Reflective Leadership: The Leadership Qualities Framework in Action

Reflective Leadership
The Leadership Qualities Framework in action Personal Leadership Journeys
A research report by Julie Hollingsworth and Jane Hodgson on behalf of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership June 2005
Acknowledgements and thanks

We would like to thank Alison Walker-Fraser from CEL Ashridge for asking us to be involved in this research project and for her support throughout. We would also like to thank the 15 senior leaders from within the sector who made such an enthusiastic contribution to this part of the research. Our thanks go to their organisations too for providing the photographs that appear throughout this report.
June 2005
page 1
Foreword
This is a fascinating read and I warmly invite you to share in the highlights, the challenges and the joys of this perpetual journey that never ends, that re-routes along the way and that has no nal destination. As I reect upon the various storylines and the ndings from 15 leaders within the learning and skills sector who participated in this valuable case study, I have no doubt that you too may identify with the many leadership issues that affect human endeavour. As we learn from each other, we are better able to prepare effectively for the challenges that face leaders today. The richness of this leading-edge research informs our understanding. Its value lies in its relevancy to our world of learning and skills delivery. We know that leaders can and do make a difference and that leadership can be learnt. Reective leadership has an important role in surviving reform and sustaining leadership; this valuable research report supports this activity. The value of these stories lies in the very fact that as leaders we are all learners in the art of leadership. Welcome to this ongoing journey.
Lynne Sedgmore CBE Chief Executive
page 2
June 2005
Contents
Acknowledgements and thanks Foreword Section 1: Introduction, aims and methodology Section 2: Key themes emerging Section 3: Personal leadership journeys Section 4: Implications for development in the sector Section 5: Conclusions Appendix A: Research questions 1 2 4 5 7 43 45 47
June 2005
page 3
Section 1: Introduction, aims and methodology

The aim of this research project was to explore the personal leadership journeys of a number of senior leaders from across the learning and skills sector. We wanted to understand: the signicant landmarks that had helped to shape their careers what helped to prepare them to make the transition into a top leadership role how they continued to learn and develop and respond to the challenges of the role the way they approached leading their organisations the values, qualities and skills that they brought to the role This project was partly inspired by the ndings of an earlier research project carried out at Ashridge Business School by Hodgson, Briner and Hollingsworth, entitled The Top Leader Journey Research: How do people learn and grow into top jobs and emerge as effective leaders.1 This was carried out across private, public and not-for-prot sectors. In our current research, we were interested to see if the experiences of top leaders in the learning and skills sector were similar to or different from those in other sectors. We wanted to link our ndings to the CEL Leadership Qualities Framework2, which was designed by CEL in consultation with ACM, FENTO, AoC, ALP and other sector partners and launched by Lynne Sedgmore, CEL chief executive, in November 2004. This framework was designed as a tool to support the learning and skills sector in effectively developing people for current and future leadership roles. It focuses on the characteristics of leadership and the effective behaviours and qualities that can enable successful leadership to take place. We were interested to see how this framework was working in practice. So between November 2004 and March 2005, we interviewed 15 people in senior leadership roles across the sector. The majority of those interviewed were principals of further education colleges or sixth form colleges. Others were involved in training or learning organisations and one was the governor of a prison. Of those interviewed, eleven were men and four were women. We created a structured questionnaire to use as a guide during interviews. A copy of this is included in Appendix A. We used the structured questions as a framework but also used perceptive probing to dig more deeply where particularly interesting issues arose. We were interested in exploring the personal perspectives of each journey, told in the subjects own words. This gave us some fascinating insights and we were pleased by how enjoyable and satisfying most of our subjects found telling their stories. A synopsis of each of the stories is given in Section 3. We are pleased and privileged that each of our subjects who was interviewed has agreed to be identied by name. We believe that their preparedness to be so open and honest about their experiences has greatly added to the richness and value of the report.
1 Hodgson P, Briner W and Hollingsworth J (2004) The Top Leader Journey Research: How do people learn and grow into top jobs and emerge as effective leaders. Ashridge Business School 2 The Leadership Qualities Framework (2004) Centre for Excellence in Leadership
page 4
June 2005
Section 2: Key themes emerging

Each leadership journey described in this report is unique. There is clearly no one set route to a top leadership role in the sector. We found a lot of diversity amongst our subjects in terms of background, career path and achievements. In our rst analysis of the stories, we deliberately did not make any reference to the CEL Leadership Framework. We looked for key themes emerging from the conversations with our subjects. We found that despite the diversity of the people we interviewed, a number of themes did emerge, which were common to several of our leaders. We will introduce you to these key themes here but would urge you to explore them in more depth by reading the personal stories of our 15 subjects in section 3. For each theme, we have indicated just a few of the stories that illustrate that particular theme.
Values driven
This passion and energy was often derived from strong values. Early experiences or strong role models often shaped these values. These role models were very varied, but were all ordinary people, who inuenced both what our subjects saw as important and how they behaved. For example, whilst one was inspired by a grandfathers drive to succeed, another was inspired by a colleagues approach to developing staff. There were many other examples. Our leaders and the people who inspired them were not super heroes, rather ordinary people capable of doing extraordinary things. (See Stella Dadzie, Garrie Owens, Geoff Pine and Sujinder Sangha)
Career direction
Most of our contributors had not embarked on their careers in the sector with the ambition of attaining a top leadership role. Rather, their careers had evolved over time and for several of them there were often signicant events that led them to realise that they were capable of successfully taking on a senior leadership or buck stops here role. (See Bill Fearon, Rae Angus, Jackie Fisher and Andrew Thomson)
Business focused approach

Our contributors recognised that whilst a passion for education and learning was vital, it was not sufcient in itself. Many of them saw the need to bring a disciplined, business-focused approach to how they ran their establishments. This included taking a very customer-focused approach to their activities. This was often informed by experiences that they had had outside the sector, whether during their formal working life or as a result of activities in which they had become involved outside of work. These experiences were helpful in giving them a different perspective. (See Gill Read, Adrian Carey, Geoff Pine and Garrie Owens)
Passion and energy

Many of our leaders showed passion for what they were doing and had a real belief in the value of learning and education. They had the energy and drive needed to deliver results, often in the face of adversity. A number had achieved results in their senior leadership roles in complex and testing circumstances. Others had overcome extreme difculties or barriers early in their careers. These experiences seemed to lead them to develop higher levels of determination and reservoirs of resilience. For many, their personal leadership journeys had not been plain sailing! (See Garrie Owens, Daniel Khan, Sujinder Sangha and Paul Head)
Clarity of vision
The leaders in our research generally had a real clarity of vision and an unwavering sense of what was needed. Several used this to bring a real turnaround in the fortunes of their colleges or organisations. They demonstrated the courage of their convictions and we have examples of individuals who were prepared to take risks to achieve what was needed. They also recognised the need to overcome resistance and to win both the hearts and the minds of their people. (See John Guy, Adrian Carey, Andrew Thompson and Daniel Khan)
June 2005
page 5
Section 2: Key themes emerging

Performance through people
In the learning and skills sector, you would expect an underlying belief in the importance of performance through people: Many of our participants recognised that they needed to adapt or change behaviours, especially in honing their people skills to enable them to make their relationships with staff, customers and other stakeholders as productive as possible. (See Paul Head, Gill Read and Sujinder Sangha) There were several examples of the leader focusing his or her attention on trying to get the best from their people both academic staff and non-academic staff through introducing effective performance management systems. They had to be prepared to take unpopular or difcult decisions in a timely manner. (See Jackie Fisher, Adrian Carey and Fiona Radford) There was also a strong focus on recognising potential, developing skills in others and providing the right opportunities for others to progress. Many of our leaders were very conscious that someone had taken a chance with them and were keen to do the same for others. This was clearly not only to the benet of the individuals concerned, but also to the organisation as a whole. (See Russell Woodrow, Rae Angus and John Guy) ndings of earlier research by Hodgson, Briner and Hollingsworth on the Top Leader Journey3. (See Fiona Radford, Rae Angus, Russell Woodrow and Jackie Fisher)
Need for support

Many of those interviewed recognised a need for support because being a senior leader in the sector can be a lonely experience. For many, a strong senior management team was an important source of support, whereas others gained support from family, friends or other principals and informal networks. A few had experienced mentoring or executive coaching. Those that had experienced coaching felt that they had beneted from it and many of the others recognised its potential benet. One of our subjects credited his ultimately successful transition into the role of principal to the support and challenge he received from his executive coach. (See Bill Fearon, Paul Head, Russell Woodrow and Andrew Thompson)
Lifelong learning
Again in this sector, you would hope that there would be a strong commitment to lifelong learning. We found some excellent examples of individuals committed to their ongoing learning and development. A number had encountered difcult early experiences in education and had overcome these through high levels of proactivity and commitment. Many had studied on a part-time basis whilst working to gain further qualications. This had reinforced their passion for education and their determination to help others to reach their potential. For many, there had also been the recognition that, on being appointed to a senior leadership role, they had needed to adapt and change their behaviours. (See Stella Dadzie, Andrew Thompson, Garrie Owens and Sujinder Sangha) As you read the following stories, look out for each of these themes.
Developing top team

Leaders recognised the importance of a strong and cohesive senior management team. There were lots of examples of long-standing top teams, which seemed to add stability to the organisation, but also of the need to bring in key players both from elsewhere in the sector and outside the sector to strengthen the top team. A strong top team provides support and acts as a multiplier of the leaders efforts. Conversely, an ineffective top team can reduce signicantly the leaders impact. This conrmed the
3 Hodgson P, Briner W and Hollingsworth J (2004) The Top Leader Journey Research: How do people learn and grow into top jobs and emerge as effective leaders. Ashridge Business School
page 6
June 2005
Section 3: Personal leadership journeys

Our thanks to the following leaders both for agreeing to be interviewed and for allowing us to publish their stories: Rae Angus, Aberdeen College Adrian Carey, HCTC Limited Stella Dadzie, Frontline Training Bill Fearon, West Kent College Jackie Fisher, Newcastle College John Guy, Farnborough Sixth Form College Paul Head, North East London College Daniel Khan, Grimsby Institute Garrie Owens, Learn Invicta Geoff Pine, Greenwich Community College Fiona Radford, Ford Prison Gill Read, YES, Grantham College Sujinder Sangha, Stockton Riverside College Andrew Thompson, LSDA Russell Woodrow, Stanmore College 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 23 25 28 31 33 36 38 41
June 2005
page 7
Personal leadership journey: Rae Angus

Rae has been principal and chief executive of Aberdeen College since 1994. He has strong views about both the value of further education and on the importance of FE colleges being consumer-led rather than producer-led organisations. including using church halls. It was a huge logistic problem for the college and Rae found himself being appointed resources co-ordinator to resolve how to run a college without premises. Shortly afterwards, the position of senior deputy principal came up. Rae applied for it and successfully got it, so I went from being a lecturer to being the senior deputy principal in ten months. In 1991, the College of Commerce merged with two other colleges; a move that Rae not only welcomed, but also had actively encouraged. Despite being offered the position of principal elsewhere, Rae decided to accept the position of deputy principal of the merged college. It was a challenging period because the merger was followed by changes in governance and management. Just prior to incorporation in 1993, the principal became ill and Rae was appointed acting principal. He then was appointed principal designate and nally became principal in April 1994.
Journey to becoming principal

Rae left school at the age of 15 with no qualications. He describes himself as an abject failure at school. With very little idea of what he wanted to do, Rae obtained an apprenticeship with the Scottish Gas Board, who fortunately had a very good training programme. Purely by luck, I found myself in a job that offered training. As I progressed, I realised that I was not as intellectually stupid as I had thought I was and my teachers had afrmed at school. He completed a City and Guilds course and then moved to General Motors. He then went to an FE college and from there to do a degree in history and economic history, graduating with a joint rst. He then did a postgraduate degree and became a research fellow in defence studies. After that he joined FE as a lecturer, conscious that the FE sector gave me the opportunity as an individual, a second chance opportunity and I was very aware of what it could do for others. Rae became a lecturer at the Aberdeen College of Commerce in 1981. The college was housed in a 1960s tower block. Cracks appeared in the building and the building was closed down. Ad hoc arrangements were made to ensure that teaching could continue,
Transition into role of principal

Raes experience as acting principal and principal designate clearly helped to prepare him for the role. Rae identied a number of other factors, which helped to prepare him for the transition. I had a very broad experience, including outside the education sector in industry. I had run my own small business. This helped me to maintain a clear view of what the organisation and I are here to do. I believe that a business approach is more appropriate at times than a collegiate approach all the time. I had a varied educational background. I had been an economist as well as teaching the subject. So I had a clear view of economics and the business side. The most difcult thing for Rae to learn on entering his new role was that others did not always share his views that colleges are economic entities and need to be managed. Rae had to work with people to change the culture from producer-led to customer-led. He reects, You can have a plan for anything. Thats quite easy to put together. You need to put a structure in place. Thats a bit more difcult but not impossible. You can put procedures and processes in place to make the structure work. But peoples actions are informed by their attitudes. Their attitudes are a product of the culture in which they work. One of the things that I worked hard to do was to change from a producer-led culture to a customer-oriented culture. At the same time
page 8
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Rae Angus

I was trying to engender amongst my colleagues the attitudes that would inform the behaviours necessary to meet that goal. One of the factors enabling this change was that status quo was not an option. We had to act. We had to bring all three colleges together. There was an imperative whether we wanted it or not. One of the rst areas that Rae focused on was his senior management team. He thought that it was vital that they should be professionally qualied so he recruited a director of human resource management and development and a director of nancial administration, both from outside the sector. Rae has an interesting view on how a senior management team should work: People often talk glibly about teams. We have a team but its a golf team not a football team. I dont know a great deal about sport but I do understand that in a golf team each person plays their own game and the team wins because of this. In terms of structure and approach, there is a degree of functional specialism in the management team. I dont have to be the expert at nance and human resource management. Its about picking the right people, working with them and having the trust and condence in them. At middle management level he recruited from within, identifying and developing potential amongst the teaching staff. It was vital that everyone was on board because there was no doubt about where we were going and how we were going to get there. The college re-proled the stafng structure over a number of years. The college now has fewer permanent lecturers than the three constituent colleges had, despite a doubling of student activity. There are more part-time lecturers, many of whom are professionals in their elds. Rae also resolved to end the caste system, which separated the teaching staff from the support staff. Each individual can make a difference, whether in the janitors cubbyhole or the principals ofce. In fact, you can do without the principal for longer than you can do without the janitor. This college values everyone and gives everyone the opportunity to improve themselves.
Clarity of vision and courage of convictions

