Leadership Skills for Sustainable Change

This month we will be featuring the Purposeful Leader Programme which is a key component of our Achates Community platform, going live in October.

Vicki Grace, our Director of Recruitment and Organisational Change has written a blog series about leadership, of which the first in the series is below:

The idea of a ‘typical’ leader for the cultural sector has been a topic of much conversation in recent years and rightly so. As a sector we have taken steps to grapple with a system which, for too long, has favoured a certain type of leader with a certain type of leadership journey. Whilst there’s no question that many of our leaders (past and present), who have followed these ‘traditional’ paths, have shaped our sector for the better in a multitude of ways and have worked hard to do so, it is also critical that we acknowledge that the sector is now facing a future for which there is no precedent and the path to leadership must be widened. 

The conversation about alternate models of and pathways to leadership is not a new one and many organisations and individuals in the sector have been successfully innovating in these ways for a long time. However, the last 5 years in particular have shone an ever-brighter spotlight on this topic from a sector wide perspective challenging the ingrained stasis that much of the sector experiences when it comes to who leads and their journey to those positions. The time has come for us to truly think differently about the structure of leadership in our sector, about who gets to lead, about what skills and experiences they bring, about what new ideas and ways of thinking they contribute. 

At Achates, we know that leaders need to be able to act as conduits for change in our organisations and for the cultural sector. We need to be able to tell the story of our organisations with integrity, be able to manage relationships (with a wide range of stakeholders) with care, generate income with stability in mind and be able to do all of this without ever losing sight of the fundamental reason our organisation exists – our purpose. 

To us, this combination of skills is found nowhere more perfectly than within those whose remit involves generating income. Those whose contribution to the sector sits within income generating departments or ways of working possess this very combination of skills and yet we are often overlooked as the ‘obvious’ pathway to leadership. 

That ends now. 

Offering a fresh approach to leadership development, The Purposeful Leader development programme is an integral strand of the Achates Community revolution launching this October. The programme has been designed to offer those in the sector who lead (or who wish to lead) a space to come together, explore key leadership issues and develop the skills and tools to develop your leadership approach. Accessed through monthly live facilitated webinars, The Purposeful Leader development programme will offer you the chance to develop your own ambitions for the sector and to develop your Leadership Manifesto centred on leading with purpose, care and resilience. 

Wherever you are on your leadership journey, The Purposeful Leader development programme will provide you with the opportunity to develop your leadership skills and knowledge to enable you to continue to change our sector for the better.

And what’s more this is also all included in an Achates Community membership for just £50 per cultural sector charity employee/ month, or £500 / year paid up front.

Our Purposeful Leader live webinars begin with an introductory session in October. To join us, sign up to Achates Community for more details.

Make sure that you don’t miss out on this chance to shape the future of our sector and sign up to the waiting list for Achates Community here.