Post Election - Leadership in a New Era

Transcript

Claire Newell  0:05  
Hello and a warm welcome to the mayvin people change podcast. This is the place to find thoughtful and heartfelt conversations about leadership and organization development. Each episode is created with our listeners in mind. So if you have a suggestion for topic you'd like to hear us talk about please do get in touch with us. Mayvin are thought leaders in the area of leadership and organization development, and have a wealth of experience in this area. We have a thriving community, and we offer regular free events. You can find out more details via our website. Mayvin.co.uk, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, please do leave us a review on your favorite platform to help us grow our audience. Thanks so much for being here, and we hope you enjoy listening.

In today's episode, we have all the Carolyns. Carolyn Norgate and Carolyn Parker got together after our event "Leadership in a new Era" to discuss what came up and the insights we gleaned from it. We hosted the event just three weeks after the election, as we were already noticing a change in the ask from our clients with the new Labour Government. Our guests talked about feeling purposeful, hopeful and excited to see a shift happening. I'll pass you over to the Carolyns. Thanks.

Carolyn Parker  0:05  
Hello, we are here today, myself, Carolyn Parker and my colleague, Carolyn Norgate, to have a conversation about an event that we ran last week, and what, what came up for us during that what we'll be hearing from some of the attendees and what might where we might go next as a consequence, given that we're both Carolyn's I'll invite you, Carolyn, to introduce yourself, so that our listeners can differentiate between our voices. 

Carolyn Norgate  0:36  
Thank you. Hi there, I'm Carolyn Norgate. I'm Principal Consultant at Mayvin. I've worked here nearly five years, and prior to that, my career was all in civil service and NHS, which is relevant to the conversation we'll be having as we go on. 

Carolyn Parker  0:55  
Yeah, likewise. Carolyn Parker, as I said, I'm also a principal consultant with Mayvin, albeit I've joined more recently, and prior to that, I've held senior HR and organizational development roles across private sector, civil service and NHS as well. Yeah, so I wonder if we might say a little bit about why we stood up the event, and why we moved so quickly. So normally, we give quite a lot of notice for our events. And actually, this was a snap event. We we had a conversation as a team, and agreed on the Monday that we wanted to set something up for for that coming Friday. So Carolyn, you hosted that with our colleague, Sophie, another one of the principal consultants in the team, say a little bit about the rationale for standing up the event so quickly and why we felt it was necessary.

Carolyn Norgate  1:52  
I think there was at that point we were doing a bit weeks post the election result. So the election itself hadn't been a surprise that we're going to have one this year, or certainly by january 2025 but I think it caught everyone by surprise that it was going to be a July election, and many of our clients, the majority of our clients, are public sector, civil service, health, local government, etc. So we really noticed the impact that the election itself had, in terms of that six week run up to the election. But most particularly, what we were noticing was even though, only as we were sitting reflecting together on that Monday morning, our client community had only had the two first two weeks of the impact of that, the impact felt quite profound. So and and knowing that probably a lot of the people we would be talking to when we're thinking about, you know, this potential for a new area, new era of leadership, and particularly noticing Prime Minister's words around public service leadership, there was something about kind of catching a bit of a moment around what are other people noticing? Is what we're talking about resonating and what we're thinking about as a result of this? Is this a conversation that people want to be involved in and do some sense making together on and also, Parliament went on recess this week. So let's get it in before recess happens given that, although, as I say, our client group is mixed, there's quite a lot of pointing towards public sector and the civil service, particularly as sort of being at that sort of center of government and the center of the impact around this So, and it was a bit of an experiment, we always talk about Mayvin being an organization that's culture is built on how we experiment, both in terms of how we organize ourselves and how we work with our clients. It's at the heart of our practice based learning methodology. So there was also a little bit of a let's see, let's put it out there and see whether people are able to come and want to be part of the conversation. And we had group of about 35, 40 people join us, and kind of as expected, mostly, mostly civil service, somehow, some local government, some of our associates, some people who are working in a similar space to us. So but yeah, got into a really good conversation. And and as we hoped, it was a bit of doing that sense making together. I think when I was framing it, I talked about that kind of, let's interpret reality and flight together, and a chance to kind of notice, pause and notice what's already starting to happen. So Sophie and I kicked it off with a little bit about talking about what we're noticing and then we kind of opened up to conversation, shall I shall I say a bit more about about what some of that noticing was, would that be helpful?