Raes conviction that this was the right direction in which to go gave him the condence and determination to see things through. He admits that others may have seen his condence as bordering on arrogance. Rae was prepared, at times, to risk his credibility in order to achieve what he considered important. He took a stand on crucial issues like ending conservation of salary. In many Scottish colleges, lifelong conservation of salary is in place. The college introduced a contract, which removed that right. There was no way that we could present this as a great benet, but we had to explain that in making the necessary stafng changes if we did not end conservation of salary, we would denitely have to manage by redundancy. Rae played a key role in the contracting out of a number of services, including even temporary lecturing. This proved to be a controversial issue. The college was on the front page of The Scotsman when it made 570 people redundant. But these people did not lose out nancially or otherwise. Thats not just soft word. Despite having to take tough decisions, Rae retained the support of most of staff. A good example was when there was a furore in the Scottish press about principals receiving shabby bonuses for preparing their colleges for incorporation. One union staff representative was quick to defend him: Our principal would never do that sort of the thing. Raes clarity of vision and his courage of convictions appear to have worked. We are now Scotlands largest college. Weve got the best quality inspection of any college in four years. Were nancially viable. We achieved over 28 per cent more activity last year than we were funded specically for. That 28 per cent activity is larger than the output of any one of 20 Scottish colleges. Just as importantly, there has been the desired shift from producer-led to consumer-led. It is only by meeting the needs of students, employers and local communities that we can not only do the job but also prosper in doing it. But the biggest challenge we faced was moving from being a producer-led to being a consumer-led organisation.
Its about picking the right people, working with them and having the trust and condence in them.
June 2005
page 9
Personal leadership journey: Adrian Carey

Adrian is chief executive of HCTC Limited, a training provider operating exclusively in the hospitality industry. HCTC offers a wide range of training and assessment services, including government-funded apprenticeship and VC programmes. Adrian took on the role in January 2004, having previously held a number of senior leadership roles across a number of different organisations and sectors. His focus is clearly on using his business skills to improve the nancial and operating performance of HCTC. team. He looked carefully at the company, liked what he saw and acquired a considerable stake in the business. Adrian was subsequently appointed group managing director of a business responsible for producing the ofcial transcripts of legal proceedings. He describes it as a very unusual business. It was a very niche service business. By investing in the development of our own software and the skills of the stenographers, we were able to provide superior levels of service to law rms and courts in many jurisdictions. We built the company up to be the largest and most protable court recording rm in the world. The business was sold to an American organisation and Adrian stayed for a few more years before he decided to nd a new challenge. He found it with another venture-backed business, HCTC Limited, the company where he is currently chief executive. Its a fantastic business, with great potential, but which, at the time was only modestly protable and generating inadequate cash ow, he says. Reecting on what has shaped his career to date, Adrian states, Well, Ive always taken total control of my own destiny. He has been immensely proactive about creating and taking the right opportunities. He will turn for support to his chairman, colleagues, friends and his wife, but is generally a fairly self-reliant individual. He has no experience of more formal support mechanisms like executive coaching or mentoring, but has been focused on self-improvement through attending various seminars and conferences each year in leadership, management and business development.
Career path
Adrian was encouraged by his parents to go to university and to get a professional qualication. He followed this advice, did a degree in economics and accounting at Southampton and went on to qualify as a chartered accountant whilst working in London. He found his early experience as a chartered accountant invaluable, but was keen to gain wider experience. He joined a venture capital business before moving into the role of nance director with a venture capital backed software company. This business did very well and was close to being oated before it was successfully sold to a larger public company. Adrian was then appointed by his new chairman to be chief executive of another part of the rapidly expanding group. Over seven years, he gained a reputation of being able to turn around difcult parts of the business: if they didnt know what to do with part of the group they gave it to me to sort out. Adrian was then asked by 3i, the largest venture capital group in Europe, to look at a new potential investment opportunity that needed to strengthen its management
Transition into role

When Adrian became chief executive of HCTC Limited, the organisation was breaking even. It was his rst role in a publicly funded business. He candidly admits, I had no experience of work-based learning or of the hospitality sector. I am just a businessman. So what I had to do was to energise the business and to engage everyone at all levels within it. In the early days it was about telling everyone that this was a great business and the reasons why it was a great business that they could be proud of. There was, however, a problem with protability, which Adrian decided to try and resolve by increasing revenue but also by improving business efciency. He recognised that to do this he needed to involve, recognise and incentivise his staff.
page 10
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Adrian Carey

Adrians approach to his new role was informed by his experience in other senior leadership roles he had held. In previous senior roles, everyone was looking at me and wondering what was I going to do. You cant expect people to respect you. You have to earn it. You have to involve them. You have to speak to them. I go out of my way to spend time with all the key people, asking them about themselves, their job roles, their personal lives, their aspirations, their frustrations and what they feel are the opportunities for the business. So Adrian recognised very clearly on joining HCTC that the focus needed to be on people issues. The trickiest thing is the management of people. When you are a director, youre very focused on your area of the business; nance or HR, for example. But when youre running a business, the most challenging aspect is dealing with people and nding a way to inspire and motivate them to perform. As Adrian had no experience of work-based learning or the hospitality sector, it was important for him to establish credibility with all the key players, which included the investors, the chairman, the executive directors, the management team, the staff, clients and funding agencies. He is refreshingly honest about his credentials for taking on the role. I was the rst to admit that I didnt know much about hospitality other than as a consumer, but I did have a track record in running medium-sized businesses successfully. important is to focus on the great performers. How can we develop them, stretch them and train them for the next job? Adrian has worked swiftly to achieve all of this, but has been careful to involve staff and to take people with him. He sees himself as a decisive person. My strength and my weakness is that I am decisive. I want to make decisions and I want to make them quickly. The downside is that I can sometimes make the wrong decision. But we dont prevaricate. We discuss it, we make the decision and we act. I also like to think that if we make a mistake, we react quickly to put things right. He has received positive feedback about his decisiveness and his attempts to communicate to people on a comprehensive and ongoing basis. He introduced a quarterly newsletter. After the third edition he was told that the latest newsletter had gone down well because they thought I was serious about telling people what was really going on and because it was the third newsletter, it was shown not to be just a ash in the pan. Staff told me that it was great to read about all the good things that were going on within the company. So how has all this impacted on the business? We were breaking even when I took over and budgeted to make modest prots in the second half of my rst year. We ended signicantly overachieving on all our targets. It was a staggering turnaround, which has continued in the new nancial year with strong growth in revenues, prots and other key performance indicators. I cant claim all of the credit; there were a lot of great things happening. We have secured signicant new major national employers as clients by managing to differentiate our service, but most importantly, the employees have responded magnicently. The business culture has been transformed and its really exciting. Not surprisingly then, when asked about what the achievement he is most proud of at HCTC, Adrian says, I think there is no doubt that we have transformed the nancial performance of the business. I am very proud of that and the whole change in tempo and dynamics of the business. But Adrian is ever realistic about what still needs to be done. Ive still got more work to do on a number of cultural issues, which take a long time. They are the hardest things to change.
Leadership impact
Adrian thinks that people have responded well to what he describes as his brutal honesty. He prides himself on always telling people the truth. Adrian has restructured the organisation, he has introduced performance management systems, he has made management training and development a priority and he has focused on improving communication at all levels. In terms of performance management, his concern is to recognise high levels of performance and to encourage individuals to perform to their full potential rather than to penalise poor performance. One of my real passions is to identify good talent and to develop it. What the company was previously focused on was poor performance. They identied someone who was not performing well, but many of the managers did not know what to do about it. To me, what is more
June 2005
page 11
Personal leadership journey: Stella Dadzie

Stella is the director of Front Line Training & Consultancy Ltd, which specialises in a range of race, human resources, management and equality-related training and consultancy across the public sector. She is the author of numerous publications that focus on race and equality. Stella started her professional life as a teacher. the process of serving out a non- custodial sentence. Stellas role was to develop a comprehensive and meaningful curriculum for them. So from an early stage, and from rst-hand experience, Stella developed a real passion for education as a means of releasing the potential of people who have been disadvantaged.
The move to further education

After the birth of her rst child, Stella moved into FE as a student counsellor. When her son was ve, she decided to do an MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She remained very active in the community, in pressure groups, in education and various womens groups and was a founder member of an organisation called OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent), a national umbrella organisation for UK black women. On the back of these experiences, Stella wrote The Heart of the Race, in collaboration two other women, which won the Martin Luther King Award for Literature in 1985. Stella then took up the role of head of guidance in a large, north London community college, one of the rst guidance headships to be appointed in the country. She found this a challenging role. It involved being responsible for the organisation of enrolment week, the production of college publicity, the provision of tutoring, counselling and guidance services to students across the college, the delivery of in-service counselling courses and the management of the staff who delivered all these services. Whilst relishing the challenges, Stella fought a long and frustrating battle against pay discrimination and the isolation of being a black manager and ultimately decided to resign her post. The chief education ofcer told her that she was committing professional suicide, but even this failed to persuade her to stay on.
Values
Stella expresses her values in a strong and compelling manner, I believe in equality, justice and equal rights. I believe that everybody, however lowly, however disabled, whatever their learning difculties and however humble their beginnings, has potential. I do believe that education is a liberator it changes lives and is mightier than the sword. To understand why these values are so important to her, it is helpful to look back at Stellas early years. Her own schooling was the result of a scholarship for deprived London children. She trained as a modern language teacher and was appointed in 1975 as one of the rst black teachers in Haringey. Although she enjoyed teaching languages, she became increasingly interested in the pastoral side of teaching and issues around race equality and was attracted to the challenges of working with young people who are marginalised or disaffected. Stella then became a teacher in charge of an Intermediate Treatment Centre. I was thrown into the task of managing the education of young people, who were very much on the margins of the school system. They were all either at risk of offending or in
Establishing Front Line Training

Despite these experiences, Stellas passion for education and training was not diminished. She was already receiving requests to speak at events and to run training courses, so she decided to set up Front Line Training. Her plan was to divide her time
page 12
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Stella Dadzie

between training, resource development and her other interests, which include creative writing, heritage, tness instruction and art. However, the momentum of her work with Front Line Training quickly gathered speed and she found that with an increasingly successful consultancy, a young son to raise on her own and her nightly aerobics teaching, she had little time for writing. I was over-committed but loving everything I did. I felt that I had achieved a good balance between mind, body and spirit. Stella was clear that her area of specialism would remain in equality, in promoting access, in encouraging colleges to look at how to put policy into practice around areas predominantly to do with race but increasingly across a broader equalities agenda. With the impact of Widening Participation, colleges began to engage Stella to work not only with their managers and staff but also with their governors. She also wrote numerous publications for organisations like FEDA, the CRE and NIACE and was becoming well-known for her expertise in the schools sector, youth services and local government. Stella has resisted the temptation to expand Front Line Training. I have always been very clear that managing others or making large prots was not one of my aspirations. She has a good network of colleagues to call on if required. She has also felt the need for emotional support. I have good personal resources, a lot of very good friends, particularly women friends, who have acted as supporters and condants. Her work on race and equality has very much drawn on her own earlier experiences in FE of being the only black woman in an all white management team. She is heartened that it has got better over time and that the sector is now becoming more literate in this area. Stella believes in setting and achieving high standards in all she does. She believes that credibility comes from knowing your stuff and practising what you preach and that if she has credibility it is because she has stayed close to her area of expertise, and built on her rst-hand experience of working in further education.
Continuing sources of inspiration

Asked about her sources of inspiration, Stella says, My values come from community activists and great writers and thinkers, both black and white. Quite often my inspiration has come from the ordinary people in my life my students, friends and colleagues who, despite the odds, have managed to achieve something worthwhile. My values and beliefs have been fed as much from their example as from well-known people who are already up there. There have been a number of people in the FE sector that I have admired, mostly people who really loved and believed in second chance education, often ordinary tutors and lecturers who wanted to make a genuine difference to their students lives. Stella hopes that her passion and strong beliefs have been inspirational to others. She talks with pride about her experience at the launch at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith of the Heart of the Race, her book about the black womens journey. A woman said that she wanted to thank me and my two co-authors because shed heard these stories anecdotally from her grandmother and mother over many years, but this was the rst time that shed seen them written down. She was choked and emotional. That was an afrmation for all those hours of agonising and sitting up half the night to write the book. Stella retains a strong passion for what the majority of people in the FE sector are trying to do. Most people in our sector are good at what they do. They really do put in long hours. But with all the demands on them, particularly the information overload, they sometimes have to cut corners. There are far too many people in the public sector who are overworked, and this detracts from excellence. Stella admits that this problem impacts on her own work-life balance. She has therefore taken the decision to devote a well-earned sabbatical year to writing a novel that she has been trying to complete for the past 20 years. No doubt, she will come back to us re-energised and further inspired to pursue her quest to help others reach their true potential, regardless of their circumstances, and to empower staff in colleges to do the same.
June 2005
page 13
Personal leadership journey: Bill Fearon

Bill has been principal of West Kent College for nearly three years. Prior to that, his career was mainly in education, both secondary education and further education. Bill has strong values around honesty, integrity and loyalty, which inform his approach to leadership.
Becoming a principal
Moving from an area of South London, with a very heavy ethnic and disadvantaged prole to middle class West Kent was in itself an interesting transition. Yet Bill found that there were still lots of similar issues for him to tackle in his new role as principal. He reects, The transition to principal is a major one. The gap from deputy level is considerable. You dont appreciate it until you do it and then it is a continuing experience. You want to do the job as well as you can. When Bill rst went into the role, he found that the hardest thing to learn was getting a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the management team. He readily admits that in the rst instance I took people at face value. I probably should have been a little more evaluative. In the early days, Bill was surprised that people seemed to think that I must know everything about managing a complex organisation such as a general college of FE. Bill considered that it was very important to be honest about what he knew and about what he did not know. In his new role, Bill found it important to develop even further his listening and counselling skills even though I am not bad at listening and I like to think that I am instinctively supportive. On arriving at West Kent College, Bill made a concerted effort to establish positive relationships with colleges and schools in the area. Prior to taking up his new role, Bills research suggested that this needed to be an immediate priority since the links that the college had with local schools were not strong. Kent has a history of selective education, which can be divisive. Bill made it a focus of his attention to go out and meet head teachers and college principals and found the positive response I got from them a pleasant surprise. He joined the West Kent Council of Head Teachers as a y on the wall and was a founder member of the West Kent Learning Foundation, which now includes 17 schools and colleges. This has resulted in the much stronger links and positive working relationships.
Career path
Bill started his career as a secondary school teacher. He then left education to set up his own business running a sales agency for sports equipment, whilst continuing to work as a part-time lecturer. He returned to further education on a full-time basis and progressed to senior lecturer. In 1987 he joined Harlow College, initially as marketing manager. He was then promoted to head of the business and management studies department, before taking up the position of assistant principal responsible for the faculty of service industries. He moved to Southwark College as director of curriculum and quality and then to West Kent College as principal. During his career, he has also been a part-time inspector and an external verier. Bill identied two key landmarks, which have helped to shape his career, both of which were a real challenge. The rst was moving from a lecturing post to a management post at Harlow. The second was his experience of being an Inspector, which really helped to develop my condence. Bill had not set out in his career to become a principal and attendance on a training programme proved to be a pivotal experience. The programme was held over 15 months and involved four residential modules. It was attended by about 20 participants, many of whom were very serious about becoming a principal. This caused Bill to reect on his own aspirations. He realised that becoming a principal was a realistic goal. I matched myself against my peers and realised that maybe I could do it.
page 14
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Bill Fearon

