Apparently recent research called Lessons for leaders from the people who Matter undertaken by Harris Interactive found that employees from across the globe think that one third of their bosses are ineffective, lack empathy and have poor leadership skills. What’s more, it states that employees would rather suffer a bad hangover, do housework or look at their credit card bill than sit through a performance discussion with their boss. Why?  Because such a meeting will leave them with a big dent in their personal self-esteem.

The research also reported how employees would double their performance if they were working for their ‘best ever’ boss; scary statistics were quoted such as how an increase in motivation can go from 11% to 98% and high performance from 5% to 94% if employees had a really good boss.

Naturally enough, some employees (45%) said they could do a better job than their boss but they did not want to be a manager. (Too much stress, responsibility and pressure.) At the same time, 2 out every 5 employees left because of their manager. What really grieved these employees was managers failing to ask for ideas and input, limited work-related conversations and insufficient feedback on their performance leading to poor employee engagement.

In another quite separate report, the attributes of those leaders who consider themselves ‘truly gifted’ (despite being at the helm of failing companies) were identified as:

• They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environments, not simply responding to developments in those environments;
• They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and corporate interests;
• They seem to have all the answers, often dazzling people with the speed and decisiveness with which they can deal with challenging issues;
• They make sure that everyone is 100% behind them, ruthlessly eliminating anyone who might undermine their efforts;
• They are consummate company spokespersons, often devoting the largest portion of their efforts to managing and developing the company image;
• They treat intimidatingly difficult obstacles as temporary impediments to be removed or overcome;
• They never hesitate to return to the strategies and tactics that made them and their companies successful in the first.

Right! So how do we act on all of this to make sure everyone is happy at work, successful and performing to the best of their abilities?

As someone who wrote a book on leadership in 2009, as an attempt to understand its complexities, I have a great deal of sympathy for those brave souls who decided to go for management jobs. This in part is why we are always looking for ways to improve leadership at LEYF, from the perspectives of both managers and staff.  And the issue is even more crucial when you consider the children at the mercy of our abilities everyday. (Well led Early Years settings lead to better outcomes for all children, hence our ambition to build a better future for London’s children.)

Either way, such research is always a good wake-up call (like when the mystery shopper comes calling). And so finding it makes the fact we are putting real effort into getting leadership right at LEYF even more reassuring – with a plan to roll out improved performance management systems to help managers lead and motivate their staff, whilst also trying hard to improve communication.

Of course, as a boss, I have sympathy with leaders and managers: it is a tough job, and quite a different one to being a nursery officer or teacher. So I am keen to move away from the traditional vertical approach to promotion, which often means staying on long enough to end up managing the setting by default.  This is simply the wrong approach, since being a manager is a completely different job. Luckily for me, our managers respond well to the challenge of how to lead the fabulous LEYF curriculum, while running their nursery as a social enterprise. It’s a tough call.

I think our plan for LEYF leadership teams is the only way to go. Being a leader at the top of a pyramid is a lonely place, listening to the groaning of the Pharaoh ghosts trapped in their sarcophagus and with no one to talk to (not even Harrison Ford). As a CEO, I know this and I am grateful to have a supportive team who can be kind and helpful, but who also love to bring me back to reality. (Well, they try anyway!)

In my optimistic way, I would take a punt that leadership and management is much more successful at LEYF than this report would suggest. But at the same time, we can only keep it good if we keep our eye on the ball – keep engaging with staff and remember how easy it is for them to begin to feel disengaged.

For those who know me, it won’t surprise you to know that I obsess about LEYF all the time, as I want to ensure we give the highest and best quality to our children, staff and parents. For me, thinking, talking, listening, researching and praising are the watchwords of LEYF leadership. No one wants staff to leave because they dislike their managers. Instead, I want to make sure any LEYF staff that do leave retain warm and positive memories of their time with us, and so continue to promote what we do as they become the next leaders in their field.

(For those of you looking for further reading on the subject of happiness, you may find this report from the Young Foundation worth a look.)

According to Downing St, isolation and loneliness are more dangerous to our health than smoking.  Well as the saying goes, tell me about it! But why do we need Downing St to tell us this?  We have been saying this forever. It’s one of the main reasons why at LEYF we have a multi-generational approach to how we work.

One of my many habits (the number increases with age) is listening to Desert Island Discs.  It’s a great place to hear what people think about their lives.  I was very touched by a woman who talked about her loneliness since being widowed.  She said:

I have plenty of things to do with people but I have no one to do nothing with.”

It’s an expression used this week by Esther Rantzen who is setting up a helpline called the Silver Line for older people to share worries, get advice and maybe get linked into local services. I am not sure about the name though, sounds more like a bus network to me.

Still, it was the horror of loneliness that made me so passionate about doing things from a multi-generational perspective. Just take a moment to look out the window and it does not take long to pick up the loneliness vibe.  We are not helping either by introducing those awful self-service check out machines at supermarkets. Apart from the fact that they don’t seem to work most of the time, some people have no interaction with another human being for days on end – so imagine when they finally get to the supermarket, only to find they have to talk to the woman from the Sat Nav school of communication. No thank you.  It’s another nail in the loneliness coffin: no bus conductors, few officials to chat to, limited local police officers on the street and so eventually barely a soul it seems to even pass the time of day. Humans are social.  We need to be social to survive.

