Writing a blog series on leadership - Why this, why now, why me.

I don’t think I have a first memory of leadership, but it was a feature of growing up. Whether at school, where bright shiny pins announced you as captain, head of house, head of school, prefect or something else. I coveted those pins, and cherished those moments when I was lucky enough to receive one or two. I loved the structure and opportunity that these leadership roles afforded me – what I learned from them, the responsibilities, the ability to differentiate myself beyond my labels of being a Pakistani girl.

Leadership lived in my home and family life too. We had hierarchies and heads of households. We knew which parent you had to go to for what, and the levers you needed to pull to get something done. We saw in each generational layer, from Grandparents, to our parents, and to us kids, who led. Usually, the eldest. Always the males. Leadership at home signified power, control, being listened to. I didn’t find it all that appealing, it didn’t seem as defined or as fair. I could see the benefits of being the lead within the family, but I also knew that the kinds of leadership systems that my family adhered to were not for me. I saw no appeal in them, at all.

Now, when I think about leadership, I see how prevalent it is, ubiquitous even, in all our lives. Whether we use the term or not, it comes up in conversations we have with friends, colleagues and loved ones. Be that when we talk about the leaders we work with, the people we elect, public figures, celebrities, sports people, and those running organisations that have an outsized influence on our lives in good and bad ways. You cannot move for hot takes as well as in depth and highly researched analysis on the leaders in our lives and the concept of leadership itself. 

So why exactly have I decided to add to the noise by starting this blog? 

Because over the last 12 years I have become quietly obsessed with the idea of leadership. I think this obsession, or perhaps its healthier to say ‘deep interest’, started in the way that it might for a lot of us in professional settings – through a book recommendation, although these days it’s as likely to be a podcast recommendation. 

I was recommended Simon Sinek’s book, Leader’s Eat Last. I won’t add to the critiques that already exist about this heavily simplified, repetitive and lengthy book. But it sparked something in me. It made me think about leadership properly for the first time. I think until then I had been misunderstanding senior management teams as though they were leaders. I started to see a distinction emerge. Managers were there to work through the things that happen day to day, and to make sure what needed to be done was getting done. Leaders, for me, were managers but they were also the ones that were setting us up, preparing us, and walking us through all the things we hadn’t yet planned for and did not yet know. They had the strategy, the vision, the clear sense of what was needed, an ability to commit to getting things done, and a commitment to owning and being responsible for the work they led. The best leaders, I quickly came to realise, were also the ones that worked with you, alongside you, for you even. The ones that knew that getting anywhere good meant going together. 

My thinking on leadership continues to develop and evolve. I see now how it can be applied within a wide range of contexts by individuals, organisations and wider collectives and movements. I still can’t quite figure out where I land though on whether leadership is about people or if it is about processes, or both. Today, I would say that leadership is about people, but the best leaders are the ones that produce the best processes too, collaboratively with the people they lead.

The leadership noise in terms of the many different leadership styles, mindsets and frameworks is mind boggling. There are umpteenth pieces on how to be adaptive, values-based, authentic, relational, strategic, technical, expert, participative etc. as a leader. Much is also said about the traits or characteristics that leaders may demonstrate, such as extraversion, self-confidence, conscientiousness, inquisitiveness etc. Some I connect to and others I can’t relate to at all. It is not always easy to think through how they apply to the leadership contexts I inhabit. I don’t mind this though. I think that it adds to my feeling that there is something both highly tangible and completely unknowable about leadership. I think that in a nutshell is what has sustained my curiosity and interest in leadership over the last 12 years.

As someone who has held leadership roles in the charity, philanthropic and public sectors in the UK, and completed an Executive MBA, with a specialism in strategic leadership, at Warwick Business School (yes, I am credentialising myself so that you can be convinced to commit to this blog series), I am often struck by how hard it is to come up with a single, simple definition of leadership. The best I have been able to do is come up with a list that I know will only expand and change, about what kinds of things leadership tends to relate to.

In this list there's lots about how there's no one size fits all approach to leadership. Or that leaders need followers and to work with their followers relationally. Or that they are there to develop shared visions, or expectations, or a sense of purpose and then translate these into things that feel tangible in our lives.

Despite there being so much thinking and research about leadership, I find myself routinely frustrated by how much of the research and thinking on leadership is rooted in western thinking and often arises from the same few academic institutions in the US and UK. It is also likely to relate to research that has been designed for high profile leaders or private and public sector contexts, and usually within US-centric operating models, and so is not necessarily relevant or easily applicable to life as most of us live it, or to the charitable or philanthropic operating model. 

With this blog series, I want to share my thoughts on leadership as honestly and clearly as I can. I want to hear from you as I think through all of this through and share it here. 

Will you agree with what I think the four qualities are that all leaders should have (read the next blog for more on that!)?

I want to talk about concepts relating to leadership that I have come to hate (and yes, I am using that word in order to try and prompt some outrage and generate engagement ;0) like authenticity, innovation, thought leadership, and governance. 

I want to share reflections on things I have come to learn and gain as a leader over the years. Things like the transformational power of backing yourself and having boundaries, or learning to delegate properly and effectively finally, or moving away from a feeling of constant vigilance and future proofing to being in the now and the increased energy that provides to notice and discern things.

I’ll explore other things too that follow my curiosities based on conversations with friends and colleagues over the years, like what it means to consider love and femininity in relation to leadership. Or the role of leadership when trying to make systems change and reform possible so that we can imagine and work towards a world as it should and could be, that is better and more inclusive than the world as it currently is.

There is another important reason that I want to do some writing out loud through this blog. So much has shifted beyond recognition in the last few years. The UK, like many other democracies across the globe, is experiencing significant change on practically all fronts – economically, politically, socially and environmentally. Some describe the times as a natural continuation of what went before, perhaps not ready to consider the change as anything more significant than this. Some will think of us as being in a Gramscian Interregnum, whereby we navigate this period of transition between the decline of an existing order and the rise of a new one. Some might go even further, and consider this an After Order, described by the Alameda Institute as a time beyond stable systems and replaced instead by ongoing crises – meaning we aren’t living between the old moving to the new, but instead in a time of power being fragmented, contested and seriously changeable. 

Whatever descriptor you choose, this is not the time for equivocation on what we can see most clearly. UK politics has shifted beyond recognition in a short space of time – the two party system we have been most used to for multiple generations is gone for now. This may feel unsettling, surprising, unwarranted even, but in the context of so much, including but not limited to, the Great Financial Crash, austerity measures, polarised campaigning for our departure from the EU followed by a messy and protracted exit, the Scottish independence referendum and ongoing unrest in Stormont and the Senedd, changing global trade relationships, including with the US and the EU, legislative changes reducing our rights, including our rights to campaign and protest, increasingly contentious rhetoric on othered and minoritised communities, including trans people, racialised communities, and refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, worsening impacts of the triple planetary crisis in terms of climate change, nature loss and pollution, low economic growth, a mismanaged and criminal response to the Covid-19 pandemic, high inflation, and a cost of living crisis, should it be all that surprising to us and unwarranted. One might even argue that it is inevitable. 

This is not the time for fatalism or an acceptance of the world as it is. This is not the time to retreat or to hide. This is not the time to hope that things will change without us changing anything. This is the time to search for better – for a better way forward and a better way through. I do that in my day job, and this blog series is an opportunity to do some thinking about this in my spare time, through the lens of leadership. I think leadership has something to offer us all in these times.

I know we are all busy and saturated with things we could be spending our time doing on the internet. I hope you will join me for some, if not all, of this blog series. I want you to comment and provide feedback, and to share with others that might find it useful too.