by Astrid Davies | 1 Oct 2026 | Leadership Matters, Sustainability
The financial half year is a natural checkpoint. Not just for the numbers, but for how you are actually running the business. If you are like most SME owners, the first six months have been a blur of decisions, firefighting, and maybe a sprinkling of aspirational momentum. Now , at the half year, is the moment to pause, look back at what worked and what didn’t, and set yourself up for a stronger second half.
This is not a piece about cashflow forecasts or tax planning. Well, not mostly. As you might expect, this is about leadership, people, and the way you steer the ship when the waters get choppy. That’s because the waters ARE choppy. The global economy is stubbornly unpredictable, the UK labour market is tight and the climate is no longer a future problem. It is a present-day cost and risk. It’s also an opportunity, as I write about in a sister blog on here.
So here are the lessons worth taking from the first half into the second.
1. Lead on Purpose, not on Autopilot
The first half of the year probably demanded fast decisions. That is the nature of running an SME. On the other hand, speed without reflection breeds bad habits. Ask yourself: did you spend the first six months reacting or steering?
Leadership at the half year means resetting your own compass. What did you say mattered most in April, at the start of the tax year? Did your calendar, your budget, and your conversations actually reflect that? If not, the gap between intention and action is the first thing to fix.
Your team watches what you prioritise, not what you announce. If you said culture mattered but skipped every one-to-one, the message was clear. Realign your behaviour first. Everything else follows.
2. Be honest about your team’s performance – and your own
Mid-year is not the time for vague optimism. It is the time for honest conversations. Which team members have grown? Who is coasting? Where are the gaps that have become painfully obvious?
Start with yourself. What did you handle poorly? What did you avoid? Owning that openly with your team builds more trust than any awayday or values poster. Good leaders do not pretend the first half was flawless. They name openly at was hard and what they learned.
Then extend that honesty to performance reviews. Not a box-ticking exercise. A real conversation about where someone is thriving, where they are stuck, and what support they need. Do this now and the second half starts with clarity rather than guesswork. Using a structure like Continue & Begin Fast Coaching® will help you and your team to craft actions that maintain strengths and begin to do things differently where required.
3. Rethink recruitment for a market that has been evolving fast
Recruitment in the current market is not what it was even three years ago. The talent pool is shallower in some areas but troublingly deep in others. Expectations are higher from recruits and probably from employers (particularly those misreading the market). It’s definitely the case that salary alone no longer wins people over. If your first-half hiring felt slow, frustrating, or expensive, the lesson has to be not to try harder with the same approach.
Look at what you are actually offering. Not just pay, but purpose, flexibility, and a sense of where the business is going. Candidates in 2026/7 are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. If your job adverts still read like 2019, that is your problem, not the market’s. You’re reaping what you’re sowing.
Also, stop waiting for the perfect candidate. The first half may have taught you that long vacancies cost more than a good-enough hire who you can nurture and grow. Build a talent pipeline, not just a wishlist. Invest in onboarding and talent development, so that when you do hire, people stay because they’re feeling happy, valued and motivated.
4. Develop new markets without chasing every shiny opportunity
A tough economy makes new markets feel both urgently-needed and also dangerous. The temptation is to scatter your efforts, chase revenue in any desperate direction, and hope something lands. That is how SMEs dilute their focus and exhaust their teams.
Instead, look at what the first half told you. Which customer conversations felt like they had energy? Which sector or area kept coming up unprompted? Which of your existing clients was asking for something you hadn’t yet brought to market (or even thought of)?
New market development should be a deliberate extension of what you already do well, not a leap into the unknown. Pick one or two new avenues. Make sure you resource them properly. Set a six-month gateway review with clear success criteria. Test it. If it works, scale it up and test again. If it doesn’t, move on and don’t worry about it. Learning is always a win, even if it’s how and when to stop something.
5. Treat the Climate Crisis as a business reality
Here, as Al Gore famously said, is the inconvenient truth: the climate is now a financial, operational, and reputational factor for every SME. That’s the facts, whether you chose to engage with it or not. Supply chains are already disrupted by extreme weather. Energy costs are volatile and the level of global strife is not stabilising things any time soon. Customers, particularly larger ones, are asking about your sustainability credentials before they sign contracts. In fact, if you want to supply the UK public sector and anywhere in the EU, you already need sustainability, ethical and financial governance criteria set out in a clear policy.
