Do you want to lead? Are are many qualities of a leader, to be an effective leader requires communication skills…to persuade groups,inspire, and motivate. A leader must prove to others that he or she has the background and experience to tackle a problem with an solod solution. A leader must show a proven list of accomplishments that reflect the challenges that could arise in the future. Are you that person?
Pass it on,
Dr Anthony
Rob Noble is CEO of The Leadership Trust
Lead by example: Our core belief is that leadership is using personal power to win the hearts and minds of people to achieve a common purpose. The leader must have credibility through knowledge and provide an example – they must live the values to which they prescribe.
Where is local government today and where does it need and want to be? Can the current team get it to where it needs to go without a new perspective? This is not to say the leadership has to change but the leader may need some new input by reaching out personally or adding to the team. Perceptions of new arrivals with Surrey are interesting and the leader must ensure they do not miss an opportunity to harness this energy.
Tim Hall is a member of new Surrey county council leader David Hodge’s cabinet
Involve all staff and keep ‘walking the floor’: We have adopted a one team approach to leadership, this is very much a transparent style with cabinet members and senior mangers being both upfront and out walking the floor. We think the John Lewis model is a good model to learn from. We move our graduate trainees around departments to get them wide experience of the organisation as with a £1.8 billion pound turnover and over a million residents we are a large and complex organisation. Also the new leader and chief executive visited all our major sites in the first week or two to meet staff en masse, in their teams and at their desks. A lot of effort has been redirected into communication with frontline staff, as they are often residents and service users as well. This is very productive and positive.
Tim Gilling is deputy executive director at the Centre for Public Scrutiny
What makes a good leader? Leadership of any kind in any sector should be built around three principles – transparency, inclusiveness and accountability. In other words how leaders handle information and how open they are about what they do and how/why they do it; the extent to which leaders seek a range of views and respond to them; and how leaders use mechanisms of accountability to demonstrate credibility.
John Atkinson is director of infrastructure, government and healthcare at KPMG
Perspective is essential: Leaders need to really immerse themselves in the context in which they work so being very visible and visiting where the work goes on are both important. Too often we focus inwardly on our immediate environment and what is happening in our organisation without understanding what is happening to the people who we are working for, be they customers, citizens, politicians or staff. Without this range of perspective we build stories that self-fulfil, we can tell ourselves we’re great when the world thinks otherwise.
Nick Forbes is Labour leader of Newcastle city council
Collaborate and co-operate for the best results: Councils are squeezed between increased demand from residents and decreasing resources. Leadership in local government is currently about setting a strong direction. We cannot just wait to be battered by storms and must have a vision for what we want to see in the longer term. To that end we have set out four clear priorities, not just for the council but for the city as a whole. Leadership is increasingly going to be about working with others, not just in soft partnerships but in true collaboration and co-operation.
A leader is not a manager: A key element of leadership is understanding the difference between that and management, or where the two overlap. I set out at a meeting of the top 100 managers at Newcastle city council that I am an elected leader and not another layer of management. Politicians who have as their ambition to simply better ‘manage’ the council should get a job there instead.
Emanuel Gatt is managing director of Shared Service Architects
Sharing is essential to being a good leader: Leaders are increasingly looking to new and innovative ways of collaborating with others, blending services and aligning resources around communities or places to maintain public value. This is challenging leaders to re-examine how they lead their organisations to address the complex issues we face in our society. There is much talk of collaborative leaders (those that can lead beyond their authority) or collective leadership (leaders skilled at both delegating leadership within their organisations and sharing leadership across partnership). The question is how we help our leaders build capacity and capability in these skills.
Broaden your knowledge base: It is dangerous for emerging leaders to develop a selective perception, seeing the world only from their organisational standpoint. The modern day leader must make time to stretch their peripheral knowledge, go see other organisations in different sectors and industries and find out how they address problems and innovate. We can encourage this by asking leaders to build networks beyond their sector or discipline – do some ‘shared service tourism’.
