Paths to leadership series: Sarah Woolnough

In the fourth of our series of blogs by existing senior leaders, Sarah Woolnough, CEO of Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation, tells us about her path to leadership and advice to aspiring leaders.

1. To set the scene, can you give us an overview of your career to date?

I have always been really interested in how organisations and individuals achieve policy and societal change – through building strong evidence bases, campaigning, advocacy and working in partnership and collaboration. I studied Government and Comparative Politics at university and worked for two members of parliament part-time, before a brief stint in the civil service. I found my feet in the charity sector at Cancer Research UK, where I started as a policy officer but enjoyed a number of different positions during my 15 years there and eventually became Executive Director of Communications, Policy and Information.

2. Have you always wanted to be a senior leader?

No, not at all! I definitely didn’t think about that earlier on in my career. What I knew from the start is that I wanted an interesting job where I could make a positive impact. As I took on more senior roles, I really enjoyed managing others and leading teams and campaigns. And I also gained confidence. I think the real turning point was joining the Executive Board of Cancer Research UK and taking on a much broader portfolio, where the emphasis was on leading and not just using my own expertise. I found that rewarding and it spurred me on to think about other leadership roles.

I count myself lucky that I have really enjoyed all the roles I’ve had throughout my career, which was really important as I was motivated by the causes I worked on and organisations I worked for. Highlights from my time at Cancer Research UK include being seconded to the Department of Health in the early 2010s, to help write a new cancer strategy for England with the National Cancer Director, and working on the campaign for ‘plain’ cigarette packaging. The past few years have been tough for charities; Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation has seen an unprecedented drop in funding and a huge increase in demand because of the pandemic. It’s been tough but I’m just so pleased we’ve managed to pull together and support people that need us more than ever and influence real, tangible change for the millions of people living with lung disease – it’s a very rewarding feeling. 

3. Did you encounter any barriers on your path to senior leadership and, if so, how did you overcome them?

I’ve definitely had some ups and downs, particularly when I’ve felt frustrated at the pace of change or may not have agreed with certain decisions or the direction an organisation is taking. It’s really important to try to keep a sense of perspective, and to have other interests outside of work so it doesn’t become all-consuming and to try to find a positive way to work through difficult times. I’ve got four young children which brings its own challenges, the major one has been managing how I’ve felt about having a senior leadership role while bringing up young children, which has ebbed and flowed. But I’ve had good advice and worked with some great leaders, so I wouldn’t say this has been a barrier. Someone once said that I’d work and worry the same amount about any job I had so I may as well take the senior leadership job. That was good advice – don’t talk yourself out of jobs just because you have other commitments.

4. How would you describe a ‘leader’, and has this changed throughout your time in the sector?

The best leaders I’ve worked with or for have been inspiring, by setting direction and having ambition while really empowering others to deliver. I think it’s also really important to be generous in sharing knowledge and expertise and to celebrate success in an inclusive way. Over my 20 years or so in the sector, leadership has become more diverse and less ego-driven, which is definitely a good thing!

5. What advice would you give to aspiring and developing charity leaders today?

Enjoy what you do, take every opportunity to learn, ask for help and support from people you admire and recognise there will be challenging times but, as people have said to me, you often learn the most from these! I’ve also found that being a trustee of several other charities throughout my career has been a fantastic way to test and grow my leadership skills, and I'd recommend this to anyone interested in the sector. And stick with it, it’s very satisfying to be in a leadership role in the sector.

Paths to leadership series: Martin Houghton-Brown

In the third of our series of blogs by existing senior leaders, Martin Houghton-Brown, CEO of St John Ambulance, tells us about his path to leadership and advice to aspiring leaders.

1. To set the scene, can you give us an overview of your career to date?

When I was starting out working with young people and communities, which I did for the first twelve years of my career, I learned so much about the nuts and bolts of how things work. Literally, I set out the chairs, unblocked the toilets and opened up and closed down the community centre. I learned about buildings, people, finances, just how organisations work. I will never forget when the ceiling fell in on the women’s institute meeting, fortunately they had gone into the kitchen for cake when it came down! If nothing else I learned how often cake can save the day!  I learned so much and I value every bit of that, all my leadership decisions now, are made with the people who live in the community in mind, how will it affect the people who live and breathe this decision every day.  

