The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has warned that a “funding gap” for schemes backed by European Social Fund (ESF) cash could force providers to lay-off staff and close training centres.
Stewart Segal (pictured), AELP chief executive, said “we are almost certainly looking at a funding gap” between when a number of ESF contracts with providers were set to end on July 31 and the agreement of new funding arrangements.
Current contracts, managed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and for example involving training schemes to improve skills of existing employees at small companies and the unemployed, have been in place since 2007 and new ones would run until 2020.
An AELP spokesperson said it was expecting a “major delay” with the granting of new ESF contracts that “will mean a real gap in provision for those most needing support, such as hard to help young people and the long-term unemployed.”
“It will also mean that training providers delivering these programmes will have a major issue and will have to reduce costs including specialist staff and premises,” he added.
It comes as Linda Dean, managing director of Sheffield-based Intraining (which is part of the NCG group), said on Thursday (April 23) that the work-based learning provider could be forced to shed 120 jobs because of “ESF-funded contracts including Skills Support for the Workforce and Skills Support for the Unemployed which are ending”.
A European Commission spokesperson said the new round of ESF contracts, which it is understood were originally supposed to be agreed for the UK by the end of last year, “needed to be carried over for adoption in 2015″. She said the” negotiation process is progressing”.
It comes after FE Week exclusively revealed in March that the European Commission had forced the government into a climbdown over plans to hand control of nearly £1bn of ESF cash to the 39 Leps.
It followed months of negotiations that AELP suspects held up the overall tendering process for ESF contracts.
The SFA and DWP both declined to comment on what may have caused delays with tendering for and agreeing the new ESF contracts.
But an SFA spokesperson said: “The SFA continues to work with Leps and the ESF managing authority on ESF programme delivery.”
A DWP spokesman said: “There will be no gap in funding. We have already started the 2014-20 programme, with 19 schemes worth more than £200m.”
However, he declined to comment when asked by FE Week to confirm whether new contracts would be granted to those 19 schemes, or any other ESF projects run by DWP, before
the end of July.
An employer provider’s status as an apprenticeship Trailblazer was today in the balance after Ofsted found it had “no significant strengths” and issued it with grade four ratings across the board.
Priory Central Services, which runs the national medical chain that includes London’s Priory rehabilitation centre famously attended by an array of celebrities, offers healthcare training and apprenticeships to 377 learners.
It is also part of the healthcare employers’ Trailblazer group designing new nursing apprenticeship standards.
But despite Ofsted’s damning verdict neither the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) nor the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) could say if it would be expelled from the group, while the future of its £600k SFA contract was also uncertain.
Priory itself was also unable to guarantee its continued involvement with the Trailblazer programme.
The Ofsted report, published on Friday, April 17, following the inspection last month, told how “the large majority of apprentices do not complete their framework successfully”.
Inspectors added: “Trainers are not sufficiently ambitious for apprentices; they plan to teach only to the minimum standard.” Priory was previously inspected in 2013, when it was deemed to require improvement. A Priory spokesperson said: “A robust and highly-focused action plan, in response to Ofsted’s report, is already in place. We are committed to — and are investing heavily in — the development of our staff.” She added the company’s learning and development arm was under new leadership. However, she declined to comment on whether the company would remain a Trailblazer.
A BIS spokesperson said it had “alerted” the health Trailblazer group’s chair to Priory’s Ofsted result. However, she said: “It is a matter for the healthcare Trailblazer and its chair to determine which organisations are invited to support the development of its standards and assessment plans.”
FE Week was unable to contact the chair of healthcare Trailblazer group, which includes Health Education England and Bupa UK.
An SFA spokesperson declined to comment on Priory’s Trailblazer involvement, and was also unable to say whether Priory’s training contract would be terminated. “The SFA is considering the Priory Central Services’ Ofsted report in line with its intervention strategy,” she said.
The news comes as the SFA confirmed Leicester-based Qdos Training was facing contract termination over a grade four rating this month.
Its Ofsted report noted the previously grade two-rated independent learning provider had “good success rates,” but it was awarded a grade four because criminal checks on staff with regular unsupervised access to learners under 18 had not been carried out. It also got a grade two for outcomes for learners, three for quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and four for effectiveness of leadership and management.
