Leadership And Love

The Guardian Housing Network live chat I did recently has appeared on their site and it’s interesting to see just how much overlap on thoughts about leadership there was from the accumulated housing association chief execs. There’s clearly more agreement in the sector than it might sometimes seem. The overwhelming note sounded by the collected leaders was that the important thing for success is the team you surround yourself with.

Mick Kent from the Bromford Group set the scene: “Surround yourself with great colleagues: Recruit and develop colleagues that are better than you, especially those that tell it how it is and will let you know when you're on – or off – track.” Joe Chambers also made a good point with regard to staff development, “Staff who like the organisation will do a better job: Remember, the key question most people have is "what's in it for me?" It's a perfectly reasonable question and you must have a reasonable and honest answer.” My own point began with the question, “Are you sure you love people enough?”

Love might seem like an odd concept to even raise when it comes to a work-based discussion. Granted many people find their partners at work, (and I count myself amongst those who have got this particular t-shirt and worn it for many happy years) but it’s perhaps rare – and maybe even unseemly - when love gets mentioned. Love is for the home, surely? It's the sort of thing that we only apply to friends and family, isn't it? I’ll clarify: by love, I don’t mean romantic love and sending Valentine’s cards, I mean genuinely wanting what’s best for people. This takes some thinking through because you also need to want what's best for your customers and for your stakeholders  - and oft times those three seem to be pulling in different directions.

You’ve heard the maxim that if you love someone you should set them free. There’s more than a crumb of truth in that sentiment and countless books on empowerment are testament to the conventional wisdom that giving people your power enables them to achieve the freedom that comes when they reach their maximum potential.

The litmus test for this is when people do ask to be set free. In all the years I’ve been a chief executive I’ve often found myself in the position that all leaders hate. Where someone whose work you value and appreciate tells you that they’re moving on. This is the point where love is really demonstrated – you have to (regretfully) let these people go on and then champion them even after they’ve gone. You might well have experienced this sort of situation yourself and you'll know that a loving approach is by no means the only one. The alternative fuel for a leader is anger, but I’ve never really understood how these “angry” leaders survive. How much energy must it take when every day is a battle of attrition, every question a challenge to their authority?

Whichever approach leaders adopt there is one thing that we can all agree on: the vital first step is to bring in the best staff you possibly can. I've said before that I see this as one of my key functions at Trafford Housing Trust, attracting talent to the organisation, helping them achieve everything they can and getting out of their way. I'm very pleased to say that our office is currently awash with the next generations of housing talent. We’ve had work experience students in from Flixton Girls’ School and our 10 apprentices have been undertaking various challenges to see who will be awarded the five placements we have up for grabs.

This stuff is done by many housing organisations. It's stuff that makes our businesses stronger, it makes our communities stronger too. And unlike the private sector participants in the work programme, we do it for love not money.

Leadership Lessons From Bob Diamond

I've been thinking about leadership quite a bit this week - it's perhaps inevitable given the press coverage of Barclays. I should point out that I'm writing this before what I think is going to be an explosive Select Committee appearance from Bob Diamond on Wednesday afternoon (watch it live here). As Twitter is already suggesting, "massive bank account, no job to lose and a thirst for vengeance" could lead to nuclear-level revelations (which certainly seems to be the case if Diamond's daughter's Twitter account is genuine).  All of us who are privileged to lead dread the "no way out" problem Diamond faced. If he knew what was going on inside his bank he was complicit and a rogue; if he didn't he should have done and was a fool .

I'm sure that leadership in a technically complex, multi-national organisation like a bank is much harder than in any of the UK's housing associations; that's why they get paid so much more money than even the most highly paid CEO in our part of the industry. That's also, presumably, why the opprobrium over those salary packages is only heard from government ministers when things go so blatantly wrong, rather than for housing associations where the sniping about CEO salaries is indiscriminately applied to successful and unsuccessful alike. Anyone else remember A4E? And is there a common thread of greed here?