Carolyn Parker  4:49  
Yeah, what was it that we were starting to hear and see with the clients that that we are working with, and the sense that we were making because I think that was really the context for the conversation and that was the invitation, wasn't it? So if you could say a little bit more about what you and Sophie shared in the framing, that I think that'd be useful. 

Carolyn Norgate  5:08  
So I think there was a couple of things, one around a shift in tone, which I don't think is a surprise to anyone, as in terms of what we're hearing sort of fairly daily, but particularly around leadership, that Sophie talked a bit about how the previous government, there'd been a kind of urgency culture, quite a lot of short termism, quite a lot of tactical ways of of being. But there was a a different both a kind of tonally but and kind of almost like the practice of this, this government and this, again, I think it's particularly in our civil servant colleagues and their closeness to being ministerial facing, a sense of partnership, being wanted, their support and advice, being wanted, an assumption of trust and uh, an interesting tension between, obviously, a need for delivery and, you know, there's, there's always that in public public sector, that's what it's, you know, they have to deliver for our citizens. And of course, any new government is going to want delivery quick wins. But I think one more importantly, what people are noticing is not looking for is not looking for that at the expense of long term strategic thinking and partnership and kind of systems thinking. And one of the things that I was then reflecting on is, if you're applying Leadership Theory, contemporary Leadership Theory, to some of what we're seeing then and noticing and what our clients are talking about, you'd think, Okay, well, there's, there's, you know, there's some really good kind of engagement type process in this leadership there's, you know, you know, bringing the kind of the wisdom of the whole system together, you know, so systems leadership, quite a lot of people had talked to us about purpose, feeling more purposeful, feeling the same kind of sense, sense of purpose or care around the mission. So there's something about like inclusion starting to come up in some of the conversations with having a sense of belonging in an organization through being trusted. So yeah, the whole kind of conversations we often have with our clients around trying to understand what their leadership in practice is, versus, you know, the kind of organization they want to be, and pace setting leadership, for example, can really get in the way of engaging people. And yet, organizational imperatives often really encourage, systemically encourage pace setting leadership, even though it's actually not getting what you want. So I was sort of pondering a little bit out loud around how, even though many organizations talk about contemporary leadership in practice, in theory, rather, we don't, we don't say, you know, we don't see it consistently in practice, and we don't see it necessarily supported at board level, for example, or a ministerial level, potentially. So are we, are we seeing some practice shifts right at the heart of public service leadership? Albeit it's very early days. Sophie talked a bit about some of the variation that some parts of government feeling of sense of relief. There's been a sort of exhaling. She talked, I think this was quite interesting. We started the event off with just a very short body scan, just to sort of help people check in with themselves. And it was, it was a useful, I think, 90 seconds or so of just having people, know, get present in the room, notice how they are, notice how they're showing up, but it also really linked to the point she made, which was, in that kind of short term, the short term kind of sense of how things were in the last government, the nervous system has been set to react and to change the way the nervous system is set to a different kind of tone feels quite difficult, even though you might feel relief around it. That's actually quite difficult to sort of change your you know, we were looking at this way, and we're, we're in a kind of ready to catch any ball that comes our way, and now it's not a ball, it's a something else I've got to catch to a different way of being. That's, that's hard. So, so we were kind of using that example of the body scan just as a way of, kind of noticing, you know, how you know, what's your kind of parasynthetic system set to?

Carolyn Parker  9:56  
Yeah.

