Julia Middleton's Thoughts on Leadership

Last week Mary O’Hara wrote an interesting piece in the Guardian about Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative.

It’s a good piece.

It’s sad when experienced leaders complete their formal career and expect ‘that call’. If it never comes, they retreat to the golf course. But the call doesn’t always happen because they have been so absorbed in the world that they know well that they have not planned or prepared for the next phase. They certainly have not thought of their careers as citizens.

With luck, a career as a citizen has been running in parallel to their formal career all the time, but for many it’s a new thing.

Leaders have a journey as a citizen that outstrips their time at work. But a citizenship career requires as much planning as you put into your formal career. All that educating yourself, getting hired, getting involved in interesting projects, expanding our networks and thinking, putting your skills to the best possible use, and learning to work with new people – it all applies.

There is no retirement age for citizens. But if it’s left as an afterthought of ‘what I’ll do when I leave here’, the danger is that when you do no one much wants you…because you have become only really effective ‘here’.

And even if you don’t revert, or evolve to golf, if you don’t plan things properly you become a volunteer. Now, I know I get in trouble for knocking volunteering, but let me clarify.

Reading with kids in schools or distributing books in a hospital are strong starts as they root you in reality and come with huge individual satisfaction. But to me, if you have been a successful leader all your life, surely these skills need to be used to change things so that reading is – for example – better taught in schools? So after you’re done reading, maybe it’s time to become a school governor? Or to join an NHS board?

We run a course for leaders at this stage – and by this I mean preferably a few years before the end of your formal career – to consider the multitude of options and figure out what has to change in you if you are to avoid the gold banishment.

We also run a campaign called About Time. This is for leaders who want to take on big board opportunities. I speak on both courses every year because it is so exciting opening up new worlds to people who have the time, commitment and potential ability to change things.

I speak on Frontrunner too – our course for university students – so that our future leaders think about their careers as citizens from the start.