Leadership impact
Bill hopes that his staff will see him as approachable because of his open door policy, as someone who works industriously and efciently and as someone with a sense of humour. Bill sees a sense of humour as a therapeutic tool and a way to diffuse difcult situations. When he took on the role of principal, Bills credibility was linked to his expertise around curriculum and quality. He was seen as an educationalist, rather than as a businessman. He encouraged college staff to open up. When I joined, many people didnt want to speak in meetings. Now its gone full circle and I often struggle to get a word in! His work with schools, colleges and the local community seems to have added to his credibility within the college as well as his more democratic, hands-on approach. For Bill there has been a strong focus on the curriculum. I have been a champion for vocational education. I have made sure that at the very heart of the college there is a strong emphasis on curriculum and on design and delivery. Looking at teaching and learning styles has been important and I have sought to champion information and learning technologies. Whilst Bill may have seen himself as having expertise in the area of curriculum, he has also focused on an area which was outside his area of previous expertise, capital investment. He comments, One thing that I have focused on is the property strategy of the college. Its not my area of expertise but I saw it as much more than a bricks and mortar issue. It is important to design the curriculum and then design the college to deliver the curriculum in the most exible and contemporary way. Whilst some of what he has done has increased his credibility in the college, he has also knowingly risked his credibility during a recent restructuring process. He engaged in consultation with his programme governors, managers and staff. He found that some people took this as an invitation to rubbish what I was proposing. However, from the majority of people he got lots of positive responses and lots of different and helpful views. Bill found it really important to stick to my guns and the consultation process. If I hadnt done, it would have been a real credibility issue. The consequence has been a strong commitment by staff and governors to the restructuring programme. During his time as principal, Bill has worked for an 18-month period with a CEL executive coach. He also considers himself fortunate in being able to rely on high levels of practical support from his governors. He has also used fellow principals to a certain extent as a support network and has found the Kent Association of FE College Principals helpful for advice and support.
I have been a champion for vocational education. Looking at teaching and learning styles has been important and I have sought to champion information and learning technologies.
Asked about his greatest achievements, Bill says, My greatest achievement was to be appointed principal. I wasnt sure I wanted it or could do it until a few months before I applied. The rst job I applied for I was short-listed. West Kent was the second job I applied for and I got it. There was a real sense of professional pride in reaching my goal. Asked more specically about his greatest achievement within the role, Bill says, Its still a little early to say, but I think that I am starting to make a positive difference to the culture of the college.
June 2005
page 15
Personal leadership journey: Jackie Fisher

Jackie Fisher is principal at Newcastle College. It is her second principal role and she has come up the academic ladder from lecturer, via roles of assistant principal and vice principal. Newcastle is one of the largest colleges in the FE sector, with a turnover of around 60 million, 42,000 students and a staff headcount of 2,000. Jackie believes that the critical job of a principal is to create capacity in an organisation. Many people think that the management/leadership focus is about strategy. I think its about capacity, not strategy. Capacity will deliver any strategy. One of the things I focus on as principal is getting that capacity in place. Thats about getting the right people, developing people, building systems and creating condence and ambition. Its the continuing requirement to keep moving the college forward to meet new challenges. For Jackie, her most difcult career transition was the move from the assistant principal role in a college where she had been happy and extremely successful, but where it was absolutely clear there was no future for her, to a vice principal role in a college where there was no clear mandate. I just proceeded to carve out the space I needed to do the job I needed to do, but it was a very difcult time. Moving to jobs which are difcult and where colleges are struggling, regardless of whether a college is mediocre and wants to be great or a college in recovery and wants to be mediocre, the change process is painful. I just accept that. She says, One of the transition elements is very much around you establishing yourself in the job and doing the job on your own terms, not the terms of how the previous person might have done it, or the terms of what the people sitting around you might be expecting from you. Managing authentically is critically important if you are in for the long haul of leading and sustaining change.
Transforming performance
She took up her current post in June 2000, when the college was in the hands of the FEFC, in recovery, and perceived to be in such difculty she was asked to start earlier than planned. Her credibility coming into the role in Newcastle was high, as she had taken her previous college from mediocre to a beacon college with accredited status, a fantastic inspection and nancially very strong. She added to it by taking Newcastle from being a dysfunctional college in recovery in 2000 to an outstanding inspection in the summer of 2004 when 65 per cent of provision was judged as outstanding, 93 per cent as good or better. Phase one of the property strategy is now complete and the second phase is under way, with phase three currently in the planning stage. The college has a very strong nancial position and a condent, committed and ambitious management team. Jackie takes a robust approach to making necessary changes. She is open about changes that need to be made and discusses them with people, but is prepared to take hard decisions, which some people may not like. Im very much someone who thinks Im there to do stuff and get change in place and people who come to their job and work with a different perspective can nd that difcult.
The move towards leadership

Jackie did not start out her career with the intention of becoming a leader or manager. Her focus on a management rather than a teaching journey started when she attended two training programmes within a six to nine month period, while she was a senior lecturer. The rst was a study tour of Scotland that was really aimed at principals and the second was a programme about general management put together by the Yorkshire colleges. The combination of both programmes meant that Jackie changed her perception about what being a principal entailed. It 100 per cent demystied what being a principal or vice principal was about. Recognising that there was nothing substantially different between me potentially and people already in those roles was helpful.
page 16
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Jackie Fisher

She found this ability useful when she came to Newcastle, where she found a college in absolute nancial, management information and every other bit of disarray you can possibly imagine. It was the most dysfunctional place and my rst year in the job was about normalising the college and creating a fully functioning organisation. She refocused a planned two-day managers meeting from team building to a college business planning and budget-setting event and took managers through basic nancial management and planning. She says, Poor nancial and business awareness was the heart and the nub of our problems, not whether people could work together. They couldnt work together because the college wasnt structured, organised, managed in a way that was capable of allowing people to work together effectively. She binned the recovery action plan agreed between the college and the FEFC. You cant run a college through an action plan. You run a college by enabling every function and every school to perform at its optimum and that cannot be captured in a recovery plan; its about effective people and processes set in a framework of high expectations. In coming into Newcastle College, she talked to groups of staff and told them the truth about the colleges nancial position, the hard decisions needed, how they were going to be made and what the light was at the end of the tunnel. She aimed to establish a new set of ground rules: Ill always tell you the truth, youll hear it as it is and you may not always like it. This was very important as many staff were complacent, not because they were purposefully so, but because they had been consistently misinformed. The college had previously been perceived to be very successful and people had not been encouraged to adjust to the colleges new reality, that is, that several years of leadership neglect had resulted in nancial difculties, some poor performance and generally unclear expectations of both staff and students. She gives very clear messages about her expectations in respect of high standards and where the college is heading, and puts in structures and processes which enable her to keep the performance and direction of the college under continuous review. She aims to make work stretching, enjoyable and stimulating and to give people a lot of freedom to do the things they want to do for the college. She works with them to set direction, and to encourage them to keep pushing the boundaries. She gives them the freedom and autonomy to get things right or wrong. She wants everything done to the best possible standard, and believes that the best way of doing that is by having the best people doing the best job they can do. The critical judgement youre making about people is - do they own this problem? Do they care? It doesnt matter if someone has made a hell of a mess, what matters is whether they are owning that mess, and beginning to nd a way through it. You establish renewed condence that they can move their areas of work forward and over time you begin to trust their judgement as well as you would trust your own. The top team is important. Jackie believes that having the right people with the right skills and attitudes is key for all senior management posts, because you can only optimise the performance of any organisation if youve got the basic wherewithal to do it and that basic wherewithal is people. She looks for experience, track record, interpersonal skills, a shared view with you as principal about performance, values, drive and direction. This means that sometimes changes need to be made to get the team right. She looks for whether the people in the senior team can help her to do the job that needs to be done at this moment in time. Her assessment is based on the kind of experience, skills and attitudes that each individual is bringing to the table as part of a team. She enjoys problem solving and further education colleges provide a continuous supply of complex problems to solve. Reecting on her role, Jackie says, I enjoy working with able and committed people who enjoy being part of a strong leadership team. This is vital to pushing out the boundaries of what the college is capable of delivering and ensuring sustainable change which can benet learners.
Leading for continuing performance

Jackie is fundamentally committed to what FE is about, which is meeting the needs of vocational learners; learners being absolutely the priority for the college, and the other parts of the organisation being marshalled to support the learner.
June 2005
page 17
Personal leadership journey: John Guy

John has been principal of Farnborough Sixth Form College since 1992. Prior to that, he was principal of St Philips Sixth Form College in Birmingham for seven years. John comes across as a condent and credible individual, with clear views about the value of education and how to get the best out of his staff and students. He demonstrates courage to stand up for what he believes in. university was very signicant for the role that I now have. It was fantastic to be elected to the role. It was motivating and it gave me condence. John also feels that formal training and development activities have helped to prepare him for the role of principal. A Masters in Education that he completed at Warwick University helped to give him deep insights into human behaviour. A Leading Sixth Form Colleges programme that he participated in after being appointed was very worthwhile partly because the group bonded in a brilliant way and has been a source of support for John over the years.
First role as principal

John joined St Philips, a Catholic sixth form college in 1985. The college had just had a bad inspection report. John reects, I was nave and I thought I could change things. The college was tightly controlled and as a result the youngsters were rebelling. John saw his task to liberate them, something that he knew he could do but none of the staff believed it. He was there for six years and the liberation took three years. John feels that when he entered the college his level of credibility with others on the organisation was low. He adds, In a sense it was deservedly so because I was catapulted into a failing inner city college without huge experience of such a situation. He can identify the point at which he believes his credibility changed. The college had a new design centre, which was accessible to students throughout the day. One day his head of design reported that the colour printer, which was worth 800, a fairly considerable sum for 1988, had gone. John tells the story of how he gathered all staff and students together in the sports hall. I stood on a table and said we had a real problem, because someone had stolen the printer from the design centre. I said that one person had it and could use it and no one else could. I said that we couldnt afford to buy another one so we were stuck. I said that some one had probably made a mistake here and please could we have it back. The response from the majority of his staff was that he had made a mistake. John recounts, The cynics had a eld day. But two days later the printer was returned anonymously. John put it quietly back in the design centre and at the next college
Career path
John started his career as an academic, gained a PhD and did postdoctoral research at Cambridge. He then decided to go into teaching. He did not do a PGCE, but applied directly for the position of head of chemistry at Stratford-uponAvon Grammar School for Girls. He recognises that the headmistress took a risk in appointing me to this post, as I hadnt taught before. But it was good. It worked well. He then gained experience in independent and comprehensive schools, before becoming head of sixth form science at Leamington School. Whilst there he was inspired by a head teacher, who was quite autonomous in a way and liberated the whole school from all of the external forces, so that the teachers could teach and the youngsters could learn. The youngsters were always encouraged to ask why, so there was a great atmosphere of curiosity about learning there. It was a wonderful experience really. This experience helped to prepare him for becoming principal, rstly of St Philips and then of Farnborough. Another experience that helped to prepare John to take on a senior leadership role was his active involvement at university in a society, which resulted in him becoming chairman of the society twice. This experimentation at
page 18
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: John Guy

meeting, thanked the person who had returned it. He acknowledges that this had been a risk to his credibility. You have to take risks but Im not sure when I did it that I realised how much of a risk it was. I didnt realise it would be meet with such hostility. The fact that it worked was about establishing the credibility of an open system. St Philips was on the edge of Handsworth, which was where riots took place in 1985. John saw a clear role for the college. We needed to provide an environment in the college where youngsters felt safe and supported, rather than open to attack and vilication. We had lots of youngsters from different faith backgrounds, although it was a Catholic college. That was good and the college developed as a place where the different faith backgrounds of different youngsters were valued. What we came to discover was that because of this they felt secure. Unfortunately this approach to education, which was inclusive of all faiths, did not meet the concept of Catholicism shared by the trustees, who changed the governing body and informed John that he must meet their policies or leave. He chose to leave as he had no intention of implementing their policies. It was a difcult time for John. At the time I felt that my whole career was in jeopardy. The reason it was in jeopardy was due to deeply held convictions about what Christianity is. He was concerned that his young family was at risk but was courageous enough to stand up for what he believed in. Fortunately, he applied successfully for the role of principal at Farnborough. As a result, he found the opportunity to establish credibility because I was authoritative without being authoritarian about what was happening. I think people thought that these hands were relatively safe and that we would be leading the college in a businesslike way, without treating it as a business.
Leadership is about hearing, listening, showing that youre listening and taking decisions.
In his role as principal, John tries to take interest in all staff, not just the teaching staff. What really irritates me is when people talk to the cleaning staff as though they are not equal colleagues. Giving recognition to staff and students is important to him. This includes verbal recognition, written recognition and small gifts. John gave an example, Before our inspection in 2001, everybody was working his or her socks off. Everybody was anxious. It was November 17th and Beaujolais Nouveau had just come into the shops. So I rang up Waitrose and ordered 150 bottles. She said that was their entire stock so I said Id take the lot! I put a note round to people saying that before you go home this evening there is a bottle of wine waiting for you in the staff room and to take it home for the weekend and enjoy it. People were delighted...it was a signicant moment in the inspection. John believes that it is important not only to invest time in building relationships with his staff and students but also with his governors. The governors are crucial to the success of the college. They are thinking people who ask searching and critical questions in governing body meetings. He recognises and values their role in both supporting and challenging the institution. When asked what he is most proud of in terms of what he has achieved, John reects, I like going to work every day and I think that the staff and students like it too. So I guess that is about climate. I am proud of the climate of the two institutions that Ive led.
Second role as principal

