In 2024 we recorded and published nine episodes of our podcast Leadership Worth Sharing. Even though every guest brings a different perspective and personal history to the table, a few themes seem to appear in most of the conversations. Here, we highlight a few things our guests have said about three of those prominent topics.
Being a CEO and a trustee
“I think it’s incredibly useful as a leader. It’s also given me more confidence, more insight into my own chair’s role.” (Nicci Russell)
“I say frequently to people who are in a chief exec role. For me, it was transformative, becoming, going onto that side of the ball table, not least just on that basis of actually, you find yourself when you’re, then in your chief exec role, you think, actually, these people are not trying to make life difficult for me or throw me a challenge, you know, just for the sake of it, they genuinely want to understand something they genuinely want to contribute.” (Jane Ide)
“I found it quite transformational to step onto a trustee board in terms of my understanding of what my role was and could be as the chief exec with the board.” (Jane Ide)
“But it’s so much more than that, that caring about the issue is the only thing that kind of brings you to the table, but your responsibilities are so much kind of bigger than that. And in some ways, the responsibility of being a trustee means that you do have to sometimes park your interest in something because you might think something is brilliant and amazing and have these great ideas. But also, you have to make sure that you’re making good financial decisions for that organisation, and your great idea is not a good financial decision for that charity.” (Sanchita Hosali)
“I love being a trustee. And to be honest, I always think I’ve been a trustee since I’m in my 20s. And it was one of the things that massively supported me to become a chief executive actually, my understanding that I learned about the kind of cycle of you know, running a charity and governance and the difference between being a board member and and all of those different things.” (Charlotte Hill)
“I think having that experience of chair gave me the bigger picture and that kind of external perspective as well. So I’ve been charity of trustee of various other charities as well, and especially when you’ve been in an organisation for a long time, that importance of getting perspective of how other organisations do things and how other conversations happen is really important.” (Rosie Ferguson)
Having hope – what gives you hope?
“People for a start, definitely the people the incredible people in my team, and I know you feel the same, Jane, because I’ve heard you talk about it lots of times. They are what gets me up and into work in the morning. It’s an absolute joy to work with them, the people at Power2, the Governors at the School, and all of the teachers, all of that just brings me so much hope and joy. I love family time engaging them in all the different bits of things with the children. And the work life balance is good. Because of the four day week, and I have this mix of things, as you said, you know, Power2, Waterwise and school governor which the three, the three of those together really, really give me energy and positivity. And I absolutely love it.” (Nicci Russell)
“I think a firm belief that we will all come to better answers and better outcomes if we reach out, listen, chat with and engage with people who’ve got different experiences and different hopes and ambitions and trying to constantly learn and stay open to different outlooks on life, and different hopes and different hopes and ambitions. So I think we are a stronger village or town or city or community be that geographic or community of interest. We are a stronger sector, we are a stronger, stronger civil society if we listened to learn from engage with as many people as possible.” (Ruth Marks)
“And of course seeing the impact we have both environmentally and socially is massively motivating. But actually, the fact that that impact is made possible by an amazing community of people who come together. I think he’s just awesome. It’s just amazing. And it is really inspiring. And it does make you see the good in the world.” (Charlotte Hill)
“One of the most fantastic things about civil society leaders is they take what life throws at them and they turn it into human gold. They’re social alchemists, and that human capacity for resilience, courage, creativity, generosity, making change happen, that’s what gives me hope.” (Mark Norbury)
Taking time for yourself
“So I very much into kind of fitness, I go to the gym every day at 4:30am I love that I love being up kind of before the rest of the world is watching the sunrise and kind of knowing that I’ve achieved something in that morning, doesn’t matter whatever else happens in that day.” (Sanchita Hosali)
“There is actually oddly something that’s good for your well being in having a four and a six year old whilst doing a big old full on job, which I know sounds odd. But I before having my kids let work basically seep into every single bit of my life, I am definitely a workaholic. And that’s partly because I love my job, but also that there is something definitely wrong with me, I do work too much. And it actually having little children has made me way more boundaries around work, the boundaries of having small kids has made me much healthier.” (Charlotte Hill)