Tom's leadership travels

The begining

This is the start of the journey.

Alongside 30 others I am about to begin my two year Clore Leadership Fellowship.  It's a leadership programme for leaders in the cultural and creative sectors. My fellowship is sponsored by the UK Film Council and Skillset.

It promises quite a ride.  A three month placement in another organisation, what could that be?  A period of research, what shall I research and why?  A mentor, who and why? And spending time with a whole bunch of others who I presume have similar concerns....? or perhaps not.

So why am I doing it?  Why am I adding to my already hefty workload from my current job running Northern Film & Media in North East England to spend time studying leadership?

At the moment my answer to this question is that I want to better understand the type of leader I am (presumes I am one to start with....but I passed the interview etc!)  If I can do this then I can get other people to do all the things I'm not good at and concentrate on the stuff that I do the best.

I've read lots of stuff on leadership over the years, most of it is too dry for me and seems too much theory than practice.  I work in the creative industries where it's often folly to apply traditional models.  Take John Adair's classic three circles of his functional leadership model - task - team - individual.  In my experience in the creative area the 'task' is often being defined and reinvented as you go, the team is often virtual or divided on it's aims (often rightly) and the individuals are often very driven, creative people more interested in their own expression than the end result (again often rightly) .  Actually drawing them all together is sometimes the very thing that kills the project.

Though I love all the Jim Collins stuff in Good to Great

So off we go.  At the moment I am trying to discover what sort of leader I am, and then how to best use that to tilt the world in the right direction a bit.

Day 1 at Bore Place

This place is very special.  It's a huge dairy farm in deepest Kent, beautiful gardens, lovely buildings, not overly restored.  I was last here about 7 years ago on the PAL multi media labs and I met my wife here then.

So to day 1.

Intense time learning 30 people's names, just about had it by lunch time.  Most of us arrived on Sunday night, most of us exhausted from trying to tie up all sorts of loose ends on our day jobs. But an air of expectation and excitement about what's to come.  Some of us concerned at how on earth we can spend two whole weeks talking about leadership!

Shot some video to go with this blog which will post when have time, asking people about what they want to get out of all this. It's clear that for many this is a personal journey perhaps more of self disovery than one of picking up a few skills to be used back in the work place. Though interviewing people on day 1 over breakfast was pretty harsh so not all took it seriously - Mary was doing the Clore in order to become 'supremely, globally, fantastically successful and Annie's central question was whether cultural leaders had toast soldiers with their soft boilded eggs, she was moretified to discover that she was the only one.

Useful stuff I wrote down from day 1

Malcolm Higgs from the Henley Centre told us that only 30% of change programmes actually work and that organisation culture has a bigger effect on performence than most strategy and that leaders can have a BIG effect on organisational culture - so building a culture in which people can perform at their best is a good bet.

Perhaps this is a good example of the move away from 'Heroic Leadership' or the Cult of Peronality to a more engaging model that better supports people and builds capacity and resilience into an organisation.

Key words

Enquiry - invite challenge, accept leader is not an expert

Enable - provide resource and support to enable success

Develop - the people and the teams, coaching mentoring etc

Apparantly good leaders spend 60% of their time developing the teams and the people.  Bit of a shock this one as I probably spend about 10% of time doing this.  I MUST STOP MANAGING AND START LEADING.

Malcolm was a big advocate of positive psychology.  I liked what he said about appraisals - that it was a waste of time spending so much effort on the things people do badly instead of focussing on freeing them up to do what they do well.

Malcolm talked about the change in the organisational paradigm as a shift from a machine to a living system.

I did wonder that he seemed to be implying one could lead without personality and charisma, which I'm not sure is true.

We spent nearly all the afternoon talking about words to apply to leadership and great leaders.  The usual stuff came up - Drive, enthusiasm, focus, determination, courage etc. It was good to chat in the groups and one of the great leaders Tony came up with in our group was Clement Attlee.  I hadn't quite realised what a huge change this rather unassuming man had pushed through after the second world war.

Some talk in the afternoon of work life balance and a nice quote from Socrates 'beware the baroness of a busy life'  or is that baronness....?

Lord Puttnam

Truly a great man. 

Key points we talked about were the need to start from quality, good is just the begining and its from there that the journey begins.  The first attempt will never be good enough.  If a fast moving world trust is a far more useful tool than accountability and it is pointless trying to micro manage a creative environment as both accountability and micro managment will kill creative output.  We discussed how easy it was to fall into a blame culture and how it was more important to encourage people to feel fearless by creating an environement of trust.

All good stuff. But one has to ensure that people are taking responsibility for doing things better and constantly improving, so whilst not creating a blame culture its important that people know when they have got it badly wrong. IS this a contradiction?

Puttnam used a great quote from Oscar Wilde about an ex studio head - 'Some people cause happiness where ever they go and some cause happiness when ever they go'

Puttnam's key words were Commitment, Dedication and Trust.

He cited his great mentor in his first real job as saying he wanted Puttnam to amaze him, and if he couldn't amaze him he should leave.  How many of us have a list of the amazing things we have done in the last year?

my leadership profile

We have done a slightly odd 360 degree feedback profile with the Work Foundation.  I say slightly odd, because it only asks questions of 5 people which did not seem very many to me.  When I asked why so few, John Kirkham explained that when more were used it tended to produce a less distinctive average.....I thought that was the whole point of a significant survey?

It' also odd because it says my results are the from six observers and as we were only asked to get feedback from five observers this is puzzling.

It's also odd because it seems to say that I am weak on things I thought I was strong on.....what if it's right?

Let's assume it is -

Many of my skills are rated well and on a par with other Clore Fellows - BUT

My sensitivity to external partners and Stakeholders is rated by both me and my observers as lower than Clore Fellows as a whole.  Not really surprised by this.  We are a funding organisation and less partnership driven than for example a theatre or a museum.  Though it is an area to work on.

My ability to Liberate my staff is marked lower by my observers than by me and they mark it lower than the average.  This one really puzzles me and I need to get to the bottom of it.  It's an area I conciously work hard on.  But somehow, where I think I am providing resource and support to go further, the staff questioned must be getting a different messege.

Also low compared to others was Developing People and Teams, being an Example to Others and Building Relationships on Trust.  All things I marked myself higher on than my observers.

So it was a very small sample, and only three of them were staff, but it is still a real puzzle.  Liberation, Development, Example and Trust all low....blimey!

Blaire v Brown

Seems to be a classic leadership style issue playing out here.

Blaire is commonly seen as becoming too self centred at the end and obsessed with his own legacy, image and power.  Brown however, is looking really promising, a new type of leader who rejects somewhat the obsession with appearances and focusses on the job.   A leader who is also interested in moving power away from Whitehall and trying to spread wealth and decision making out to the country more.  He already feels as though he cares about the whole country being successful in a way that Blaire didn't.   See Sue Stirling's blog at IPPR North.

Interesting times.