John acknowledges that he was older and wiser when he joined Farnborough and much more willing to see the good things going on in the college and to value them. As a result change has been much more evolutionary in this college. Its been much more negotiated and consultative, but not always democratic because democracy does not always lead to increasing standards. Leadership is about hearing, listening, showing that youre listening and taking decisions. He believes that his credibility on entering Farnborough was much higher than when he entered St Philips. He arrived at Farnborough in the run up to incorporation, something he had already researched fairly thoroughly.
June 2005
page 19
Personal leadership journey: Paul Head

Paul has been principal and chief executive of the College of North East London since October 2002. Prior to that, he had 20 years experience in education, although no direct academic experience. Pauls successful transition into the role of principal was helped by his experience of executive coaching. It was also helped by his preparedness to reect honestly on his leadership impact and to ex his style appropriately. Paul then joined West Surrey College of Art and Design as academic secretary to help the college get degree awarding powers, effectively taking a signicant proportion of the existing academic registrars role. A year later, the academic registrar left and Paul took over his job. By the age of 30, he was academic registrar and dean of quality and part of the senior management team. He then became director of registry services at Thames Valley University. Paul comments, It was both the biggest mistake of my career and the period of my life that has most shaped who I am. The university was undergoing an administrative and academic reorganisation and Pauls job was to implement this. It is terribly character-forming when youre in a job that everyone hates. I arrived there and it was awful. During his rst two years there, things lurched from crisis to crisis. There was a big scandal about academic standards and the vice chancellor left. The governors appointed an acting vice chancellor, who had a tremendous impact, He came in, and it was like being in the room with someone with so much presence, someone who commands so much respect, that the atmosphere completely changed. Paul was very impressed with the way that this acting vice chancellor provided leadership and shaped events. Paul also learnt a great deal from his permanent replacement. He had a very different style but he was a very competent manager who understood the need to deal with things directly. I got on well with him and stayed on the management team. As things settled down at Thames Valley, Paul began to see the need for a new challenge. He accepted a job at the College of North London as vice principal for information and strategy. On the surface, things looked promising, including grade A nancial status, signicant investment in new buildings and so forth. Paul soon discovered that behind the facade there were deep problems in relation to teaching, learning and quality of provision. Soon after Paul arrived, notice of an Ofsted inspection was delivered. The inspection was a disaster. Twenty two per cent of the teaching was seen to be unsatisfactory compared to a national average of between eight and nine per cent. Paul recalls, It was a dreadful outcome. The governors and some of the management team wanted to challenge it. They were in denial mode. It was apparent to me that the inspection conclusions were a reection of the organisation I was part of. I wanted to get on and
Career path
Paul was brought up on a farm; he lived in a tied cottage and went to the village primary school. He failed his 11-plus and went to the local secondary modern school, leaving school at 16 with a CSE Grade 1 in design and technology and a clutch of CSEs at lower grades. The job market was poor, so Pauls parents encouraged him to go to his local college of further education. He met two absolutely inspirational teachers who gave him the encouragement to overcome mild dyslexia and study for O levels, A levels and a degree. At university, Paul got involved in the students union, in senate and in lots of committees. On graduating, he took an unpaid job on the NUS National Executive before going to work for the British Youth Council and then CNAA. He joined CNAA as an administrative assistant to the secretary of the council, before being promoted to assistant registrar.
page 20
June 2005

deal with the outcomes. They wanted to challenge the outcomes. I fought and won responsibility for the post-inspection action plan. Pauls principal then went off on long-term sick leave. An interim principal was appointed, who inherited what Paul describes as a senior management team at war. When Pauls principal retired on the grounds of ill health, Paul decided to apply for the position, recognising that he hadnt served time in the sector but was full of drive, energy and ideas to turn the place round. He must have convinced the governors because, much to his surprise, he was offered the position. and challenge was seen by others as losing it. It made Paul question a number of things. I just didnt know whether I could do it [continue in the role of principal] or wanted to do it. Paul is refreshingly honest in saying that Mike, his course tutor, helped him to grow up. He said that no one was making me do this. Youve got to do this yourself. Mike offered to support Paul through a coaching relationship, an offer that Paul readily accepted. I had Mike on board as a coach. What really helped was not being on my own. Its very lonely being chief executive and principal. There was no one else I could conde in. The coaching relationship with Mike was pivotal in helping Paul ultimately to make an effective transition into his new role. Paul found that it gave legitimacy to his having doubts about what he was doing and helped him to recognise that he did not have all the answers. The coaching gave him courage to deal with some tough issues in the college. Most notably, a key member of his senior management team was clearly resisting change and was acting as a barrier to the organisation moving forward. Paul dealt with this in a direct but non-combative manner and as a result this individual left the college. In some respects, this was a symbolic gesture and freed the organisation to move forward.

When Paul was appointed principal, the fact that he had no academic experience could have been a barrier. Paul did not see it as such, I havent been an accountant, a cleaner or lots of things in terms of running a 30 million business. Yes, the business is about teaching and learning but I think I derive an authoritative approach because of 20 years spent in education. I think I have a different kind of experience to bring to the table. Paul quickly recognised that he had to change his leadership style in the new role. I inherited a management team in which I had played a role as a disruptive inuence. I now had to lead the team. I could no longer play the role of challenger because who was I challenging? The rst month of being principal was absolutely appalling. No matter how much you believe you know what needs to be done, no matter how much you think that the principals role will be an evolution from what you were doing, nothing prepares you for it. All of a sudden there is no other place where the buck stops. Paul recognised that he needed help to make a successful transition into the role. Quite fortuitously, he found that there was a LSDA Principals Programme running, which he joined. It consisted of a mixture of new principals and existing principals, a blend that seemed to work well. Paul completed a number of diagnostic tools, which gave him some very clear feedback on his leadership style and impact, What I saw as passion
No matter ... how much you think that the principals role will be an evolution from what you were doing, nothing prepares you for it. All of a sudden there is no other place where the buck stops..
June 2005
page 21

Leadership impact
Paul and his team drew together to prepare for the re-inspection. The whole place came together. We worked as a team. There was a fear of being found wanting again, but there was also cohesion. I think we built a quite open, consultative style in the period leading up to the re-inspection. The re-inspection went well. We were found to be satisfactory. There was some really nice stuff in the re-inspection report. It talked about open and strong leadership from the principal; an open consultative style; a sense of direction. All those things that you nd validation from. Throughout the inspection, Paul adopted the same honest approach with the inspectors as he does with his team. It was important to adopt an open, honest policy based on no surprises. Its an open book. Tell them it as it is and dont over-egg anything. Some of his colleagues were unsure whether this level of honesty was appropriate but it seems to have paid off. Our inspection report reads like a much done, much to be done report, which was essentially the state we were in. I think it was much better than if wed have said we were ready when we werent. Despite this, Paul experienced a low after the re-inspection, I found it hard to get up and going. I was tired and couldnt see where the next challenge was. Paul wondered if he thrived in the role of troubleshooter/change person but not in the role of sustainer/builder. Through his coaching conversations with Mike and the opportunity to be involved in CEL activities, Paul became re-energised and recognised that, there are people who can be troubleshooters and sustainers. So that for me was part of the leadership journey you can constantly learn and change what you are doing; you can adapt to the circumstances you are in. Paul has focused on building his team at senior and middle management level and on trying to get a more distributed leadership model going. With Mike, his coach, he did a year-on set of diagnostics and, to his delight found that he had really changed. Paul was inspired by reading Schons book, The Reective Practitioner, to become more reective and to encourage others to be so too. If I can create a reective management team, I think that will create a better management team. Paul has invested his energies in trying to harness and develop the potential of the people within his organisation. I got involved in a way of working with people to try and enable them to stretch themselves in the roles they are in. I tried to give them freedom of movement to learn from the job that they are doing, both doing things well and making mistakes. Asked about what he is most proud of in his current role, Paul says, The thing that I am most proud of is the huge improvement in student achievements in the college. When I took over as principal, out of every ten students, just under six were getting qualications. Now its just under eight out of every ten and its got to get closer to nine out of ten. This seems to typify Paul pleased with what has been achieved but in no way complacent and denitely hungry for more!
I got involved in a way of working with people to try and enable them to stretch themselves in the roles they are in. I tried to give them freedom of movement to learn from the job that they are doing, both doing things well and making mistakes.
page 22
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Daniel Khan

Daniel Khan has been principal and chief executive of Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education since 2001. Daniel progressed to this role by a mainly non-academic route. He is passionate about the value of education and it is clear that his parents were a strong source of inspiration for this. My dad had a corner shop. He left school at 12. Mum left school at 16. They had little education, but my dad is one of the cleverest guys that you could meet because he had so much common sense. He said that he could never leave us much of an inheritance but he would make sure we all had an education. Now two of my sisters are teachers, one brother runs his own successful business and another is a senior partner of a medical practice in Kent. This was achieved through strong support from both of my parents and is why education is so precious to me. I know that education can help you attain a better quality of life. I have always said to my staff that we have a fantastic opportunity to change the life of a child and make them a better person. What better challenge can you have? Lyons Bakery Group and then the University of London, where ultimately he became director of nance at the School for Oriental and African Studies. In 1996, he moved to York College as deputy principal for nance and business development. He was there for four years and had a wide remit for nance, business, national recruitment, marketing etc. He found that this experience was particularly valuable in helping to prepare him for the role of principal, helping him to gain a different perspective on the institution not just from the nancial aspect. Daniel had had some rich and diverse developmental experiences. These have included being a part-time lecturer in accountancy and tax at the Polytechnic of Central London and a local councillor in Kent, where he became chair of housing and chair of nance. He had also been a governor of both a primary and a secondary school in Kent and of a grammar school in Yorkshire, so I had been involved in education and governance a great deal. Daniel found that his experience of running an accountancy practice in Kent also helped to prepare him for his role as principal. I think that the accountancy practice helped a great deal. I advised businesses on their whole operations and I dealt with the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise, banks etc. I learnt to deal with a variety of constituents and learnt a lot about organisational operations.

Daniel admits to having an unusual background for someone in his role, being an accountant and coming up through the administrative stream. He does not believe that this created any real barriers to acceptance in his new role but is sure that some of those on the academic side must have wondered about someone with such a different background taking over an academic institution. The hardest thing for him to learn in his new role was liaising with the unions because he had never had to deal with them before. It was a steep learning curve, much helped by the strong management team that he inherited when he arrived. I have very much the same management team as when I arrived. That is quite unusual for the sector. We have transformed the college in four years. Theres been lots of change.
Career path
Daniel was educated in Trinidad and Tobago. After A levels he joined a rm of chartered accountants as a trainee audit clerk. He then moved into management accountancy with a seafood company and started his ACCA qualications. He came to England on a two-year accounting scholarship. He returned to Trinidad as a chief accountant within the construction industry and a project accountant with the University of the West Indies. In 1980 he returned to England and took up accounting roles, rstly with the
June 2005
page 23
Personal leadership journey: Daniel Khan

Daniel focused very much of bringing about a real cultural change where the learner comes rst. In this culture people know exactly where they are and that what is expected of them is to deliver a learning and skills agenda for the community. People operate to clear ground rules and if we say we are going to deliver something we will do. That gives people a lot of condence. There has also been a focus on getting rid of the blame culture. We have this philosophy that we are happy to try ten things and if nine fail, then it doesnt matter. The one that succeeds could be the big one. Too much time is spent in the public sector, and not just FE, with people trying to cover their backs. There is no need for that. What we want is innovation, enterprise and initiative. To encourage innovation, enterprise and initiative, Daniel has recognised the need to create an effective working environment, to invest in buildings and resources and to invest in staff development. Daniel has a very clear vision for the college. To achieve what has been achieved has required determination, resilience and courage. Daniel took the college into the overseas market; a potentially risky venture as it involved investing 1 million in developing an international centre. Whilst there was an element of risk involved, Daniel had clearly thought through all the implications of this. In a similar way, Daniel convinced his own senior team and the governors of the need to invest 3 million in a new engineering centre at a time when many colleges were closing down their engineering departments. I argued that England was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution and that we had petrochemical companies, oil reneries and manufacturers close by. We needed to maintain an engineering provision because if every college closed down their provision, where would the country be?
Leadership impact
Daniel is rightly proud of what has been achieved so far, When I joined, we had never won any awards or had a national prole. Now we have ve centres of vocational excellence four full and one development. This is the most ever awarded to any college in the country, so its a real plus for us. For the last three years, we have won a beacon award from the Association of Colleges. Our students have won national awards. Every year for four years, our retention has improved. Weve had an excellent Ofsted report and we have had superb quality assurance reviews. Our provision is rated as high quality. We have gone from 14,000 to 21,000 students. Our higher education course provision has gone from 26 to 60 courses. So we have grown, but retained quality. Daniel has fullled his pledge to invest in the working environment. When people visit our campus from all over the country they are amazed that it is so pleasant and clean. The workrooms and the staff rooms are well maintained. He has also shown that his rhetoric around staff development is not empty. We do lots of staff development and training. We have lots of staff doing masters degrees. Were very supportive in terms of staff development. We cannot achieve what we are setting out to do if we do not have good teachers. All of our success is down to good quality delivery and we stand or fall by the lecturers and teachers in the classrooms.
I came from the Caribbean to London, then to Kent, on to York and I am now in Grimsby. I think there is a message here. If you want to reach the top, you have to be exible.
Daniel is proud of what he has achieved so far. I am proud that I have been able to come over from the Caribbean, assimilate and be accepted in a different culture and environment, and reach the top of my profession. I am proud not just for myself, but also for the Caribbean where I grew up and developed, but also for the English society, which allows people to develop to their potential. His key message is, however, that to achieve this you must be exible. I came from the Caribbean to London, then to Kent, on to York and I am now in Grimsby. I think there is a message here. If you want to reach the top, you have to be exible. He is also immensely proud of the success of the Grimsby Institute. Last year the Secretary of State recognised what we are trying to do in higher education, agreeing to change the name from Grimsby College to Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, because there is no university in the area.
page 24
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Garrie Owens

Garrie Owens is chief executive of Learn Invicta, ofcially Kent and Medway Hub Management Company Limited, which manages 41 Learndirect centres, some in colleges, some private providers, some in communities or charities. He is proud of making a difference to peoples lives and their potential earnings, also of the condence and self-belief that staff have gained from working in Learn Invicta. He feels there is a lot more to achieve, both locally and more widely. When the college principal decided to raise the standard of IT delivery across the college, Garrie was a given the role of managing the academic IT delivery in addition to corporate IT, while continuing to manage the Learndirect delivery. This was something of a culture shock for Garrie, as for the rst time he was managing staff from an academic background and was working with a hugely increased responsibility. Two years later, he had the opportunity to set up and run a company for the delivery of Learndirect in Kent. Since then, his company has increased the delivery of Learndirect 40 per cent year on year, going from 2,000 learners to over 12,000 in two years.
Inuences and inspiration