The first half of the year may already have shown you this. A delayed shipment because of flooding. A potential client questionnaire about carbon reporting. An insurance premium that jumped without warning. Again.
The lesson is to stop treating sustainability as a tedious ide project. You do not need a net-zero strategy on day one (or even at all – sustainability is WAY more than that). However, you do need to understand your risk exposure and start reducing it. Energy efficiency, supplier resilience, and waste reduction are not just ethical choices. They are cost-saving, risk-mitigating, tender-winning decisions. They’re survival choices.
Make the second half the period where you get a grip on this. Assign ownership. Measure what matters. Talk to your biggest clients about what they will need from you next year.
6. Know your numbers, even if it’s scary
Right, here’s the one financial tip. I’m not a financial wizard and I don’t expect you to be too. I am all about staying in my lane. Nevertheless, I am happy to encourage you to pursue this leadership behaviour: even if you don’t love spreadsheets full of numbers, you do need to be confident about what those numbers are telling you. Too many SME owners run on instinct and avoid the figures until the year-end panic sets in.
At the half year, sit down, look at the actuals versus the plan, and understand the story. Are margins holding? Are your debtors taking longer and longer to pay? Is one client quietly becoming a dangerous percentage of your revenue, so they could be your single point of failure if they move on?
Confidence with the numbers is not about nerdy precision. It is about not being surprised. If you are surprised at year-end, you were not leading in the middle.
The Second Half Starts Now
The best SME owners use the financial half year as a genuine reset, not just a reporting milestone. Reflect on your leadership. Have the honest conversations, even if they’re tricky. Rethink how you hire if it’s not working. Choose your new markets carefully, based on data and with a steely discipline. Take the climate seriously as a business risk. And get comfortable with the numbers.
Sounds easy, eh? Do these few things, and the second half is not just a continuation of the first. It is a better version of it. If you want to talk through your leadership decisions with an experienced confidante, please get in touch. It’s how I help a lot of my C-suite clients.
by Astrid Davies | 1 Sep 2026 | Diversity of Thought, Leadership Matters, Sustainability
Last month, I sat in a room in Lymington, in the New Forest, with around eighty fellow residents of our local area. We were there for something called The People’s Emergency Climate Briefing. If you have not heard of it, I would encourage you to seek it out. The format is deliberately broad: a bit of something for everyone, from food security to immigration, from public health to the macroeconomy. What struck me, though, was not the breadth. It was the urgency and depth of the problem.
And it made me think about my own backyard. Not the New Forest itself, but the businesses that operate in it and around it. Small and medium-sized enterprises. The backbone of the UK economy. The companies that will feel the squeeze of climate disruption long before the policies and regulations catch up.
Climate Change Is Not a “Net Zero” Debate. It Is a Business Continuity Issue.
Let me get something off my chest. The phrase “Net Zero” has become so politically loaded, so sullied by culture wars and vague commitments, that it has lost practical meaning for many business owners. Mention it in a room of SME leaders and you will see eyes glaze over or at least roll. That is understandable. But it is also dangerous.
The briefing in Lymington made something abundantly clear: climate impacts are not a set of future hypothetical threats . They are landing now, in ways that touch every corner of a business. This is not about ideology or any political party. It is simply about operational risk. If your supply chain runs through regions facing increasing drought, flooding, or political instability tied to resource scarcity, your business has a climate exposure risk. You may or may not use that language, but that’s what you’ve got. And it’s a show stopper.
Where Climate Disruption Will Hit SMEs Hardest
Supply Chain Fragility
If you import components, ingredients, or materials from overseas, you are already exposed to the kind of volatility that climate change worsens. A flood in a manufacturing region doesn’t just displace local communities that you might see on TV. It disrupts your lead times. A drought in an agricultural belt does not just make headlines and charity campaigns. It raises your input costs. As SMEs, with our thinner margins and smaller buffers, we feel these shocks more acutely than large corporations with all their diversified sourcing effectively spread-betting their risk.
The question is not whether your supply chain will be disrupted. It is when, and whether you have a plan.
Unstable Foreign Markets
Many SMEs that export or rely on international customers are watching markets become increasingly volatile and unpredictable. Currency fluctuations driven by climate-related economic shocks, shifting trade routes as regions become less habitable, and new carbon border adjustments (international carbon tariffs) are all reshaping the political and economic landscape. The businesses that thrive will be the ones that map these risks early and diversify. That’s something we can all learn from the big corporates.