Carolyn Norgate  9:57  
So we talked to them about that um, and then think probably, probably most of what we talked about, I was, I was reflecting a little bit on the, some of that sense of tone that felt different to people. And I'd heard Lisa Nandy talking on the one, I think the politics, the rest is politics leading podcast about her first few days and just being given her ministerial appointment and the first few days of it being in a role. But she was reflecting back on what has happened to the self confidence, what she described as a self confident, outward country that the Olympic opening ceremony portrayed in 2012 and she was having this conversation with Danny Boyle, I think was the director of it, and he said that country is still there, it's just waiting for someone to give voice to it. And I was thinking about this so many organizations I talk to that when I go out and do diagnostic conversations with people, I'm thinking everyone's completely aligned around what, what we're trying to do, what you're trying to do, there are, there is there are, you know, hairs breaths that you can put between where individual people are, and yet, when you come together as a leadership team, for example, or as an organization, something's not happening. And I was thinking about that phrase from Danny Boyle around that kind of if you change country to purpose, that purpose is still there, it's just waiting for someone to give voice to it. I was then thinking about, Okay, what's, what's the kind of leadership style, tone we're seeing is that giving a different kind of container to bring people in public sector, potentially together, to lead in a slightly different way? So, yeah, quite a, given it's only been two weeks, quite a lot coming up for us.

Carolyn Parker  11:44  
Yeah, a lot coming up for us, and a lot coming up for us because of the conversations with our clients as well. So it was our reflection, and as you said, it was our sense making with clients, and what we were hearing, you know, from folk in the civil service, and I think you know what you really spoke to just there, was this hypothesis that we were holding, and are still holding, I suppose, and this was really the beginning of an inquiry into and so how might leadership practice need to shift? What are the patterns and ways of working that have existed, you know, for the last 14 years, under a Conservative Party, under a Conservative government, in civil service, and more broadly, and given what we're noting and what we're hearing, how might those ways of working need to shift. And, yeah, that body scan at the beginning was a was a really lovely way into thinking about, actually, how are we wired today? And that's obviously a consequence of what we've experienced to this point. And and even if we want to shift, what's the effort that it might take to shift? Because some patterns of being, some some ways of working, you know, potentially quite ingrained in us right now. 

Carolyn Norgate  13:13  
Well and also when, you're more than 10 years younger than me, but, I mean, I've I was around for the big shift in 97 so I was  working in the health service then, I'd probably about six, seven years experience already. And then, of course, the shift in 2010 when we can when we went to Coalition, which was obviously big in and of itself, because it's first time we'd had a coalition for most people's lifetimes. But those were sort of the two major shifts for some people, though their working lives have mostly been in in the in the last 15 years. So they're not they don't have an experience of a different tonally, a different kind of leadership, and almost structurally, a different kind as well. So really conscious of of that when we think about participants on our programs, in organizations, our master's program, for example, that that might be the majority of their working experience,

Carolyn Parker  14:11  
Yeah, it's really informed their leadership practice to now, hasn't it? And so kind of with that framing, we then kind of, you know, we invited people to have some conversations around what they were noticing, didn't we? So we put folk into into a series of breakout conversations, really, to kind of make sense of what are you seeing and hearing and feeling from from your perspective, whether that's you know, within within central government, within within health, wherever you're coming from. I suppose one of the things that came up in that conversation, as we might have anticipated, was how palpable that tonal shift felt depending on where you were sitting in the system. So for colleagues in civil service, and particularly where folk might have a more of a direct ministerial relationship, there was, you know, that that felt quite significant. It felt it did, it was feeling like there was a different ask and a different a different invitation and an acknowledgement of, perhaps more acknowledgement of the complexity of the solutions that might be required, and as you talked about in the framing that sense of maybe having a longer term horizon now. There were others, you know, still within civil service, but perhaps not you know, so directly in contact with ministers and or you know, their work not being, you know, perhaps, as new ministers were landing, their work not being, necessarily, the first thing that ministers were getting to in their portfolio, who perhaps have the sense of the shift in their environment, but you know, it was more it felt, it felt less directly palpable. And then you know, colleagues who perhaps are in health, where it's, you know, one step away from the politics with a big P, if you like, kind of, yeah, we're hearing what, what the Labour Government is saying, you know, we're, we're hearing what colleagues in this conversation are saying, and actually, the reality is, you know, it's, it's still really tough. We're still very much operating day to day. There's still real pace and urgency in the system, yeah, and actually, you know, the Secretary of State for Health is saying that the NHS is broken. So we hear that, and we see that day to day. And I guess we're curious as to and so what might happen, you know, and will it, will this truly look and feel different in the future? So, yeah, a kind of a mixed sense, I suppose, of what was what people experiencing.

