On Leadership: Tom Bell

The Language of Confusion
Tom Bell

On a mild, sunny day in late March I attended a meeting of the CELP at which we discussed the changed role of the SRP, the CSP, the CLAA, the CLIP, the SIP and the evolution of the CEDE from the original LSP and its role within the LAA, naturally this led us to discuss the removal of RDA’s, the demise of BL’s, the emergence of LEP’s, the CLEP, the EBP, the role of the CEBP and CBEC; they were members of BCCI.  The meeting was chaired by a representative from a local B&E school who remembered the time of EFAC, which was funded by RRC and WLR (or URC as it was sometimes known).  The chair was supported by a regional SSA who was familiar with the work of CLEAN and the NFEA, she also discussed BIS, CLG (formerly DCLG of course!) and DOE (not DOA) and she referred to funding from the NWDA.  The meeting finished with a discussion about the role of RGF and RDPE.  There was some confusion about the role of the CIA (Cumbria Inward Investment Agency of course!) and no ERDF was involved...get the picture?

Why does the world of economic development and regeneration do its level best to hide in an ever changing shroud of mystique by using another language that only we (sometimes) can understand?  The language we speak may as well be like the Klingon language of the aliens in Star Trek; it is utterly unintelligible to the vast majority of people on planet Earth.  “Indicators and Predictors of Beaconicity,” “Stakeholder Synergies,” “Market Making Facilitation,” “Cascading,” “Holistic Governance,” “Coterminous,” “Capacity Building,” “Downstream,” “Integrated Cascading Information Flows,” “Improvement Levers,” “Subsidiarity,” “Thinking Outside the Box,” “Transactional,” “Transformational” and last but not least, “Upstream Value Added Synergies.” 

Those of us who look in confusion upon polished collections of such phrases can identify with the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes: “No, I still can’t see them.” When I started my working life in a timber yard, neither I, nor the people who worked with me, nor the people who managed us, would use words like “facilitate” or “additionality”. Had anyone been tempted to say to a colleague in the wood yard, “Would you like me to facilitate the safe lifting of that large stack of nine-by-fours to leverage some additionality to our roles and create a synergistic partnership?” they would have quickly been exposed to an express programme of cultural alignment.

By translating activity into an alien language, the world of regeneration risks appearing to be a closed loop, which is counter-productive.  If a new era of enterprise and economic regeneration is really about innovation and finding new and more effective ways of doing things and genuinely engaging with the private sector then it needs to be exposed to as much new thinking and as many sources of ideas as possible. This won’t happen unless the language changes.

Right, I’m off to discuss a synergistic opportunity with a quasi autonomous stakeholder; speak soon!

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Tom works as a partner in innovation and support services. He is the recipient of an MBA with a focus on enterprise and has experience with providing enterprise support to a variety of businesses and people affected by social and geodemographic exclusion, specifically rural isolation, time poverty and disability. Tom’s other qualifications and achievements include an MSc in marketing and PRINCE2 qualification as well as being the first member of the CIM in Cumbria to become a chartered marketer.

       

On Leadership: Paul Walsh

Leading from the Centre
Paul Walsh

Working in learning and development for over ten years, I’ve spent a lot of time in training rooms working with managers helping them to work out what management and leadership means to them. The same discussions often crop up, such as,

 Is there a difference between leadership and management?; What is a good leader?;   Are we born to be a “natural leader” or can leadership be learned?

There are many ways a trainer can approach these questions – discuss some models, display relevant quotes from well known leaders, talk about what their employer expects.  But underlying all these questions is the assumption that there are leaders and, therefore, followers to be led. 

As I work with participants to answer these questions, I can not help but recall a quote by leadership author Keith Grint, when he observes that, “leadership is too important to be left to leaders.”  Ideally, we want everyone in our teams and organisations to feel empowered and as committed to our business as if it were their own. 