Health and Safety, and the Rising Cost of Compliance
This is an area that catches people off guard. Climate change will reshape workplace health and safety obligations. Rising working temperatures are already a concern in warehouses, kitchens, and manufacturing floors. Particulate matter from increased wildfire activity (as we have seen to devastating effect in the New Forest recently) is a growing air quality issue which particularly affects the young and the old. Access to clean water, drainage, and flood resilience for commercial premises are all moving up the regulatory agenda. It’s not “making a fuss”, because things will sort themselves out again in time. We don’t have that time as employers.
Each of these brings cost. Retrofitting ventilation, updating risk assessments, ensuring thermal comfort for staff, meeting new emissions reporting requirements. They are coming, and the businesses that prepare now will spend less than those that scramble later.
Why This Is Not Shroud Waving
I want to be clear about the tone here. I am not in the business of frightening fellow business owners into paralysis. The Lymington briefing was sobering, yes, but it was also galvanising. The message was not “give up.” The message was “get ready.”
And here is the good news: the things that make a business resilient to climate disruption are, in most cases, the things that make it a better business anyway. Avoiding waste reduces costs and exposure to resource price spikes. Planning for the future builds confidence with lenders, investors, and customers. Seeking out new markets, particularly those less exposed to climate risk, diversifies revenue and gives you crucial options. Energy efficiency lowers overheads. Supply chain mapping reveals vulnerabilities you might have missed entirely.
These are not sacrifices. They are sound leadership decisions.
A Practical Starting Point for SME Leaders
You do not need a fifty-page sustainability strategy to begin*. You need a clear-eyed assessment of where climate impacts could reach into your business in places you least expect. Start with three questions:
- Where are your supply chain pinch-points? Map your critical inputs. Test what happens if those sources are disrupted for a week, a month, or a whole production cycle.
- Where are your compliance and H&S exposures? Talk to your insurers. Ask about climate-related risk assessments. Look at your workplace environment with fresh eyes (or at least theirs!).
- Where are your growth opportunities? Climate adaptation is creating new markets and opportunities, from retrofit services to resilient logistics. Positioning early is a wise competitive advantage, not a cost.
The Leaders Who Act Now Will Be the Ones Who Thrive
There are People’s Emergency Briefings up and down the UK. Please get to one. The one I attended in Lymington was not a gathering of activists, as some would have you believe. In fact, it was a room full of ordinary people of all ages. The group included parents, carers, politicians, business owners, recognising that the landscape is shifting all around us. The climate does not care about political opinions or cultural arguments. It is already affecting supply chains, markets, workplaces and costs regardless of anything that anyone thinks and wants to spout online.
The SMEs that prosper in the coming decades will be the ones whose leaders refused to bury their heads in the sand now. Not because they are idealists, but because they are pragmatists. They understand that good business means anticipating change, not reacting to it after the damage is done.
I walked out of that briefing in Lymington with a sharper sense of purpose. Not fear. Purpose. And I would encourage every SME owner reading this to find that same sense, before the market decides it for you. It’s a leadership decision and if you want to talk about that, please get in touch as it’s what I do.
*If you would like great support to have a proper sustainability strategy, you can start with a free download from True Horizon. That’s where I got mine!
by Astrid Davies | 24 Jun 2026 | Diversity of Thought, Leadership Matters, Sustainability
Leading a business as a founder or sole director is often romanticised. “Oh, you must have so much freedom!” or “I’d love not having anyone telling me what to do” are frequent comments you may have heard. And yet the psychological reality is almost always far more complex. While the autonomy is undoubtedly unparalleled, the mental weight of every strategic decision rests solely on your shoulders. This unique position can bring with it a specific set of psychological hurdles that can either propel your business forward or lead to stagnation, fear and disappointment. For female founders or sole directors, these challenges are often compounded by a whole range of societal pressures. Add in the delicate balance of managing professional ambition alongside personal identity, let alone any family responsibilities, and you have a real powder keg of issues.
Managing the Rollercoaster of Founder Motivation
One of the most significant challenges is how much your motivation may change. It is rarely a steady climb; instead, it is a series of peaks and troughs. For many women, the struggle to maintain momentum during the quieter periods can feel like a personal failure. In fact, it is actually a natural part of the entrepreneurial journey. When you are the primary driver of your business, your energy levels directly dictate the pace of progress. How many female founders remember this, tho’?