However, FE Week understands it is hoping to retain its SFA contract by proving, before the three-month notice of contract termination is up, that it meets the legal requirements against which it failed.
Qdos managing director Elena Ryabusha told FE Week: “Qdos has raised several issues with Ofsted regarding its concerns about our safeguarding arrangements…The concerns identified related to two unrelated incidents, which occurred as a result of individual oversights rather than systemic failures, where Qdos has taken remedial action as necessary.”
Former Lincoln College principal of 14 years John Allen (pictured above left) has taken over from under fire New College Stamford principal April Carrol (pictured above right).
Ms Carrol had been hit with two votes of no confidence from staff while trying to implement new contracts that included extending the college year from 33 to 36 weeks.
The college, which is awaiting publication of the result of its Ofsted inspection late last month, last week told FE Week she had since taken leave, but declined to deny speculation she had been suspended. However, college governors’ chair Alison Grant said Ms Carrol, who was appointed to the post in July, was being replaced while on leave by Mr Allen, who stood down as principal of grade one-rated Lincoln College at the end of 2013/14.
Ms Grant said Ms Carrol was on “extended leave”. She said: “Due to the anticipated length of the absence [of Ms Carrol], and the lack of a permanent senior leadership team (SLT), the corporation felt it would be prudent to appoint an external interim principal.
“To this end we looked for an individual with experience who would be able to step in and continue the work which April has started, to continue to work to appoint a permanent SLT, to draft a post Ofsted plan of action and to continue to assess progress. I am pleased to announce that John Allen has accepted the interim principal post.”
A college spokesperson subsequently declined to comment on how long Mr Allen, who it is understood started in the post on Tuesday (April 21), would be in the post or whether Ms Carrol would be returning.
It comes after staff, including University and College Union (UCU), Unison and non-union members, passed two votes of no confidence in Ms Carrol. A UCU spokesperson said that around 80 members of staff passed the first no confidence vote through a show of hands during a meeting on March 23. He added that 123 employees then backed a second motion of no confidence in an online vote organised by the UCU a fortnight ago.
He claimed that the votes were called because Ms Carrol would not negotiate with the unions over her new contract plans. But he told FE Week: “We are pleased there is leadership in place at the college for the sake of students and staff.”
The college spokesperson said that staff had been consulted over the proposed changes to their contracts that were needed to “ensure the college remains in a sustainable financial position”.
Concern is growing in the FE sector that plans for an FE Chartered Status quality mark have “stalled” with no mention of the scheme in party manifestos and little in the way of news on its progress.
Plans, originally drawn up by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), for the Royal seal of approval to be granted to high-achieving FE institutions were revealed in July 2012.
It was almost another year before the appointment of Tory peer Lord Lingfield (pictured) as chair of the Institution for Further Education (IFE), a not-for-profit company set up to launch the quality mark.
In March 2014 he told FE Week he expected “negotiations to be completed within months” that would allow for the quality mark to be launched. An FE Week survey on the mark was carried out in May last year unveiling concern it could simply “sink without trace,” while further meetings were set to take place the following month. But the launch is yet to take place, and it is understood that an IFE petition for Chartered Status is yet to be considered by a special Privy Council committee, while IFE chief executive Ed Quilty told FE Week he “would not expect to see any further movement on this until the other side of the general election”.
Matt Atkinson, principal of City of Bath College, who took part in the FE Week survey on the scheme last year, said: “To be honest I had completely forgotten about this and the fact that the sector has not been banging down the front door of BIS asking for its swift development and implementation should be taken as an indication of how it is viewed.
“The fact that the development of Chartered Status has stalled somewhat is a reflection of just how important it is to both government and the sector.”
Verity Hancock, principal of Leicester College, who also took part in the survey, said: “While we’ve been generally supportive of the idea of Chartered Status it seems as if this is being pushed further and further away.”
She warned that the “environment” now facing FE providers was much more “challenging” than when Chartered Status was first proposed. “We see little immediate prospect of that abating, so there is a real question as to how willing colleges would be
to engage in an application process if there
are additional costs or few obvious benefits,” she added.
The lack of progress comes despite a BIS competition in conjunction with FE Week to design a Chartered Status logo, with former Skills Minister Matthew Hancock meeting winner and then-24-year-old Manchester College graphic design student Lisa Cassidy in March 2013.
