Christopher Pietroni is joined by Kirsty McNeill, Executive Director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns at Save the Children.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:08
Speaker 1
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Leadership Exchange Podcast. With me, your host, Christopher Petrone. In this podcast, we ask whether we have the right kind of leadership for the challenges we're facing or whether it needs to be exchanged for something new. And this podcast is brought to you by the University of Birmingham, where I'm Professor of Leadership Practice and Director of the Birmingham Leadership Institute.
00:00:26:10 - 00:00:56:01
Speaker 1
I'm absolutely delighted that we've been joined today by Kirsty McNeill, who is executive Director for policy Advocacy and campaigns at Save the Children, as well as being Labor's parliamentary candidate in the Scottish Target seat of Midlothian, because she's also chair of a number of organizations, including our Scottish Future and Larger US and is a non-executive director for the Center for Countering Digital Hate, amongst other things.
00:00:56:03 - 00:01:05:21
Speaker 1
And Kirsty, previous roles have included acting as a special adviser to the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Kirsty, pleasure to have you here with us today.
00:01:05:23 - 00:01:06:19
Speaker 2
Thank you for having me.
00:01:06:23 - 00:01:42:00
Speaker 1
So Cathy will be clear to everybody from that introduction that you've had an enormously successful and impressive career in and around politics advocacy campaigns. But what strikes me most actually about your political interests is that you've chosen to give a great deal of time and energy to writing about and working with, and for organizations that are seeking to counter polarization in various kinds of ways and to actively bring people together around various divides on the basis of shared values.
00:01:42:00 - 00:01:55:18
Speaker 1
And I think we might start there, if that's okay. And just to ask you, so why is that important to you? What is your motivation for putting your time and energies into that theme come from?
00:01:55:20 - 00:02:15:22
Speaker 2
So I think my sort of personal animating value is around equality, right? So growing up, I always knew that the two sides of my family were different and and had really different life chances. And there was nothing that separated those two halves of my family in terms of my mum side of my dad's side. There was nothing that separated them other than money.
00:02:15:24 - 00:02:42:13
Speaker 2
So it was who had grown up with money, who had expectations of money, who had the agency that comes with having money. So inequality was a really visceral thing for me My whole life. And that took me to being an egalitarian. And I don't think you can be an egalitarian and not be a Democrat. So part of the point of saying that everyone is equal is people have got an equal right to be wrong.
00:02:42:17 - 00:03:06:05
Speaker 2
They've got an equal right to be heard. Actually, it doesn't matter whether you agree with them or not, you're not got any right to assume that your opinion carries more weight. If you find people you disagree with, it's your job to try to work with them and win them over. So I think this idea around sort of countering polarization actually comes from a sort of earlier sort of preexisting commitment.
00:03:06:05 - 00:03:31:20
Speaker 2
I have to both democracy and equality. And then on a personal level, my whole experience growing up was my my parents are both SNP members, supporters, activists, campaigners. I mean, it's a heart and soul commitment. And for other members of my family to a cause, I think is entirely wrong. But those are my favorite human beings in the whole world.
00:03:31:20 - 00:04:01:19
Speaker 2
So the idea that you could disagree really passionately on something and have that thing be incredibly important to you, like almost the most important thing and it's still not as important as your relationship to one another is a kind of that's not a sort of abstract idea. That's not a philosophy for me. That's the sort of daily practice of just finding myself absolutely consumed with love and admiration and affection for people that I think are really wrong on something really important.
00:04:01:19 - 00:04:07:18
Speaker 2
And they think I'm really wrong, too. And we still find a way to live together well and to disagree well.
00:04:07:20 - 00:04:26:13
Speaker 1
And was it. Was it always easy to disagree? Well, I mean, but there are moments when you are growing up and you realize that your political perspective on on Scottish nationalism was different and was that something that it was hard to find a way to to disagree well about? Or was that always that?
00:04:26:15 - 00:05:07:00
Speaker 2
I think it was actually quite easy because for both my mom and my dad's in different ways, they are drawn to sort of practices around like belonging and organizing so that we join things right as a as a family. We are we are joiners. And if you believe in something, you're supposed to do something about it. So the fact that my beliefs had diverged and therefore my behaviors had diverged, they thought was entirely natural, I think what they would have considered to be utterly unnatural is if I disagreed, but passively because, you know, there's this idea that life is short and your time to make a difference is therefore limited.