Greed is absolutely not what I think leadership is about. I've referred before to our Apprentice programme before and it's started this week. So we've got 10 budding Apprentices all eager and keen in our offices hoping to be one of the five youngsters we appoint to formal apprenticeships with us. They interviewed me today, perceptive and probing in their questions, one of which was about salaries. They were astounded when I told them that as CEO I got the same pay-rise as my staff; yet another example of our sector not getting its story out - because that's just what we do, isn't it?

So what does drive leadership in our sector? What makes for the best housing CEOs? There was an interesting Guardian Housing Network webinar this week where housing association CEOs discussed this very issue. The striking thing for me was just how much common ground there was between us that it was people and places that mattered to our sector's leaders, not profit. This was exactly the USP for our sector I had set out last week when arguing at the UN for the unique place of social housing in Real Estate Markets.

So as I dwell on just how much more I can learn from my peers - and for however long we've been doing it, we are still learning the job - I also wonder whether there might just be a few parts of the discredited capitalist world that could learn from our people-centred, customer-focused, values-driven leadership. Still, I'd be pretty sure it won't be one of us who get that call from Marcus Agius!

From Trafford To The United Nations

You might have noticed that for only the second time in my working life, I've had a business engagement outside the UK this week. I was asked to talk about the role of social housing in the recovery and sustainability of Real Estate Markets at the United Nations in Geneva this week - and it's the kind of offer that you just don't turn down!

If you now have an image in your mind of grand state rooms within which eloquent and rigorous debate results in consensus building at the highest level, I'm sure that was going on somewhere, for the buildings were indeed very grand. Our little corner of the UN was however, slightly more prosaic and at the end of the day, the debates were slightly less conclusive and to some extent were left hanging in the air. And, as it also took me (and quite a few others too including one charming woman lobbying on behalf of human rights abuses in Eritrea) more than an hour and a half to get through security because "my name wasn't on the list", I can confirm that the UN is also a huge bureaucracy!

Nonetheless it was a fascinating opportunity to hear first-hand from a series of experts about problems in Real Estate Markets in hugely diverse countries. The part of the UN that put on the session, only covers Europe, but their definition of that geography bears no relation to anything I ever studied for my degree. For them, Europe includes the whole of North America, "Europe" as it is more conventionally understood, the ex-soviet block countries in transition like Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, as well as the monolith of Russia itself. Immediately you can see the enormity of the task of arriving at a set of unifying principles which can apply across such physically, politically and economically diverse terrain. That they managed to produce a policy framework at all is pretty surprising!

Everyone seemed to have pretty much a common vision for what a sustainable Real Estate Market looked like, with the tests of affordability for all, environmental impact and community cohesion being universal. But clearly starting points for different countries varied enormously. I suppose that was my first thought - that in the UK, it might not seem like it at the moment, but we are pretty well off. Not for us, the complete absence of any written land ownership records, which is the case in some countries, or the corrupt and untrusted records that exist in others. Our markets may have their problems, but the uncertain provenance of land and buildings, generally, isn't one of them.

My presentation (that link should show you mine and all the other presentations made during the day) focused on the unique role that social housing, and social housing providers could make. I used the example of the Old Trafford Masterplan - a partnership between THT and Trafford Council, to show how housing associations, with their long-term interests in an area and their focus on social as well as economic value, can take developments forward at a time when others can't or won't, thereby creating the conditions which enable the private sector to follow in behind.

I spoke also about how we take into account the housing needs of the whole community rather than only those of the people who are able to pay; how we are not as influenced by the changing winds of national and local politics as local government are, and (at least for now!) how we have access to national and local government subsidy, whether that's in the form of loans, grants or land, as well as the ability to attract private investment. Most of all though, we can play that role of developing markets because we care about People as well as Properties & Profit.  If you want to see the whole of what I said it's available here.

So where did the experience leave me? You know what, we are so fortunate we should get on and do what we can, rather than keep whinging about what we can't. And where did it leave them? Well, at least they all now know that Manchester United FC is based in Trafford, and not Manchester. Did you?