Carolyn Norgate  17:11  
I think when people were a bit closer in, there was a question coming up around, is power being, exerted doesn't even feel like the right word, given the question, but is power being used differently, exercised differently? So I think that was a which, you know, again, was one of the things that we got this, almost like Spidey Sense, around, even if we hadn't quite named it, around this invitation for collaboration, and I don't just mean between public servant and minister, but I think thinking around systems leadership, that the you know, how, how, for example, the civil service is partnering with business, how departments partnering with each other in order to achieve the mission, the mission led government stuff. I remember that the four years I was in the civil service, it was, it felt like it was one of the really tricky perennial issues of, how do you get, you know, given cabinet style government, how do you work across those siloed lines of the different departments, even though you have a very fluid workforce in the civil service. You know, the moves across departments for us a policy perspective, I think really does some of that enabling in the kind of informal system, but it's, it's formally, it feels very hard to get that kind of work. But it felt like, right from the start, there's been a kind of, we work differently with our external partners. We work differently with the you know, we have an expectation of a different style of of joining up in order. You know, the mission is all and everything else. You know, we work. You know, we make it work,

Carolyn Parker  18:53  
Yeah, yeah. How we work is informed by the mission. And even that sense of collaboration, even within departments, I would say, I think, you know, certainly hearing from folk that, you know, we're going to need to that that sense of collaboration is, it's within, it's cross civil service, it's cross wider public sector and actually reaching into private sector and you know, many of us have never really done that before. And you know, there's some practical realities that sometimes make that tricky around, you know, well, both make that a challenge and make that an opportunity. So this, this question of, you know, yeah, there's all this hope and the reality is, there's still budgetary constraints. There's still a financial envelope within which we need to work and, you know, and there are some real challenges there. And so there was this sense of, you know, even when there's a will to collaborate, sometimes the the kind of practicalities of and and who's going to pay for that, and who's going to take the lead get in the way and yet that is also the opportunity, because if everybody's working with limited resources and seeing a part of the system and a part of the challenge, surely a more collaborative way of working is the opportunity to kind of really create more sustainable impact, which in service of of those missions.