An early inuence on Garries life was his grandfather, who ran away from home to join the army at the age of 14. He left 37 years later as a major, a huge achievement in the days when moving from the ranks to becoming a commissioned ofcer was very rare indeed. His pure determination to get where he wanted to go had a big impact on Garrie. Inspiration in later life came from a manager who recruited him with the clear aim of building a team, rather than looking to ll specic roles. This persons leadership style impressed Garrie. He took an encouraging and supporting role, completely removed from a blame culture. If something went wrong, he didnt jump up and down and scream at people, he looked at what went wrong, and how to stop it going wrong again.
Career path
Garrie has had an eclectic career, starting his career as a private in the army and progressing via bluecoating, retail jewellery, a commission in the Royal Engineers, serving in the rst Gulf War, insurance brokerage and golf course management to his decision to return to full-time education as an adult learner. He took a course in business information technology at a further education college, while also working as a milkman to support his family. While he was in his second year there, he was recruited to start work in the college itself, running their open access centre. On completion of BIT qualications he moved into management information, setting up and training people to use management systems. He was then part of a team, which set up Business Class, a corporate training arm of the college doing commercial IT training for local companies. He became corporate IT training manager, which gave him responsibility for the delivery of Learndirect. At this stage, his unit of ve people was delivering 1 million of training annually to commercial clients.
He took an encouraging and supporting role, completely removed from a blame culture. If something went wrong, he didnt jump up and down and scream at people, he looked at what went wrong, and how to stop it going wrong again.
June 2005
page 25

Developing business performance
When Garrie took over Learn Invicta, Learndirect in Kent was stagnant. Because he had run two Learndirect centres as part of his previous role, Garrie knew that with a bit of right direction, with a bit of kicking, we could actually get it moving forward. He moved the organisation into a more central point in the area, and took the hard decision to get rid of those centres which werent performing. No one was willing to do it before; it was all very nice, very politically correct. He put a lot of support in place to help those centres who had potential and worked hard to ensure that they felt part of a network, by bringing them together in networking and training events. He also took a good hard look at the quality of delivery and found it to be inconsistent and poor. We had the added challenge of coming from a very poor quality base with total inconsistency across the board, to take the organisation forward, to take the quality up to spec. We had an inspection at the end of the year from which we came out with satisfactory grades. From the starting point of where we were, to where we got to in that time, was a huge step. He changed the emphasis of Learndirect towards learners achieving their learning outcomes, so that payment was linked to learners completing their courses. He set quality standards and used incentives to inuence providers to improve their delivery. He expanded his team to bring talented people into the right jobs. His aim was to forge partnerships with providers and foster a collaborative rather than a competitive atmosphere between them. What we have begun to show providers is that by working more collaboratively, they improve their learners lot. He invested time and money in ensuring that quality ran through everything we did. Not just about how we look after learners, but we put quality at the cornerstone of our business operation and in training and developing staff not only in Learn Invicta but also at the provider centres. He gives centres a lot of autonomy and asks them to share what they are doing well with other people. In three years, Learn Invicta has moved from unsatisfactory to being top 14 of the 60 providers nationally. In some areas such as basic skills delivery, they are in the top ve.
Leadership style
Garries energy and passion for the job come through clearly and show in his approach to leadership. He is willing to try things, change things and do things. He found working with the politics and academic culture within FE a bit of a shock. I was frustrated by the lack of vision by people at middle management in the organisation and the unwillingness to accept changeI get frustrated when politics get in the way of doing what I know is right. In moving into a senior leadership role, Garrie found that the ability to inuence and negotiate and make impactful decisions very quickly became increasingly important. Even more important was the ability to take other peoples advice and opinion and not necessarily act upon it but bring it into your thinking, so that when you are making the decision, you have a balanced view. He reects that stepping into a management role is a big step, from being at the coalface delivering, to stepping back. The tendency is to want to get your hands dirty all the time and get back in and deliver. Garrie is keen on learning from others. He has learnt from the management styles of other managers and picked the best bits of that for my own management style. He is clear that the ability to communicate and know when to challenge and when to accept is crucial in establishing an improvement culture that doesnt accept mediocrity. One of Garries road to Damascus realisations was that in building a team its not about how good you are, its about how good you get the people around you. He looks for people who can work together and who can grow into a role with development and support. My personal philosophy is that theres always someone out there brighter and cleverer than you, but if you can nd them and work with them, the whole of the organisation will go forward. He believes in delegating responsibility to people and trusting them to carry these out.
My personal philosophy is that theres always someone out there brighter and cleverer than you, but if you can nd them and work with them, the whole of the organisation will go forward.
June 2005
page 26

When Garrie took on his current role, he felt he had credibility based on his previous experience running Learndirect centres, but that he might have lacked credibility in certain parts of the sector because of his relatively young age (38) and short time in FE. He has established and built his credibility by making sure that he and his team deliver what they promise. He says, Moving forward, always challenging people, and helping them achieve what they want to is another way of helping credibility. He has been prepared to take calculated risks to improve performance, such as over-contracting with centres, which meant that they aimed at and achieved higher targets. However, if all centres had met all targets, it would have been difcult to pay them all. He did this based on their previous records of underachieving by 30 per cent. The reason we never hit anything is because they were only aiming at a particular level. To hit something, youve got to aim to go through it aim for the stars and you might just hit the moon. It put me on a different career path and put me on a direct career path from where I am today. If I hadnt made that decision then, there is no doubt I wouldnt have ended up where I am. Though working and learning simultaneously was a huge strain, one huge advantage its given Garrie is that I can look any of my learners in the eye and say, I know where you are coming from because Ive been there and I know exactly what you are going through. Its given my family a standard of life I wouldnt have had if I hadnt got involved with it and I want to put something back so that other people can benet from the same sort of thing as Ive been through. You get huge job satisfaction when you see from someones face that theyve understood it. I get a buzz from seeing the number of people we help and the range of learners were getting through and what theyre getting from it.
aim for the stars and you might just hit the moon.
Garries passion for learning also focuses on his own team. The chap who inspired me at the college his approach to staff development was that youve got to develop yourself and Ill support you in any way I can. I have a similar approach to it. He gives people responsibilities and encourages them to develop and if that means they leave me, they leave me. He says, My rst obligation is to make sure we can do everything we can within the company, but the other is to make sure we can help you develop yourself. The two shouldnt be separate. I nd it frustrating when theres a lot developed for the organisation and very little for the person. He is keen to enable people to develop their potential and move on and up in the organisation. They have a hunger to develop. I nd it frustrating that people never encourage each others potential because they feel threatened by it. We should embrace it. When you are developing people, dont be afraid to develop them to more senior positions than yourself. Garries enthusiasm for learning, development and quality are clearly evident in his leadership style and his ambitions for Learndirect. He says of himself: As soon as the passion goes, I will move on, but I do not see any sign of this as yet. Its not fair to your staff or learners to stay put when the passion goes.
Support
Garrie gains support from his board of directors and chairman, senior people whove been in the education sector a lot longer than I have, who are not scared to give you a frank answer when its needed. He has a peer network of people in senior education positions and has been active in setting up the Association of Learning Direct Hub Operators. He uses these support networks to bounce ideas around and cope with the political mineeld of FE. He also gets a lot of support from his team. These support networks are important in times of stress. Like many other senior people in FE, he does not have a formal coach or mentor, but does seek advice and support from the chair of his board of directors.
A passion for learning

Garries passion for learning has come from what was probably the most signicant decision of his career - to go back into education and improve his skills. I was relying on experience up to that point without the skills to back it up. Then I got those skills on paper and that made the most fundamental change in everything I was doing.
June 2005
page 27
Personal leadership journey: Geoff Pine

Geoff is principal and chief executive of Greenwich Community College. Having trained as a teacher, he has had what he describes as a pretty standard progression through the academic ranks to his position as principal and has also spent some time as an Inspector. He has been in a principal role for 13 years. Before taking up an academic career, he spent a brief period setting up and working in a successful retail business, then an agency for dancers and performers which became a production and costume manufacturing company and grew into quite a sizeable enterprise. He has retained an interest in this business throughout his career. Another signicant inuence occurred when he moved into his next job. He met a boss who saw in me things I hadnt seen in myself. She put me in positions which enabled me to do things I never thought I was going to be able to do. Those things propelled me into the management roles that I then took on. Within four or ve years, Geoff was an acting vice principal. This boss gave him the task of running a department, which was outside his own specialism. The department was in a mess nancially and in terms of performance. Geoff was able to get it into shape again. The experience of working with someone who identied abilities in him that he had not seen in himself had a profound inuence on his approach to developing others. He also was impressed that as one of the few women principals at that time, she was tough enough to battle against prejudice and brought strong principles to leading her team.
External focus: meeting the needs of the community

When Geoff took the role of principal at Greenwich, it was an engineering college with ten mechanical engineering labs and staff sitting here wondering why the apprentices were not coming into the building like they used to, when in fact the major employer whod been working with them was going out of business and closing. He set out to develop the curriculum to include vocational specialisms appropriate to the area, and establish external partnerships. We looked at what the skills needs were in the local economy and started trying to align them with what was currently in existence in the college. We developed specialisms in areas where there were skills shortages or potential growth in the area. That has been the major driver, but getting people to think about what the external environment means and getting into partnerships were the things that moved the college.
Shaping career
At the beginning of his academic career, Geoff says, I was never that ambitious. He enjoyed teaching and was happy as a senior lecturer. Then there was a very signicant event when he discovered that the reason he had not been selected for a job was overt discrimination. He was working in an engineering college with a very macho approach to things. Being a gay member of staff was something which was clearly not accepted. I heard subsequently that the principal said that he would never promote a person like that, so I was not promoted. This negative experience prompted him to move out of the college into the Inspectorate, which he enjoyed and where he was very successful.
page 28
June 2005

Geoff believes its important that the college engages in delivering curriculum only where there are job opportunities for students so that when they complete their studies they have a chance of being welcomed into the workplace. He has been prepared to take some risks to bring together what the college offers and what the neighbourhood needs. One major example is the development of the London Leisure College. Geoff saw the opportunities in leisure and took the opportunity to develop a partnership with Greenwich Leisure Limited and Charlton Athletic Football Club and also to use their grounds to develop a pretty desultory lot of courses around sport and leisure into a huge success story. Its won a beacon award for links with employers. The college now has three areas of vocational specialism: leisure, health and social care and applied crafts. They are just considering developing their applied electronics, which again would have signicant links with local businesses. One difcult thing for Geoff to deal with personally was a vote of no condence from his staff when trying to change teaching contracts. We just had to be resolute in what we wanted to do, and stick with it. It was a very uncomfortable two to three years. I could have settled at any time, but I didnt want to settle on too generous a basis because I knew that in the future that would give us problems. So it was being resolute in that context and recognising that it was a period you needed to get through. He got support during this time from his fellow principals, who were having to deal with similar issues, and from his senior management team. Nine years ago, Geoff instigated a continuing leadership development programme for his senior management team, starting with understanding what leadership and management were and using a range of processes and tools to help us understand the nature of ourselves. This has been helpful in developing understanding of the teams strengths and areas to develop. In the last three years, all the management in the college has been through a leadership programme looking at emotional intelligence, organisational climate and leadership styles. This development programme has been signicant for Geoff in enabling him to understand his own style. The college has an equality agenda, central to the way it works, which is recognised internally and externally. Everything we do is tested against equality. The college is a very diverse organisation and sets targets for the balanced recruitment and development of staff. In the college management as a whole, when I rst got here there was one woman in a management role in the organisation. Now, well over 50 per cent of the roles are lled by women. The college has strong support for all issues around discrimination, understood by everybody in the organisation. Its been recognised in our inspection reports and we do sessions for other colleges on looking at the policies and procedures we have.
Internal focus: getting the structures right

Geoff was helped in bringing about the necessary changes by the external pressure of incorporation, at a time when staff were anticipating change anyway. In setting up the management structure for the college, Geoffs commercial experience gave him condence. A principals role before incorporation was very much around curriculum leadership and working with the local authority. The fact that I had been involved in running a business, where you have issues around employing people, preparing annual accounts at the end of the year [meant that] all of those things were second nature to me and helped me signicantly. Also, one of the strengths I brought was an understanding of the external world and an ability to get on with people and recognise the need to build up relationships. All of those helped. The other issue was nancial, and getting the nances right took a number of years. It meant looking at areas where the college was overspending, benchmarking with other colleges and making sure that all staff knew what the issues were and what needed to be done about them. This was not easy at a time when contractual changes for teaching staff were also taking place.
June 2005
page 29

Keeping the balance
Geoff has no formal support mechanisms, but has a network of college principals in London to whom he can turn when things get tough. He also gets a lot of support from his colleagues in the college executive. Geoff feels one of the things which helps him keep a reasonable work/life balance is the fact that he has kept an outside business interest as well, and that this helps him recognise the nonsense and preoccupations of both sides. His home environment and his wide interests in travel, theatre and so on help him maintain a balance. Other people would probably say that I havent got it right and theres too much work and not enough life. But I so thoroughly enjoy the job that it doesnt seem an issue to me. His outside business interest helped him signicantly to maintain this balanced perspective when he was up against conict with the unions about recontracting. You could just sense how important other things were to other people and suddenly things which seemed so crucial to you didnt seem so important. Also, being involved in running a medium-sized commercial enterprise has helped with understanding the preoccupations of the managers of this type of business. In Greenwich, most businesses are small and medium enterprises. Geoff says of his career, When you describe it in retrospect, it all sounds a little bit planned. A lot of it has been about being in the right place at the right time. When I rst started as principal, I didnt know about any of the skills Ive learnt about from the leadership development programme and you sometimes cringe about some of the things you might have done or said, so its not all been as clearly planned as it looks in retrospect.
One of the strengths I brought is an understanding of the external world and an ability to get on with people and recognise the need to build up relationships. All of those helped.
page 30
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Fiona Radford