To manage this, it is essential to shift your focus toward celebrating micro-wins. By recognising small, tangible steps of progress, you provide your brain with the necessary feedback to maintain that forward momentum. Instead of only looking up at the highest goals, remember to look at the ground beneath your feet. In fact, regular check-ins with your original vision and purpose can also prevent the sense of drift that often occurs when you are bogged down in the minutiae of daily operations. This alignment ensures that your daily actions remain firmly anchored in your long-term purpose, making even the difficult days feel meaningful. This can make all the difference.
Overcoming Isolation and Sustaining Productivity
There is also a proven connection between your mental state and your actual productivity, and probable success as a result. Isolation can act as a silent drain on your cognitive resources. Without a peer group, a support network or at the very least a trusted sounding board, decision fatigue becomes your constant companion. In turn, this can make even minor tasks feel overwhelming. When you are making every call, every hire, and every strategic choice alone, the mental load can become unsustainable. This is where having access to a trusted confidante, or a trusted network of peers, can make all the difference.
Implementing structured habits can help protect your mental stamina. Specifically, by creating clear boundaries and routines, you can navigate the ambiguity of founder life much more simply. Protecting your mental capacity by automating repetitive tasks is not just about efficiency; it is about preserving the energy you need for high-level strategic work. Refocus your energies on what you’re best at. Focus on your strengths and what your growing business needs.
So, some key elements for maintaining psychological resilience include:
- Celebrating micro-wins to provide instant psychological reinforcement and to underpin momentum.
- Aligning daily tasks with your core vision to prevent purpose drift.
- Utilising automation appropriately, so you reduce the cognitive load of repetitive administration and reserve your bandwidth for the key strategic tasks.
- Scheduling regular peer connection to combat the mental drain of isolation.
- Implementing structured focus blocks to manage decision fatigue and maintain your focus on delivery and growth.
Why Founder Resilience Drives SME Growth
It’s crucial that we recognise that the founder’s psychology is the heartbeat of an SME. Any growing organisation can only grow as far as its leader’s energy and clarity allow. There is a direct correlation between the psychological health of a founder and the scalability of their business. When a founder is navigating burnout or a lack of purpose, the impact ripples through every facet of the company, from innovation to customer retention.
An SME is not merely a collection of assets and processes; it is an extension your vision and drive as its founder. Therefore, investing in your own psychological resilience and leadership development is not a “nice-to-have” that you can keep kicking into the long grass. Instead, you will thrive once you understand it is a fundamental requirement for sustainable growth. To scale a business, you must first scale yourself. This means moving from a state of constant, reactive survival to one of proactive, strategic leadership. And this includes self-leadership as perhaps the most important part.
Navigating this journey alone is perhaps the hardest part of being a founder. Transitioning from being a solo operator to a strategic leader requires more than just hard work; it requires connection, insight, and a community that understands your specific landscape.
If you are a female founder or sole director, and you recognise these challenges in your own journey, you truly do not have to navigate them in isolation. The Acumen Supper Club™ was designed specifically to provide the support, connection, and high-level development that female founders and women sole directors need to thrive. Please visit the Acumen pages on our website to book a chat. This is an opportunity for us to discuss your current position and check your fit for the programme, or perhaps our leadership development services. The most important thing is to ensure it is the right step for your personal growth and your business’s future success.
Image credit: Photo by Ben Blennerhassett on Unsplash
by Astrid Davies | 7 Jul 2025 | Leadership Matters, Sustainability
If you’re reading this, you’re probably already committed to continuous improvement in your leadership – and, probably, that of the people you work alongside. And yet, there feels to me a gap. I hope this article will trigger conversations, to fill that gap. What’s this gap? Sustainability. More specifically, the leadership skills we all need, to support every organisation and home to a low- (or even no-) emission basis as soon as possible.
What are we talking about here?
The United Nations’ Brundtland Committee defined Sustainability in 1987, as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” I am pretty happy quoting the UN on this. However, let’s be clear that the “needs” of the present are just that. They are needs, not desires. At present, we have a global economic whirl fuelled by demand, growth, demand, growth … and this economic model is working brilliantly for a few, but comes at a cost to billions. (I could go on and on about ethics in global leadership, but that’s for another place and time). The immediate impact of this economic model is exploitation of natural resources beyond a level that can replenish themselves without intervention, a surfeit of waste to be shipped around the world and increasing global warming to levels that are affecting millions.
