Changing Lives Newsletter Spring/Summer 2008 Article – Developing a Leadership Community Case Study: ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine’

Leading to Deliver is a postgraduate leadership development programme, which the Scottish Government has fully funded since 2004, making about £2.5 million of investment in some 500 participants, who have now completed the programme. Within the Changing Lives change programme, the Leadership and Management Group began to explore ways social services might benefit more widely from this investment. The concept of a leadership community was developed, whereby graduates from this programme and others might work together as a community.

In March 2007, Leading to Deliver (L2D) graduates were invited to an event in Glasgow that aimed to develop a Leadership Community – defined as “a community of connected, open minded and motivated leaders who share ideas, knowledge and experiences, and who seek to be the best they can at delivering social services in a way that meets the needs of service users”.

Janet Menzies and Alice Timmons are two of 7 volunteers who are developing the concept of this Leadership Community. The 7 leadership champions worked out that the community would work best through sharing expertise and experience: the ground rule being that if you give something to the ‘community’ you then have the opportunity to take things from it.

Various ideas arose in terms of sharing skills and knowledge to assist learning and development.

One of the ideas was Co-Training which Alice and Janet brought to the group.

Through networking events, Janet, a trainer for Renfrewshire Council SocialWork Department, had become aware of Alice’s (a team leader with the Care Commission) range of experience, work, knowledge and personal communication style within a learning context. They had discussed various aspects of practice and leadership and Janet decided to ask Alice to co-train two of seven Middle Managers’Workshops, covering aspects of leadership, that she was running. Alice was keen, as part of the Leadership Community, to take part and saw it as an opportunity to share experience and skills that could contribute to her own continuing professional development.

The two workshops were on a) Self, Leadership and Relationships, and b) Teams, Motivation and Change. Janet prepared material and Alice’s role was to generate discussion, provide illustrations and give alternative perspectives as the workshop progressed.

They agreed that both being L2D graduates gave them a common understanding of relevant themes and theories. Janet felt that Alice’s differences in experience and the application of knowledge and theories would work well alongside her own. Both Janet and Alice’s management were aware of the co-training proposed, and Alice’s involvement was readily agreed.

The key and important issue here is that Alice’s contribution was complimentary to Janet’s; although it was contrasting, there was sufficient overlap for workshop participants to benefit from Alice’s expertise. There is also an agreement that because Alice has participated in the co-training event, both she and her organisation can expect some ‘repayment’ from the Leadership Community. Since Janet has drawn from the Leadership Community, she and/or her organisation require to ‘pay into’ the system.

The Leadership Community project is still in its early phase, but there is already a group working in South East Scotland, calling themselves SELF (SE Leadership Forum). They have had an inaugural meeting and are planning co-consultancy as well as action learning sets to support each other. In theWest an event is taking place on 2nd May to develop a community in that region. Janet and Alice’s case study demonstrates how this community could work.