Fiona has been governor of Ford Prison since 2003. She joined the Prison Service in 1985 on the Assistant Governors Training Scheme. She has successfully combined her career with the Prison Service with bringing up a young family. She is passionate about her job, stating that her driving force is to improve the conditions and treatment of prisoners. Reecting on what has shaped her career to date, Fiona mentions the birth of her children which has slowed down the rate that she has progressed but is something which she has accepted as inevitable because she has been able to work part-time for a considerable time. She has also been inuenced by role models, sometimes strong role models but at times poor role models. Her experience outside the Prison Service in the Inspectorate, which is part of the Home Ofce, was also valuable. It gave me two years at looking at the work we do. It was a real luxury in that normally you just get on with it and dont stand back and think, is my practice good enough or could I improve it? She also found it benecial to spend time working with others from different professions, including drug workers, alley inspectors, doctors and nurses. She is less sure about the value of off-job development activities. A one-month attachment to industry in the early 1990s was frustrating because in a month you cant do very much. Her experience of training courses in the Prison Service has been mixed; some of the operationally led courses like hostage incident management have been very good, others less so. Fiona is impressed by the way that standards of training are continually improving.
Career path
Having joined the Assistant Governors Training Scheme, Fiona did a one-year placement at Holloway Prison as a prison ofcer, an experience that she describes as a baptism of re, which taught her an awful lot. She went to Pentonville Prison as the second female assistant governor and became a fully edged governor. She was then posted to Maidstone Prison, and had a stint as the staff ofcer to an area manager before ending up back at Holloway as head of operations. She had just had her rst child and became involved in the rst job share at this level in the service. She continued to work in a part-time role and joined the Inspectorate, focusing on operational prison issues. She found this latter job to be an extremely valuable experience, which has helped to shape the way that she has tackled her current role. She then went to Wandsworth Prison as deputy governor for two years. During this period, she spent four months as acting governor, which gave her the condence to realise that she could be successful in the role of governor. It was an interesting experience. Its the biggest prison in the country. It was really helpful. It made me realise that I could do this. It made me think that this might not be beyond me.
Transition into role of governor

When she was appointed governor at Ford Prison, it helped Fiona immensely that she had the experience of being acting governor at Wandsworth. It was really helpful, especially since Wandsworth is such a huge and very complicated prison with all sorts of issues. Despite this experience, she readily admits that the hardest thing to learn in her new role was to allow people to get on with things operationally. This is partly because people are very keen to push it up to me, but its also because Im not pushing it down enoughIm still keen to get involved operationally. Fiona is the rst female governor at Ford and on appointment was also younger than her predecessors and the second youngest of her own management team. She was pleasantly surprised that this did not affect her credibility, and realised that her track record of nearly 20 years in the prison service helped with this: being in the know about prison service things helps.
June 2005
page 31
Personal leadership journey: Fiona Radford

In her role as governor, Fiona has made it a priority to develop her senior and middle management teams. She has been learning to develop them strategically for the future. She is becoming better at letting go and delegating the simple operational issues so that she can focus more on strategic thinking and linking the strategic plans together. Fiona has placed a lot of emphasis on identifying and developing potential within the organisation both through formal training programmes but also through a high level of empathy that she has in her dealings with others. Ive come across a number of middle managers, senior ofcers and principal ofcers who have been stuck in a rut. If you give them something that they are particularly interested in, you can see them blossoming in front of your eyes. If theyve got something that theyre really good at and you really value them, then Ive discovered that, for a long time afterwards, they will do all sorts of things for you because youve engaged with them. So its about recognising people and empowering them. In making her transition into the role, Fiona had had little formal support in the form of executive coaching or mentoring, although she recognises that there is potential in these areas. Her support has come more informally, from a trusted long-standing colleague who has a temporary position at Ford to help with the performance improvement process, from her husband and from other governors. I know lots of other governors and I can always ring them up for help and advice. Im always quite happy to ask. You get a lot of support from your colleagues.
Leadership impact
Fiona is very clear about what she brings to the role: consistency, transparency, honesty, enthusiasm and pace setting. She sees a need to drive change, to manage performance and to celebrate success. For her, being completely open and honest with prisoners and staff is vital because its like hostage negotiations. If you lie right at the beginning then youve lost it later when you are trying to get their trust. Its exactly the same with staff. At Ford, the enthusiasm and pace setting has been particularly important because Ford has a culture of doing things in their own time, not moving very fast. Fiona acknowledges that it has been important to push things fast because of the benchmarking process taking place in the service, we either meet the performance improvement objectives or we get market tested. Its very much a threat over our heads and weve got to move very fast. Thats been a big change for us. Weve really needed to pick things up and move things on. And there have been tangible results in the form of the weighted scorecard, a method of measuring prisoners against all others. In the last three quarters, they have moved in position from 131 to 87 to 43. Fiona is ever realistic about this achievement. It doesnt cover everything we do, but it does have an effect on how we are viewed by HQ. Fiona recognises that to sustain the level of progress achieved so far, she needs to have a strong management team, which will suitably amplify her efforts. She has made recent changes to her team to ensure that this happens. So how has Fiona managed to do this? She admits to being quite well organised in monitoring the performance improvement process but again it comes down to her enthusiasm and pace and inspiring this in others. I have changed the pace of the place. I think that the middle and senior managers have changed the way that they work and are feeling more enthusiastic. That happened because we had to drive change quickly. We havent had much time. The performance improvement process is one year long. It was announced the week before I got here. I had to start running as soon as I got here.
Ive come across a number of middle managers, senior ofcers and principal ofcers who have been stuck in a rut. If you give them something that they are particularly interested in, you can see them blossoming in front of your eyes. If theyve got something that theyre really good at and you really value them, then Ive discovered that, for a long time afterwards, they will do all sorts of things for you because youve engaged with them. So its about recognising people and empowering them.
page 32
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Gill Reid

Gill Reid is director of yes, the off-campus arm of Grantham College, located in a shopping centre in town with four other sites across the town. All students are part time adults, with courses ranging from apprenticeships and work-based learning through distance learners, to IT to people learning to read and write. yes works closely with local employers. She started her working life in a multinational organisation, working in a range of capacities such as business analyst, sales manager, project managing, catastrophe planning for the whole organisation and introducing new import and export systems. It was after a career break for her family that she went into teaching. For the last ten years, she has been with Grantham College, progressing from being a lecturer in management and professions, through curriculum area manager, higher education manager, to deputy director and now director of yes. yes has about a third of the college turnover: 50 staff, four sites and about 10,000 students enrolled a year. and steer a path through some quite difcult situations, overcome problems to do with resources or personalities, and do that on time and within budget. A more recent transition was the move to yes. yes is the off-campus arm of Grantham College and has quite a different culture from the main college campus. It had been running for eight or nine months when I got here, so it had its own culture already established. I had to t into that and work out what my contribution would be. Her previous experience of moving from the private to the public sector helped prepare her for this move. Id been through a major change then and you learn how to deal with that, to look and learn and listen to whats going on around you before you jump in with both feet.
Leadership impact
Gill believes that her business experience outside FE has helped her to look at problems objectively and understand the causes of issues and problems. If I have a skill, its being able to analyse a problem rationally and dispassionately. I think thats probably what you need sometimes, the ability to not get too wound up in the human stories, but to look at it from a business perspective. She aims to be methodical about sorting out issues. Set out a plan, deal with the discussions with colleagues and communications . I think its a combination of being able to analyse rationally whats caused the problems and to put together a rescue package and sell that successfully. Im particularly keen if things go wrong to work with colleagues to nd out what might have happened and what we can do about it. I consciously try and get people in and sit down with them and say theres no blame here, what happened, why did we let that happen, and what do we do about it for the future? Ive learnt a lot from analysing situations where I havent got things done in the way I would have liked and I try to use that across the eld with my colleagues as well. Gill has learnt to deal with disciplinary, conict and stafng issues in her more senior roles. I nd it an easy thing to do in terms of being a rational process, but when youre in the room with the people concerned, you have to be fair and be seen to be fair. People get quite emotional and you have to be clear about your facts. Curbing impatience, taking time and recognising that you might not always get it right can help.
Signicant career transitions

The move from the private to public sector was quite a culture shock for Gill. She found the level of control and protection over structures such as working hours and hours of contact very strange. She feels the role of higher education manager was an important part of her career development because it gave her more exposure to external partners than her previous roles as lecturer or curriculum area manager had done. I was able to demonstrate to managers within the college that I could be trusted to negotiate
June 2005
page 33

Also, having condence in what you can do and following the capability procedures, getting the facts right, and knowing that youre not going to tripped up over something youve not checked properly are helpful. Gill feels that she has developed her skills in leading people. She has become comfortable with injecting calming down time into difcult situations, rather than thinking she has to sort it out straight away. Coming back to conicts between staff in a couple of days time means a better resolution. She is also less likely to take on all problems herself. Five years ago I might have felt I had to solve everything, whereas now I often say to my senior management team go away and come back to me and let me know what you think. Ive got an idea, but it may not be right and its your department, come and talk to me about what you think might be a better way or another way of looking at it. Thats encouraging them to contribute more and take ownership. One of Gills strengths is her attention to detail, which brings a level of scrutiny, which can improve performance. However she recognises that in certain situations it is not appropriate. Ive had to learn that there are certain situations and outcomes where its not going to matter hugely one way or the other if its done the way I want or the way a colleague wants it as long as the result is t for the purpose. She has become more patient and conscious that she needs to listen well. Im not a naturally patient person and Ive had to learn to hide that. Ive had to learn to be more patient with people and accept that not everyone is obsessed with getting it right rst time. In taking over the directorship of yes, Gill was a relatively unknown quantity and needed to establish her credibility fairly quickly. She did so by bringing a businesslike approach to sorting out various aspects that were not being managed as well as they could be, and improving nancial performance. She paid attention to detail, such as looking at class sizes, teaching hours and budget, and rationalising classes. She also worked on performance management improvements. Although this was not always popular, it has led to good nancial performance and last year yes was a Beacon Award and National Training Award winner. She says, The trick of getting on well at this level is to be able to be dispassionate when faced with a problem, to look at it logically and rationally whether its a human resource issue, a customer service issue, or whatever and be able to step back, not get emotionally involved and to work out how to put it right and to pursue that with some vigour so many problems occur when people dont keep an eye on the detail and dont follow things through. Gill is passionate about customer care and putting the learner at the heart of what we do. She has turned the customer care policy into a living document by working with all staff to develop protocols for how we want to behave, particularly towards each other, where it has an impact on the customer, for example, returning phone calls, and if you are going to meetings to be there on time, that sort of more businesslike approach. They are monitored to make sure that people are following agreed practices and challenge those who are not. Because were prepared to do that, in a supportive way, people know we mean business. They are going to review the protocols once they have been in place for eight months, looking at whether they are getting fewer complaints and more praise.
page 34
June 2005

Developing self and others
Gill was inspired by a colleague who is a great skill spotter in people to have condence in her own, and other peoples abilities. She has been surprised in her own career about the assumptions that others make that their colleagues are not capable of doing things. We dont tend to look very closely at the talent weve got within the organisation and we miss people who would really shine if given the opportunity. She says that in order to progress in organisations, you sometimes need to draw attention to whats gone on and make sure people recognise what youve done in order to establish your credentials a bit. She has given a lot more responsibility to her management team because I wanted to give them room to grow, as Id had the benet of that. She encourages people to develop their potential at all levels of the organisation, trying to get as wide a buy-in as possible with projects. She encourages people with good ideas to develop them; for example, a new entrant coming from the NHS, who was enthusiastic about mentoring has largely driven a new mentoring approach within yes. She says her work life balance is better now than when her children were young. The difference now is that I have so much more control over my job and autonomy at this level, that although I work very long hours, I dont feel stressed, because I feel in control of it. Thats the absolute difference, I think. Most of the decisions are down to me, and if things go wrong its not the end of the world, but we can look at it and make sure it doesnt happen again. Im much more measured in my response to problems, because there are always problems to deal with. With so many staff and customers involved, you have to deal with it routinely, so you get a much more detached perspective.
I consciously try and get people in and sit down with them and say theres no blame here, what happened, why did we let that happen, and what do we do about it for the future? Ive learnt a lot from analysing situations where I havent got things done in the way I would have liked and I try to use that across the eld with my colleagues as well.
Asked to sum up the values she brings to her role, Gill says, Hard work, putting the customer, the learner rst so that their experience is as good as we can possibly make it, and to celebrate the success of our team. We won a Beacon award for our Skills for Life work but the award really reects the whole of yes. They spent the whole day here and talked to staff in different sections within the organisation and were impressed by the whole thing. I think its really important that people take pride in their contribution.
June 2005
page 35
Personal leadership journey: Sujinder Sangha

Sujinder has been principal and chief executive of Stockton Riverside College since 2003. He started his career in FE in 1981, having previously worked in industry. Sujinder communicates a very clear passion for education, stating that his fundamental values are about enabling and empowering others to achieve in their lives. part-time study, which is about to culminate in the completion of his doctorate with Birmingham University. Sujinder is rightly proud of his achievements: I did it on my own on a part-time basis my rst degree, my certicate in education, my masters degree and now my doctorate. Thats real lifelong learning. So Sujinder developed a very genuine belief in the value of education, based on his personal experience. It was also shaped by his shock at encountering low levels of literacy when he rst arrived in this country. Many of his work colleagues simply could not read or write and needed his help to fill in their worksheets. My image of Britain had been of an advanced country, and yet so many people more than three quarters of a million adults could not read or write. That shows something of my journey into FE.
Shaping values
To understand Sujinders absolute commitment to education, it is helpful to go back to his early experiences. Sujinder spent his formative years in India, where he was inspired by his grandfather, who was in the British-Indian Army and later on part of Indias freedom movement. He would always go a long way to help people for the collective good, even if he had to make personal sacrice. Sujinder also had a secondary school head teacher who was a powerful source of inspiration and he acknowledges that these early experiences have really inuenced my life. He had also been inspired by role models in his fathers generation, including his father, who was a railway ofcial, and his mother, who was a strong character. In the 1960s, when he was in his late teens, Sujinder came to this country, hoping to complete his education. He found himself being funnelled into doing an English for migrants course and fought instead to study for his O and A levels, which he did part-time in the evenings and through a correspondence programme whilst working in industry during the day. He received very little encouragement. I wasnt actually perceived as someone who might go to college and get an education. There was no support or encouragement available. Sujinder overcame a number of barriers to ensure that he was able to complete his education, and he embarked on a lifelong process of
Career path
Sujinder progressed from the shop oor to become a quality inspector and also got involved in the Transport and General Workers Union, interested in issues concerning work-related education and training. I wanted to help my members to be more effective in the workplace and improve conditions but also to make progress and to get promotion. This developing interest in education resulted in Sujinder being appointed, on completion of his rst degree with the Open University, as a lecturer in industrial language training in Sandwell LEA at Worley College. His interest in joining FE was intensied by his initial concern that FE was not meeting the needs of people from minority ethnic communities. So his rst drive was to develop connectivity between the communities and local colleges and likewise between employers and colleges. Sujinder relished the challenges of FE and progressed through the system to become lecturer, lecturer grade 2, senior lecturer, head of department, head of faculty, vice principal and deputy principal before taking on his current role.
My image of Britain had been of an advanced country, and yet so many people more than three quarters of a million adults could not read or write. That shows something of my journey into FE.
June 2005
page 36
Personal leadership journey: Sujinder Sangha

