Tom's leadership travels

Intervals of Possibility

We started the day with a de brief of yesterday. It was a good day, but we were all a bit cynical about the intellectual level of some of the sessions, and felt some of them were a little familiar.  Helen, Sue and Chris sat politely making notes....only they knew what they were going to unleash on us next.....

We entered the barn and sat in rows and we met Caroline Sami from Id-ology.  Within about 30 seconds she had picked us up, turned us upside down and shot a bright beautiful burning arrow straight through our hearts into our souls.   At least, she did for me.

Caroline brought a completely different perspective, she made each of us feel extraordinary, she was vulnerable in a moving and very brave way, and powerful and charismatic and incredibly focused.  All those words we had written on flip charts yesterday about leadership had been rolled up together and were standing in front of us.  This is my kind of stuff - stuff you can smell, touch and hold.

We then worked in groups to look at the perception others have of us and the persona we portray.  Our group were all incredibly open, supportive and generous, I wanted to hug all of the people in my group and probably will later, even Ted, though he might be a bit reluctant.  Led by Caroline we explored how we come across to others and discovered the very powerful things about ourselves that made us special.   Sounds a bit trite written out like this but it was a very moving experience and it was one that I came out of, considerable different to when I went in, I can begin to see the unstoppable power I can harness when I can get properly connected, and feel very humble at the enormity of what I could achieve if I get it right over the next few years. And we did it from the inside out, not from the outside in, so it was scarily real.

How to hold onto this?  How to take it further? It feels like the beginning of a very exciting journey indeed.....

Jenny tells us about day 2

Our Jenny tells us about her highlights from day 2

Jenny

bit of a puzzle

Today I was told an odd story by the man who runs the saw mill at Bore Place.  I don't know whether to believe him or not......?

Andy Parfitt

Andy gave a good talk on leadership within radio 1.  It was useful to hear of ways he had used various tools in practise.  It retrospect this was the best part and it would have been good to hear much more of this practical stuff.

Interestingly Andy's star was rising at the BBC when I was there.  He managed to find good mentoring support to grow up through Radio 1 and was helped to see where his unique skills were valuable.  I never found this sort of support there, but I was across in Television which was a rather unforgiving, self obsessed dry place to work then.  Perhaps it is no coincidence that ten years later it is BBC Radio that is finding a diverse audience from across the country whilst television struggles to reflect  stories and aspirations from the whole of the UK.

Kate lobbies Andy Parfitt for more hip hop on Radio 1

Peace not happiness

Day 2 with wonderwoman

Another blockbuster.

We learnt about originality, authenticity and truth and we discovered the awesome, infectious, unstoppable power of being in those places.

We examined who we appeared to be, who we aspired to be, who we thought we were and who we are.

It was an extraordinary, moving and very profound day.  None of can quite believe how close we have come and how much trust has already been created after such a short time.

If we could bottle this Gordon Brown would give the entire arms budget to the arts.

But patience, live you way to the answers.

I'm so converted I'm almost shaving my head!

Caroline Sami - a very bright shiny star, thank you.

Julia Middleton

Julia is probably one of the few people in the country who could follow Caroline Sami.  Julia is nothing but herself, powerful and genuine.

Julia was brilliantly honest about the challenges of juggling work and family, if only all our partners were that understanding!

It's clear that Julia has achieved many things, but she has not done it by seeking to be popular, or nice, or compromising. 

What can we learn from Julia?

That being authentic, focussed and determined, even with the thunder that that can bring is a pretty unstoppable package.

Simon tells us about day 3

Simon is converted.

Simon and day 3 convertion

Diversity talk and no action

Diversity

This session began with a long reading from what I think was an Arts Council document on what diversity means for them. It seemed to mean that they wanted more people to participate in more art more often.

If this is the aim then someone should give the marketing team at Coca Cola or Nike a call and enlist their help.

A quaint example given of what diversity should look like was the people in a tube carriage. A tube carriage might represent a good ethnic mix, but it won’t contain that many disabled people or people with no jobs and 85% of the people on it will be from London……

It seems to me that the cultural sector have got themselves completely tied up in knots discussing diversity. I’m afraid to say that our group did little to show any leadership on this subject whatsoever. Our action plan was full of lovely ideals like ‘bring people together’ ‘inclusion of all in the UK’ (duh) ‘Talk to each other’ ‘look at the grassroots’ ‘be joyful’. Come on guys we are meant to be cultural leaders! Why not lobby the Arts Council for a trebling of marketing spend to be used in whatever way the venues think will work? Mind you that would be on top of the £300m they already give to regularly funded organisations to get it right in the first place…..