Dr Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, said “a natural degree of scepticism has crept in” over the scheme. “It is telling that no political parties make reference to the idea in their manifestos, and I wonder whether time is not on its side,” she said.
A BIS spokesperson said: “We are satisfied with current progress in this matter.”
The newly-elected National Union of Students (NUS) vice president for FE Shakira Martin (pictured above left) has told of her hopes to boost the sector’s learner engagement and be an inspiration to minority groups during her tenure.
The 26-year-old Lewisham Southwark College students’ union president spoke exclusively to FE Week after she secured 141 votes — 86 more than her nearest rival Amy Smith, from Sheffield College — at the NUS national conference, in Liverpool, on Wednesday (April 22).
Ms Martin, who is training to be a teacher, said she wanted more learners from colleges and independent learning providers to become more involved with the NUS.
“Students from FE make up around 4.1m of the 7m NUS membership, but that it is not reflected on the national stage,” she said. “Only around 250 of the 895 delegates at our conference were from FE, which shows why we’re underrepresented.”
She added: “I’m proud to have been elected. The whole reason that I ran for this post was to help push down the barriers for other people from similar backgrounds.
“As a black, working class woman and single mother, I have seen so many talented people from my community who don’t get anywhere because they haven’t got the confidence. If seeing me achieve this inspires all sorts of different minority groups then that would be great.”
Her election came after Megan Dunn (pictured above right), aged 24, the current vice president for higher education, won an earlier election with 413 votes, which was 211 more than rival Beth Redmond, to become the new national president of the NUS. Both winners will take up their full-time, paid sabbatical posts in July. Ms Martin replaces Joe Vinson and Ms Dunn replaces Toni Pearce.
Ms Martin said she planned to work with other sector representative groups to fight FE funding cuts, including 24 per cent to the non-apprenticeship part of the adults skills budget, for 2015/16. “I want to form a broad coalition, with students joining with the Association of Colleges, 157 Group, the Education and Training Foundation and other powerful FE representative bodies to campaign against the cuts,” she said.
“At the moment everyone is just accepting it without a fight, but if we don’t have increased funding then there won’t be an FE sector apart from apprenticeships. I love apprenticeships, they are a great route to employment and I plan to campaign for an increase in the apprenticeship minimum wage, so it isn’t an excuse to some companies for cheap labour, but there is a lot more important training that FE does that is now under threat.”
Ms Dunn said she planned to “build a movement around a vision for apprentices not just with a rise in the minimum wage but with a living wage”. “The end of the false choice between FE and higher education — with the focus on how someone wants to learn and what they want to study rather than what they can afford or what they are told — is worthwhile,” she added.
Key conference motions
Of the 38 FE-related motions that went before NUS conference, vice president for FE-elect Shakira Martin said the most important focused on fighting FE funding cuts, restoring the education maintenance allowance (EMA) and restoring free education.
She said that she was pleased that all three were passed by delegates.
Motion 207 stated that “the government needs to reverse all cuts to FE and instead provide a well publicly-funded FE which is accessible for all”.
It also resolved that the NUS should “campaign nationally to restore all FE funding cut since 2009 and for yearly real terms increases”.
Motion 211 stated that “it doesn’t make sense to fight for free education in higher education but not FE”.
It called for NUS to “campaign for free education funded by taxing the rich for all students in FE and higher education.”
Motion 303a stated that “EMA was a lifeline to thousands of students that, in England, was cruelly scrapped by the government in 2010”.
Payments of up to £30 a-week used to be given through EMA to students from low-income households. The motion called on the NUS to “launch a major national campaign to bring back EMA”.
A month after the launch of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ‘dual mandate’ consultation on the future of FE and Mick Fletcher reflects on what the hefty 90-page document presents.
It is a measure of how far our expectations of BIS have sunk that a deeply flawed paper such as the consultation on a ‘dual mandate’ has received such a positive reception.
The reason is obvious; after years in which the answer to every issue in vocational education has been more apprenticeships the FE sector is pathetically grateful to be given any mandate at all; offered two they think Christmas has come early. On closer examination however the paper is not only confused but dangerous.