Yet, there’s a contradiction here with how we tend to think about leadership.  Writers and theorists on the subject often talk about “leading from the front”, transforming the values and goals of followers so they carry out their leader’s vision.  But there are risks:

• In the past three years, we’ve seen huge financial institutions bought to the very edge by leadership visions that have been so successfully taken on board by the organisation that no one thought to challenge them. 
• How does future talent develop if they take on their leader’s values and beliefs without working these out for themselves?
• What about leaders so convinced by their own vision, they won’t listen to anyone who dares to dissent?

From this perspective, expecting followers to work within your values and vision doesn’t empower teams or individuals – quite the opposite.  After all, pinning your hopes and expectations on a leader and accepting their beliefs without thinking them through for yourself is an easy option.  Something people taking part in leadership development often realise as I challenge them to work these out for themselves. 

As a leader, if you want teams to take responsibility and work problems out for themselves, consider if leading from the front is the best way.  For instance, researchers looking at leadership across the world have found this isn’t the only approach to leadership.  In China, for instance, business leaders aspire to lead from the centre – a well connected source of advice, support and facilitation for those they work with. 

Next time you feel frustrated at someone in your team or business who doesn’t seem able to take responsibility, take the opportunity to reflect and ask yourself whether you are so busy leading, that they feel they have no alternative but to follow.

__________

Paul Walsh is a Training Officer at Manchester Metropolitan University and mentor with a community based employability and enterprise group in Warrington.  Having worked in learning and development for over ten years, he has a research interest in the participatory evaluation of development programmes. 

When not writing blogs, Paul is most likely to be found in a training room attempting to support participants’ development by inducing confusion, asking awkward questions and trying not to provide any answers.

On Leadership: Tim Sharpe

Lead Us Not Into Evil: How Empathy Is Prerequisite for Ethical Leadership

Tim Sharpe

I don’t think I’m a leader. Day to day there are a thousand minor leadership tasks to be performed but simply performing them doesn’t make me a leader. No one ‘follows’ me as such; they’re either employed by me (I pay them to follow me), or a customer pays me to deliver some sort of benefit. I don’t view either as leadership – though through the MMU’s excellent LEAD programme, it’s something I’m trying to develop.

Recognising my limited leadership capability releases me from what I believe is a greater level of ethical responsibility. Whilst employees can resign and customers can choose to go elsewhere if faced with an unacceptable course of action, I think leaders demand a greater investment: trust.

This investment of trust means that a leader holds sway over opinions in a way that an administrator doesn’t, which means the leader has a greater responsibility to ensure this trust isn’t abused. Yet that’s surely not enough; for a leader to limit their concerns to their immediate followers risks the welfare of those indirectly affected. For example, the business leader has a responsibility to the families of employees.

Therefore the ethical leader must conduct their affairs in a manner which takes into account the wider impact of their actions, particularly on minorities or the disenfranchised. To fail to do so constitutes something more than just neglect of duty, or lack of respect - history suggests it can develop into cruelty of the most extreme kind.

Richard Holloway, in the exhaustive and excellent ‘Between the Monster and the Saint’, suggests that evil develops from an absence of empathy, a failure to be able to put yourself in the place of those affected by your actions, “the ability to not only feel for the afflicted, but to feel with them,” as Holloway puts it.

He rightly describes how human beings can accommodate cruelty with alarming ease when mobilised to do so by a leader. I would argue that this applies to all leaders, from leading a church group to a leading a country.

So my take on leadership is that a leader who does not demonstrate empathy is a tyrant. A leader can be driven, energetic, tough, demanding, or anything else they need to be, but without empathy they don’t deserve your trust.

As a final thought, my concern is that the ethical responsibilities of leadership are rarely referred to, despite recent lessons from history. We live in a world where Lord Sugar, a moderately successful remnant of the original 1980’s technology boom (others from that period include Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates) is described in awed tones as Britain’s “most belligerent boss”.  Is that a good thing? I think not; to my mind, belligerence doesn’t sit well with empathy.