Prior to taking on this role, Sujinder worked alongside his predecessor as a consultant for two months. On appointment, he was eager to acknowledge what was already being achieved in the college. Valuing what had already been achieved together with setting very clear future vision and targets to become a Premier League College, serving employers, communities and individuals was important. The greatest challenge when Sujinder entered the role was to develop relationships with staff, managers, members of the corporation, external community, agencies and so to understand the overall dynamics of what makes the organisation and people tick. He recognised the need to understand a complex human organisation and was conscious that he needed to use his people skills more than he had done in previous roles. Technical skills and specialist knowledge are available elsewhere in the institution and you can always hire these in or outsource them. I think that the fundamentals are people and process skills. A people organisation depends on how you treat others and how you move forward collectively. I tried to encourage, motivate and support people. I wanted leadership in the college to be collectiveI wanted everyone to be leaders in their own rightI said to teachers that they were leading their class, they were inspiring the learners to make a success of their studies so that they could move into employment, higher studies or whatever else they wanted to do. achieved their three-year growth targets in terms of student numbers, employer engagement, professional qualications for staff and equality and diversity. He acknowledges that this is due to the staff expertise, commitment and collective effort from all of our people. When he became principal, the college had just moved to a new 17 million campus. In terms of infrastructure and buildings, we were one of the newest buildings in FE. Sujinder was very impressed with the facilities and the capacity of the college to serve the service industry. He was not convinced that the college adequately served the needs of the manufacturing or construction industries. Practical skills and technology workshops were in an industrial estate two miles away from the new campus. Prevocational and vocational students did not enjoy the facilities of the colleges modern infrastructure. So, with the initiative and full backing of his corporation, he and his strategic management team have pushed for the 4 to 5 million required for a phase two development, which would address this issue. The LSC took some persuasion and the project had to be scaled down from 9 million to 4.5 million, but they agreed to receive and support the application, in part at least, because of the colleges success in meeting its existing targets. The college has close to three CoVEs and is developing a good range of Foundation Degree courses. Sujinder is pleased with what has been achieved to date. When the college moved to its new single-site campus, it had to relocate its Billingham provision to Stockton, which involved a move of about seven miles. There was some resistance on the part of the Billingham community, who felt that they were being deprived of their local college. Even the local MP opposed the move. Sujinder put in place a whole range of initiatives to support and build relationships with the local community and local community organisations. This has proved such a success that the MP who had opposed the move recently attended the colleges Annual Awards Ceremony and spoke very highly of the college. Even more signicantly, increasing numbers of students are travelling from Billingham to attend the college in Stockton. Sujinder is proud of this. Likewise, the college is reaching out to other towns, communities, organisations and employers. I think that this has been a good college achievement. I wouldnt claim the achievement for myself. Its a collective effort, but Ive made my contribution.
Leadership impact
This clearly links to Sujinders earlier assertion that his values are based on enabling and empowering others to achieve in their lives. So how have people responded to Sujinders approach and what impact has this had on the college? Sujinder is pleasantly surprised at the overwhelming support he has received for what he is trying to do. He comments that people have been very co-operative, very understanding and very supportive. Twenty months into a three-year development plan, they have already
June 2005
page 37
Personal leadership journey: Andrew Thomson

Andrew Thomson was about to take over as chief executive of the Learning and Skills Development Agency at the time of being interviewed. After a brief period as a residential social worker, he has spent his entire career in education, rising up the academic ladder to eventually three different principal roles at two sixth form colleges, and acting principal in a GFE college before taking up his current position. He has tended to apply for jobs which look interesting, or which seemed like a good next step. This has meant that he has had some interesting jobs which have opened my eyes to a wide range of issues such as running extra curricular activities in a sixth form college, representative work for groups of principals, committee work for various agencies of government. He believes that one of the biggest transitions in leadership is moving to a vice principal role and becoming part of the senior management team. Going into senior management is the quantum leap. That is a bigger thing to do than going from there to becoming principal. Up until that point you have responsibilities for which people internally hold you accountable. After that point you can nd that you have lots of responsibilities you didnt even know you had, lots of things for which you are not in any way responsible, but people still wish to hold you accountable. It was only once he was at vice principal level he started thinking about the possibility of becoming principal.
The path to leadership

Andrew has never consciously pursued a particular career path. He had some signicant advice when he was a social worker thinking about going into teaching. The advice was, no matter what you do, just try to make a success of doing it and not be always thinking about the future or dwelling on the past. Live in the present and get on and do the best you can do that day. In consciously trying to follow that advice, he has focused on what I am doing today and what are the issues facing me, how can I do my job better and contribute better. Ive loved what Ive done. Ive been in a way of life mode rather than a nine-to-ve mode pretty much since I went into teaching. Rather than thinking about the next step of his career, Andrew has always focused on the current job and how to improve it. Ive never set out to do things in order to get somewhere. Ive taken the approach of trying to do your level best at what youve got.
But you know that its really all a team effort and you have to play to the strengths of your management team and recognise that any idea you ever have is always going to be improved by sharing it with someone else.
He thinks the big difference between vice principal and principal is more of an emotional than organisational one. Emotionally, as principal you have the real issue of decisions and the way the organisation works ultimately resting with you. But you know that its really all a team effort and you have to play to the strengths of your management team and recognise that any idea you ever have is always going to be improved by sharing it with someone else. So you dont confuse leadership with bossing or responsibility with power. There is no power in this job; theres just a hell of a lot of responsibility if you are doing it properly. But you cant park things that dont go too well on the shoulders of other people, which you still can do as a vice principal.
page 38
June 2005

Turning around performance
Andrew was involved in a signicant turnaround situation when he was drafted in as acting principal in a small GFE college. At the time there had been an adverse Ofsted report, the management team had more or less gone and the next level down had moved into management positions. The college was facing signicant problems with management information systems and nance. There was real fear about merger/ takeover/complete closure and a genuine belief that lots of staff would leave and not stick around to see what happened. Andrew believes that any change results from a team effort, and that while leadership is important, the big critical issue is working with other people because other people are even more important. His approach was to look at the circumstances which were causing the problems and to work with the Learning Skills Council, the new management team at the college, which rose to every challenge superbly, the staff within the college (likewise) and the local community to create better circumstances. In six months, the college had the beginning of a recovery plan, renewed certainty about its future, a signicant rise in student applications and a really good beat to the place. When he went into the role, he felt that his level of credibility was not very high, as he was coming from a sixth form into a tertiary college. He had a meeting with all the staff by the end of the rst day to explain who he was and to give a message of hope that the college could pick itself up and move forwards. To do all that, I had to have an idea in my own mind about how we might move forward and what we needed to do. You cant say, here is the plan and all its details; what you can say is the objective is that this time next year well be sitting in a bigger college, we have to learn from what Ofsted said, do it in the spirit of continuous improvement and do it with condence. In his rst principal post, Andrew worked on the direction of and purposes for the college, with everybody pulling out lots of stops it was a period of all sorts of efciency gains, very strong nancial management from our accountant, strong support from the senior team and governors, a great team effort and a real belief on the part of the staff in what they were doing. He led the college in increasing student numbers by 50 per cent, introducing adult education as a new provision for the college and rebuilding relationships with local schools and colleges. He says the college has moved forward in even greater leaps and bounds in subsequent years. The people who were working there carried on the good work with a new principal after I left and the college has gone from strength to strength.
Leadership values
Andrews approach to leadership involves treating people according to their needs. He feels that reading people well is a skill that can be learnt. You learn by the times you dont do things terribly well and think you could have done it better. He has also developed the ability to analyse circumstances and make the best of the situation, concentrating on the matter in hand rather than calling for level playing elds and fairness. What does get a little easier is just to believe that no matter how difcult things may seem, they usually sort themselves out if you concentrate on the matter in hand, have a clear idea of how you want the organisation to develop and work hard with your people. You are probably going to go further in leadership roles if you are willing to learn all the time, because organisations have to be willing to learn. Because he was struck that there was no structured approach to leadership development across different sectors of education, Andrew set up a training programme called A step up the ladder, a voluntary co-operative of people in management positions sharing their experience with people seeking management positions, wanting to know about the next step, or people at the younger end thinking about whether they want to become managers.
June 2005
page 39

Difcult learning for leadership includes learning just how accountable you really are. The more responsibility you have, the more problematic decision-making becomes and making decisions condently and consultatively is difcult to do in practice sometimes. He believes that some of the qualities you need to be a good teacher, patience and tact and understanding other people, are the same as you need to be a good leader As a leader you are getting other people to do things they dont necessarily want to do you use the same kind of emotional intelligence. Andrew believes that its important to respect other people. Self-respect in people is something that needs nurturing by the respect of others. Its very important to behave in the way that people really do matter and give them that lead and set that tone in an organisation. He believes in the fair treatment of people individually, which means rigorous terms and conditions, but also a systematic way of offering opportunities. It means recognition that rather than having power as a leader, you simply have enormous responsibility, He tries to create a culture where people know there is a future for them and which is open to learning and respects openness and dialogue between staff, by being systematic about staff development and assiduous about equality of opportunity for promotions and development. He believes that people develop as professionals by sharing and learning from best practice. Andrew looked for personal support primarily from his management team, chairman and board of governors. He also had an informal network of other principals in the town. Andrews approach to his career has been a willingness to learn, ways of reading people and situations, and recognition that most lasting achievements in public services are the work of more than one individual. Knowing oneself and being oneself. Dont be arrogant, and recognise that other people have a lot to do with anybodys achievements. Ive chosen to do jobs that I really like doing. People who are successful sometimes set out with a life plan and everything worked out. In my case, I set out with no life plan except to do things I enjoy doing and Ive been lucky to work in some excellent places with some wonderful people, and Ive added value to those circumstances. but the truth is theres a degree of good fortune around achieving success. Being a good principal is a bit like being a good police ofcer. People notice when theyve got a bad one, but all the good ones are accepted but not recognised.
Self-respect in people is something that needs nurturing by the respect of others. Its very important to behave in the way that people really do matter and give them that lead and set that tone in an organisation.
page 40
June 2005
Personal leadership journey: Russell Woodrow

Russell is principal of Stanmore College of Further Education Corporation, where he has been for 16 years, having previously gained varied experience across the education sector. He believes that education should be a liberating experience to give people choices. focused approach to his role. The second was his experience as a ward councillor and chair of social services in Lambeth. The most important training that I ever had to become a principal was as a ward councillor because I had to deal with peoples problems. I learnt to deal with people on the warpath and people in distress. It was wonderful training. As a principal I face up to and deal with problems.
Moving into the role of principal

Russell was appointed as principal in 1989, joining a college which was experiencing severe problems. He received some really positive support from the governors, especially one who Russell describes as an incredibly knowledgeable and powerful man, a nancial accountant. He was a nancial genius. Russell had credibility in the eyes of the governors because of his track record in other colleges, but some members of staff were less impressed. There was one guy who confronted me in my rst week and practically spat in my face saying, what was I doing here because it was a failing college. Most people thought that and I needed to believe in myself. I had to be crazy enough to really believe in what I was doing and be prepared to put my career on the line.
Career path
Russell did not set out on his career to become a principal. He reects, It only dawned on me that it might be possible when I became head of department. After completing a specialist FE training course at Wolverhampton, Russell went into FE before going to Canada, where he taught in a high school. He found that this was a useful experience which helped to prepare him for the role of principal because it gave him a perspective that quite a lot of my contemporaries didnt have. He was impressed with the standard of education there. Canadian education was designed for the students to succeed, whereas education here was designed for people to fail. This made a profound impression on me. Whilst in Canada, he completed an MA in philosophy. On returning to Britain, he taught for a while in secondary education before moving back into further education. He has taught most of his professional life in FE in London. He was appointed to his current role in January 1989. Russells approach to his role of principal has been informed by two key experiences earlier in his career. The rst was his completion of both a diploma in management studies and a certied diploma in accountancy and nance at the Polytechnic of Central London. That was really important because I mastered my business management skills, especially on the nancial side. This has led Russell to take a very business
Leadership impact
In his early days in the role, he took a similar leadership style to the one he had adopted as head of department and vice principal. He describes it as a macho approach to management in the sense that I thought I had to do everything myself.
June 2005
page 41
Personal leadership journey: Russell Woodrow

Russell soon recognised that he needed to develop a more inclusive style and to delegate much more to others. Things were moving so fast that I had to change the way that I looked at people and organisations. I had to recognise peoples strengths and play to their strengths and support their weaknesses. I had to stand back. My style changed completely over a couple of years. Three main things contributed to the need to change: the increasing complexity of colleges, incorporation and a nancial crisis in the college. There was a need for everyone to pull together to deal with the challenges and Russell reects, We started to delegate more. We started to develop a much greater sense of partnership. We began to rely more on one another and to respect one another more. Russell focused on developing a cohesive senior management team to drive the business forward, a team that has been together for 14 years and it is to this team that Russell turns when he needs support. We have worked together for so long. We really trust one another. You know when you walk into the college that if there is a problem, all you need to do is to call a senior management team meeting and it gets sorted. assistant principals retired and we advertised nationally. It was the rst time wed been out in well over a decade. Everyone was home-grown. When asked about the personal qualities he brought to his role, Russell thought that they would not be very different than anyone else in the business. I believe in the value of education. I love the business. I really adore the business. And I am adaptable. Everyone Ive ever known in FE who has been successful has always been adaptable. Adaptability is incredibly important and that is the watchword here. People move fast. It is not a big college. We pride ourselves on being very fast on our feet. Asked to reect on what the achievement in this role that he is most proud of, Russell replies, It has to be playing a part in getting us to where we are now. Its a situation that is really working well. Everyone believes in it and is committed to it. I am extremely pleased and proud of it.
You take off the top of the mountain and look for rich seams beneath it. We had them. We had some very talented people buried in the depths of the organisation who had been waiting.
Part of the changes Russell introduced included making three assistant principals redundant. This meant that it was even more important to identify and develop potential at lower levels within the organisation. Russell uses the metaphor of open cast mining to describe how they did this. You take off the top of the mountain and look for rich seams beneath it. We had them. We had some very talented people buried in the depths of the organisation who had been waiting. This has resulted in Russell being able to promote from within. What this has meant is that until recently we havent been out for a senior appointment. Last year one of our
I believe in the value of education. I love the business. I really adore the business. And I am adaptable. Everyone Ive ever known in FE who has been successful has always been adaptable.
page 42
June 2005
Section 4: Implications for development in the sector