We looked a bit at best practice where events and venues worked well with different excluded groups. This was like a chip shop in Gateshead wanting to attract more Hasidic Jews and looking at why an Indian Restaurant in Morpeth was frequented by Chinese people. SERVE THE FOOD YOUR PEOPLE WANT!

Francois made the best point of the session which was that it was a quirk of history that we had been through a period of homogeneity in the first place and that we were now rapidly returning to a much more mixed society.

If our half empty venues continue to have nothing to offer that mixed society they will simply close.

Perhaps Radio 1 could offer us a few tips……

We must move the diversity debate away from mix and onto creativity if we are to have any chance of it becoming crucial to what we do.

Tell me I’m wrong…..

Francois takes the day.

It’s rare that leadership can be seen in action but today we saw a great example.

The task was to arrive at proposals for the British Library to further utilise its London site in a manner that would set it up to exploit both its archive and future technology to be a knowledge base for the world.

Here’s what happened.

Just before we broke for tea some of us noticed Francois had a real gleam in his eye.  He was clearly excited by the task and had some ideas.  Out of all of us he probably was the heaviest user of the libraries current facilities. So he was driven and an expert, no wonder he had eight of us follow him outside when he suggested we skip the tea break and get started straight away.

I love passion, if it’s passion based on expertise not only do I love it, I will follow it.

Francois reminded us of the British Library Mission.  This was genius.  I would have been too keen to tell everyone my brilliant idea and would have completely missed this opportunity to remind everyone of the context.

Francois set out his idea. It was good.

 

Then he did a very great thing, he sat back and let all of us bash it up and down the table, add to it, rephrase it, and redefine it.

The great leadership moment here was not to attempt to protect his idea but to have faith in both the idea and the group, but at the same time not to care too much were it went.  We could have easily trashed the idea and come up with something else, in which case he would have gone with us because it would have been better.  But having talked it through we came back to his idea; this gave him and the idea real authority.

 

Just at the point we had really talked it through, four more of the group turned up.  I would have been tempted to push forward from the place the original group were in, but Francois used the new arrivals to test the concept, thereby updating them and including them at the same time.  This way they were able to be part of the process and make some good contributions.

With five minutes to go, Patrick chipped in with three new ideas, not just additions but very different proposals, again they were good ideas and each one could probably have worked on their own.  Here I would have been tempted to explain apologetically that we just didn’t have time for new proposals.  However, Francois, by now galloping fully in his leadership horse, politely set one of the ideas aside, quickly unpicked the core concepts of the new ideas and showed how the core concepts could be incorporated into the existing plan.

When we returned and presented the idea, Francois presented with Lesa and Louisa.  Again I would almost certainly have presented on my own or with one other max.  During the presentation Francois kept things anchored and was able to bring the presentation back to the core, but was able to stand back and let Lesa and Lou do their thing.  This meant the presentation was lively, different, entertaining and varied.  It also meant the whole group felt very involved and had real ownership of the idea.

It wasn’t an exercise where Francois drove through his idea.  It was an exercise where one person with expertise and passion lead a stroppy group of creative people through a complex process in a short time and came out with a strong idea which happened to be close the his original proposal.

We trusted him and followed him because he knew the environment we were dealing with and had a strong sense of what would work.  We ended up with a strong idea because we were led in a very inclusive way and all felt engaged in the whole process and were able to add significantly the original proposition.

Leadership in action…..

Francois discusses his moment...in the dark

Annie catches fire

Tonight, for a powerful chunk of time, Annie was in the zone.

She was talking about the importance of the English folk music tradition, though she could have been talking about astrophysics for all I cared.  It wasn't what she was talking about it was the fire coming out of her that mattered.

I often wonder what I look like when I'm on a roll, if it's 10% of this, it's worth pursuing.

Annie's words flowed, she took up half the room, she was BIG!  Her cheeks glowed, her eyes shone, her movement matched her words, she had conviction that would kill a cow, and a passion and charisma that could lead an army. Her hair got redder and she was like a fast, gleaming, steaming express train.  In that space, in that moment that belonged only to her, we would have gone anywhere for her.

It was the polar opposite of Francois early in the day. But both were phenomenally powerful examples of different aspects of leadership.

Go girl.