So immediately we see the issue: leadership in sustainability is going to be tough. It is going to be helping people to stop doing the things they’ve normalised in their lives. Moreover, to paraphrase Harry S Truman on leadership, it will be persuading people to do something they didn’t know they had to do and don’t want to do now they know, and often don’t care about because it’s all a long way down the road.
The trouble is, climate change and global warming are not a long way down the road. They are here and they are important. Right now. As we see on the news regularly, there are freak floods in parts of the world unused to rain on near-Biblical scale. There are droughts lasting for years, in parts of the world craving rain, which lead to displacement and tensions. According to the IPCC’s AR6 report 2023 [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/figures/figure-spm-2] , the wet bits of the world are getting wetter, and the dry bits are getting drier and hotter. The Earth’s climate is heating up at unprecedented rates, which is close to becoming irreversible. Leadership in this context is pretty quiet. It’s just too hard. Doom and gloom don’t win votes or contracts.
Sustainability theories
I need to declare my hand here. I have been a committed supporter of the environmental movement for almost 40 years. Sustainability, avoidance of waste and circularity are at the heart of everything I have done as a leader. Now, in my own company, it features throughout my work with my clients. I suspect you didn’t need me to tell you this, given the emphasis on ethical and responsible leadership throughout my website!
In the course of my work, I see leadership from all angles, as we all do – the good, the bad and the downright ugly. There are umpteen leadership theories, which many of us will deploy depending on our clients’ needs.
There are also several sustainability leadership theories. You may well have come across some of them, such as https://sustainableleaders.eu/model-part1/ or https://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/sustainability-leadership-linking-theory-and.pdf
There is also the famous Butterly Diagram from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and The Doughnut (or “Doughnut Economics”), which Prof. Kate Raworth developed in her seminal book. These help us gauge our environmental AND social impact as we do what we do. These are shown here to give you an idea of their scope – and complexity.
I also have my own, that I use with clients embarking on their sustainability journey, which pulls heavily on John Adair’s simple venn diagram. It’s small, imperfect, but it does the job – opening clients’ eyes to the fact they CAN do something that makes a REAL difference.
Where does all this leave us, as leaders and students of leadership?
Sustainability leadership impact
I would argue that it offers us an opportunity for impact like never before. As leaders, we all have a key role to play, to model sustainable behaviour and to encourage its leadership because it is such a huge global need … and precisely BECAUSE it is so hard. If not us, who? We are self-defined leaders. Do we really get to pick and choose, so we are only leaders for the easy stuff, the people stuff, the popular stuff? I don’t know any leader I have ever met who would believe that. No, we lead because we believe in a vision. We believe in better, for everyone. And there’s not much better than arresting the decline of our home planet, surely?
To finish, I am going to be cheeky. Please may I invite you to engage on this topic, so it gets onto our collective agenda? Even if it’s contentious, we need to discuss the leadership implications of sustainability, both the challenges and the huge opportunities. So, who’s with me?
by Astrid Davies | 14 May 2025 | Diversity of Thought, Leadership Matters, Sustainability
I don’t know about you, but I am noticing that a lot more companies are recognising the value of bringing in external facilitators to support their teams through strategic discussions, workshops, and decision-making processes. As a trained facilitator with extensive experience, including my current role facilitating the Help to Grow programme at University of Winchester, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative impact that skilled facilitation can have on organisations.
What Is an External Facilitator?
An external facilitator is an impartial, trained professional who guides groups through structured processes to achieve specific outcomes. Unlike internal facilitators, external facilitators bring a fresh perspective, neutrality, and specialised expertise to the table. In fact, they are adept at managing group dynamics, fostering open communication, and ensuring that meetings are productive and focused.
You might say, “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” And yes, well, that’s true. However, here are ten pretty persuasive reasons why your business could find using a facilitator a very helpful decision.
My Top 10 reasons:
Objectivity and Neutrality: one of the primary benefits of hiring an external facilitator is the objectivity they bring to the table. Internal facilitators may have existing relationships and biases that can influence discussions. In contrast, external facilitators approach each session with a neutral stance, ensuring that all voices are heard and that decisions are made based on merit rather than internal politics.