Sarah Hyder is external relations manager for Changemakers
What makes a good leader? Having knowledge and insight, values, being open-minded and communicating well. Younger people are more likely to value more personality based attributes such as charisma and open-mindedness, whereas those over 30 are more likely to see leadership skills as things gained through experience.
How to encourage younger people to become local government leaders: Provide mentoring opportunities for young constituents who may be interested in being a local councillor. Encourage those young people who have already become local councillors/reached senior positions within local government to promote the benefits of these roles to a younger audience – they are often more effective advocates. Maximise opportunities for young people to be engaged in decision making processes such as commissioning or participatory budgeting to give a real opportunity to understand, and influence, how local authorities work.
Robin Lawrence works for The Leadership Trust
Leaders can get sucked into the detail of the task: The more effective leaders divide their attention to ensure the needs of the team and the individual are met. This means lifting ourselves above the detail for long enough to ensure that the people are working effectively together, are clear on the objectives, and have what they need to tackle the task.
Not all changes are a bad thing: Seeking out the positives is a useful quality. Be prepared to muck in or do something different to make change a success instead of blocking or avoiding it. Similar to being positive but with the added quality of being proactive. The overriding quality needed is adaptability.
George Griffin is director of learning and development at Penna
What works best for you? Each organisation we work with faces a variety of challenges and opportunities so the first step is to clearly establish the ‘leadership brand’ required to support the organisation in the achievement of its objectives. A particular leadership style may work well for one organisation but have a detrimental impact on another.
A good leader must motivate people to follow them: Leadership boils down to the ability of an individual to inspire and motivate people towards a vision. This requires the ability to communicate clearly but also with conviction and passion. Additionally, a leader needs to have ‘followability’ which is harder to articulate but is based on a whole host of factors such as their values, emotional awareness, gravitas, impact and credibility. As an ex-soldier, the phrase ‘serve to lead’ resonates deeply with me. The best leaders I have known have always been prepared to put their own team’s needs before their own.
You can read the full debate here.
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Doctor, doctor, this sexist toy-selling is making me sick
Some toy companies are still living in the past…it is clear as a society we are past the gender gap…both men and women share the same opportunities in deciding what career paths to take ….your sex should not hinder your desire in becoming a doctor,lawyer,CEO,fire-fighter,police officer…careers that were once dominated by men have long since seen women occupy. Perhaps the toy companies need to come up with a new way of identifying their inventory…what do you think of that ”Boss Man” or “Boss Lady”
http://www.yepod.com/?p=23438
Pass it on,
Dr Anthony
Look at this picture (above) of a doctor’s coat, which comes with a “handy stethoscope and mask”. It could fit any wannabe medic, as long as they’re up to 116cm tall – which covers most children aged between about three and eight. Why, then, would this outfit be seen as suitable for a “boy”?
My smaller-than-average eight-year-old daughter has asked for a real skeleton and a book about bodies for Christmas because she wants to be a doctor. Hurrah. Yet for sex-appropriate dressing-up, I should of course turn to the nurse’s outfit. This is filed under “girl” on the same website, Ocado, as it happens, which, like other online grocers, seems to fall straight into gender traps when it comes to toys. Why?
At least the Early Learning Centre, which sells these outfits, has learned not to gender stereotype the future career choices of its clientele. Look, here’s a firefighter with long hair! Such gender neutrality comes after a long and, at times, bitter campaign by Pink Stinks, which urged the toy retailer for younger children to stop promoting all things pink and pretty for girls as far back as 2009. Yes, girls like dressing as fairies and even princesses, but not to the exclusion of all else – and maybe they wouldn’t at all if they weren’t led to believe that that’s what girls should want. My colleague Polly Curtis has written here about whether nature or nurture dictates our colour and toy preference.
The campaign website shows other examples of gender-specific retailers, such as Sainsbury’s. Given today’s news that Hamleys is giving up the action-figures-for-boys and nail-varnish-with-feather-boas-for-girls signposting in its flagship central-London store, is it time to name and shame the stores still doing this?
Do you have more examples of sexist toy-selling? Does it matter? And if so, how do we get it to change?
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