Leadership Conversations: Vicci Livingstone Thompson
Vicci Livingstone Thompson is 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.
Welcome Vicci to these set of interviews.
You can read the transcript of the interview here or watch and listen to the recording on YouTube below.
Vicci, can you just tell us a little bit about what Inclusion Gloucestershire is and what it does?
Inclusion Gloucestershire is a charity and also a user led organisation which means we're run by disabled people for disabled people. And our purpose is to give disabled people a really strong voice and encourage and ensure that society is including disabled people every day and in every way. So we do that by running a range of services, we're commissioned to deliver specific contracts and projects and we're always co-producing and engaging with disabled people around all of our work.
I'm going to take you back to when you first went to Bath University and your experience of being on a business studies course and how that was taught. Could you tell us a little bit about the experience and how maybe how it changed you a little bit?
Yeah absolutely, I went to university as an 18 year old with these ideas that and I'd be a really successful business woman, the next Alan Sugar as you said and I loved the content of my degree but I saw a ruthless and sometimes quite deceitful side sometimes in my peers on the course and sometimes certain elements of business didn't quite sit comfortably with me. Some of the ideas like pursuing profits at any cost.
Instead, I was very attracted to modules like corporate social responsibility and how to really support your team to achieve the best that they can do. I realised during the course of my degree that actually the business world perhaps wasn't the world for me and that I needed to be working in a sector that I was really passionate about.
I was lucky enough to do one of my placements with a local charity, and I realised then that running a charity is a lot like running a business. You need the money in, you need to manage the contracts, ensure you're delivering to your KPI's, ensure your staff are properly managed and supported - but it's just much more meaningful and that experience made me realise how I wanted my career to go.
Businesses now are realising you have to do both of course but when you came to the end of your course you had quite a hard experience when you were applying for jobs.
Yeah, absolutely I think that was the first time in my life that I realised that my disability could be a real barrier in getting to where I wanted to be. Up until then it was always the case that if I set my mind on doing something I would do it but suddenly when i was starting to go to interviews for graduate jobs I realised that in some cases no matter how hard I tried, employers just were not interested in employing a disabled individual. I would apply for lots and lots of jobs and nearly always I would be invited to interview. And I went all over the country to interviews, probably about 30 or 40 and often it was before I'd even opened my mouth when I walked into the room I could see the interview panel look at me, make up their mind that they, you know, I wouldn't fit in their organisation and the answer was always that 'no, I hadn't been successful'.
The statistics are really horrifying when you hear that 65% of companies are say they're unlikely to employ someone who has a disability. There's a real misconception isn't there about someone you know putting everybody with a disability into one group and I know you're really working hard to break through that.
Tell us a little bit about your leadership style because it's been honed from those experiences you had and who you are as a person.
So at Inclusion Gloucestershire we have about 50 staff and the majority of them have lived experience of a disability be that physical disability learning disability or long-term mental ill health. I think leadership style really shapes a whole organisation and its culture, and when I was at university I learned a lot about the type of leader that I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be someone who trampled on everybody else to get to the top.
I didn't want that really competitive style and because I feel strongly that within an organisation if you're very clear about your values and goals with your team you should all be working to the same final goals. So you're very much working as a team and you should be raising each other up rather than competing and trampling on each other and the thing goes with partnership working as well.
In the charity sector there's a lot of partnership working and rather than all competing I believe it's much more efficient to work together, so you're not duplicating, you're not trying to do what someone else is already doing but you're pooling your resources and using them as effectively as possible.
I think a lot of companies are realising that they've got to work much more collaboratively than they have done in the past. Over these last difficult months with Covid how has your style served you do you think?
I think they have certainly been a huge challenge but I think my style of kind of collaborative working has helped our team pull together. I've been so proud of our staff who have just gone above and beyond and I know they must be exhausted but we constantly talk with each other - we have an environment of high support and high challenge - so we're constantly supporting each other, checking in, and I really believe in investing time in people and that that pays dividends. We can supportively and constructively challenge so that we can develop people to be the very best that they can be and I think that's really important, so that's enabled us as a team to be very adaptive and responsive to change the ways we needed to work as a result of Covid and keep delivering our contracts, keep serving the people who we exist to serve and just somehow make it through.
And how do you think it's looking for you the future? I know a lot of people are worried about funding.
I think throughout the charity sector there are very legitimate concerns about funding and they are long-term concerns and I think the economy will take a long time to fully recover. And whenever the economy takes a hit, local government and local authority will look at the contracts that they might normally commission to charities and organisations like us and whether they can continue to do so, whether they need to reduce their value, so it is a really uncertain time but for our organisation I'm determined to seize the opportunities that do exist.
So we started doing some new work as a result of Covid doing things like creating a resource hub of accessible information about the pandemic and lockdown on our website and we've also just started a new project working with family communities in black and ethnic minority groups to assess the impact of Covid and lockdown on them, so I think there are new and exciting opportunities. Especially around the way we work which I think will change permanently and we're also really keen to diversify our income streams so where some areas of income like local authority contracts might be in doubt we just need to be working really hard to secure other income and do more income generating work so that we're more financially independent.
It's very uplifting to hear you talking about these opportunities because I think there's been such a lot of pressure on people and having got through that people are just beginning to see opportunities and think ahead really. I also know part of what you do is about advocacy and you know giving people a voice that might not normally have a voice. Can you tell us just a little bit about that work as well?