00:05:07:02 - 00:05:26:11
Speaker 2
And so when you believe in things, you're supposed to do something about them. So I think they found that a completely natural conclusion of the type I adopted different sort of forms of thinking and being, as I say, for them, for them, the sort of the curious thing is why you would be neutral about the questions, not why you might come to a different point of view on them.
00:05:26:13 - 00:05:49:17
Speaker 1
Unless you became politically active and you joined things and joined the Labor Party and so on. I mean, you know, political parties and maybe maybe teenagers are not perhaps best known for having those kinds of approaches which, you know, seek to to see the the the the good in in the other person rather than the difference that you're disagreeing about.
00:05:49:17 - 00:06:15:22
Speaker 1
I mean, you know, we all remember what it was like to be a teenager fired up with an absolute conviction in the rightness of our view and not always very good at sort of, you know, seeing the rightness in somebody else's. And I'm just curious about whether whether you ever found that that sort of tension in your political contacts growing up and sort of coming into your political maturity, was it always easy to take the view that you you take?
00:06:15:24 - 00:06:39:01
Speaker 2
I also got asked this quite a lot when I moved from single issue activism into the more formal political sphere. Lots of people said, was it not horrible to have to compromise all the time? And actually I found I found myself to be a more authentic version of myself in government than I ever did before in single issue activism.
00:06:39:03 - 00:07:02:05
Speaker 2
And the reason for that is to be an effective single issue advocate. You have to see that your things the most important thing and almost the exclusively important thing. I'm I worked for shelter and for a period before I worked in number ten, and housing is incredibly important. So that was a bedrock in terms of families being able to feel safe and to feel their potential.
00:07:02:07 - 00:07:29:11
Speaker 2
But climate change is also incredibly important. Fighting racism is incredibly important. Dealing with the epidemic of violence against women and girls is incredibly important. Health and equality is incredibly important. The educational attainment gap is incredibly important. Everything supported and actually I found moving from single issue activism into government, where you have a little piece on everything and you're able to see how things connect and how your work can be mutually reinforcing or can undermine other objectives you have.
00:07:29:13 - 00:08:02:08
Speaker 2
I find that a more coherent sort of authentic version of me, really. So I didn't mind the compromise, but is it at all because I actually thought that was a much more honest appraisal of the fact that like life is constant tradeoff, constant prioritization, constant choices, constant reconciliation of competing interests, but for an amazing thing that we live in a country where are these like huge competing interests get reconciled by people going into a little private booth with a pencil?
00:08:02:08 - 00:08:21:04
Speaker 1
Well, thank you. So because you've you've written and spoken about what you've called the need for a leadership revolution and I just thought we might explore that together a bit as well. So, so first of all, what's the revolution that in leadership that you think you think is needed?
00:08:21:06 - 00:08:43:08
Speaker 2
So I think for a long time we have sort of been waiting for heroes and we've assumed that there will be some sort of singular person who's just endowed with extraordinary qualities. And if only the kind of the framing of history meant that they were in the right place at the right time, everything would be fine. And I just don't think that is true.
00:08:43:08 - 00:09:07:19
Speaker 2
So this sort of era of sort of walled and bounded institutions that aren't porous, that kind of hoard power to themselves and that power is distributed internally to those institutions and a really rigid hierarchy. I just think the time of that is over. Like all the problems that we have to deal with that are sort of existential for our species, they do require everybody.
00:09:07:21 - 00:09:35:19
Speaker 2
So there isn't going to be never mind one individual person and there's not going to be one individual organization that can deal with most of the things that require sort of fixing in the world. But I'm not sure I yet see a generation of leaders that believes that their job is tending to that complex web of organizations and of peoples and of currents of opinion and and keeping it healthy as an ecosystem.