Expertise and Experience: External facilitators often possess specialised skills and experience in managing group dynamics and facilitating complex discussions. Likewise, their expertise allows them to employ proven techniques to encourage participation, resolve conflicts, and keep discussions on track. Consequently, meetings are not only efficient but also effective in achieving their objectives
Enhanced Group Dynamics: skilled facilitators are adept at managing group dynamics, ensuring that everyone has taken part and that no single voice dominates the conversation. In addition, they create an environment where the room values diverse perspectives, leading to richer discussions and more innovative solutions. This inclusivity actually fosters a sense of ownership and commitment among team members .
Focused and Productive Meetings: external facilitators take the burden of managing the meeting process off internal team members. Therefore, participants are free to focus entirely on content and decision-making. They ensure that meetings are well-structured, time-efficient, and aligned with the organisation’s goals. This leads to more productive sessions and tangible outcomes .
Conflict Resolution: in any group setting, conflicts can arise: External facilitators have had the training to identify and address conflicts constructively, ensuring that disagreements do not derail the group’s progress. By fostering open communication and providing strategies for conflict resolution, facilitators help maintain a positive and collaborative environment.
Driving Innovation and Creativity: facilitators employ creative techniques to stimulate brainstorming and encourage innovative thinking. They challenge assumptions and encourage out-of-the-box thinking. In turn this helps teams explore new ideas and solutions. Above all, this approach is valuable in strategic planning sessions where fresh perspectives are crucial.
Tailored Approaches to Team Needs: external facilitators can customise their approach to suit the specific needs and objectives of the team. Whether the focus is on leadership development, communication skills, or strategic planning, facilitators design sessions that address the unique challenges and goals of the organisation, ensuring relevance and effectiveness.
Building Trust and Psychological Safety: an external facilitator can create a safe space where team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas without fear of judgment. This psychological safety is essential for fostering trust through encouraging open communication. In turn, this leads to stronger team cohesion and more effective collaboration.
Supporting Change Management: organisations undergoing change can benefit from the support of an external facilitator. Facilitators help manage the human side of change. They do this by guiding teams through transitions, addressing concerns, and fostering a positive attitude towards new initiatives. This support can ease the change process and increase the likelihood of successful implementation.
Long-Term Impact: the benefits of external facilitation extend beyond individual sessions. By equipping teams with the tools and skills to manage their own discussions and decision-making processes, facilitators contribute to the long-term development of the organisation. This empowerment leads to lasting improvements in team performance and organisational effectiveness .
My Experience as an External Facilitator
Having facilitated numerous workshops and programmes, I have seen the profound impact that skilled facilitation can have on organisations. As I have mentioned, I am delighted to include the Help to Grow: Management programme at University of Winchester’s Business School in this. The Help to Grow:Management programme, designed to support small and medium-sized businesses, provides a structured framework for strategic growth for participant companies. It’s a total privilege to work with the inspirational entrepreneurs that attend the programme. Through Help to Grow, I get to guide participants through a series of sessions that challenge their thinking, encourage collaboration and equip them with the tools to drive their businesses forward. So, yet again, there’s a big benefit to having a discussion facilitated so that the participants can focus on their business. Further, there’s the added benefit that you creat a sense of cohort. There’s few things that can actually beat a shared sense of experience to bring people together.
“Many Reasons Why?” an External Facilitator
Hiring an external facilitator is an investment in your organisation’s success. The objectivity, expertise and specialised skills they bring can transform meetings. Let’s think about this. On the one hand you could keep on with a predictable, routine gathering. On the other, you could hold a dynamic session that drives innovation, resolve conflicts and achieve strategic objectives. Simple decision, right? For instance, you might be planning a strategic workshop. You might want a really good team-building session. Maybe you’re navigating organisational change, and need some neutral help. Whichever you want, an external facilitator can provide the guidance and support needed to unlock your team’s full potential.
In summary, if you’re interested in exploring how external facilitation can benefit your organisation, consider a qualified facilitator. Discuss your specific needs and objectives with them. The right facilitator can make all the difference in achieving your goals and driving long-term success. Trust me, you’ll be so pleased you did. And if you want to speak to me about your needs, please get in touch.
by Astrid Davies | 7 Aug 2024 | Diversity of Thought, Leadership Matters, Sustainability
One of the great privileges of my work is supporting a range of organisations in the UK’s charitable and community sector. All of them have leaders who frequently describe their roles as “a balancing act”. This is because they have to manage a delicate balance between internal management and leadership by paid staff AND their Trustees. They also have to do this while ensuring their charity presents itself strongly in a difficult financial market AND managing how their charity shows up in the local community. This balancing act is essential for ensuring the charities’ sustainability (in all senses), credibility, and impact.
