Leadership skills for charities

Sometimes the days you most dread are the most stimulating!

Northern Ballet Theatre was offered a day on corporate governance from the Clore Leadership Foundation. The deal is that if you accept, the whole board absolutely HAS to take part in this.

As a board member, I went along this morning thinking a whole day on corporate governance sounded deathly and I could be doing a million other things with a day out of the office. I shouldn’t complain – we have board members from Sussex, London and Scotland so their time commitment was far more than mine.

I arrived in an irritable mood – but the day was so good this was quickly turned around. Thanks to City Inn for offering us a fantastic venue – stunning views across Leeds. Prue Skene, chair of Rambert Dance Company led the day and was inspirational. We have a number of new board members – myself included – and she helped us bond, winkled out issues and helped us address them.

I think it was particularly good for our chief executive and artistic director. We had time to listen to them and their issues and have proper discussions – in a way that is just not possible in a normal two hour board meeting.

To describe the day as about ‘corporate governance’ does not do it justice. We covered everything from new internal structures and addressing key risks to maximising the board’s skills and income generation ideas.

Any charity that has a chance for one of these days – grab it with both hands.