00:09:35:19 - 00:09:57:09
Speaker 2
I don't see I'm not currently seeing lots of boards rewarding that kind of behavior. I'm not seeing lots of thunder supporting that kind of behavior. And I'm not seeing lots of leaders holding themselves to account for their own role in those ecosystems. And I'm not sure we're going to have to deal with some of the biggest problems until we do so.
00:09:57:11 - 00:10:31:24
Speaker 1
The bit I we would absolutely agree with you in that that's how we approach leadership in Egypt for exactly those reasons. So I couldn't agree more. I suppose that the question for me is, well, there are several, but one is okay, what does that leadership look like when we sit? So so when we actually see people who are capable of operating in that way, recognizing that the the leadership that is required from them isn't just about what happens within that little bit of of the of the universe.
00:10:31:24 - 00:10:42:19
Speaker 1
It's actually about how it relates to everything that goes on outside as well. If we're going to tackle climate change, not just today. One obvious example, what does that look like, do you think, when when it's been done well?
00:10:42:21 - 00:11:02:03
Speaker 2
So there's a fantastic line in a report that the IPR put, I think two years ago, and I am called like making change what works and when lazy had to it is you need to sort of a generation of network weavers and they said those are the people who will do the things that are in everyone's interest but nobody's job description.
00:11:02:05 - 00:11:28:15
Speaker 2
So for me, that's what leadership will look like. It's people stepping up to say, actually, we have we have a need of some collective back end infrastructure that will enable all of these organizations to succeed or to collaborate. Well, I will go away and create it and fundraise for it. They're the people who say, actually the problem is not the individual brands inside this category are growing anymore, and I'm talking in profit categories.
00:11:28:17 - 00:11:57:18
Speaker 2
And the problem is not that individual brands aren't growing. The problem is that the the section of the population that is affiliated to this cause is not growing. Therefore, I'll take upon myself to fix that category problem. That is true for the whole ecosystem, not simply the I will. And as they try and try and make one of the remaining organizations the fastest dinosaur, they will say, here are some problems.
00:11:57:18 - 00:12:35:08
Speaker 2
For example, the Center for Country Tissue, he has done. Exactly. They're saying here are some sort of existential risks for everybody who depends upon an Enlightenment settlement about the fact that there are facts, there are kind of boundaries around evidence. There are ways in which we navigate, debate and treat one another like we we all depend upon that settlement, whether we knew it or not, whether we work in reproductive rights or in public health, or if trying to mitigate the climate emergency.
00:12:35:10 - 00:12:56:08
Speaker 2
We all depend on that settlement, but we tend not to think about it very often. And so it does take some extraordinary leaders like those that we have around center of country digital hate to come and say, I'm actually going to keep the whole framework safe to allow you to do your work. So I think we I think we do know when we see it, it's just we're not seeing it very often.
00:12:56:10 - 00:12:57:04
Speaker 1
And it's hard.
00:12:57:04 - 00:12:58:04
Speaker 2
To spot the patterns.
00:12:58:06 - 00:13:21:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. And is this partly why you describe leadership as a calling? The reason I ask that question is it seems to me that the people who are exercising that kind of leadership are almost certainly doing things which, as it were, you know, you said this are not in their job description and which not only will they not be rewarded for within the performance metrics of their own organization, they might actually be a little bit risky.
00:13:21:06 - 00:13:43:20
Speaker 1
Right? They might actually be having to stretch the boundaries of what they're supposed to be doing in order to do what needs to be done. So, you know, I guess for me, you know, what's it going to take to be willing to put yourself out there in that kind of way to take those kinds of risks? Well, something that you call a calling might might be a part of that.
00:13:43:22 - 00:13:45:16
Speaker 1
I mean, is that is that he said.
00:13:45:18 - 00:14:03:22
Speaker 2
I think you also need to know who and what you're there for. So when I used to train a lot of women who were thinking about public life through the Labor Women's Network, one of the exercises I would do with people was ask them to literally write on a piece of paper that they could fold up and keep in their wallet.
00:14:03:24 - 00:14:27:24
Speaker 2
Write down the people whose opinion matters to you. And normally the list would be about five long, and very rarely did it include the comments section of a blog like. And yet we continually behave as if that matters to us because we haven't actually done the work to ground ourselves and like to whom am I accountable to?