The confusion starts in the title. Having ascribed the dual mandate to adult vocational education, and decided early on that one part of that mandate is higher vocational education all that is left is lower vocational education. That would seem trite however so the lower level stuff is wrapped up as ‘second chance ’. Unfortunately any reasonable definition of second chance goes far beyond the confines of vocational education as do many of the examples in the document. Indeed some, though clearly valuable like liberal adult education, are neither vocational nor much to do with second chance.
We need to ask why BIS couldn’t bring itself to think about mandates for adult education as whole which could have resolved this definitional problem: it was probably because it shows there should be far more mandates than two.
Higher vocational education, one part of the dual mandate, is an area where colleges have a proud track record and could do more
Higher vocational education (HVE), one part of the dual mandate, is an area where colleges have a proud track record and could do more. The implication in the document however appears to be that the development of HVE should come about through a redirection of adult FE. Surely it should come about through a redirection of higher education.
The resources devoted to higher education are many times larger than those remaining in the adult FE budget, even excluding the £5bn or so spent on university research.
The BIS budget to support higher education teaching is almost £9bn even though most higher education teaching is funded by student fees. Higher education student maintenance amounts to around £5bn compared with £0.2bn in adult FE.
Not only is there far more scope for developing HVE from within the higher education budget, but colleges should strongly reject the implication that the shortfall in higher vocational education compared with some other countries is due to misplaced priorities in the FE sector.
It is largely due to the very generous treatment of young full time undergraduates in universities compared with all other modes of FE and higher education. Colleges should be keen to help develop HVE, but not at the expense of existing FE programmes and not on the currently unlevelled playing field that obtains.
BIS is also concerned about the second part of the mandate; what it brigades as ‘second chance education’ for adults. Unlike providers however, who would see lack of resource and recognition as the major problems, BIS is concerned about the nature of the market. It wishes to explore how new providers might be brought into the market, how competition might be increased and how commissioning might be developed. BIS looks to pilot a model which would involve prime contractors bidding to deliver a limited range of employment-related outputs specified by commissioning partners.
The experience of programmes such as OLASS, the Work Programme or Skills Support for the Workforce which follow such a model demonstrates its fundamental weakness.
Provision for vulnerable learners is best safeguarded by working with providers that are known and trusted locally, that serve as ‘anchor institutions’ for communities and are committed to adult education for the long term.
The theoretical advantages of sharper competition would be more than offset by the complexity of specifying appropriate outputs, the bureaucracy and inflexibility inherent in public sector procurement processes and the gaming behaviour associated with a manipulative rather than a trust relationship with providers.
The old saying is ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’. Beware of BIS bearing mandates.
Last week, FE Week revealed the best and worst success rates performers for classroom-based provision in 2013/14 — and this week it’s the turn of apprenticeships, writes
Rebecca Cooney.
As her heart raced, her mouth dried and her imagination ran wild with the tragic scenes that could lay ahead after reports of a gunman on campus, Sam Parrett was calmed by the wise words of her then-principal.
“No matter how much you’re panicking inside, all the people in that building are panicking much, much more so our job is to keep everybody calm, keep the show on the road, make sure the students become safe, and that the police take away the person with the gun,” she was told by then-Plymouth College principal Bill Grady.
Parrett with, from left, sons, Greg and Ollie at a college award ceremony in December 2014
Parrett was his vice principal at the time — around 10 years ago — and together they were responding to news a student had brought a gun to college and shot another student.
“I was like ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?’ and I got into real panic mode,” she explains.
Thankfully, it turned out no student had been shot, while the gunman was swiftly arrested.
However, those wise words in time of extreme stress have stayed with Parrett, principal of Bromley College, in South East London.
“You just learn from that, that so much of your job running a college is to keep the show on the road — whatever it is that’s going on outside,” says 44-year-old Parrett.
“You have to decipher in your own mind which are the policies which are going to impact on you, which aren’t, which are opportunities, which are threats and keep your organisation stable.”
You have to decipher in your own mind which are the policies which are going to impact on you
The mother-of-two tells me this while sitting in the college’s plush new training restaurant — itself perhaps testament to her belief in differentiating between challenges and opportunities.
The restaurant is part of a bid to revamp the Orpington campus and make the most of the town centre regeneration — but it’s also the result of a surprise announcement Parrett faced on her second day as principal of Bromley in 2010.
