This next picture is one of my most precious. I think about it every time I work with new people; and in a way it has defined how I want to make my difference.
I have always felt that memories are more important than things and that memories made with the people we love are most important of all.
I do not want to portray this as being particularly virtuous or practical. In the end, in the society we live in, there must also be a financial and material reward to show for a working life and all our hard work, stress and contribution. Neither am I against an accumulation of things – a nice house, a nice car, nice clothes; but I am absolutely certain that what gives our lives colour and resonance and meaning are the memories we have made with people we care about deeply.
I hold this thought so tightly that I have come to believe that the greatest gift of leadership is to help people make the memories that will sustain them in their good times, but especially in their bad times. A bonus, or a promotion and a sense of purposeful career development might be important in the moment, but these things do not feed the soul. Being driven and acquisitive, doesn’t add to our humanity, and pursuing business centric ambition alone, doesn’t ground us in the responsibility to fulfil our potential using all the gifts we have been blessed to receive and which we should be encouraged to share with the world.
Leadership in the end is about love. A deep, selfless and profound sense of caring for others so that they may have the best opportunity to feel safe, to contribute in their way, and to explore their potential to make their difference.
I know that on the Pollyanna spectrum I may be at the far end. I also know that a working life is not meant to be an easy-listening picnic, or floating on a meandering stream in a Hundred Acre Wood theme park. I believe in striving for the highest possible standards and in having no exceptions whatsoever to the “no wankers” rule; but surely to goodness there must be more to work and life than our HR defined grade, our bench-marked salary band and our post code?
It has always saddened me that a work objective is most likely to be about defining a specific task by a specific date with a predictable and provable outcome. We tend therefore to channel our efforts into uninspiring binary activities; and sooner or later the only things left to motivate us are equally shallow incentives usually around money or status. Inevitably this pushes behaviours to a place where short-term business outcomes are seen as more important than relationships. People are then promoted on the back of their success in achieving short-term objectives and so people in leadership roles will often assume that driving towards even more narrow and efficient outcomes is the best way to succeed and is in fact their version exemplary leadership.
But where is the love? Where is the joy in creating memories that will sustain people in good times and bad? Where is the understanding that leadership is not about the leader, but about the people we have the privilege to influence and care for. These thoughts are so much part of my work that when we wanted to create a leadership programme every element of it had to reflect these feelings. There would be no spurious strategy case studies, I wanted to make sustaining memories for everyone involved and to place love at the heart of our work.
The LBCambridge2 Leadership Programme took nearly six years to develop. Each element from venue, to menu, to speakers, to mentors, to delegates, literally everything had to fit. I can’t tell you how much time I spend on this, but it can be measured in years, agonising over whether it was ready and if everything was in place.
Then in 2012 the first event was held and this is the most precious picture I want to share with you.
In the autumn before, I was heading to a busy coffee shop on Charlotte Street in London, I was a little late for a meeting with someone I had not met before. I had been looking for someone to be part of the programme who could help the delegates with their presentation skills. Before this meeting I had met and rejected twenty-two other possible collaborators. I didn’t want anything cliched; I didn’t want people to feel diminished; I didn’t want to stick a camera in their face and make them feel embarrassed. I didn’t want to train people to read the news or to speak at a political rally. If truth be told I knew very clearly what I didn’t want, but I had pretty much no idea what I actually wanted.
It had just started to rain and as a result the café was exceptionally busy with pavement refugees, but I could see the person I was meeting and she had very kindly saved me a seat. This was the first time I met Fiona Laird. All I knew about her was that she worked in theatre and that a mutual contact thought she was brilliant. It wasn’t much to go on, but after twenty-two failed meetings I was at least prepared to spend a few more minutes with another stranger, just in case this was the one.
Anyone meeting Fiona will never forget her. I let my cappuccino go cold listening to her stories even though I wondered what on earth she was talking about. I hardly said a word as we jumped from theatre work to voice coaching to body posture and well-being. It was a lot to take in, and I didn’t understand most of it, but there was something mesmerising and wonderful in the pictures she painted in my mind.
I asked Fiona if she would show me how she worked with people and we agreed to meet the following week. I asked a law firm if we could borrow a meeting room and I met Fiona there to talk more seriously and in detail about her work away from the bustle of a busy café.
She asked me to take off my shoes and to lie on the floor. As a confirmed introvert and not altogether comfortable with hippy-shit, I suspected that this might not be for me, but there was something so compelling about Fiona’s energy and commitment to her work, and I went with it. Within a few minutes I knew I had found the person I most needed to help me make the programme what I needed it to be. Fiona understood that the programme was not about helping people to be leaders, but about helping people to be themselves; and to love being themselves.
As the first programme was coming to an end, we were in one of the stunning teaching rooms at the Moller Institute in Cambridge. We were overlooking the playing fields and a wintery sun was illuminating our space. Fiona had been working with the delegates on their voices, posture and breathing. She was helping them to understand the untapped power of their presence in a room and she was encouraging them to shine as themselves and not to wear the masks others might expect them to wear. The culmination of this work was for each delegate to share a Shakespeare sonnet with us.
Three or four delegates had been brave enough to go first and they were wonderful. It was moving and uplifting and beautiful. Then it was the turn of the next delegate. She had been hesitant about this moment from the beginning; and we all knew how nervous she was about any expectation for her to speak up. In this moment she was all of us who have ever felt that we have been unheard; however, we also knew that she was an amazing lawyer, with a beautiful soul and that her team adored her.
She stood in front us and in a calm, soft and resonant voice she spoke to us. Her sonnet quietly filled every corner of the room and touched our hearts. As her words came to us, silent tears started to roll down her face and we hung on every syllable she shared. When she finished, everyone in the room was rapt in silence, each of us with our own quiet tears. Then she turned to Fiona and said, “Thank you Fiona, thank you for helping me to find my voice”.
As I tell this story I always cry. I am crying now writing these words.
I could not wish to share with you a more important picture about love, leadership and the power we all have to create memories with others that will last forever.
To be continued
Take care.
Paul xx