00:14:27:24 - 00:15:06:12
Speaker 1
Again, really interesting that in the recent revolution you wrote about leaders and I'm just going to quote them, but you said, you know, when they when they lose, they're not rest until they understand why. And when they win that worry more about identifying the variables that led to victory than fighting for the credit. And again, it's not about you using that, but it echoes and echoes in what you just said, which is that learning is critical, that there's an expectation that you don't know and that that leadership in some way is an action is a process of of learning as well.
00:15:06:14 - 00:15:36:01
Speaker 1
And that see, that seems to me pretty rare in in a way of understanding leadership and maybe particularly where in politics, where, you know, the sort of learning that you've just described is so easily characterized as a U-turn or something else. So how do we I mean, if that's right, if this kind of revised ability, this learning, this recognition that that we don't have the answers, we can't possibly because the world is too complex, all we can ever do is hope, hope to learn our way forward.
00:15:36:03 - 00:15:45:05
Speaker 1
That doesn't sound like a kind of good political kind of message. How do you square that when you know your life is poetry?
00:15:45:07 - 00:16:11:04
Speaker 2
Well, if I mean, if social change was linear and predictable and scientific and easy, the world would be completely different. Like we wouldn't have the enormous social problems we have if someone had already cracked how to make sustainable progress that never gets reversed and enjoys mass popular consent like if I was if it was easy, it would have happened by now.
00:16:11:06 - 00:16:40:03
Speaker 2
So it's not easy. So I just. I just don't think you could have any you even be a student of history in any way and not want to be learning all the time. Because as a species we've got things so horribly wrong so often and you have to be constantly, I think learning. There was also I did a sort of leadership course where there was a bit of an exercise about the fact that some leaders run to things and some leaders run from things.
00:16:40:05 - 00:17:01:11
Speaker 2
And when I came back to the team, I said, I've just done this exercise and they said it was really obvious what you are. And I asked what their supposition was and they said, Do you run towards things because you are you're sort of idealistic and you know, you you can be a vision to us. So we think you were running two things and that's completely not the case at all.
00:17:01:12 - 00:17:26:19
Speaker 2
I run I am running from things because I have chosen a practice that looks square in the face, the worst things that people can do to each other. So for a long period I was on the board of the Holocaust Educational Trust because we have to revisit that continually about the great evil that we can do to one another.
00:17:26:19 - 00:17:54:18
Speaker 2
And like my whole life, is trying to run us far from the times where we've visited great cruelty on one another, and that cruelty sometimes is in acts of commission, and sometimes it's acts of omission where we tolerate the fact that we live in a society where inequality literally kills people and we have tolerated a sort of distribution of wealth and of power, that that means that through policy we decide who lives and who dies.
00:17:54:24 - 00:18:29:16
Speaker 1
And it in your description of that and least said and and reflected on in terms of the things that motivate you and your values. So it does it does suggest that for you, you know, sort of politics is a is a is a crusade. Let's say, but it's not rigidly ideology ideological. Right. That there's that that your your the orientation, the things that matter to you, the things that the injustices that need to be faced and and righted that's clear.
00:18:29:18 - 00:18:44:03
Speaker 1
But the the means of achieving that for you is is a question of exploration, of learning, of discovery, rather than something which is determined because of a particular ideological point of view.
00:18:44:05 - 00:19:09:02
Speaker 2
I think it's that we've all got different rules in the movement. And this is this is why I think I see just this period of things being sort of like hierarchical where power is hoarded. That is just over. And that's true of the whole social change ecosystem. So we all have different roles in the movement and some some people's rule will be funders, but that doesn't make them more important or likely to be right than anybody else.
00:19:09:04 - 00:19:30:12
Speaker 2
Some people's rule will be as a grassroots activists, some persons rule will be as the philosopher, some persons rule will be as the artist. That helps us imagine a different future. Some people's rule will be to be on the ballot. And increasingly, I think my role is to be on the ballot. But just our rule in the movement is not a superior one in any way.
00:19:30:18 - 00:19:49:23
Speaker 2
And if I'm successful on the ballot, I still will be able to get done what the movement needs me to get done. If every other bit of the movement is not also playing their part. So I say I just think this sort of is very retro, this idea that some people are more important than each other when actually every single person is necessary but insufficient.