Carolyn Norgate  20:28  
Yeah, which I think, to me, really links to the point we heard quite a few times around trust. So we heard it as a sort of, almost in a kind of the micro spaces that kind of, what's it like being being trusted when you walk into a room and your advice is, is listened to, valued, etc, etc, and that, of course, trickles through the system. But what you're talking to there, right?, is a kind of, how do we trust as a slightly, you know, to kind of leader to leader level, you know, if you think about, you know, a local health and social care system, if you're incentivized with all your separate budgets and your separate performance metrics, what's the kind of organized system level trust to okay, well, we'll, we'll stop doing that, we'll give you our budget, and we'll trust that between us, we can achieve that for our, you know, we can actually do that probably better, more effectively, more efficiently for our population. And still, you know, hit our CQC target, still hit the other targets that we're required to, you know, kind of, how do we kind of work in that, that very formal performance system that we're in, and actually do what we need to do for the citizen? I think I don't, I mean, I remember those conversations 10 years ago when I was doing its integrated care work, and it's, it's really hard, but the where, because we heard a lot of hope in the room, as you were saying earlier, I think there's something around that holding the long term and the and the short term that seems to suggest that, if the trust is built upon the stuff that we're already starting to see, which feels different for people, that how can you kind of work that through the layers of the system and the kind of build sort of systemic trust, system wide trust, and which makes me wonder around, and we touched on this at the end, we probably didn't have as much time, maybe as much time for it, maybe it's a another, another session. But what does it actually mean then for us in our practice, a lot of the people who came in the room were more in the kind of change organizational development, HR, those kind of roles, as opposed to leaders themselves. So what we're doing is we're supporting leaders and organizations or systems of organizations to work better or differently. And I think that's that's kind of the question we were walking away with, as opposed to kind of trying to answer or getting into answers around that. But I was thoughtful. There was a comment quite near the end which which reached back into that and will, will it really feel any different for the patient on the front line or the person in the DWP office in 18 months time? And what is our role in helping organizations work with what's what's already starting to feel different, albeit, you know, we've since last Friday when we ran the event we've had, I think so, the things for the health, for example, the junior doctor strike, or if the votes happened yet or not, but certainly the, you know, there's a much better offer on the table for them, and then on the other side, general, yeah, general practice, have got a different kind of sort of strike working to rule process in place, and we've got complete transparency around, there's not going to be 40 new hospitals, there's not going to be, you know, things that aren't costed aren't going to happen, let's just be clear, but really, we do need more. You know, departments are going to have to make efficiencies so that that kind of, for me, there's something about how, how in all of our roles, whether you're external, working with these systems or internal. How do we help leaders navigate difficult the difficult messaging and the and how do we come together differently around these missions and work differently to really, well, I mean, all of the public service, of course, is around supporting the kind of health and well being and security of the country without getting too high falutin.

Carolyn Parker  24:45  
But I think that's back to, you know, this, this real, what feel, you know, what I hear as a kind of central theme of this government around, you know, public service leadership and really putting at the heart that you know, public services exist for, you know, citizens and across the UK. And actually, that's, that's what we need to be focused on. What I also hear, and what you were saying, Carolyn, though, is this kind of sense of tensions. You know, on the one hand, there are some short term, difficult decisions that need to be made and some resolutions to be made, and on the other hand, we want, you know, long term, sustainable impact. On the one hand, you know, we've got real hope and a sense of possibility, and that is contrasted with some really, you know, challenging and and though, as you said, it transparent decisions around what can, what, what is affordable here, you know? So I guess I have a sense of a kind of shift to, you know, to adult, to adult like relationship of, you know, what? If it's not costed yet, if it's not funded, it's not happening. And if it, if it is going to happen, it has to be funded in some way and and therefore there are cuts to be made in other areas and so that, yeah, I think there's, there's both a sense of hope and the reality of grappling with some of the tensions and things that sometimes may feel at odds with with the broader narrative. 

Carolyn Norgate  26:22  
Yeah, and for leaders particularly, I'm really thinking about that. I don't this is necessarily new in terms of our work with leaders, but maybe there's a different archness, the sense, different sense of it at the moment, around holding this the space of ambiguity and the amount of projection onto leaders of being or knowing and containing anxiety in organizations and giving absolute clarity and leaders feeling a huge pressure, I mean, yeah, feeling some being brought up in a in a style of leadership that suggests that is very much what they they should do, and and realizing that, of course, they can't always do that, and some potentially being more comfortable with that, but having that projected onto them, and then having to work with those projections, I think, I think there's a certainly, you know that's a lot of the work that we do, whether it's on programs or whether it's in working with excos, boards, senior leadership teams, that kind of team, coaching team review and renew type sessions, helping leaders work through how do we, you know, what do we need to contain? Where do we need to be transparent? Where do where do we need to be partnering within our own organizations, if we are now being partnered with, how do we, yeah, how do we lead differently, given, potentially, we're being led differently, and that's quite a lot to absorb for leaders who are also, you know, going back to the short term, being asked to probably do quite a lot right now, in terms of the government that's keen to deliver and show show impact early on. So the energy required, and how do you I was, there was something I was saw in the Olympics earlier, where it was around, I think it was rowing, which I know nothing about, but it was about the kind of, the points of expenditure of energy, and the points of kind of almost relaxing in the kind of stroke, and that, you know, how do you do that when you know you're the you know you're in the final of the of the process? And how do you kind of manage both and like that? How do we help leaders with their their focus, their energy, their their pointing in many different directions, those you know, all the the demands on them, and they're human beings