I registered my first charity when I was 20, a club I set up to provide holiday clubs for kids in what we then called inner cities, and I have been leading smaller and larger charities ever since. Fundamentally I enjoy the excitement and challenge of leading others, it’s a real honour. 

I have had the honour of leading in lots of contexts, currently as CEO of St John Ambulance and as the volunteer Trustee Chair of Centre for Youth Impact. But I so enjoyed all my assignments, chairing the National Board of YMCA, Chief Exec of Missing People and then Depaul UK with the incredible Nightstop programme. I learned so much about leadership at The Children’s Society and through the many other charities I have worked and volunteered in over the years. 

2. Have you always wanted to be a senior leader?

Leading is hard work. Leading small organisations is hard work because there are fewer people to do the work and leading in large organisations is hard work because the many people who you have responsibility for magnify the demands and impact of every decision you make. I always enjoyed leading and so I realised quite early on, ‘If all leadership is hard work, why not work just as hard and make the biggest difference you can.’ I set out with an ambition to lead nationally and use my energy to make that national impact. Not everyone approved of my ambition, but I feel comfortable looking back and realising that I made a difference sometimes in a small way and sometimes in a bigger way at every stage of my leadership journey.  

3. Did you encounter any barriers on your path to senior leadership and, if so, how did you overcome them?

I have faced two big barriers to succeeding as a leader. The first was that I started my career in the church at a time when the majority of churches were anti-gay. I found the whole idea of coming out and being gay very difficult. To be honest I wanted to be straight, and my first marriage and three amazing children made a really good go at it. But the truth is you can’t change who you are. I was always gay and would always have ended up having to live with the reality of that. Sadly, however I hadn’t come to terms with it when I was outed for ‘having homosexual thoughts’, dismissed from my church job and sent packing with so called friends and colleagues ‘sending me to Coventry’ (literally – I ended up camping in the spare room of a kind vicar friend of mine in Coventry). What happened to me was wrong and really broke me. My career and my community work were in ruins. I had lost my house, my job, my hopes and dreams. I had nothing except my wife and children and one good friend who stood by me. 

I learned so much from this experience, and probably the most important lesson for my life and one that I would offer to any aspiring leader: You are never your career. Your career or vocation or whatever you want to call it does not define you. Your inner passion, your decisions about what next and your belief in yourself define you. I got started again at 32 with no CV to speak of and a job handing out baskets at Sainsburys. From there I rebuilt, little by little I became a better leader, not worrying about failure, because I had already failed and survived so I just kept on going. I made decision after decision to try something more, to have a go, to build. I didn’t look back, I just kept on looking forward and seeking the next opportunity. Until just four years later when I was appointed Deputy Director in a regional charity in Yorkshire. 

There is one other barrier to leadership which most of us face and that is our own resilience or lack of it. The more senior you get the more muck people throw at you. People who don’t know you say horrid things about you and quite frankly it hurts. So I invest in my resilience, I have a therapist, a coach and a mentor and together they provide me with thinking space, a place to be emotional and a place to say what I really think! Leaders need to invest in their resilience if they are to lead others because it will not all be easy. 

4. How would you describe a ‘leader’, and has this changed throughout your time in the sector?

This is easy. Imagine you go for a walk to somewhere special, and its special because when you get there you will have achieved something positive. If you get there and you arrive on your own, you are just an explorer, and nothing wrong with that. If you arrive and you have companions who have joined you on that trek and found the joys of the new destination with you, congratulations, you are a leader. 

People join you on that journey for all kinds of reasons. It does seem though that being kind, caring, enthusiastic, energetic and thoughtful goes a long way to helping people enjoy the discovery with you. In the beginning a lot of people followed me because I had bags of energy and communicated with lots of passion. But now, I hope I still have some of that, but I find as I climb bigger mountains, go on bigger adventures I need more than charisma to get me there. 

In fact now I would say the better I plan and resource the journey the more people come with me. I try and work out who is going to find the journey hard and why? I think about who will need help, who will get tired on the way and who will need encouragement.  

I also try really hard to be clear about where I am going. Because it turns out that not everyone who is around you really wants to come with you and sometimes you have to confront that and have difficult conversations about the journey ahead and who is really up for it. That’s hard but it’s a critical leadership skill. 

5. What advice would you give to aspiring and developing charity leaders today?

Leadership is like any skill. Practice for ten thousand hours and you will be good at it. Practice means you have to look at each leadership act you make and reflect, how was that, how could it have been better? None of us are born leaders, some are told they are and that boosts their confidence to make a grab for leadership but its not true. We are all formed and mainly formed by practice. 

