Be a Better Leader

We talk about the importance of listening, reading the room and Kantor's Dialogue model, grief, vulnerability and boldness and much more. We talked for over two hours...

Brigid says of herself I have been a self-employed coach and leadership consultant for the past five years or so. Before that I worked in the public sector in leadership and team development, as well as working as a management consultant within an international consultancy for over ten years. I have lived and worked in Scotland for just over twenty years. I was born and brought up in Oxford, though my family origins are in South Wales and the West of Ireland.

I’m at a stage in my life where I want to support those who can make a real difference to our public services, and our civic society. My husband, Jim, died of leukaemia in February 2020. He believed as much as I do in making a positive difference to others, of being kind; he wanted me to be doing meaningful work.

I see leadership as being all about the relationships between people, and across parts of a system which are inter-connected and inter-dependent. It is about connecting with purpose, making a positive difference to people’s lives. I’m particularly interested in exploring how leadership develops in practice. I believe that developing leadership goes way beyond expertise in theories and models. It starts with who we are as people, our humanity, and our relationships with the people with whom we work and right across our communities.

This is why I believe in a relational approach to leadership development. It is also why I’ve been so drawn to finding and creating more spaces for listening to each other, and having more open conversations. And that’s part of the inspiration for being involved in #SpacesForListening with Charlie Jones.

Find Brigid on twitter at @brigidrussell51

Anne Cooper had had a long and distinguished career as a nurse in the NHS and is now a non-executive Director at Yorkshire Ambulance Service and Clinical Director of Ethical Healthcare. Until recently Chief Nurse at NHS Digital, Anne is immensely experienced and highly regarded figure within healthcare informatics.

A national leader in driving the digital nursing agenda, she has experience in strategy and leadership development, requirements and design, clinical safety and deployment. As a T1 Diabetes patient, she is also a passionate advocate of ensuring the patients and citizens have an equal voice in the health and care system.

Outside of both work and being a Twitter addict (@anniecoops)

In this podcast we talk about the humaness of leadership, leadership as friendship (and what we do about bad friends), women only leadership development, matriarchy and patriarchy, slime making, and the nature of female only community - where Anne breaks the code!

In conversation with Emma Bearman of Playful Anywhere we talk about play, Leadership, being side by side rather than following someone who is in front. We talk about the power of provocation and discomfort, innovation and novelty.

Playful Anywhere CIC is a Leeds-based social enterprise with a mission to catalyse creativity, inventiveness and playfulness, where we work, live and travel.

They have a proven track record of delivering high-quality fun participatory events, programmes and activities. They have devised and delivered festivals, open space events, civic participation, networks, playful tech labs, young inventor programmes, building launches, panel events, team builds, place change activities, websites and community activities. They take care of the smallest detail, creating meaningful experiences whether it's a one to one or a huge family festival.

They bring teams together to deliver high quality experiences, and have a long-standing reputation for excellence in culture and heritage, public art and realm, art and urban landscaping, fundraising, digital and social media engagement. 

Blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, encouraging participants to get creative with all manner of media, from cardboard to code.

Lou Mycroft has been working nomadically for several years now, guided by an ethics of joy.

She brings people together in community, to think, make efficient decisions and implement plans which change cultures.

She is a Thinking Environment facilitator, writer, public speaker and coach and translating this work to online spaces has been a revelation. She is co-founder of the #JoyFEL movement and its influential ‘Ideas Rooms’. She has particular strengths around creating spaces to think and the creation of effective, bespoke culture change programmes. She tries to be joyfully militant in everything she does.

She is very interested in wellbeing, particularly mental health, and developing personal agency (her first career was as a Public Health Specialist). She is a member of the @MHFECrowd and was the winner of the EduFuturists 2020 Staff Wellbeing Champion Award, even though she doesn't have a ‘staff’ or even a proper job.

Just a quick trailer for my podcast series helping you to become a better leader.

You can find it at https://be-a-better-leader.captivate.fm/listen

Mike Chitty

@mikechitty