'K' is for kickstart'

Dear reader I abandoned you and I am sorry.

At the beginning of 2022 I committed to writing 26 editions of the 'A- Z of Purpose Led Performance' - but I stopped writing after 15. What happened? My commitment wavered and then failed. After a busy post-summer period, a bout of writer's block and lack of inspiration in relation to my chosen topics for the 'K' edition, I missed my deadline, and then I let things drift....

"Being defeated is often temporary, giving up makes it permanent" (Marilyn Von Savant)

Consistency and commitment are two of the core leadership qualities we promote at Purpose Led Performance(along with curiosity, courage, candour and collaboration). So much is written about the importance of consistency, but it is commitment that enables consistency.

Today I am resetting my commitment to finishing the 'A - Z of Purpose Led Performance' - inspired by my Co-Director, Kim O’Reilly-Blackwell . Kim has launched the 'Purpose Led Leaders' newsletter, a series of profiles of real-life purpose led leaders that do amazing work. Kim has helped to 'kick-start me'.

Below is the first article of the series. I hope you find it as interesting, inspiring and useful as I did. She is a much better writer than me and has lined up an amazing group of leaders to share their leaderships values and philosophy.

Click here to subscribe to the new 'Purpose Led Leaders' newsletter to receive the rest of the series showcasing a diverse set of leaders doing it their way.

I will return in two weeks time with the 'L' edition of the 'A-Z of Purpose Led Performance' focusing on learning and leadership.

What does it take to be a good leader??Today, in the first of our new Purpose led leaders features, we meet? Pablo Lloyd OBE Group CEO (Interim)? Capital City College to hear his views and advice for leaders.

“I am as opinionated as the best of them, but opinions are for sprints, questions are for marathons.”

If you take the time to speak with Pablo, you will quickly get the sense of his curiosity and his respect for the power of asking questions.?

“I am genuinely curious”

Pablo believes learning and curiosity characterise his approach to leadership.

These qualities have helped him during a 30-year career in senior roles, ranging from CFO to CEO. He is a Founder, a Non-executive Director and Entrepreneur.

After four years as Co-Founder and CEO of Visionnaires (a social enterprise providing inclusive & practical support for entrepreneurship and self-employment), he is about to start yet another leadership challenge as Group CEO (Interim) at Capital City College Group. His goal is to recruit his long-term replacement and get the team ready for a new stage in their journey.?

It was a great moment to check-in with Pablo about his approach to leadership. Faced with returning to a role overseeing over 2,000 people again, he was reflecting on the role of a leader in a big organisation.

“A CEO has technical responsibilities, of course, and they need to set boundaries for clarity’s sake, but culture… that is the most important thing to get right as a leader:?Leadership behaviour is the biggest lever on culture.”?

Pablo has a clear model for how he thinks a great culture of high-performing teams is achieved. It is inspired by Daniel Pink’s book,?Drive.?But he has reinterpreted the philosophy to work for him.

Rather than the classic Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose cited by Pink as key to motivating teams, Pablo believes that Autonomy,?Learning?and Purpose make good teams tick.?

He passionately believes that it is a leader’s responsibility to major in learning, and that this should be seen, heard and felt by the people you lead. But how??

• Ask questions, positively
• Encourage and celebrate those who do the same
• Focus on the benefits of challenging in a positive way

This culture of positive teamwork starts the conversations needed to set good strategies and make meaningful changes.?Pablo’s advice to anyone working with teams is to start with a?Dialogue.

Ask yourselves what kind of organisation do you want to be?

What kind of colleague do you want to be?

Every organisation and every individual has choices…so talk to one another.

Define the answers to these questions together.

In all his years of experience, Pablo has realised that a challenge for leaders is not to jump straight in with your opinions and ideas for solutions.?The role of a leader is to be a part of the discussions, asking the right questions.

“Don’t go off alone into a dark room to define a purpose and come out with a ready-made solution for others to implement.”

It is so much more motivating to get to the root causes of challenges together and co-create solutions.?

But Pablo was also clear that for this approach to work, it must be underpinned first with?Purpose?and then by?Respect, Transparency, and Rigour.

1. Purpose: the primary task of leadership is to define and refine the organisation’s purpose, clearly enough that decisions and dilemmas can be resolved. This can work at a team or organisational level, so it’s a yardstick for all leaders and managers.
2. Respect:?a great leader needs to understand that changing culture requires new habits to form. This necessitates being the one to know when it is a “don’t do that” moment and calling it out, in a respectful way.?
3. Transparency:?create environments in which colleagues know that they can and should call for help and be transparent. Let your teams know you would rather they manage risk and ask the question than wait for things to go wrong.
4. Rigour:?use all the data and resources available to you to make good decisions. Educate your teams about how to make big decisions. The bigger the decision – the more consultation and use of data is required.?

So, where does this style of leadership come from for Pablo?

"Personal and organisational purpose can be different of course but I believe they have to be consistent for a fulfilling career.

My purpose is to help people discover their potential and give them the opportunity to fulfil it. I believe these are social rights. So my working life only started to make sense half way through my career, when I started working in education. I’m now driven to help people find their way sooner than I did."

A healthy dose of humility also constantly reminds Pablo to consider whether he may be wrong. It doesn’t matter if you have experience of leading teams through big organisational change and challenges, a great leader must step back and remind themselves:

“I may be wrong…I remind myself of that because that is how we learn. I started professional working life with sound academic credentials and a thirst to learn, but I feel I lost that a little mid-career. Now, after decades as a leader, my curiosity is making a big comeback. I am probably more confident to share doubt with people around me and realise the act of learning is a motivator for most of us. It is certainly at the heart of my leadership.”?

When you are always in dialogue with yourself and others you can manage fundamental leadership dilemmas and challenges.

You are always willing to go back to the beginning and ask the right questions, and make sure you get to the right solution with the full engagement of your team.

Capital City College Group?is the largest further education provider in London, and the third largest in the UK. They are a team of 2,000 people supporting over 30,000 learners.

They comprise three major colleges (City and Islington College, Westminster Kingsway College and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London), London's leading apprenticeship training provider Capital City College Training and two ground breaking ventures: coding school 01 Founders and social enterprise Visionnaires supporting the UK's 500,000 hidden entrepreneurs.

We support leaders to uncover, articulate and activate their purpose; grow their businesses; achieve high performance through highly effective teams; and have a greater and better impact on the world.?But there is no one type of great leader.?

We have been meeting with inspirational real-life leaders from our network to understand their leadership style.

We have captured their ideas in a series of newsletters, entitled Purpose led leaders.

We will shine a light on different people and their individual approach to leadership.

We hope you find the series interesting, inspiring and valuable to you wherever you may be on your leadership journey.

Subscribe to this newsletter for more features on real life inspirational and purpose led leaders.

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