- Social leadership is based on radical levels of connection and collaboration
- It can boost recruitment and retention, and fosters community partnerships that support the organisation for the long term
- Early years professionals can use it to better make themselves heard and fight for the pay and status they deserve
When social leadership is applied in early years organisations, it addresses some of the major challenges that the sector faces. It can improve recruitment, retention and performance among the early years workforce, and it can help early years professionals to learn how to make themselves better heard in wider society.
I have interviewed social leaders in early years around the world and worked closely with June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation. We have developed a collective understanding of the difference social leadership can make, and the mechanisms through which it helps organisations to address major challenges in the sector. We want to share three ways that it impacts positively on recruitment, retention, performance, organisational sustainability and professional advocacy:
- Cultures of connection.
- Community partnerships.
- Building professional confidence.
Cultures of connection
Social leadership is characterised by intense levels of openness. In organisations where social leadership has taken root, people say what they really think and talk about what is working and what needs to change. But this openness – what leadership writer Kim Scott calls ‘radical candour’ – is based on a foundation of kindness. Without kindness, openness can feel invasive and upsetting.
‘It’s essential to remember that we’re talking about human beings,’ says Nichole Leigh Mosty, former director of Ösp playschool in Iceland, and now early years consultant and project manager in community development for the city of Reykjavik.
Put openness and kindness together and you will end up with what we are calling a ‘culture of connection’. In a culture of connection, the kindness is visible. Anyone walking through the door of the setting can feel it.
‘I can hand on heart say that every stakeholder that comes into the organisation comments on the warm welcome that they get when they come in,’ says Jacqueline Lamb, CEO of Indigo Childcare Group in Glasgow. ‘They comment on how happy and relaxed the staff team seem to be.’
Building a culture of connection involves signalling to staff that they matter and they will be listened to. Small acts of kindness – based on really knowing your team – also make a difference. Chantal Williams, CEO of Stepping Stones in Tasmania, Australia, keeps a notebook with her at all times so she can jot down any good news stories that she hears about her team, and can thank or congratulate them.
Community partnerships
Social leadership insists on connection within the organisation, but it also necessitates fostering connections that extend to the outside world. In the case of early years, this means strong partnerships with families as well as other institutions in the community.
‘We work really hard to build those strong relationships with parents,’ says Ed Vainker, CEO of the Reach Foundation in Feltham, London. ‘I think when professionals show leadership, it often comes from empathy and a sense of feeling a shared responsibility with the parents for what happens to that child. There is a curiosity about figuring out what the right thing is and what the right approach is for that child.’
Strong relationships with family are not just supportive of good practice, they are key to organisational sustainability, argues Nurper Ülküer, former UNICEF senior advisor for early childhood development. Dr Ülküer suggests that the key question, when we are thinking about whether an organisation is protected in its future, is ‘how are we going to set up that local network and make sure that the programme will be owned – and protected – by the stakeholders, by the parents and the families?’.
Indeed, early years can become – through social leadership – a means for community renewal and growth. Ms Lamb describes this mutually beneficial relationship in Indigo’s central position in creating the resilience hub in Castlemilk, Glasgow, which involves more than 40 agencies, including not only early years providers but the emergency services, public sector, statutory provision, third-sector organisations and community groups.
When Indigo needs support – when, for example, it is looking for the integration of specialist services, such as speech and language therapy, into its provision – these pathways are enabled by the integral role it plays in the wider community. Social leadership in early years is therefore about finding a way to put early years provision not only on the map, but at the very centre of the community.
Building professional confidence
The beauty of social leadership is that it actively fosters the development of leadership capacities for all staff, regardless of hierarchies. Since we cannot expect all early years professionals to lead by default, this necessitates a strong emphasis on professional development. This can be formal leadership training, but there are other ways of building leadership across teams. Grassroots innovation, action research and distributed leadership are all processes that we saw in organisations around the world hoping to enhance their leadership behaviours.
‘Everybody has a leadership role to fill somewhere,’ explains Nichole Leigh Mosty, describing the way leadership development happens at Ösp. ‘If you were a person that liked to work with clay, then you had the clay workshop and it was yours to make it a success… We had all these specialists teaching with passion and communicating to their co-workers.’
Through its commitment to everyone demonstrating leadership, social leadership approaches professionals who are not afraid to stand up for themselves and for the sector. An example of this, led by Ms Williams at Stepping Stones in Tasmania, was early years professionals coming together to successfully challenge a move by local government to get children into school at a younger age. Through finding a confident and collective voice, the professionals were able to secure pilot funding from government to support more children to enter nursery – rather than school – provision.
It takes courage – and leadership – to put your head above the parapet and tell people about the injustices of working in the sector, whether you are communicating this to a family member over dinner, or trying to lobby an MP to make change.
Social leadership lays the foundations for a body of professionals who bring confidence and courage to the task of leading the urgent social changes that face us.
CASE STUDY: Indigo Childcare Group
CEO Jacqueline Lamb joined Indigo in 2016 and wanted to get her team collectively involved in deciding how to define outstanding quality. She says, ‘I told staff “you are best placed to tell me what outstanding quality in this service looks like”.
‘As part of this, we wanted them to have the opportunity to identify particular things of interest to them and a plan for testing them out. We set out a little business case document that we referred to as the “ideas process” – so they would put a little blurb about what their idea was and then say “OK, this is what I’ve found out about it, this is what the research shows”. I use “research” loosely – it was more about going and just finding out a bit about what they were interested in and the potential difference it could make to the service. They filled out one page and they could bring that to their manager.’
A result of this was the introduction of Spanish in both Indigo nurseries. Ms Lamb says, ‘We have a professional who works for us in one of our nurseries who is Mexican. The children were constantly saying to him “that’s not how you say it, you say it like this… that’s funny, why do you say it like that?”.
‘He had a real passion for language and literacy development. After sharing his initial thoughts and work, I gave him some research about the value of childhood bilingualism, and he came back really excited, saying: “I’ve had a look and actually the curriculum for excellence, as far as modern languages, it stops at primary 1, there’s nothing for early years at all – do you think I could do it for us?” And I said “well, you could always have a go at it”.’
The staff member started teaching Spanish in the 3-5s room, and now teaches across the other setting while supporting the teacher in the attached primary school, which also teaches Spanish. ‘It worked really well, we got a really good response from the children and he did some great work in developing the curriculum itself and differentiating it down, developing his own professional skillset through some additional CPD. The local authority has asked to share his work. He’s become the expert, the leader,’ Ms Lamb adds.