Staff at LEYF have responded remarkably well to our multi-generational way of doing things.  For instance, last week saw Julie Weiss and her nursery team at Luton Street begin a series of six weekly activity sessions with older people (above), spending time together to make things with the children. Some people may think this all a tad trivial, but I remember how Jo Lax (our manager at Holcroft) found herself shocked and rather distressed at the end of one Pancake Day she had hosted for older people in her nursery’s community, as an elderly lady came and said

Thank you. This keeps me wanting to stay alive, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.”

But we know that isolation is not just about being old; again why we have a multi-generational approach.  We are always meeting people who have moved to London, only to find themselves isolated and not knowing what to do.  That’s why we are starting a TimeBank.  We have lonely Dads, especially those who are no longer working, at home with their children and not sure how to engage with other parents.  Dad’s sessions like those run by Marion at Carlton Hill are as much about this as giving Dads a safe space to play with their children.

Some of our apprentices, barely 17 years old, come to LEYF feeling isolated and very alone in a crowd. It takes the skill of the tutor to engage with them and help them become part of a friendship network.

Our Children Centres have to be multi-generational, as we have to find ways to help people make friends and get to know one another; so many mothers are lonely, especially those who have come from abroad, either with their high flying husbands or as economic migrants.

Loneliness is the scariest thing out there. We can’t build a better future for London’s children if we don’t at least try to create ways of reducing loneliness.  And we can’t afford to fail, lest it also become our own inevitable fate.

Footnotes:

I must remind every reader of this blog that children, staff and the occasional parent from our Carlton Hill Community Nursery will soon have their 15 minutes of fame on Channel 4, as part of the three part series ‘Daddy Daycare‘. So make sure you set your Sky+ or Freeview recorders for 8pm. Starting this Wednesday, February 15, Carlton Hill will feature on episode #2 (Feb 22), so please do tune in – and let us know what you think in the usual channels!

Final mention this week must go to one of currently two male nursery managers at LEYF, David Stevens at the Angel, who is using findings from our own action research to present for a second time at BECERA. In fact, he’s not the only member of LEYF staff (male or female) presenting this year. So thanks and congratulations to you all – simply fantastic stuff!

The National Audit Office report  Delivering the free entitlement to education for three- and four-year-olds has sent the press into pessimism overdrive, telling us the £1.9bn spending on provision of the free entitlement by local authorities in 2011-12 (providing  places for  831,800 in 28,630 settings) was a waste of  money, with apparently no measurable benefits to children.

Absolute poppycock! The report actually said that it was probably too soon to tell, adding how there has been improvement in the Foundation Stage but this has not carried on into Primary School. Dare I say it’s maybe the hallowed Primary Schools that need addressing; or perhaps we need a serious conversation about what we as a country want for our children?

Unlike our contemporaries in Europe, we have never fully considered what we want for our small children; instead we simply react to external reports and anecdotal observations. What does measurement actually tell us if we are measuring the wrong or non-compatible things with the same set of measurements?  Apparently, we want children to be happy, whilst at the same time ‘school ready’ and successful.

Perhaps, someone should listen to the many commentators suggesting that maybe schools are not the right place for children as young as three, and that if they were in nurseries for longer (like their apparently more successful counterparts in Europe) there would be even more improvement, sustained for much longer.

In addition to improvement, the report looked at the hoary chestnut of funding, unsurprisingly concluding that the Department and its partners do not yet sufficiently understand the relationship between this and local performance – including how far variations in rates paid to providers reflect legitimate local factors – to be confident that funding arrangements are efficient. For example, certain local authorities use funding to provide limited incentives for providers to improve quality, despite finding no links with take-up rates or quality. It’s no surprise to see the report noting how funding formulae are complex, yet despite this, transparency and fairness of funding was improving. (Although funding remained insufficient to cover the costs for some providers, nursery schools received a much higher level of payment than the rest of the sector.)

The report concluded that the Department for Education (DfE) needs to address variations in take-up when it comes to accessing high-quality provision – along with the impact on attainment in later years – if it is to achieve value for money and get the best possible return for children from its annual investment of some £1.9 billion. I vote this should become a central strategy to the current work being done and the reviews being undertaken, so that every DfE activity weaves together to deliver a coherent service, one which parents can both understand and buy into without all the confusion that is raised by so many emotive headlines.

I would caution that if we are to truly measure the longer term benefit, we must remember what we are measuring. Our children (including the two-year-olds) are babies and must be allowed to enjoy their childhood.  Value for money is important, of course, but if we are showing improvement already let’s start from that premise; measure the right things in the right way.  What we want is for children to have a happy childhood; Early Years is a crucial step towards that, but not a stick to be beaten with if children do less well in Primary Schools.

Mr Gove, I urge you again to take more interest in the Early Years and stop assuming that Primary Schools are perfect.  Be as critical of them as you are of Secondary Schools, and let’s have a more in depth look at transition. Remember what this report says: there has been improvement in the Foundation Stage.