What leadership means to me: reflections for future leaders

I was approached to participate in the Housing LIN Future Leaders programme by Jeremy Porteus (who was my line manager in a former life!) after I posted on LinkedIn about the importance of empathic leadership as part of the “Chief Empathy Officer” campaign by Catalyst and CEO Magazine last year. I was only too pleased to help.

Leadership to me is about modelling good behaviours, bringing people with you, being clear and upfront, and most importantly, helping the people that work with you to be the best they can be. It’s no good holding on to all the power, gatekeeping contacts and rationing what you expose your direct reports to. As leaders, especially those of us at a certain point in our careers, we will have to step down sometime, so we need to nurture the next generation. To this end, I am very interested in coaching and mentoring, especially for people of colour. I’ve recently set up a new mentoring pilot with a former colleague called Voluntary Equality which is aimed at people of colour in voluntary sector public affairs roles. Because there is a very traditional route to working in public affairs which is not available to everyone, we feel this is important.

There are people coming through – for example I see more diverse people working in Parliament these days – but we need to do more to open the doors, and support people once they get through the door. Diverse future leaders will come up against barriers, so they need the skills to navigate majority spaces before they lose confidence and try a different career. We need to see good representation of society in the spaces that are working towards social change – nothing about us without us.

My view of leadership has changed as I have grown. I started my working life in the private sector, in the days when office bullying was not named but simply accepted, where there was no recognition of equal opportunities, so working hard was not enough, and quite frankly a leader was supposed to dominate and humiliate people. Since I found my true home in the voluntary sector via the public sector, I’ve found a space for my style of management and leadership. And I think I’ve proven that it works.

I’d like to wish the current and future cohorts of the Housing LIN Future Leaders Programme every success – you’ve got this!

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The Housing LIN Summit - A Festival of Ideas session, Inspiring young talent: investing in our future housing and care leaders drew on the experience of the recently concluded 2nd cohort of Housing LIN’s Future Leaders’ Programme and offered a series of conversations with participants about their hopes and aspirations for the sector in their early career, and how the Future Leaders’ Programme has helped to begin to forge their career paths. Rewatch here!