00:19:50:00 - 00:20:28:23
Speaker 1
So let me take conversation in a in a related but slightly, slightly different direction and and kind of open up this theme around leadership in the face of culture wars, which we sort of touched on, as, you know, thinking about polarization and difference and connection and so on. But the notion of the culture wars is something that you've written about and even through your work with art and in other ways, you are actively thinking about how do we engage with this in a way which doesn't, as it were, exacerbate polarization, but seeks to understand what's going on and engage with it in different ways.
00:20:28:23 - 00:20:40:10
Speaker 1
So I'd like to explore, you know, what is the leadership that we need at this moment. But maybe just as we get into this, you know, how do you define the culture wars? What is a culture war issue for you?
00:20:40:12 - 00:21:05:16
Speaker 2
So I wrote a report about this and a few years ago, and the reason I felt called to write it is because, see, the children, we work on a lot of issues that had become very divisive and weaponized. So we work on international aid, we work on refugee rights, we work on welfare reform in the UK, and lots of the sort of human rights frameworks that we work under.
00:21:05:16 - 00:21:44:10
Speaker 2
And the justice understanding that we have was coming under really sustained assault. And so when we dug into the culture wars are really fights that were around and identity in which there is an assumed zero sum. So if someone of a different identity is doing better, you must be doing worse. So they are sort of weaponized, fabricated and sort of fissures in society that are used to make people angry with one another rather than angry at the system That allowed people not to flourish in the first place.
00:21:44:12 - 00:22:23:13
Speaker 2
And our sort of conclusion from all that research was that the culture wars are real but not authentic. And what we meant by that was the are real and they're doing real damage that if you're on the sharp end of one of these debates, you can feel sort of harmed and distressed and othered and dehumanized by them. But they're not authentic insofar as they don't really represent really big splits inside society like people are not, for the most part, having really ferocious fights about statues in their stuff.co.nz they're not there.
00:22:23:15 - 00:22:44:06
Speaker 2
They're talking about how their community, their neighborhood, their workplace, how everyone can move forward together so they don't represent sort of splits. This idea that Britain is like riven with division and split 5050 is just not true in our finding that actually most people do agree on much more than they disagree on.
00:22:44:08 - 00:23:11:01
Speaker 1
So we're talking, you know, just a week or so after the speech by election and the obviously the conservatives unexpectedly won only just that they did. And there's been a huge amount of kind of commentary since pushing that down to the, you know, the ultra low emission zone. And then sometime in the country that's got a bit conflated with green policies.
00:23:11:01 - 00:23:43:11
Speaker 1
I mean, actually it's about air pollution. But, you know, the point that people are making, I think, is or the the sort of cultural version of it seems to be something like, you know, it's all very well for those, you know, wealthy elite policymaker, some politicians to enforce ultra low emission zones on working people in outer London. But, you know, they can the elite can afford to replace their car, but, you know, ordinary people can't.
00:23:43:11 - 00:24:07:01
Speaker 1
And so so there's a sort of kind of identity split, which is trying to be creative. There. I mean, do you see that as a kind of culture war strategy? And and if so, do you think we're, you know, in the face of climate change in particular, that we're you know, there's a real risk there that that gets kind of absorbed into these divisions.
00:24:07:03 - 00:24:33:19
Speaker 2
So I think there's just a few things I'd probably commend to listeners when thinking about this. So Steve Acres, too, is a fantastically interesting pollster, has done quite a lot of testing about this and what he has defined is there's a real chasm between for people think about climate change and climate action and what politicians think people think about climate action.
00:24:33:21 - 00:25:03:08
Speaker 2
And he's saying just this absolute gulf that it doesn't matter how many times you say climate remains a top five issue for the public. Actually, there is huge public concern for climate action in the red wall as everywhere else, that all of these kind of media narratives are actually completely false. When you look at the data in terms of support for climate action, it doesn't matter how many times that data is presented to politicians, there's still some chasm where they just believe that the public doesn't consent to it.