If you haven’t already, start looking at leaders you admire and work out what you could do to be more like them. I am a mix of my Mum and Dad, my absolute hero Maeve, an off the wall Aussie I once met and my old Finance Director who showed such wisdom about finance and resources. And then a jumble of the best bits of leaders I know now from leaders I once led to people I work with now like who lead their own organisations with such courage and hard work. 

Finally, some people will offend you, hurt you, mess you around, overlook you, ignore you, tell someone else that your great idea was theirs, get promoted over you, turn their back on you and in general make life difficult for you. If you can, with dignity and grace, ignore their bad behaviour and still be magnificent, you will enjoy leadership. Because life is full of leaders who got stuck fighting battles that are not worth it. The lesson I learned from losing everything is simply this. If you don’t like me or want me for who I am, no problem, I will go and practice being the best I can be somewhere else. Thankfully St John still want me so I get to keep practicing being a leader, here, making a difference as best I can for at least today. Enjoy your leadership journey and keep on being the best version of you, you can be.  

Paths to leadership series: Jo Youle

In the second of our series of blogs by existing senior leaders, we hear from Jo Youle, CEO of Missing People on her career journey and tips for developing and future leaders. You can find Jo at @JoeyYoule.

1. To set the scene, can you give us an overview of your career to date?

I’ve followed a more unusual road and done things a different way, which as it happens is a line from the most successful song I ever wrote. 

I was flying for a few years as a songwriter and artist. Signed to a record label, writing and recording albums, touring in our band - playing pubs and the big stages, quaking in my boots behind the piano.

Little did I know that years later it would help me in my CEO role – standing on the same stages, striving to win people’s hearts and minds with stories and words. 

One of the best things I ever did, new to London aged 19, was to become a Samaritan. 

I count my lucky stars for the day I walked into the Central London Branch in Soho. I am still inspired by a set of values as near to religion as I can get – of kindness, compassion, listening, no judging – what we all need when times are tough. 

And in amongst it all I spent a fair few years at my dining room table studying for a social policy degree with the fab Open University.

And as the music died, (which sounds more dramatic than the more prosaic ‘falling out over musical differences’), I joined Missing People - the start of an amazing journey in what has always felt like a spiritual homeland. Taking calls on the Helpline, which I went on to run before leading the Services team, and now 8 years in to leading the organisation.

And I’ve been a proud trustee of the great charity Brook for young people – recently stepping down after 6 years there.

2. Have you always wanted to be a senior leader?

I remember the day the previous CEO at Missing People rang me to tell me he was going. 

And I think the conversation went like this: 

Martin:            “so where does that leave you, Jo?”

Me:                 “I don’t know, in the s***?”

Martin:           “Jo, I meant would you consider trying for the CEO role?”

Me:                 “Oh!”

I think that says it all really.

The furthest point I’d got to was thinking I was a good number 2 to the top dog. The support act if you like.

3. Did you encounter any barriers on your path to senior leadership and, if so, how did you overcome them?

I think I’d become a paid up member of the imposter syndrome club and I didn’t even know it. 

It took me a lot of manoeuvring in my own mind to get me there, a tale told in my Tedx Talk Dare Yourself

I’ve trained to be a coach now, with the marvellous Meyler Campbell after experiencing the magic of coaching myself. And this self-doubt, particularly amongst women, is an area I’ve noticed coming up lots. 

I’m hoping I can play a part in helping others overcome it too because we need more than the usual suspects to lead.

4. How would you describe a ‘leader’, and has this changed throughout your time in the sector?

Leaders are people that take you to a place you may not have got to on your own. 

They chorale the ideas and inspirations of others, of teams, of organisations into a story.

They are the amplifier. The person prepared to just bloody well stand up and sing the song.

One of my favourite Ted talks is this one because it helps to see that we needs leaders of all styles, of all backgrounds. 

5. What advice would you give to aspiring and developing charity leaders today? 

To keep asking if what got you here, will get you to where you want to be.

As someone prone to thinking (sometimes too long) before doing, I’m drawn to Herminia Ibarra’s mantra in her book ‘Working Identity’- to ‘act your way into new ways of thinking’, versus ‘think your way into new ways of acting.’ 

