Welcome to Lead On – the newsletter from Clore Leadership, which seeks to explore, stimulate and share perspectives on the issues currently impacting the leadership of culture. Spring is most definitely here! The determination of those Spring flowers to break-through the earth and into view, cannot but encourage some keen anticipation, even optimism, for what might lie ahead. Will the pleasant warmth of recent days (at least in the UK) herald a warm Summer? Will the clear blue skies maintain their clarity, and support us to dream further, higher and longer once more? For it has been the toughest of years, where we have experienced tragedy, shared calamity, and learnt to hold room for doubt and uncertainty, in even the most (previously) secure of plans. The human spirit wills us forward. Back on that beast, once a horse, now not so distinct… but it moves, and so do we. We keep going. On to a new chapter of being and learning to be. Learning to navigate with reduced tools and depleted resources. Not yet the ‘resilience’ so eagerly sought. Not yet the solutions for setting in stone. Rather, we explore and experiment to seeing what lands well. What resonates against this current backdrop, itself somewhat fluid and unfixed. Working with creativity gives us courage to imagine new possibilities for a post-pandemic, post-lockdown, with-Covid world. We are learning to be adaptive - to blend, to blur and mix-up our lives – ‘working’ from home, ‘commuting’ to the lounge and holding ‘virtual coffee’ meetings in office/kitchens. Flexibility is key. Hybridity is practical. And inclusion essential. So this Spring, we encourage you to find your flex and be creatively adaptive. It will take time to find the workable solutions for hybridity and inclusion that demonstrate that we have learnt from the pandemic, and are not simply stepping back to the old ways that did not serve us equally well. How might we do things differently? In this issue of Lead On, we highlight some emerging thinking that offers different ways forward. I will always treasure those first days with our Autumn 2021 cohorts after 1.5 years of working online, and Clore Leadership Head of Programmes, Kate Atkinson, shares how, through planning, trial and error, hybrid-learning emerged as our new ‘go to’ model for residential delivery – a central feature of our offer until the pandemic stopped us in our tracks. Read on to explore some insights and suggestions for adapting to working in different ways. Kindness and compassion have pushed their way up the hierarchy of characteristics for leadership in current times and we are responding with new learning opportunities: We will be working with respected leaders Michael Day and Anne Murch alongside a cohort of Clore Fellows to pilot ‘Leading with Compassion’ exploring ways to help build and refresh options for emotional and interpersonal resilience at a time of extraordinary challenge for leaders. Coming soon, we are also commissioning leadership professionals Vyla Rollins and Kathryn Gordon to introduce ‘Leading Systemic Change’ a dynamic, blended learning programme to support leaders and organisations to steer their organisations against a backdrop of constant change. Do sign up to our mailing list to be the first to receive full details... Times, they are a-changing. Society is a-changing. Let culture lead the way. Hilary Carty, Executive Director, Clore Leadership
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