00:25:03:10 - 00:25:25:19
Speaker 2
But we do. We absolutely do, like the public does in huge numbers. Want to pass on something better for their children. So there's that problem. The thing that has happened in Oxbridge is people did not believe that a fairness law had been passed and the IPR in its work on environmental justice. He's done some really interesting thinking about this.
00:25:25:19 - 00:25:48:22
Speaker 2
But how do you create a fairness floor under every climate policy such that the distributional consequences of climate policy are the first question, nor a later sort of impact question It's the first question you ask. And if it doesn't pass the fairness law, then it should be taken off the table and we'll find other climate action policies that do pass that fairness score.
00:25:48:24 - 00:26:18:20
Speaker 2
I'm actually quite heartened that people in Oxbridge feel that something something did not pass a fairness threshold and they shouldn't be welcomed on that basis. So whilst we've had a quite unedifying debate about climate action, as a result, the underlying value that has been activated is people want things to be fair and I think that's really quite good news for the West.
00:26:18:22 - 00:26:36:09
Speaker 2
But it is is such a hardwired British value and some of the commentary has said, Oh, but there's lots of people who objected to less who wouldn't be personally affected by it. I'm like, Great, that's fantastic that people vote in solidarity with what they perceive to be the interests of their neighbors.
00:26:36:12 - 00:27:05:24
Speaker 1
So let's take another issue which has been highly divisive, very close to your heart about Scotland's place within the United Kingdom and and the debate between unionism and nationalism in Scotland. And obviously you're a you're a Labor prospective parliamentary candidate, the Unionist Party, your chair of Scottish Future, which describes itself as rejecting no change unionism and no compromise nationalism as false choices.
00:27:05:24 - 00:27:34:16
Speaker 1
But but ultimately you want to see Scotland stay with him in the UK. So. So you're a politician, you're pro-union, you hold these values around, sort of maintaining a sense of what we have in common, what what brings us together. And also, I think what I hear is a deep respect for the sort of dignity and humanity in others who might disagree strongly with you.
00:27:34:18 - 00:27:40:11
Speaker 1
How do you have this debate in that way? Is that possible?
00:27:40:13 - 00:28:12:14
Speaker 2
I think it is because when I speak to people who who voted yes in the Scottish referendum or who continue to vote for the Scottish National Party today, but what they're often saying is that they want change. Well, and so do I, like we can agree on that. So our starting point is one of deep frustration with the way that sort of inequality continues to be a scar in Scotland, that we do not have public services that meet our aspirations, that we have not got to grips with climate emergency.
00:28:12:16 - 00:28:38:08
Speaker 2
Like aren't our the the sort of hunger for change is shared. The point where we diverge is that some of those people in the different side of the constitutional divide think that they are pulling in emergency cards marked independence because they think it is the fastest and the safest and the easiest and in many respects the only way to get the change that we seek, that's where I depart from them.
00:28:38:14 - 00:29:09:06
Speaker 2
I think there is an alternative way to get the change that we all seek, but it's by having a stronger Scotland inside a reformed United Kingdom, which is why our Scottish future, we utterly reject the idea that the status who is adequate to anyone's needs. So you won't find me kind of advancing an unreconstructed unionist position. That's not what brought me to politics, like dealing with inequalities, what brought me to politics.
00:29:09:06 - 00:29:28:08
Speaker 2
And it so happens I think a reformed United Kingdom is a good vehicle for that because we can mobilize the resources of the entire UK state to deal with poverty and inequality. Then we've got a shot of solving those problems and that is the starting point is actually shared.
00:29:28:10 - 00:29:52:04
Speaker 1
So so I can absolutely understand the the ground that you're staking out, you know, which is essentially it's it's sort of one about means and ends that you share the ends that others might might wish to achieve in terms of, you know, more equality and and and, you know, tackling climate change and so on. But but your argument is essentially that the route there is a different one.
00:29:52:04 - 00:30:27:23
Speaker 1
And that may require constitutional change or devolution or whatever. Further devolution, I suppose. I mean, I suppose what I'm curious about is that so in the 2014 referendum, it did become highly polarized in ways that were often very kind of aggressive on both sides, that a lot of people felt very kind of attacked. And, you know, that was a quite a wounding experience for quite a lot of people.
