After a few weeks off over the summer, Dr Kate Paradine shares some more reflections on leaving as CEO of Women in Prison (WIP) (which she wrote about here).
While away on holiday last month, I was in a hired boat for a day trip. Sitting in a peaceful bay after a swim and a picnic, I was feeling pleased with myself for laying an anchor for the first time, when suddenly we realised that somehow the boat was adrift. Swift (very amateurish!)) remedial action avoided a collision and loss of the hefty deposit. It was this incident and the death of Queen Elizabeth that got me thinking about the ‘anchors’ of leadership, duty and work.
Back in July, as well as the baby blackbirds taking flight, I enjoyed my last couple of weeks in my CEO role. A highlight on my last day in the office was opening the post to a lovely homemade leaving card from a woman in prison (who I’ve never met). One of my final tasks was a handwritten letter of thanks, sent along with some back copies of the WIP magazine, ‘Still I Rise’ – this felt grounding for me on an emotional day – a reminder of WIP’s founding values and who it stands for.
I’ve reflected previously on the personal drivers and forces that hold us in tough charity leadership jobs and now that I am outside I feel better able to see these. It’s said that the “fish can’t see the sea”, and I certainly felt that myself in the latter period in my leadership role – it became harder to see the organisation separately from myself. Yet being able to look from that distance becomes more important the longer you are in the role. The personal responsibility, sense of duty to the people the charity serves, and that [often consciously irrational] feeling of being indispensable can be an anchor holding you firm, getting you up in the morning and driving you on, but it can pull individuals and organisations down too. A firm grasp of holding that line is easier said than done.
In recent weeks successive prime ministers have described how deeply they valued weekly meetings with the Queen – not so much for advice, but for the chance to confess, unburden and share things that no one else could know. The importance of regular meetings between chairs and CEOs is well established, but the description of these royal meetings felt more like my experience of external clinical supervision – regular confidential meetings that enable you to offload without feeling you are ‘putting it on’ someone else who has to act.
Chairs of charity boards do so much, usually on top of ‘day jobs’, and we are often acutely aware of not overloading them. So to have a dedicated space to share and reflect – guilt-free – is absolutely priceless. These monthly sessions over the years became, for me, points of stillness in an often spinning world of demands. I feel strongly that this kind of ‘anchor’ is a ‘must‘ for everyone in a leadership position, including trustees, especially those with board leadership roles.
Thinking about anchors led to me reflecting on the mundane organisational habits of the workplace and how these can ground us in ways we can underestimate. One of the things I have missed most since leaving my CEO role has been drafting weekly all-staff emails which I would send out reflecting on the week, letting people know what I was doing, thank yous, welcomes and farewells – sometimes including a quote, a poem, a picture or a ‘desert island disc’. I was in the habit of sending one of these more or less every week. Looking back, writing them didn’t feel like a chore. It felt cathartic and ‘grounding’ and forced me to reflect back and forward, sometimes opening up conversations in our team. I see now how this anchored me even when my communications were about tough issues, and I know that some of our team felt that too. It’s not for every leader or organisation, but it worked for me during those years.
With all the reflections in the country about the complexity of monarchy and the role of the Royal family in history and today, one theme – sometimes expressed by those opposed to the institution itself – is the comfort of some of the associated traditions, and public events giving a sense of ‘life going on’ and excuses for people to come together. When I reflected on my ‘Top Ten Memories’ from Women in Prison it was annual all-staff away days that featured most prominently. In these later Zoom years, the 11am Monday morning slot enabled the whole team to come together for 15 minutes and became a touchstone for our organisational week. I miss these points of connection, but know that these habits need refreshing and changing from time to time for individuals and organisations.
Another powerful anchor through my job and since has been relationships with other CEOs. From the start of the lockdown months, leaders of women’s organisations providing services like WIP’s started meeting on Zoom at the same time every Thursday afternoon – we did a whole range of troubleshooting, plotting, risk management and information sharing, but the thing that shone through was the solidarity of being together. I was quite late to the value of peer ‘action learning sets’ in my role and I really wish I hadn’t been.
ACEVO provides so many opportunities like this, but all too often it feels like we as leaders and as organisations see this connection as a luxury and an ‘add on’ to our week. Over the years, funders paid for some leaders of womens organisations to meet at residential team building events at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor. The ripples from these rare chances to connect ‘away from the office’ have ricocheted through the years, embedding organisational collaboration and strengthening our collective voice, even helping us create more formal coalitions and partnerships.
I know I’m not alone at the moment in feeling like I am in a nation adrift – working out the anchors we need to hold secure and the ones we need to cast adrift. True for so many organisations at the moment too and for the whole charity sector, as the turmoil expected in the months to come starts to unfold.
It’s only in the space after leaving my role that I’ve recognised some of the elements of work and leadership that have been so important to keeping balance (individually and organisationally) – all of them in some way are about connection – with self and with others.
Just as the boat out at sea faces risks, it’s only with the anchor up that the new course for today’s conditions can be found. Allowing us to look back at the place we were and see it properly for the first time, while setting off for new shores. We have to know our anchors, honour them and, where necessary, give them new life – as leaders, as organisations and as a whole charity sector. We’ve never needed them more.
Photo by Matthew Wheeler on Unsplash