Running the Charity: Internal Management
Effective leadership within the charity sector starts with strong internal management. This involves effective and savvy strategic planning, sound financial management, and efficient operations. Leaders must ensure that the charity’s mission and goals are clear and that all activities align with these objectives. They must also bring paid staff AND volunteers along with them on the journey. When this journey features a big change of direction (or a big change in how the charity is run) this can be a tricky task for the leadership.
Add into that, that many charity leaders are “accidentals”. By this I mean that they took a senior job in a charity because they believed passionately in the purpose. The trouble is, they may not have had the management and leadership training to equip them with all the necessary skills to do the job. Often, the very different nature of charity strategic operations means it attracts people unhappy with (or unsuited to) the corporate world. Charity leaders are a varied lot, but always resourceful and pioneers of “agile” leadership way before it became on-trend. Survival instincts do that to you.
Trustee Behaviour and Responsibilities
Good governance is vital to effective charity operations. It is also a key feature of leadership. Trustees play a crucial role in the leadership of charities. They are responsible for effective governance, which includes ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, safeguarding the charity’s assets, and setting the strategic direction. This is all set out in the Charity Governance Code and yet is something very few charity trustees and paid leaders appear to know about.
Trustees are often people who have held senior roles in a long working life and are now “giving back” in retirement. For most this means doing good in a way that helps their local community. For most this also means doing good, well. However, for a slim minority, being a Trustee is a badge of office, an instrument of power to use as a bludgeon rather than a ladder to help up others. Sadly, I have encountered some autocratic bullies in local charities. Such people tend to run their organisations as their own personal fiefdom, to pursue theor own personal agenda. That is toxic and has nothing to do with effective leadership. Effective trustees are engaged and knowledgeable leaders, acting with integrity.
Presenting the Charity to the World
How a charity presents itself in the marketplace is vital for attracting donors and volunteers at both the operational and strategic levels (Trustees are volunteers who run a charity). A charity’s market positioning is also key to ensuring it targets, reaches and attracts its beneficiaries. These are the people that the charity has been set up to help and they have to be defined in governance documentation and registered with the Charity Commission in the UK.
It is impossible to have strong and effective market positioning and branding without effective leadership within the charity. Effective marketing involves creating a strong brand identity, clear messaging, and a compelling value proposition. Good luck having that in an organisation that lacks a vision, a clearly communicated sense of shared purpose, and an effective operating model that maximises the impact fundraising can have.
Demonstrating Leadership in the Community: Impact and Engagement
Next in this list of leadership obligations that charity leaders have to juggle and, hopefully, balance, is leadership within the local community. This may involve engaging with community members, whether beneficiaries of the charity or not. It may also involve understanding the community’s varying needs. It is almost certainly going to involve delivering services that have a lasting impact in the community that the charity aims to serve.
There is another angle to this. There are many local and national charities which are advocates for change. On the one hand, leadders might push for change, demonstrating leadership in their own field. On the other, it might be by collaborating with others to increase their impact and effect. The recent marches in London in support of nature, prior to the UK General Election, were an example of this. Many national and global charities came together to remind politicians that wildlife and the natural world need a voice at future political tables. It was a powerful message.
The Balancing Act in action
Charity leaders are looking to the future more than ever before. Not only is this a reflection of the scarcity of money available to them, through reduced public sector spending and a cost of living crisis, but it is also a reflection of the increased reliance we all have on digital tools. Online fundraising, virtual events and the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence to improve donor experience when giving hard-earned cash, are here to stay.
I am pleased to report that charity leaders are also pooling their meagre resources more and better. Small is no longer beautiful, because it splinters the pot available to charities. More charities are seeing the solution to complex issues to be shared, not a solo challenge.
Impact measurement is also something that charities are looking to do. I always advocate the use of Generic Social Outcomes, as I have noted in another blog on this site. However, there are others, such as the sustainability impact indicators associated with BCorp status. It is vital that donors can see their money making a clear difference.
Leaders in the voluntary and community space have a tough job. We rely on them doing that well, every day. We don’t realise how much we rely on them, I suspect. So the next time you think about a local charity as they fundraise and ask for support, please consider helping out. You never know where it might take your leadership journey!
If you would like to explore how I can help your charity with its leadership development, I would be delighted to have a chat. Please book a complimentary strategic conversation and let’s get you started.
