Bath Consultancy Group has recently worked very successfully in the further education sector helping colleges improve their leadership to transform performance. We have noticed that teachers are under increasing pressure to make management decisions amidst a policy labyrinth.

Danny Chesterman has been instrumental in raising awareness of the challenges faced by Further Education colleges. He has contributed to Sir Adrian Webb's report on the policy confusions in the FE sector and has recently led a seminar with senior leaders on policy and leadership. Danny draws on his experience working with government departments, local authorities and within three further education colleges in recent months.

Even though there is an economic crisis, the principles of business success remain the same:

• Strategies need to be developed that align current action with the organisation's purpose
• People need to be clear about what's needed and energised to make it happen
• Change processes must be integrated and implemented quickly

The difference, and the ultimate test for organisations during these times, is how leaders themselves approach the recession.

This paper prepared by the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL) provides an executive summary of ‘Leadership in FE: Managing Complexity', a report authored for CEL by Sir Adrian Webb, an academic and adviser to the Welsh Assembly Government and former vice-chancellor of the University of Glamorgan. Sir Adrian Webb produced a review into further education in Wales which was published in December 2007.

Dowload Executive Summary:  FE Leadership Amid Complexity Exec Summary 102 Kb

Download full report:  FE Leadership Amid Complexity - Seminar Report 196 Kb

(By Chris Smith, Principal Consultant, Bath Consultancy Group)

Leadership is about relationships not just simply the qualities of the successful leader.  There are many books and articles about leadership often offering a post-event explanation for what individual leaders achieved. 

While hindsight is enlightening these books tend to focus on the personal qualities and strengths of the leader and how they personally made the difference.  While they typically offer part truths and helpful insights, such recipes for success offer little practical value because leadership is always contextual.  We need to understand about more than just the thinking and actions of the leader to complete the picture. 

    Download:  Strategic Leadership 112 Kb

Today’s lifestyle involves significant risks to personal health and organisational performance where long hours, high stress, limited time for relaxation or exercise, damaging eating and drinking habits and frequent periods away from home are commonplace.  Leaders are increasingly conscious of poor management practices and anxious to avoid potentially costly and high profile court cases.

High on the corporate agenda remains the need to engage talent and be seen as an attractive and socially responsible employer in a highly competitive market for skills, as well as the commercial need to reduce sickness absence often attributed to stress and anxiety at work.

The focus of this work is on keeping pressure positive and creating climates where innovation and high performance are more likely to thrive.  Fit and healthy executives feel better about themselves, are more astute and energetic and better able to attend to key relationships including clients, other stakeholders and direct reports in order to contribute to their organisation’s performance.

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No one can dispute the fact that the current UK Government has invested substantially in leadership development.  We have seen the establishment of leadership academies in all the main areas of the public service - albeit with widely varying funding regimes. 

But there has been too much investment in individual leaders as if they are separate and free agents rather than a participant in a web of complex relationships; and too much leadership development in abstract, rather than sited in the heat of the struggle with a particular issue.

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Women's participation in leadership positions is back in the news again.  On the one hand, Gordon Brown is losing women from his Cabinet amidst allegations that Westminster still behaves like a gentleman's club.  On the other hand, Stuart Rose's piece in the Observer argues that women have never had it so good. And for the first time there are more women Senators than men, in the US legislature.  So what does the evidence say...?  Well, it's a mixed and complex picture.  Without a doubt, persistent and determined actions to improve women's participation in the workforce have seen some success, although the position of women at the ‘top of the shop' is still woefully behind male colleagues.  It is over 30 years since the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act and the statistics are revealing. 

Looking at the FTSE 100:

• 10.5% of CEOs are women,

• 33% of managers are women

• 14% of Directors are women

The Public sector looks a little better: women make up:

• 45% CEOs of Third Sector organisations

• 28% CEOs in the NHS

• 25% Top tier Civil Service

• 17% Local Authority CEOs

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Moving to a new position within an organisation can provide huge challenges to senior leaders. Within 100 days they must assimilate a new job, a new team, make an impact and review the business strategy. New leaders are expected to hit the ground running, and the cost of not doing so can be huge, in terms of direct impact on the business when anappointment is not successful and to the individual in terms of their career.

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