“The principal of Orpington College came to see me and said Orpington was a million and a half in the red, its numbers were falling and the governors had instructed him to find a merger partner,” she says.
“So in that first year where you’re on probation and you’re trying to make a go of being in your first principal’s job, I also had a merger to deal with.”
Parrett, aged one, with her mother Jackie in 1971
And the restaurant development, says Parrett, was part of cementing that merger.
“I decided we needed to create a focus for Orpington so the staff felt we were investing in Orpington — it wasn’t a takeover or about running it down and then closing this site down,” she said.
At the time of the interview, the restaurant had only been open four weeks, and was staffed by nervous 14-year-old Careers College students — but already it was full and attracting people from outside the college.
Parrett’s own education became something of a “cornerstone” for her, she says, a constant when her father Phil’s job as a salesman meant she had lived in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Gloucestershire and North Wales by the time she was 11, when the family settled in Dorset.
Her parents’ work ethic (her mum Jackie was a sales rep for Pedigree dog food) was passed on to Parrett, who passed her grade eight flute exam — equivalent to a level three qualification — by the time she was 12.
From left: Parrett’s son Greg, Parrett, husband David and son Ollie at Christmas
However, her A-level results were lower than predicted — thanks, she says, to TV heartthrob Jason Donovan.
“I was doing my GCSEs and A-levels in the first three years of Neighbours,” she explains.
“And I used to run home from sixth form at lunch to watch it, and I never went back afterwards.
“So my A-levels weren’t quite where I wanted them to be so I didn’t go to my first choice university and life began — at Kingston, rather than Warwick.”
However, she says, she should probably thank Mr Donavon, as alongside her sociology degree, she carried on her retail career at Kingston’s newly-opened John Lewis.
By the time she’d finished university and a postgraduate diploma in HR the recession had hit and there were no HR jobs available.
But in her job at John Lewis she had progressed to become a staff trainer and so was able to get a part-time job as an assessor in retail in the early days of NVQs for private provider Link Training.
So much of your job running a college is to keep the show on the road — whatever it is that’s going on outside
“So none of my education was at all relevant — but because I’d done this part time job for six years, I had a lot of experience in the retail sector,” she says.
After three years at Link as a regional manager in Berkshire, she was asked by the local training and enterprise council to help pilot the new modern apprenticeships.
Surprisingly, the work was not a million miles away from the focus of today’s apprenticeships reform, she says.
“I think that’s always been the case that apprenticeships are employer-led,” she says.
“Even right back in the early days, we would go out and meet with employers and you had the opportunity to design a local framework and that’s exactly what we were doing 20 years ago.”
The pilots were successful — but Parrett felt she was “in an ivory tower telling people how to do it, which just wasn’t me”.
So in 1997, Parrett walked into an FE college for the first time as a business development manager for work-based learning at Bracknell and Wokingham College, and within six years become a vice principal before heading to the Association of South Eastern Colleges.
Parrett with sons, from left, Greg and Ollie at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in 2014
From there, she was told she needed more experience in colleges if she wanted to be a principal and was pointed in the direction of Plymouth College, where, she was told, the principal would be able to mentor her.
When a job came up, she applied and was successful — but in between getting the role and starting, the college was slapped with an Ofsted grade four, prompting the principal to leave.
Experienced college troubleshooter Mr Grady was drafted in part time, but the rest of the time Parrett and her fellow vice principal were left holding the reins, an experience she describes as “career defining”.
But after the aforementioned gun incident, Parrett began to look for a college to call her own.
“I went for a job at another college and got down to the last two but wasn’t chosen,” she says.
“And the recruitment agent said, ‘Don’t worry Sam, you get the college which you deserve in my experience — and I’ve got a college up which I think is the right one for you.’”
What makes Bromley College right for Parrett, she says, is its connection with the community.
Parrett in fancy dress as a flower fairy in 1974
“The principal who left Plymouth College just after I arrived said to me: ‘Don’t live within 30 miles of the college — you won’t be able to into Sainsbury’s on Saturday without a student serving you or everybody knowing your business’,” Parrett tells me.
“And I remember thinking ‘How weird — why would you want to live that far away from the college and the community that you’re working with?’
“And I made up my mind that that wasn’t me really — I live 400 yards from the Bromley campus.”
