Leadership Conversations: Sally Byng on ‘Unlearning’ assumptions about leadership
Dr Sally Byng OBE, is chief executive of the Barnwood Trust, an organisation which aims to create the best possible environment in Gloucestershire for disabled people and people with mental health problems to make the most of their lives.
Sally has spent her life advocating for those with disabilities, influenced by her mother who campaigned in the 1960s for the first disability rights group in the UK, and inspired by disabled people she has made deep connections with through her work. She has had a 40 year career in a variety of sectors and roles and gained a PhD, a professorship and an OBE along the way. More recently she has been made a Deputy Lieutenant of Gloucestershire.
For our leadership conversation Sally has focused her thoughts on the importance of inner work; our own ‘personal leadership’ which is rooted in values that guide us when making decisions about how to react, respond and behave…
“We cannot have a healed society, we cannot have change, we cannot have justice, if we do not reclaim and repair the human spirit, if we do not do inner work: that has been under emphasised”
‘Unlearning’ assumptions about leadership: balancing personal & positional leadership
My guess is that most readers of this blog are engaged in seeking this healed society, change and justice, because you are involved in, or interested in, Create Gloucestershire’s important Catalyst leadership programme. 2020 has sharpened what is required of all of us to navigate this work in this world.
For me, 2020 has crystallised the importance of being aware and in control of our own ‘personal leadership’, whether we have ‘positional leadership’ (leadership that comes as part of a role in a structure) or not. By personal leadership I mean how we each live out and enact our personal values in how we react, respond and behave. So I believe that the inner work that angel Kyodo Williams is emphasising is more necessary than ever.
Self-awareness, a key part of that inner work, is fast becoming a critical life and work skill. When we talk about achieving work-life balance it often suggests that work is not part of life. It is. We are the same people inside wherever we are and whomever we are with. ‘The way you do one thing is the way you do everything’ as the Buddhist saying goes. An ability to be self-aware, to be willing and able to look at ourselves, understand and take control of how we are, enables us to enact our personal leadership whatever we do.
This inner work needs to encompass a willingness to examine for ourselves our deepest values, and to notice how we live them in how we react and respond to those we live and work amongst, how we conduct ourselves, and how we take action. Most of us need some help in learning to do this self-reflection: it is hard to look at ourselves clearly in the mirror.
Self-awareness needs to be differentiated from self-absorption
In a western culture which all too often reverts to blaming others, taking binary, oppositional positions and emphasises the importance of being right, we need to hone our skills in being self-reflective, examining our own impulses, motives and responses and how they fit with our personal values. Does our personal practice fit with our ideals?*
This is hard work. Trying to live from our deepest values using self-awareness does not necessarily bring harmony and an easy life, either in families, workplaces, clubs, groups, faith groups. It requires sophisticated skills in communicating, negotiating and managing our psychological and emotional responses. It is not surprising to me that so many people are finding that they are enjoying being able to work from home, if they can, or are choosing to work independently: it means that you don’t have to face, so explicitly and immediately, the daily challenge of living out, and living up to, your inner work with everyone around you, not just those you choose.
Challenge your expectations and assumptions of leadership
I have observed over many years in organisational life that each of us brings to it our assumptions and expectations of what the role of the leadership is. Those assumptions often seem to be based on our early experiences of people in positions of authority: our parents, or the care environment that we grew up in, or school life. I have had so many conversations with positional leaders who have been frustrated by the tendency to project on to them the role of those early authority figures, and then to try to create relationships which reflect an adult:child (or at worst even parent:child) dynamic. For healthy organisational life we need to enact our personal leadership to ensure that we are challenging, and if necessary unlearning, our assumptions and expectations of positional leadership.
Interestingly, when in workplaces we try to focus on activities which enable self-reflection and encourage self-awareness, the response can often be resistant, along the lines of ‘I haven’t come to work to do therapy’. The assumption is that being prepared to take a good look at yourself will somehow require you to ‘reveal your deepest secrets’ which you shouldn’t have to do at work. Being self-aware is not the same as ‘sharing our deepest secrets’ - what I tend to think of as our ‘stuff’ to coin a technical term! Being self-aware is knowing your stuff for yourself, how it impacts on you, and then learning how to manage that impact so that you don’t act it out on others: at home, in community or at work. Taking responsibility for ourselves.
How can positional leaders support themselves and others to find and use their personal leadership?
Positional leaders can’t do the reflective work for others, but they can try to create an environment where people have access to tools and opportunities to develop their self-awareness and to encourage their use. We can’t assume self-awareness will just happen. There are so many tools and learning opportunities available: put alongside Employee Assistance Programmes, which can offer external counselling, these can provide some solid foundations to grow self-knowledge.
“I believe these opportunities are as important as mandatory training in health and safety or safeguarding; in fact, I believe opportunities to gain self-awareness should be seen as part of health and safety and safeguarding.”
The more self-aware we are the more we will be able to manage our health and wellbeing and be supportive of that of others
And the more likely we will be to achieve a more healed society, with change and justice. But these opportunities require resourcing as part of the core activities of an organisation, and I am not naïve about the financial stretch that this can mean, especially when every penny is very hard won for most organisations right now. May be there could be more opportunities for reciprocal sharing between organisations – if you have skills in one self-development area, maybe they could be exchanged for support in something else?
We read much about, and can see for ourselves, the mental health impact of the crises we are experiencing in this moment of history. However, I think that the impact on our individual spiritual health is as great. By ‘spiritual’ I mean the deepest values and meanings by which each of us chooses to live, whether we have explicitly acknowledged and articulated them to ourselves or not. Right now, being able to hold on to and live out those values and meanings is challenging. Using our own personal leadership is all we have to bring to this challenge: honing our skills and capacity for self-reflection is critical to give it a chance.
It’s a life’s work.
Sally Byng/ October 2020
*Thanks to Reyaz Limalia for this way of encapsulating this sentiment
In our next leadership conversation, we will be hosting an interview with Vicci Livingstone Thompson, CEO of Inclusion Gloucestershire - a charity and user led organisation run for and by disabled people. Her strong leadership style and passion for collaborative working and co-production is evident. Vicci talks to Louise Emerson about her own life experience, the challenges and opportunities that have arisen through the Covid pandemic and a sustainable future for Inclusion Glos.
Find out more about catalyst and see all the Leadership Conversations here