Voluntary Sector Leaders – show up and show off

I’ve been thinking about leadership in the voluntary sector recently and was reminded of a debate on leadership I attended several years ago and which I wrote about in Third Sector at the time.  

My, it was an august gathering.. The panel (presumably chosen as exemplars of modern day leadership) was chaired by no less a personage than John Humphreys of the Today Programme and included Will Hutton of The Work Foundation, Tessa Jowell, at the time the Minister for Media, Culture and Sport;  Gail Rebuck, the very impressive Chief Executive of Random House Group and Hazel Banks, the former Governor of Belmarsh Prison.

A number of things struck me. Firstly, the only examples of leadership any of the above personages could call to mind were the somewhat tired examples of Churchill, Ghandi and Hitler.

Amusingly, there was a large phalanx of female heads nodding in agreement at the examples of role model leaders quoted by Gail Rebuck and Hazel Banks (David Beckham and Madonna respectively).  But apart from those two (debatable) examples there were no mentions of contemporary leaders at all. Is this because there are none who are any good?

Secondly, there were no charity or voluntary sector leaders on the panel. Why? Thinking about it now I wonder how many people who don’t work in voluntary, community or charitable organisations would know the names of any of our leaders. Indeed, does the general public equate powerful leadership with voluntary and community organisations or indeed with the not-for-profit sector as a whole at all? And if not, why not?

I conducted a mini poll among some generally well-informed, non-voluntary sector mates – and unsurprisingly discovered that although they could name the big national charities they had absolutely no idea who led them.

They could name the obvious private sector leaders, (Richard Branson); sports leaders (Alex Ferguson) the usual suspects (I used the term advisedly!)  in politics/public sector (Gordon Brown and David Cameron) but not one charity leader could they dredge to mind.

Desperately, I prompted them with names of big charities; social entrepreneurs; those who we in the sector might think of as high profile (Lord Victor Adebowale or Dame Mary Marsh for example). And nothing – nil, nada, nitch!  

Is this lack of knowledge because the sector suffers from a lack of high profile leadership, or a lack of good leadership? And are the two mutually exclusive? Lao Tse is famously quoted as saying that good leadership is where ‘the people said they did it themselves’. So is a high public profile a prerequisite of a powerful leader in our sector? Can you be a great leader that no one knows about?  

Actually I think the answer to the latter is probably a resounding yes. At DSC every week we come across hundreds of ‘powerful’ leaders working in the sector. They’re not always the Directors, or Chief Executives. They’re leading projects or small community organisations. They’re ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And that, I suspect is what powerful leadership is about.  

The debate I attended clearly showed a dearth of widely known, good examples. In a climate that so desperately needs both effective and morally sound leadership it’s probably no longer enough just to do your good stuff in a small and modest way.

Unlike many public/private sector leaders who often appear to be in the job for personal financial gain, our lot are usually good leaders doing leadership for good. Our challenge should be to ensure that the mass of leadership talent and ability lurking in voluntary and community organisations is known about and can be used as role models in a wider context.

So come on voluntary sector leaders – show up and show off.

By Debra Allcock Tyler, Chief Executive, Directory of Social Change