She adds: “When I talk to my colleagues in the sector there are principals who go round to lots of different colleges, stay for five years and then move on — and then there are others who stay somewhere for 15 years and they get it to outstanding.”
And there seems to be little doubt in Parrett’s mind that Bromley is where she’ll stay.
“I fit here in Bromley,” she says.
It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
It’s always the latest one that I’m reading — at the moment its Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor. It’s all about his leadership style and you’d think there could be nothing new written about that but it’s got the Boris Johnson insight and his interpretation so it’s really an interesting read
Parrett at a college award ceremony in December 2014
What do you do to switch off from work?
Family stuff because I work really long hours so I rarely see my kids during the week, so we go to the gym, kids’ yoga and keep fit tennis. And I’m doing a PhD in my spare time
What’s your pet hate?
Jobsworths — “computer says no” people. I come across far too many of those. And also people who say “that’ll never work”, who aren’t open to trying new things
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
Gary Barlow, not only because I am of the right era to be a massive Take That fan, but also I had a stillborn baby about three years ago and he went through a similar thing at the same time and he wrote this lovely song called Let Me Go. And [renowned crime writer] Martina Cole — she’s been a really great advocate of the Bromley Children’s University work we’re doing with children here
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I always thought I was going to be a social worker because I was one of those kids at school who looked after everybody
Having attended a two-day leadership workshop with Professor Marty Linsky, of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Marie-Thérèse McGivern passes on the key lessons and messages she picked up.
I first came across Professor Marty Linsky when I read Leadership on the Line, a
book he co-authored with Ronald Heifetz around 2002.
At that time I worked in local government and was grappling with creating a new vision for the city of Belfast as we turned from conflict and set out to create a new and forward looking city.
I was attracted by one of the opening lines — ‘to lead is to live dangerously’ — which definitely had resonance for the city I was working in then.
Fast forward to the present and I find myself as a college principal living in times of change again, an experience increasingly shared by many like me across the UK.
It is clear to me that what started as ‘austerity’ has now become a paradigm shift in what we recognise as public service.
The question for all of us as public servants is how we can continue to transform people’s lives for the better, which is surely why we turn up every day, while also trying to create the sustainable resource base to continue doing the work.
It is clear to me that what started as ‘austerity’ has now become a paradigm shift in what we recognise as public service
What is clear is that the old givens are going and we will need to find new ways to truly change the world for the better.
We are in the business of changing ‘hearts and minds’ more than just systems.
So, when the 157 Group managed to secure two days’ of Professor Linsky’s time as part of our challenging leadership programme, I was delighted to participate.
And it was worth every minute of the two days spent with more than 30 other passionate colleagues as we sought, against many odds, to keep open the bridge to opportunity and life enhancement that FE offers.
We were introduced to the concept of Adaptive Leadership — the premise of which is that many of the challenges that we face cannot be solved with purely ‘technical’ solutions as they may have been in the past.
The pace of change is now such that many of our obstacles are complex and interrelated and require more flexible and adaptive approaches.
What was clear from the beginning of the workshop was that we were not there to learn some new techniques for heroic leadership.
Professor Linsky made it clear that the capacity for leadership is everywhere and lies with everyone, even in the most mundane of situations.
While we did pick up many tools during the two days, what really enhanced the experience for me was the space to explore from a distance how we could assist leadership in all parts of our own organisations.
Perhaps most powerful was the notion of ‘getting on the balcony’.
This is a conscious decision to actively ‘stand back’, to watch the action, to notice what exactly is going on and, thereby, to get a true perspective.
It sounds deceptively simple but, in the cut and thrust of what many in FE are going through presently, it seems like a luxury to just stop and check.
It’s a practice I am determined to embrace.
There were many ‘a-ha’ moments and the ability to share with other FE-ers built a tremendous solidarity that was at times very emotional as we worked through our own particular challenges with the assistance of Professor Linsky, Mary Joyce and some of the finest practitioners and thinkers in the sector.
Linsky finishes his book with these words: ‘Opportunities for leadership are available to you and to us every day.
‘But putting yourself on the line is difficult work for the dangers are real.
Yet the work has nobility and the benefits for you and those around you are beyond measure.
‘The world needs you.’
Two days with Professor Linsky has left me reinvigorated, determined to unlock adaptive leadership in others and, perhaps, more ready to live in dangerous times.