About A&W & Me

I’m the co-founder of A&W, creators and operators of Sabisu.co, an information integration and management platform for networked enterprises. Drawing on my years in corporate programme delivery, A&W also offers consultancy on programme governance, project management and technology change management. I’m a bit of a geek and a technology enthusiast.

Feel the Fury and Fight Men's Cancer

Ladies and gentlemen, our men are under attack, and the only way to combat the advances are to spread the word. The truth of the matter is, one in three of them will fall victim to one of a trio of cancers exclusive to men.

Those cancers are prostate, testicular and penile and they are lurking in wait to wreak havoc. Each cancer targets men at different ages and awareness is the first step in preventing them. The culprits who are contriving to take away our men are:

Prostate
Prostate Cancer is the most common of the bunch, colloquially referred to as the 'old man's cancer' since it targets men between the ages 50 to 80. Prostate may be detected by difficulty passing urine, increasing passing of urine and pain whilst passing urine.

Testicular
Testicular Cancer is the trickiest of the bunch, manifesting itself in two types: seminomas and tumoursteratomas. The first type generally affects men aged 25 to 55 while the latter preys on the young, causing chaos from the age of 15 to 35. Testicular may be detected by swelling in the testicles, heaviness in the scrotum and pain in the back and lower abdomen.

Penile
Penile Cancer is a relatively uncommon type of skin cancer, arising on the glans, foreskin or shaft. Although this cancer usually afflicts men who are aged 60 and over, it can affect younger men as well. Change in skin colour, thickening of the skin and irregular discharge or bleeding are signs that could point to penile cancer.

To raise awareness of these cancers and to remind men about the importance of being tested, the charity single Feeling the Fury has been recorded by members of the bands Thunder, Gun and The Little Angels. Men Matter has teamed up with the Northern Song Collective to produce the song and a video.



So, what can you do?
Head over to your favourite music downloading site (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify) and download the song. If you have a man in your life who matters, get him to download the song, too, awareness is the first step towards prevention. If we're honest, even with their filthy habits, their football addictions and their infatuation with flatulence, men really do matter.

On Leadership: Tracy Townend

Leadership--Thoughts by Tracy Townend

Puddle Ducks is an interesting business, as (currently) it is wholly owned and primarily operated by women for whom a flexible, part-time role is absolutely paramount.  Our franchisees are a team of professional women who have been solicitors, accountants and senior managers in a past life and are now dedicating their skills and expertise to running their own business but still having time for their family. 

At our franchise conference earlier this month, I had the privilege of speaking after our gala dinner.  I believe that good leadership is about consistency of values and behaviours, and as a franchisor it is important to me that all franchisees have the same values and behaviours as I do.  Only in this way can the culture of the business permeate through to all staff across the country.

I chose to quote two American essayists from the 1800’s.  The first has inspired no lesser person than Barack Obama – Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He gave this definition of success – which I suggested that we could all do worse than put above our desks:

“What is success? 
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.”

I proposed that of course this is a wonderful ideal that we can all strive to, but we that are all also driven by financial success - and that is our challenge. 

The second American writer that I quoted, Norman Peale, wrote:

“All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless [s]he knows where [s]he wants to go and what [s]he wants to do.”

In conclusion, I challenged all our franchisees to “choose your goal, look after the people and the world around you, and remember to enjoy the journey!”

If I am right and good leadership is about consistency of values and behaviours, I sincerely hope that my franchisees see in my behaviour a reflection of these values and that, in turn, they and their staff can find a balance in their lives, enjoy their work and feel suitably rewarded for their efforts.

_____
Tracy Townend is founder and director of Puddle ducks Franchising Ltd. She founded puddle Ducks with her friend and business partner Jo Stone, in 2002, and they franchised the business in 2007. Tracy graduated as a chemical engineer from Cambridge in 1992 and worked as a chartered enigneer for both ICI and Shell before leaving to have her first child. She met Jo at this time, and a year later, Puddle Ducks was hatched. Puddle Ducks offers baby and child swimming classes from birth to 12 years with an emphasis on fun, confidence and grace in the water.