From our exploration of the personal leadership journeys of 15 senior leaders in the sector, we have identied a number of factors that appear to be crucial to success at this level, and have reached some conclusions about the implications for developing our top leaders of the future. direction. Rae feels that his very broad experience outside the education secto,r including running my own business, helped me to maintain a clear view of what I and the organisation are here to do. In terms of future development in the sector, those with wider experience outside the sector should be welcomed into the sector. The opportunity for meaningful secondments outside the sector should be facilitated and the possibility of cross-sector action learning sets should be explored.
Self-awareness
It is vital that senior leaders are aware of their personal impact, so that they can ex and adapt their style to get the best out of others and to deliver results. Subjects in our study had raised their self-awareness through a number of different means. Paul had increased his through a combination of executive coaching, diagnostic instruments and through quality reection, What I had seen as passion and challenge was seen by others as losing it. Geoff had instigated a leadership programme looking at emotional intelligence, organisational climate and leadership styles and acknowledged that it had been signicant for him personally in enabling him to understand his own style. To develop the top leaders of the future there needs to be an ongoing focus within the sector on raising levels of self-awareness at all levels. The use of diagnostics in the form of 360 degree feedback and psychometric proles should be encouraged, as well as the development of organisational climates which support open and honest feedback on an ongoing basis.
Performance management
From our study, it became clear that a culture of performance management and customer focus was a key determinant of successful delivery. Adrian introduced a performance management system designed to recognise high performance and to encourage individuals to develop to their potential. Both Jackie and Russell illustrate the need to take tough decisions and adopt a robust approach to performance management. Garrie demonstrates the need to offer the right combination of support and challenge, to the benet of individuals and the organisation. Future leaders in the sector need to be committed to the intrinsic value of performance management. One challenge for the sector is, therefore, to place performance management high on the agenda in every institution so that it becomes an integral part of the culture.
Business focus
Subjects in our study found that a strong business focus helped to deliver the results for their organisations. Often this business focus had been developed as a result of experience outside the sector. This frequently gave them a heightened perception of what the priorities were in their own sector. In our study, some individuals had experience of working in the private sector or elsewhere in the public sector. Gills passion for customer service is derived in part from her experience in the private sector. Others, including Daniel, had owned their own businesses and/or had worked as councillors or school governors. Fiona had beneted from a secondment to the Inspectorate. The majority had found these to be positive developmental experiences that helped them to develop a keener business focus and to set a clear strategic
June 2005
page 43
Section 4: Implications for development in the sector

Giving opportunities
Many of our subjects had beneted from being given opportunities to work at a higher level, or outside their area of expertise. Others had taken a chance with them. Fiona was given the opportunity to gain experience as acting governor. Following a crisis in his college, Rae was rapidly promoted from lecturer to senior deputy vice principal in just ten months. John was appointed head of chemistry at a girls school without any teaching experience and acknowledges that his headmaster took a risk in appointing me to this post as I hadnt taught before. Geoff had a boss who saw things in me that I hadnt seen in myself. She put me in positions which enabled me to do things that I never thought I was going to be able to do. Being given the opportunity was a feature of so many of our stories. It is important that this becomes an integral part of the culture within the sector. There was evidence from our research interviews that mentoring is growing both in terms of prevalence and effectiveness. Formal mentoring schemes should be encouraged, as these offer a development experience for both the mentor and the individual being mentored. For this to have the desired outcome, time needs to be invested in ensuring that mentors have the requisite skills. Within the sector there is an increasing recognition of the value of executive coaching and mentoring. This will clearly be a valuable tool to help support the progression and development of future top leaders in the sector and to help existing top leaders to meet the day to day challenges facing them.
Lifelong learning
In our research we met a number of people clearly committed to lifelong learning, eager to take advantage of development opportunities provided in the sector and proactive about creating opportunities for further study. Sujinder provides a good example of this. I did it on my own on a part-time basis my rst degree, my certicate in education, my masters degree and now my doctorate. Thats real lifelong learning. Stellas early educational experiences have also given her a strong commitment to the learning and development of herself and others. In addition to formal training and education, Andrew amongst others talks of needing to have a willingness to learn. Paul recognises the need for reection. You can constantly learn and change what you are doing; you can adapt to the circumstances you are in. To retain credibility within this sector, it is essential that both aspiring and existing top leaders retain a personal commitment to their own learning and do their utmost to create climates which encourage the same level of commitment in their staff and customers.
Ongoing support mechanisms

The transition into a top leader role is not easy. Bill comments, The transition to principal is a major one. The gap is considerable. Paul talks about his own transition, Nothing prepares you for it. All of a sudden there is no other place where the buck stops. Most of our subjects had found some form of support to help them deal with the challenges of their role. Some gained informal support from family, friends and colleagues. A number, including John, mentioned the key role played by the governors. A cohesive senior management team was also a strong source of support for many, including Russell. Paul and Bill both had a very positive experience of executive coaching.
page 44
June 2005
Section 5: Conclusions
Each leadership journey is unique. Each leadership journey has something in common with others. As we found in our previous research on top leaders, themes emerge in the patterns of behaviour and approach taken by successful senior leaders. There is a lot of common ground between our ndings and the CEL Leadership Qualities Framework and also with the Top Leader Journey research. In the Top Leader Journey research, which looked specically at how leaders make the transition into a top leader role, Hodgson et al found that there were eight signicant themes which emerged as crucial to making a successful transition into the role of top leader. These were, in order of the greatest value and importance to the top leader: Establishing and maintaining credibility Top team development Getting the focus of attention right Emotional and intellectual support mechanisms Using learning to enhance performance Spotting and developing potential Inspiration and energy Managing upwards and outwards As you read the case studies here, its easy to see how these themes are mirrored and repeated in the experiences of senior leaders in the learning and skills sector. The one theme we found in the current research, which did not mirror the patterns in the previous research, was the importance of a business focused approach. Whilst being business focused would probably have underpinned the approach of most of the leaders in the former research, they did not talk about this explicitly. A huge percentage of the leaders in this research saw a business focused approach as vital to the success of their enterprises. If we link the themes identied above to the CEL Leadership Qualities Framework, we nd signicant evidence suggesting that there is a clear link between these themes and the four key areas of the framework focus to achieve, mobilise to impact, sustain momentum and passion for excellence. This is shown in Figure 1. Key Themes Emerging from Research Career direction CEL Leadership Qualities Framework Focus to achieve Shaping the future Business acumen Action orientation Cultural sensitivity Mobilise to impact Business focused approach Organisational expertise Inuential relationships Distributed leadership Performance accountability Sustain momentum Performance through people Change management Building organisational capability Growing future talent Driving for results Passion for excellence Drive and direction Common purpose Learning orientation Self-awareness and growth
Passion and energy
Values driven
Clarity of vision
Developing top team
Need for support
Lifelong learning
Figure 1: Links between key themes emerging from research and the CEL Leadership Qualities Framework
June 2005
page 45
Section 5: Conclusions
Whilst we have used different terminology, the majority of what we identied is common to the Leadership Qualities Framework, with possibly one exception: need for support. This framework is clearly an effective tool, which can be used by individuals and organisations for guiding the development of current and future senior leaders within the sector. Additionally, to deal successfully with the demanding challenges facing our top leaders in climates of complexity and uncertainty, we believe that it is important to recognise the need for ongoing support mechanisms. The senior leaders in this research illustrate the diversity of experience and approach, which can result in successfully leading an organisation in FE. Many of them had been involved in turnaround situations or had transformed the performance of their organisation from average to excellent. As with successful leaders outside the sector, they bring a huge amount of energy into driving performance and focus, not only on the internal workings of the organisation, but the external impact, the customer experience and vision for the future. Successful leaders need to focus on performance, and they need to develop and manage their senior teams and their workforce. They need to develop and maintain their credibility and it helps to do this if they have heightened self-awareness. Leading at the top can be a lonely job and some top leaders nd that an appropriate support mechanism can make a real difference to sustaining success at the top.
page 46
June 2005
Appendix A: Research questions

The Reective Leadership research Background
The interviewees are in senior leadership roles across the further education sector. Most will be principals. They have agreed to be interviewed as part of this research project and are prepared to be named as part of the published report. The published report will consist of a series of leadership stories so it is important to probe for illustrative examples. We are interested in how you prepared for the transition into your current role and how you have learnt and developed whilst in the role. We are hoping to publish your leadership journey as part of our research, so please would you let me know if there are any areas that we discuss which you wish to remain condential.
The questions
1. Career overview Give me a brief overview of your career to date prior to this current role What were the signicant events or landmarks, which have shaped your career to date? Have you been involved in any signicant turnaround situations? Can you please describe these? 2. Transitions Looking back over your career, what have been the major transitions that you have experienced? Can you identify any signicant experiences that helped to prepare you for these transitions? Are there any forms of development activity which were particularly helpful? 3. Coping with transitions As you moved into senior leadership roles, what were the hardest things to learn? What surprised you? Were there any pivotal moments when a signicant shift occurred in: - performance - relationships - understanding - motivation - commitment
Main themes
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Career overview Preparing for transitions Coping with transitions Skills and personal qualities Establishing credibility Values and sources of inspiration Developing people Use of support mechanisms Signicant achievements
Setting up
On tape after you have set up the machine and tested that its recording OK, say your name, who you are interviewing, his or her job title and the date.
Preamble speech
On behalf of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL), we are conducting research of the Personal leadership journeys of people in top leadership roles in your sector. We are interested in hearing your personal story, highlighting the challenges, skills and qualities that you feel have contributed to the success of your journey.
June 2005
page 47
Appendix A: Research questions

4. Skills and personal qualities As you moved into senior leadership roles, were there any skills that you consciously used more? Were there any skills that you consciously used less? Were there any skills that you consciously introduced into to your repertoire, which you hadnt used before? What do you believe to be your key two or three personal qualities that have contributed to your success in these senior roles? 8. 5. Establishing credibility In a recent research project on top leaders, we discovered that credibility was a vital component, which enables top leaders to get things done. What do you believe your level of credibility was with others in your organisation as you entered your new role? What leads you to believe this? Whilst you have been in your role, what things have you done which seem to have added to your credibility? (push for specic examples) What things have you done which may have risked your credibility? (again specic examples) What was the outcome? What things have you done that may have damaged your credibility? (again specic examples) How did you recover from this? 6. Values and sources of inspiration Tell me about a time when someone inspired you. What happened? Why did it work? Tell me about a time when you believe you inspired people. What happened? Why did it work? What values do you bring to this organisation? When things are getting tough who do you turn to for support? Have you experience of any of the following: an executive coach, a mentor, a formal support network, and an informal support network? Tell me more about that What has been the most valuable form of support for you? How effectively do you believe that you maintain an effective life/work balance? 9) Signicant achievements In your job so far, what achievements are you most proud of? Tell me more about that 7. Developing people How do you release and harness your peoples energy? Can you give some specic examples? How do you gain the condence of your people? How do you go about identifying potential? What methods do you use to develop potential? Can you give some specic examples? Use of support mechanisms
Finishing piece
Thank you for your involvement in this research project. We hope to have completed this project by the end of this year and to publish our report in the summer of 2005. We would like your permission to quote you in the report. We will, of course, check with you again before doing so.
page 48
June 2005
Centre for Excellence in Leadership

The Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL) was launched in October 2003, as a key national agency within the Governments Success for All initiative, to ensure world-class leadership within the learning and skills sector. CEL provides a focus for leadership and management development and supports colleges and providers in boosting skills development, improving learning and developing more flexible organisations through effective leadership. CEL is a partnership led by Lancaster University Management School and the Learning and Skills Development Agency, with the support of Ashridge and the Open University.
Contact Information
Centre for Excellence in Leadership 10 Greycoat Place Victoria London SW1P 1SB Telephone: Enquiry line: Facsimile: (020) 7960 6035 (0870) 241 8206 (020) 7222 3081
enquiries@centreforexcellence.org.uk www.centreforexcellence.org.uk

Reflective Leadership: The Leadership Qualities Framework in Action

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reflective Leadership: The Leadership Qualities Framework in Action

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reflective Leadership

The Leadership Qualities Framework in action Personal Leadership Journeys

Acknowledgements and thanks

Lynne Sedgmore CBE Chief Executive

Section 1: Introduction, aims and methodology

Section 2: Key themes emerging

Business focused approach

Passion and energy

Section 2: Key themes emerging

Need for support

Developing top team

Section 3: Personal leadership journeys

Personal leadership journey: Rae Angus

Journey to becoming principal

Transition into role of principal

Personal leadership journey: Rae Angus

Clarity of vision and courage of convictions

Personal leadership journey: Adrian Carey

Transition into role

Personal leadership journey: Adrian Carey

Personal leadership journey: Stella Dadzie

The move to further education

Establishing Front Line Training

Personal leadership journey: Stella Dadzie

Continuing sources of inspiration

Personal leadership journey: Bill Fearon

Personal leadership journey: Bill Fearon

Personal leadership journey: Jackie Fisher

The move towards leadership

Personal leadership journey: Jackie Fisher

Leading for continuing performance

Personal leadership journey: John Guy

First role as principal

Personal leadership journey: John Guy

Second role as principal

Personal leadership journey: Paul Head

Personal leadership journey: Paul Head

Transition into role of principal

Personal leadership journey: Paul Head

Personal leadership journey: Daniel Khan

Transition into role of principal

Personal leadership journey: Daniel Khan

Personal leadership journey: Garrie Owens

Inuences and inspiration

Personal leadership journey: Garrie Owens

Personal leadership journey: Garrie Owens

A passion for learning

Personal leadership journey: Geoff Pine

External focus: meeting the needs of the community

Personal leadership journey: Geoff Pine

Internal focus: getting the structures right

Personal leadership journey: Geoff Pine

Personal leadership journey: Fiona Radford

Transition into role of governor

Personal leadership journey: Fiona Radford

Personal leadership journey: Gill Reid

Signicant career transitions

Personal leadership journey: Gill Reid

Personal leadership journey: Gill Reid

Personal leadership journey: Sujinder Sangha

Personal leadership journey: Sujinder Sangha

Personal leadership journey: Andrew Thomson