Leading Through Breakpoints

1
Leading Through Breakpoints

• Tony Jefferson
• And
• Kevin Dixon

2
Who are we?

• Tony Jefferson, Project Director for developing a
  Leadership Centre for the Voluntary Community
  Sector
• Kevin Dixon, Consultant, Community Based
  Leadership Research to help design and setup the
  Leadership Centre

3
Agenda

• What are Breakpoints and why are they important
  to plan for
• What is leadership - good and bad in context
• Leadership issues here and now
• Questions to be addressed

4
What are Breakpoints

• A change in either scale or activities that means
  existing ways of doing things are no longer as
  effective
• Events that help or hinder changes to
  operations
• Barriers to successful operations
• Boundaries to organisational development
• Opportunities to move forward

5
What are some potential Breakpoints?

• Becoming a charity
• Formalisation
• Reporting requirements
• Board of trustees
• Governance
• Getting a significant grant or contract
• Change in scale
• Budgeting
• Management disciplines

6
Potential Breakpoints 2

• Employing paid staff
• Employment law
• Who runs the organisation?
• Relationships
• Creating an organisation structure
• Who does what
• Reporting lines
• Appointments/selection
• Governance
• Becoming a representative
• Eats time
• Dual role

7
Potential Breakpoints 3

• Leasing or buying property
• Sustainability of funding
• Sense of permanence
• Planning and forecasting horizons
• Management disciplines
• Downsizing
• Rethinking the role
• Sense of loss
• Merging
• Who does what?
• Different cultures
• Endings and beginnings

8
What does this mean for Leadership

• Do I understand the nature of the choices I may
  have to make
• What do I stop doing?
• What new things do I start doing?
• Do I run faster and try to do everything?
• Try to do this consciously

9
Leadership

• Leadership is a set of processes that creates
  organisations in the first place or adapts them
  to significantly changing circumstances.
  Leadership defines what the future should look
  like, aligns people with that vision, and
  inspires them to make it happen despite the
  obstacles
• (Kotter, 1996).

10
What is good and bad leadership

• Bad ineffective and unethical
• rigid, incompetent, intemperate, callous,
  corrupt, insular, evil (Kellerman, 2004)
• Good flexible, competent, temperate, sensitive,
  ethical, inspiring

11
Good Leadership

• Achieve a complicated situation/task and take
  people with them
• No one single model of leadership charismatic,
  values and back seat
• Informal relationship structures- permeable and
  unbounded both good and bad?
• Entrepreneurship - but care with use
• Inclusive everyone is involved,
  collaborative/collective

12
Bad leadership

• Feeling of disconnect not sure why we are
  going there
• Takes action away from communities
• Small group take over a larger group so that the
  majority are not heard
• Anti-leaders pursuing their own personal
  agenda/feelings against the organisation
• Corrupt those who take or on the make

13
Ideas for improving leadership

• Maybe a greater need for management than
  leadership training?
• Planning for change
• Realism and good practice
• New organisational forms that allow diversity to
  flourish
• Create a more structured environment code of
  conduct?
• Help and support to beginnings and endings

14
Leadership Issues Here and Now

• Community Angel not in any organisation but
  part of many working locally and at national
  level
• Skills to harness the Angel and Followers
• Frustration and burn out if you dont keep moving
• The direction these services are going to take
• The Centre cant see beyond public services
  agendas
• Getting hold of the funding, that wont cover the
  costs
• Appalling cultures present dark, shadow side of
  community leadership
• What happens when I leave?

15
How to tackle the choices

• Do I/we understand what needs doing?
• Where are the gaps in capability of the
  organisation?
• How do i/we make this assessment?
• How much time have we got?
• What can I do well?
• What can I learn to do?
• Too easy to underestimate what can be achieved.
• Where can I add most value?

16
Important Questions

• What do I feel most comfortable doing?
• An honest self assessment
• What do others think
• Do I want to change/ develop?
• Again, an honest self assessment.
• What do others think
• How big a challenge will it be
• Where can I get help, what help can I get

17
And some more

• Do I want to let go of some activities to create
  space for the new?
• Comfort zones are comfortable.
• If I do not am I doing someone else's job
• The things I should be doing do not get done
• Do I have any sense of a benchmark? What does
  effective look like?
• Far too easy to imagine the standards are far too
  high?
• How will I know I have succeeded?

18
Realism
Am I expected to make changes myself and provide
help and support to others whilst they change and
grow. What load can I bear and for how long. Who
will support me?
19
Reflection

• How important are Breakpoints in your present
  roles
• Leadership what does this mean to you, how
  could the centre help
• Questions are there more
• Anything to add?

20
You are not alone

• Support can be needed in two dimensions
• Technical. Having to do new and unfamiliar
  things.
• Emotional.
• Covering both bases may need different people.
• It is difficult to be both involved and
  objective.
• Whatever support one can get from within the
  organisation an external sounding board is
  important.