Four themes & a rich picture

by Paul Davies & Susan Ralphs

Our second CEO and Senior Leader gathering took place on  4 June 2020, with the aim to stimulate sharing and learning across the most diverse group of leaders through this deeply challenging and remarkable period for us all.

30 leaders joined from the NHS, local government, charities, social enterprise, housing, finance, retail, construction, manufacturing, funeral services, and funding bodies. We also welcomed umbrella organisations representing wider networks, including small businesses and academic institutions. 

What emerged was a rich picture – have a look at the graphic above, which is a record of the gathering; and an energetic, gritty conversation with stories of people deeply engaged in thinking and responding to the pandemic and what it means for their organisations.

There was an awkwardness expressed too, with people many of whom had never met before, getting on and connecting enough to share and explore together with a real diversity of views and responses.

Following feedback from our first event for CEO’ on the 28 April, we shaped this session around some emerging themes in the hope that this would support participants to go deeper.

The themes, (deliberately provocative), created a structure and some challenge for the ensuing conversations:

·       The future is feminine

·       There can be no going back to business as usual

·       Collaboration has no place in a COVID world

·       The balance of power has shifted

We also ran some more open sessions, simply inviting people to ‘start from where you are’.

There is so much that we could write and talk about from the second CEO gathering, and whilst the above graphic captures some of what emerged on the day, we want to highlight just a few things that stood out for us as hosts.  

Those exploring the future is feminine mused on those qualities that have resonated locally and globally that often have made a real difference in responses to the pandemic. Relational, empathic, a deeper emotional intelligence, a willingness to pause and draw others into a more inclusive conversation. “The emphasis wasn’t just on gender but on certain qualities that we’d like like to see represented and celebrated in organisations, government and society as a whole.”

This connected with the work of another group exploring aspects of collaboration “Stay longer in the sense-making, democratise the conversation and dream more.”

And at the same time, we heard about about some practical aspirations: “I would love the next session to be about collaborative working for those working at home. “

Exploring ‘not going back” stimulated much conversation about virtual and home working and its benefits and costs, both to real human contact and mental health. “How can we hold and develop deep connection and relationship, even at a distance?” emerged as a wonderful theme for ongoing inquiry.

We heard “We need proportionate governance” as a powerful symbol for the work leaders are immersed in. And this was expressed in a conversation about risk assessment, long used as an important organisational tool but re-framed here also as a “comfort blanket.”

Conversations emerged around working with polarities – an example being between control and creativity and how the crisis had seen a whole range of responses from people and organisations as they grappled with making sense and planning in such unique times. At the same time there was an expression of courage and boldness to be more innovative and entrepreneurial, and yet for some experiencing at the same time a cynicism that this was being done “under the cover of the crisis.”

This conversation also included questions around pacing – those who were taking an organisational breath and making sense and those hungry to ‘re-imagine the future’ now, and paint the picture for themselves, organisations, communities, and the planet.

This imperative from many to learn from this pandemic response and shape our organisations to better respond to questions of climate collapse, built further on our first session together in April.

This seems to lead to question of Trust and integrity. How trust is unfolding as people step up in their new virtual ways of working and find their voice and place. And many people feeling freer to do their work and feeling trusted in doing so. Yet, this is set against wonderings about “will the hierarchy take back control?” And at a national political level there being a growing distrust of national governance and national guidance amidst an increasingly chaotic national and global context.

And with Integrity “Integrity enfranchises leaders,” and “The future will be determined a lot by what we do now and how we behave as people exit lock down”.

And importantly “opportunities for the future shaped by decisions made now.” And in fact “the future is now.”

It was exciting to experience a group of senior leaders sharing what this expression of their own personal sense of integrity means for them and how this was being practised in their organisations.

As we are seemingly moving further into a world of heightened uncertainty locally, regionally, nationally and globally, we witnessed amongst this group of senior leaders a real genuineness and open-heartedness to share learning, possibilities, dilemmas and anxieties.

There will be a further CEO and Senior Leader gathering  on 21 July and we want to shape this around the particular needs of CEO’s over the next six months to a year. At the same time we want to explore how we can continue to diversify the audience by attracting CEOs and sectors that we have yet to reach.

If you would like to hear more about this work please contact info@oasishumanrelations.org.uk