To remember, we are capable of learning no matter what age we are. Like Feldman-Barrett explains in ‘How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life Of The Brain’, our “wiring is not static”. We can learn new things, learn to predict differently and change future outcomes.  

And it can be hard to keep stepping up, like learning to play a musical instrument: clumsy at first but with time and practice there’ll be moments when it feels like the song is playing itself.

Photo credit: JSR Agency

Paths to leadership series: Dr Nicola-Sharp-Jeffs OBE

In the first of our series of blogs by existing senior leaders, Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE, CEO of charity Surviving Economic Abuse, shares her path to leadership and reflections on what is to be a leader. You can find Nicola at @nicolajanesharp.

1.     To set the scene, can you give us an overview of your career to date?

My background is in policy research and advocacy, initially in the field of international development and then within the women’s sector with a focus on addressing violence against women and girls.

I followed a linear career progression path for 10 years. My first ‘proper’ role was as a Policy Researcher at Plan International before progressing on to Policy and Advocacy Advisor. I moved to Refuge as Policy Manager and then Head of Policy and Parliamentary Affairs. After this I moved into the role of Director of Policy and Advocacy at Missing People.

The next logical step would have been a CEO role. However, I realised that I preferred ‘doing’ to ‘overseeing’ - I was often envious of what my team was up to and wanted to get stuck in myself! I also realised that my passion was tackling violence against women and girls, an issue I had stepped away from in my Director role.

I was undertaking a part-time doctorate and so chose to pursue an academic career for 5 years, working within the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU) at London Metropolitan University. My role as Research Fellow enabled me to focus on economic abuse as a particular form of violence against women and girls – an issue that I had first researched when I undertook an MA at the Unit back at the start of my Refuge career.

In 2016 I was made a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow and travelled to the US and Australia to explore innovative responses to economic abuse. It was my determination to ensure that women in the UK have access to the same responses that led me to establish the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) in 2017. Over the past four years I have constantly readjusted my position within the charity – from being the only paid employee to now leading a team of over 20 women. In 2020, I was named joint-winner of the Rising Chief Executive award by Third Sector magazine.

I continue to develop my academic career through my positions as Emeritus Research Fellow at CWASU and Visiting Senior Fellow in Social Policy at the School of Law and Social Sciences, University of Suffolk.

2.     Have you always wanted to be a senior leader?

The honest answer to this question is no – I never set out to be a leader and took a conscious decision not to progress along a senior leadership career path. In 2018 I took part in the Emerging Leaders programme run by Windsor Leadership and described myself as a ‘reluctant’ leader!

3.     Did you encounter any barriers on your path to senior leadership and, if so, how did you overcome them?

When I was following the linear leadership career path, the biggest challenge was limited opportunity for internal progression. This meant being flexible and willing to move between organisations to advance my career.

The biggest challenge since establishing SEA and becoming its CEO has been feeling comfortable within this role as it is not one that I set out to take on. My syndicate group within the Emerging Leaders programme with Windsor Leadership helped me recognise that my sense of purpose comes from championing a cause and making a difference by bringing about the change I want to see.

I focus now on channelling my passion and sense of purpose into being a ‘leader in the field’ and enthusing others to want to be part of that change. I seek to link my goal of empowering women into my leadership style.

4.     How would you describe a ‘leader’, and has this changed throughout your time in the sector?

I used to think that being a ‘good’ leader was focusing on my weaknesses to the exclusion of developing my strengths. I have come to the realisation that leadership is about developing a balanced team - getting others to ‘coalesce’ around you - so that we lead together.

Another realisation is that it is ok to be an introvert and a leader. I am often in the position of having to do things outside of my comfort zone such as speaking out in front of large groups. I recognise now that I put additional energy into those activities which I find difficult, but which I know are necessary. As such I consciously monitor and manage my energy levels, so that I know when they are flagging, and I need to re-energise.

5.     What advice would you give to aspiring and developing charity leaders today? 

I aspire to evolve and achieve my potential. I believe that by living to your full potential, you will not only change your world, but you will also change the world around you.

Trust your intuition and be courageous. The braver I am, the more successful I am in bringing about the change I want to see.

I love what I do, and it permeates my life in a way that is highly rewarding; however, it is also important to maintain a sense of perspective - not to sacrifice the other things that are important to you along the way.

Finally, always look to the future and consider where you want to be in five years from now. How can you maintain your sense of purpose and what does that look like in relation to new challenges and ambitions?