Carolyn Parker  29:04  
Which you know, in the projection of leadership that is often happening in organizations is somewhat forgotten, isn't it? And I think that's the other thing we do in our work, is try and create space to bring people back to their own humanity and their their connection with their colleagues, and then, you know, and then out into the organization. And I suppose that was a that was a question that I think we were holding, and folk were holding in the session was, and how do we create the space? Because we're noticing all of this, we've got a certain we're holding a hypothesis about, and that may mean that leadership practice needs to shift, and there's very real demands in the here and now that mean, although it might totally feel different, actually, it's not like we've suddenly got a load of capacity or we can sit back and kind of take stock and and pay attention and be intentional about our response to this shift in tone. So yeah, one of the questions I really felt folk were holding was, what's our role in HR, in change roles, in organizational development, in helping leaders hold some space to make sense of this new era of leadership. And I think that touches a bit on, you know, what we were then thinking about coming away from that event about and so what next, then? Because clearly that session was, you know, we heard from a lot of folk they got a lot from it. They really valued the opportunity. It was very it was very timely, and there was a real sense of wanting more of that I think, because this is a moment in time. You know, there's going to be decisions, announcements, you know, there's coming back from recess, there's, you know, the reality of, Okay, so we've set out our vision, and now we need to make it happen. So there's a sense of things will will shift and change, and how can we continue to pay attention to what is shifting and changing and what that might mean for us? So, so where do we go next? What's our offering in that space? I suppose, is for us.

Carolyn Norgate  31:39  
And I think one of the things Ash and our colleagues, Ash and Tony did a session May, I think, yeah, it was late May, about different kind of leadership interventions, and one of the things that we were noticed as being much more, bringing a lot more care to what is, so being careful, but in not in a sort of hyphenated way around what's the useful leadership intervention here at the moment? Because it might, it might not, it might not be, in all cases, a long program things are, to your point around capacity, there might be something that's needed right now that brings leaders together to have exactly that kind of sense making space that we were holding for for people who are more in change in HR roles last week, to make sense of what's going on right now, what it means to them as a leader, what it means to the people they lead, what it maybe means slightly more kind of third sort of third person for the kind of wider system they're operating in, and how I am there, and what does that actually just mean for my practice right now? So I think we've already started, we're already starting conversations around how might that support systems who are right at this kind of inflection point, and what is it we can, we can do to really support leaders, both right now and and through the process of into this long term so, and I think what the event did last week, hopefully, is, is provide a kind of a balancing space for people. If you're doing that within your organization or with with your client systems, then you know, where, where do you go to do your own sense making, what's your safe space to stay sharp? But which, of course, you know, we provide another context as well, through some of the OD and people, people in organization change type of processes we do so so I guess kind of watch this space, we may well put podcasts on and events around, particularly around this topic as the year progresses. And if you'd like to talk more about the leadership type offers around how we support your organization, or how we support you in your your change, OD, HR, work around this in order that you can support your leaders. Yeah, if that's either both any of those, or just want to have a chat, because you missed the event and you've listened to this and want to do a bit of sense making, www.mayvin.co.uk, and we're all Carolyn, I and all the rest of the team are on there. I think we're probably done aren't we?

Carolyn Parker  34:27  
Yeah. Lovely. Thanks for the conversation. 

Carolyn Norgate  34:29  
Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, everyone.

Claire Newell  35:47  
Thank you so much for listening to us today, and we hope to see you next time. Take care. Bye. Bye.