Absolutely, we are really keen to support people to develop their own voice which is known as self-advocacy so we do this throughout all of our projects really but we've just launched a new volunteering and advocacy service which is dedicated to advocacy. There's a mix of helping people to find their own voice which is brilliant because that's a sustainable form of advocacy. Once you've developed the confidence and skills, they will stay with you for life, so you're not reliant on an organisation or a professional to help you to advocate for yourself. But for some people they will need support so we also provide that more traditional form of advocacy and we deliver it through both group and one-to-one methods - it’s community based advocacy not statutory advocacy which is delivered by other partners in Gloucestershire. It’s very much around working in a person-centered way to identify someone's goals and ambitions and then work alongside them to achieve them.
There's a lot in there about building confidence in the individual. You can face a world that is very difficult for you at times and people's preconceptions sometimes go against you and really test you. Do you think that that landscape is changing, is it getting better?
Oh good question, I think when you take a step back and look at it from a longer term perspective you can see change. There's a generational shift I think, so we no longer see disabled people as people who we need to hide away. And we're moving away from the stance that disabled people need to be protected and sheltered and we are really keen on what we call positive risk taking. That’s allowing someone, if they have capacity, as many disabled people do, to make their own choices and they might sometimes be unwise choices as anyone might make. I might sometimes drink a little bit more than my allowance at the weekend but we're all allowed to make those unwise choices. So I think there's been a bit of a generational shift and I really hope that continues.
But in terms of the more immediate past I do think that we're at a really interesting tipping point and I think in some ways we've gone slightly backwards from where we were 10 years ago when there was a lot more support for disabled people's organisations and that support was financial. I also think the Paralympics provided a great opportunity that was to kind of showcase the amazing skills of disabled people, but unfortunately that legacy hasn't really continued. If anything in the last 10 years we've not progressed as much as we could have and it will be very interesting to see what the impact of Covid and the economic impact is, because we know that disabled people are being disproportionately affected which is a real concern.
Yes, so the need for organisations like yours at the moment is seeming more important than it was prior to the situation we're in now.
Yes, we're seeing demand for our services and then some of the complexity of the cases that we're dealing has really increased.
Wow, it's amazing work that you do. A lot of people I've talked to lately are getting a bit worn down by it all and their energy's been used up and talking to you is so lovely because you understand what's difficult about the situation at the moment but you also can see the opportunity and you're really actively doing things to take your organisation to the next stage. You're extremely resilient Vicci. Is there anything you think that makes that gives you that what makes you so resilient?
Well I think my personal experience of disability has definitely shaped who I am and one of those things has been that it's given me resilience. So when I was younger, I have a progressive condition and throughout my teens it progressed quite rapidly taking away my independence and ability to function. When I was 16 I made the decision to have quite major brain surgery - at the time it was fairly new for my condition so there were some risks. And I think just going through that experience as a 16 year old deciding to have that surgery and take those risks and weighing up what was preferable - going for the surgery which I was told would more than likely leave me with some level of brain damage - or facing this very uncertain future with an aggressive disability - it gives you a level of maturity I think and resilience that you can then draw upon in later life.
So when I was at university I used to drive my course mates and my friends mad because I had a very different perspective. So when it was the end of the world because their boyfriend of six months had dumped them, or they couldn’t cope with the number of deadlines they had and were all "that's it we're going to give it all up we can't carry on", I said "oh for goodness sake no one's gonna die are they?" Because I think when you've quite literally faced your own mortality at quite a young age, that's what things boil down to. You think, well is anyone gonna get hurt or die? No? So we're all gonna be okay. I think I’ve drawn on that and this year has been really challenging but I think that kind of optimism and resilience has kept us going.
And I just wish that employers, when they see a disabled person walk into the room or wheel into the room they don't see someone who they instantly think won't fit in or will be a risk, they see someone who brings with them such determination and resilience or maturity and they see those strengths, rather than any perceived weaknesses.
Oh that is such a brilliant lesson every recruitment person should hear that i think. Vicci, thank you so much you're a real lesson to us all it's been a lovely talking to you.
Thank you, Louise, you too
Find out more about Inclusion Gloucestershire here.
In our next leadership conversation, we will be hosting an interview with Pippa Jones, Director of Create Gloucestershire. With her team she initiated the leadership training programme catalyst, in Gloucestershire for young and sometimes unrecognised leaders across sectors. Pippa is interested in how we can improve our decision making by developing more co-creative leadership styles and in so doing tap into a wide range of experience and potential that is often muted in organisations and society more widely.
Find out more about catalyst and see all the Leadership Conversations here
“I was very attracted to modules like corporate social responsibility and how to really support your team to achieve the best that they can do. I realised during the course of my degree that actually the business world perhaps wasn’t the world for me and that I needed to be working in a sector that I was really passionate about. ”
“I didn’t want that really competitive style and because I feel strongly that within an organisation if you’re very clear about your values and goals with your team you should all be working to the same final goals. So you’re very much working as a team and you should be raising each other up rather than competing and trampling on each other and the thing goes with partnership working as well. ”
“We can supportively and constructively challenge so that we can develop people to be the very best that they can be and I think that’s really important, so that’s enabled us as a team to be very adaptive and responsive to change the ways we needed to work as a result of Covid and keep delivering our contracts, keep serving the people who we exist to serve and just somehow make it through. ”
“And I just wish that employers, when they see a disabled person walk into the room or wheel into the room they don’t see someone who they instantly think won’t fit in or will be a risk, they see someone who brings with them such determination and resilience or maturity and they see those strengths, rather than any perceived weaknesses. ”