00:30:28:00 - 00:30:47:14
Speaker 1
So is it something about the nature of the referendum campaign that creates those conditions or or, you know, could you could you just if we ever had another referendum, would it be possible to do that in a different way? Or is it inevitable that when you get to that point, no amount of leadership is going to make a difference, It's just going to be polarizing in that way?
00:30:47:16 - 00:31:27:14
Speaker 2
I think I think a referendum is necessarily binary and it's one of the it's actually one of the reasons why I do. I don't feel, notwithstanding that I am fiercely proud to be Scottish and notwithstanding, that is one of the reasons why nationalism doesn't actually hold any attraction to me, because I there is no there is no bit of my soul that is stirred by the idea of putting ourselves into smaller and smaller boxes that I have a I have a deeply plural and shifting identity that is, you know, I'm very proudly Scottish, but I'm also British.
00:31:27:14 - 00:32:01:14
Speaker 2
I consider myself European. I'm part of lots of multiple competing identities. And my identity as a feminist and as an activist also play a huge amount of play, a huge role in who I believe myself to be. And the nature of that referendum was you were offered two choices and they were in contradistinction with each other. And it's just a I think it is an inevitable function of if you frame the debate in that way, it's very hard with those of us who have lived identities to see ourselves reflected in it.
00:32:01:16 - 00:32:27:15
Speaker 1
So, Cathy, that we've we've covered, you know, vast drains and we've been been exploring mostly the sort of political space advocacy, space space of kind of social change and social movements. But I know you do have a day job. You Executive Director of Policy and campaigns at Save Children. I'm curious about really in your in your sort of I'm not even really thinking so much about the campaigns that Save the Children run.
00:32:27:17 - 00:33:01:21
Speaker 1
But, you know, you are a senior figure at the at the hierarchical top end of a very large and significant organization. And I'm just curious about all of these things we've been exploring about leadership and boundaries and assonance and so on. These play out in organizations in the same way that they play out in the world. And how how do you see this in your leadership, in that sphere rather than in in the sort of political or or wider social movements there?
00:33:01:23 - 00:33:47:20
Speaker 2
I mean, you might have picked up from our earlier conversation, I find I find both hierarchies and binaries not very helpful or generative. And and so one of the things I talk about quite a lot internally is I do think the old model is dying and actually its death is long overdue. But the new model is not that at we, we flip the default from saying people who are older with experience like the idea that there's an intergenerational binary and that one side has to win the fight and another side has to lose it, and then everything is zero sum, I think is so unhealthy and I don't think the new world is going to
00:33:47:20 - 00:34:06:22
Speaker 2
be one in which I can have a younger generation in the workplace, overthrows an older one, and all of the accumulated institutional knowledge and wisdom borne of experience, such as it is, is no longer of use. I think in the new world will be able to marry for, you know, in some of the literature it's called The Wisdom from the Age.
00:34:06:22 - 00:34:28:03
Speaker 2
So that, you know, younger colleagues closer to some of the issues that we work on who are able to be early adopters of things and support things. They can see things from where they're sitting that I can't see. But equally, having been around some of these houses several times before, I can see some things that they can't see.
00:34:28:05 - 00:35:01:15
Speaker 2
And when we each describe which side of the diamond that we can see, we're going to end up with a much stronger sense of what size and shape the diamond is. So I don't think the future is about replacing whole scale one one model with another model. I think it will be a kind of chaotic blending of of lots of different perspectives in a way that will be kind of very generative, very creative, like full of kind of equality and challenge and curiosity.
00:35:01:17 - 00:35:26:13
Speaker 2
And I think this is the time when we sort of navigated that quite well that I think I think teams of wherever you sit in hierarchy, whatever your experience or background, I think people feel free to bring great ideas. And I certainly from where I'm sitting, feel that colleagues feel free to challenge because they challenge me a lot.
00:35:26:14 - 00:35:27:22
Speaker 2
And that's brilliant.
00:35:27:24 - 00:35:40:09
Speaker 1
Because as we we draw this close, this question that we we ask all of our guests on this podcast, which is whose leadership inspires you and and why.
