A leadership state of mind

This year, I began working on a freelance basis for the first time in my career. The freedom has been incredible, allowing me flexibility to travel and write, as well as to work with an amazing range of charities and social start ups.  

But, after three decades of full-time work, it has taken adjustment. Not just logistically, in terms of managing my time and finances, but at a more profound level. 

Historically, whenever I have been asked what I do, I have responded with ‘I work for [insert charity name here]’. In more recent years, if anyone has asked what I do for that charity, I have been able to say ‘I lead it’.  

This has not just been my introduction, but my identity. Stripping it away has been hard. Grappling with the question of what leadership looks like when it is no longer your title took me right back to the start of my career. 

In the early 2000s, I did my first leadership training course. The instructor told us that, now we had the title ‘manager’, we should picture ourselves stepping off a busy dancefloor and heading upstairs to stand on a balcony from where we could observe the action. When you are in the middle of the dance, he told us, you can’t really see what’s happening all around you, so leaders step up and make decisions from a position of oversight. 

Even at the time, I remember struggling with the metaphor. I understood the need for perspective to make informed decisions but was not comfortable with that perspective being ‘from above’. I wanted to remain part of the team I led rather than disconnect from or rise above it. 

At the time, I was managing the Individual Giving team at Crisis. The perspective I needed to lead that team often came from the other Fundraising Managers around me or from the Fundraising Director. But it also often came from those within the team and sometimes from the clients I regularly met who helped me understand, more effectively than anyone else, how to tell their stories.  

Some people describe leadership as lonely. And I suppose if you lead from a balcony, while everyone else is having fun on the dancefloor, it could feel that way. But for me, leadership has never been a solo activity – it is inherently a collective act. 

I think this came from even earlier in my career. In my very first job, my manager adopted a coaching approach. She would present her answers to my questions (of which there were many) in the form of gentle suggestions. ‘I would be tempted to…’ was often how she would begin a sentence, sandwiching in excellent advice before ending with ‘but what do you think?’  

This approach grew both my confidence and my curiosity as I felt respected rather than instructed. In my very first role, she gave me the courage to consider whether I might be able to find new or different solutions. 

Since then, I have been incredibly lucky at many times in my career to have managers and peers who have understood and bought into my ideas and backed me to deliver them. I have also been lucky to work alongside those who have had incredible ideas I would never have thought of and been able to support them. For me, this willingness to take a risk on each other is a critical part of leadership. Unlike listening, coaching or delegation, it allows someone to lead something you could or would not have imagined yourself. 

In a world where many leaders still want to take credit for all the work their teams do, and others only delegate work that they are not interested in doing themselves, this kind of leadership is rare. But as well as delivering innovation, it creates the leaders of the future as colleagues realise their own potential. 

I look back on the team I worked in at Crisis and note how many of those colleagues are now exceptional leaders – because our Fundraising Director at the time, Chris Askew, practised a leadership that was rooted in co-creation and healthy working relationships, as opposed to based on instruction and power. This was a leadership we developed together – a leadership state of mind. 

And this leadership state of mind is accessible to all of us, at any time. This is leadership with or without it being in your title.