For this month's #FellowFriday we are pleased to introduce you to Anne Bailey, CEO of Form the Future and Clore Social Experienced Leader Fellow. Read Anne's interview which covers her unique leadership journey including how she became an unexpected CEO and her takeaways from our Experienced Leader programme.

Tell us about your leadership journey to date.

I started my career in New York in the late 1980s – think Working Girl and Wall Street. All big shoulder pads and power suits. Most of the bosses were men whose leadership skills were honed on the sports field or in the military. Apart from one leader who was a storyteller whose vision inspired me. 

I moved to the UK when I was 25 and continued my quest to figure out what I wanted to do for work. I found my way into PR based on my ability to write. But I was never quite sure I was in the right job.

I stepped away from the corporate world when my children were young and while I never stopped working, I was mainly freelance for several years.

Clients often told me that I had an ability to inspire and energise people. A headteacher once said to me: “Fifteen minutes with you and I’m excited about my job again.”

One of the projects I’d started while working on my own was to try to find a way to connect schools with businesses, so that students could learn about and prepare for their future careers. It came out of my own frustration of not knowing what I wanted to do for work. It grew over time to become Form the Future CIC, a careers and employment company that I still lead, eight years since launching with a partner in 2015. Form the Future is now a team of 30 people, a committee of advisors and a Board, all of whom I need to lead to some extent. Together we have nurtured a huge network of schools, businesses and community leaders who are integral to delivering our impact. I hadn’t set out to build an enterprise like this and I sometimes feel like an accidental CEO. When I saw Clore’s Experienced Leader programme I saw an opportunity to learn how to be a better leader.

I was lucky to win the 2022 Cambridge Social Entrepreneurship Prize which came with a bursary to put towards my own development. I would never have applied believing that all our resources should be directed to delivering for young people. 

I was intrigued by the Social Leadership Capabilities Framework which Clore Social Leadership programmes are centred around. I immediately felt comfortable with some of the attributes, capabilities and skills which I recognised as strengths and a bit anxious about the others that I thought were weaknesses. What I discovered was that the areas I thought were strengths needed development and I was far better in the areas I thought would be difficult. My main realisation is that leadership comes in many guises – no shoulder pads required – and the art is finding a way that works for you. I’m much more aware now of where I add value and where I get in the way.

Was there anything unexpected that came from your experience on the Experienced Leader programme?

There was much that I loved about the Experienced Leader programme – our generous facilitator, Emily Lomax, our cohort of diverse and inspirational leaders all tackling challenges whole-heartedly in different places and spaces; opportunities to learn about myself through Lumina Spark and a 360 review; experiencing Action Learning, and access to interesting content about the different leadership modules – but none of those were unexpected. But something emerged during the residential that surprised me; when our group discussions turned to funding, I realised just how frustrated I was with the struggle to fund our services. It’s the effort involved to chase small sums of money for short-term contracts, an inefficient use of time by an already stretched organisation who could otherwise be delivering services.

If anything drives me out of the sector it will be the endless quest to raise funds to deliver our services and then to convert to delivery, like a London Taxi doing a U-turn. It’s exhausting. The competitive nature of bidding for contracts means we keep our costs low and our margins are minimal. But this puts our work at risk, as we pay our staff less than they can make elsewhere and then bear the costs of having to recruit and retrain, losing valuable skills and knowledge along the way. 

I believe our work has value and that value should be recognised. The problem we’re addressing isn’t going to disappear anytime soon which is why we need to build a sustainable operation, one that gets fairly compensated for the important work that we do. 

The revelation of just how frustrated I was with our funding situation wasn’t just cathartic - it was also an important driver in reviewing our operations and future strategy. The programme gave me the chance to take time away from the business, to learn from other social leaders and to tune in to what I really felt.

What are you excited to see come to fruition in the next couple of years?

Building on the idea of reviewing our operations to build a more sustainable enterprise; I’m excited to see how we can use data and technology to personalise our services. For a long time we’ve delivered good services, but without precision. In the same way that medicine is moving to genetics to refine treatments, we can make sure that our careers services are fully responsive to the interests and aptitudes of the students we’re supporting. We’re gaining some really valuable insights into the next generation which we’re able to share with employers and place-leaders, enabling our employment eco-system to operate more effectively. Having built something that works well in our region, we’re excited to explore the potential for expanding to other parts of the UK and overseas.

What projects are you currently working on?

I usually have more projects on the go than is possible to deliver, so one of my goals is doing less. That’s a direct result of what I’ve taken away from the Clore programme: focused strategist and empowering enabler coming together so that I provide clarity and direction and then step away and allow my team to take things forward. One thing I’m doing to help myself transition to this approach is learning about coaching. After Clore, I took a course in Leadership Coaching which gave me a lot of insight into the impact of a coaching approach within organisations and some techniques to get started. I was aware that my default was to take ownership of people’s problems, a trait that a lot of founders suffer from and that the crisis of the past few years probably exacerbated but I hadn’t realised the impact this had on the people in my team. What I thought was helping to relieve pressure or find solutions was actually doing the opposite: making them think I didn’t believe in them or their abilities. 

In these challenging times we can only really control one thing: ourselves. Being a social entrepreneur is a tough job and ultimately it’s about mindset.  “Know Yourself, Be Yourself, Look After Yourself” is the first part of the programme and it’s easy to dismiss this. I now realise that, as a leader, the work I do on myself will benefit the whole organisation and ultimately our mission. Our work providing effective careers programmes for young people has never been more needed and I’m excited to apply what I’ve learned to help us to help even more young people.

Our next Experienced Leader programme will start in 2024. To find out more about the programme, and register for updates, please click here.

You can find Anne on Twitter and LinkedIn.

You can find Form The Future on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

If you would like to be featured for a #CloreSocialFellowFriday, send us an email at info@cloresocialleadership.org.uk.