CISKA AND SHIRLEY
MOVING INTO A LEADERSHIP ROLE
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Becoming a leader – any kind of leader – isn’t just a matter of sitting behind a slightly fancier desk and giving orders. This isn’t easy.
Just ask Shirley Wilson, Chairperson at the Brain Injured Children’s Trust (BICT). The BICT helps parents of children with brain injuries fund private treatment such as intensive, home-based therapy that helps those children overcome their brain injuries and live normal lives. Shirley’s been involved with the trust for a long time, but more recently, she became the chairperson. Not only was this a new role for her, it was also at a time
when the organisation needed to move in a new direction. She needed to develop leadership skills and influence – and she needed to do it quickly.
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That’s where The Mentoring Foundation came in. We connected her with Ciska Vogelzang, an expert in executive development. She sat down with Shirley once a month for six months and worked with her to develop her leadership skills.
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HOW IT ALL WORKED
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Ciska’s approach was that it "wouldn’t be strategic planning." Her goal was to focus on Shirley’s skills and ability to influence, and that’s more about personal qualities than a plan for where the organisation’s going to go. After all, you can set a strategic plan, but it’s not worth much if you can’t influence people to put it into action. So in their first meetings, Ciska set out to find out about Shirley, rather than focus on the organisation. "I wanted to know who she was, what makes her tick – and what she wanted to get out of the relationship."
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From here, they were able to figure out what kind of leader Shirley wanted to be. Then they fell into a rhythm of working on the specifics. In each session, they would talk about what Shirley had worked on since their last session. Then they’d make a plan for the next session. It was focused and structured around achieving the personal goals that Shirley outlined in the first few meetings. This was highly formalised, too. They kept minutes, they wrote down actions, and Ciska was very disciplined about keeping discussions on track. Shirley found this ordered approach particularly useful. "Mentoring sessions were not counselling sessions," she said, "it’s fundamentally about helping the organisation by improving my leadership skills."
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START SMALL, THEN BUILD
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While the overall goals were to do with the organisation, Ciska and Shirley ended up focussing on attributes and behaviours she could develop as an individual. This makes sense when you think about it. Leadership and influence are really about personality and behaviour. How do you influence people? How do you inspire people? How do you get people onside? The answers to these questions aren’t cut and dried. Rather, the answers have more to do with the intricacies of how someone works on a personal level.
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They worked on a myriad of topics – assertiveness, how to speak, how to make sure tricky issues are addressed properly. Ciska gave Shirley literature to read, websites to check out and other content to consume in between sessions, so that she could build on and embed what they talked about. These all formed the building blocks of the wider organisational goals – that came later. But once they’d addressed these areas for Shirley to improve at a personal level, they were able to quickly start applying the lessons they learned to the organisation. After all, when you’re managing at a chairperson level, your personal attributes and your influence on the organisation are incredibly tightly linked.
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THE RESULTS
Shirley’s now successfully leading a team of volunteers. She’s very happy with the team culture and its shared mission. She recently had a planning day where they put together a plan for the future – she was very happy with how she led that, kept it on track, and walked away with some good outcomes and action plans to make happen.
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Shirley has also become better at putting together clear processes and procedures. She put this new skill to work by putting together some really solid information, which they then used to gain funding. Shirley attributes these extra funds to the leadership, influence and big-picture thinking she learned from being mentored by Ciska.
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As for Ciska? She reckons it was a pleasure to mentor Shirley. She was a great mentee because she was willing to be open-minded, willing to examine her own behaviour, and, most importantly, willing to put in the hard work it takes to become the leader her organisation needed. Shirley’s looking forward to applying her new skills.