00:35:40:11 - 00:36:07:18
Speaker 2
So as we have probably touched on several times, I'm really quite suspicious of putting on a pedestal individuals. So I, I love teams, I love collectives, I love movements, I love the places where people collaborate. So I think the leaders I most admire are those whose kind of work and practice is indistinguishable from that of their teams or movements or collectives or cooperatives of which they are part.
00:36:07:20 - 00:36:28:10
Speaker 2
So the person I've been reflecting on a lot over the past few weeks is our outgoing chair IPR. Jess Search just announced that she's very poorly and because of her ill health, is stepping back from her role with IPR, but also stepping back from Doc Society, which was the organization that she founded and which she served for some years as CEO.
00:36:28:12 - 00:36:56:07
Speaker 2
But in the latter part of Doc Societies and Journey is had a cool leadership model where it's hard for women directors who run it as a collective. And that has made the but Jess's ill health has actually not been destabilizing for the organization at all because it's incredibly resilient sort of organizational model where you have accountability held in common.
00:36:56:07 - 00:37:19:00
Speaker 2
And, you know, I think sort of feminist leadership or collective leadership has been talked about in the past. There's often been a suggestion that it might work in certain kinds of settings, but it probably can't withstand a shock. And actually it's shown that not only cannot withstand a shock is probably the best foundation of all for an organization that's going through shocks.
00:37:19:00 - 00:37:32:05
Speaker 2
I think the fact that Jess was able to generate that in an institution that already existed and not from scratch is is just a testament to the kind of the vision and capabilities of one person.
00:37:32:07 - 00:38:15:10
Speaker 1
And wonderful. Cassie, thank you so much. I have to say it's been an absolute pleasure to explore these themes with you. And, you know, for me in in the combination between that that sort of rootedness in you knowing, knowing what matters to you and knowing where that comes from and the way that were able to connect those experiences growing up in a in a SNP activist family with the sort of some of the passions, the motivations that that motivate you now in terms of, you know, thinking about how can we have really important political difference which is so vital and your your your commitment to democracy is so palpable.
00:38:15:12 - 00:38:50:01
Speaker 1
But to do that in ways which connect rather than divide and then the leadership perhaps that might be required to enable us to do that. You know, I have to say it's enormously refreshing. And also from my point of view, as somebody who spends their life trying to advocate for and help people to develop this kind of leadership, to hear it being articulated from within a political tradition, which is often, I think, the domains that have found it slightly harder to engage with this kind of leadership is is both hopeful, but also without putting on a pedestal somewhat inspiring.
00:38:50:01 - 00:39:19:02
Speaker 1
So thank you. I do really appreciate it. And to our to our listeners, thank you for joining us. Again, all the details that we've discussed today. Well, as you shall be in show notes and if you've enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, do please subscribe. I've a rating and a review and to stay up to date with leadership exchanged, you can visit the website Birmingham Direct the UK Backslash leadership hyphen Exchange.
00:39:19:04 - 00:39:19:18
Speaker 1
Goodbye for now.
Kirsty is Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the Scottish target seat of Midlothian. She is also Chair of Our Scottish Future, the Civic Power Fund, Larger Us and the Aid Alliance, and non-executive director for the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.
Kirsty is well-known for being an innovative and effective local and national campaigner, with a particular focus on social and economic injustice. She has gained extensive experience in leadership during her career, but also throughout her education, including her time at the Rockwood Leadership Institute where she completed an intensive leadership programme on the Art of Leadership in 2018.
In this episode, Kirsty shares her personal experiences with democracy and equality, learnings from moving from single-issue advocacy into government, and her thoughts on what good leadership looks like. This shapes her views on collective leadership and her approach to her role at Save the Children today.
The Leadership Exchanged podcast asks if the world's biggest and most complex problems could be solved if the right leadership approach was applied? Do we need to exchange current approaches to leadership for something new? In each episode, Leadership expert Professor Christopher Pietroni discusses with guests what kind of leadership is needed if you want to make real, lasting change
Professor of Leadership Practice
Staff profile for Professor Christopher Pietroni, Professor of Leadership Practice & Director of the Birmingham Leadership Institute, University of Birmingham.
