leaning through leadership

Learning Through Leadership Talk – November 2024

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‘Courage with Compassion: Leading in Today’s NHS’ with Sonji Clarke (Class of 1982)

In this blog post, Louisa Searle, Chair of the Rank Fellowship and a Fellow (Class of 2003), reflects on our recent Learning Through Leadership talk, ‘Courage with Compassion: Leading in Today’s NHS’, delivered by Sonji Clarke (Class of 1982). The event took place on 27th November 2024 at The Rank Foundation’s offices in Shoreditch, London.

About the guest speaker:

Sonji Clarke is a consultant obstetrician and deputy head of the London School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and an honorary senior lecturer at King’s College London. She has been a consultant for more than 10 years with special interests in perinatal mental health, substance misuse, and women who are pregnant with other complex social factors.

She also has a special interest in Postgraduate and Undergraduate education, as well as an interest in multi-professional diverse leadership development. In 2018, she was honoured as one of the Top 70 NHS Women Leaders in London during the NHS 70 year celebrations by the London Women’s Leadership Network.

The Learning Through Leadership Talks are a bi-annual event where members of the Fellowship are invited to deliver a talk on their leadership journey and reflect on what leadership has looked like and felt like to them in their careers and beyond.

For 2024’s second Learning Through Leadership Talk, we were honoured to be joined by the dynamic and inspiring energy of Dr Sonji Clarke, Class of 1982 at Garden Walk on 27th November.

Sonji’s talk was entitled ‘Compassionate Leadership’, but covered so much more ground than that. She shared personal stories from her childhood and youth and described how that has shaped the person and leader she has become today. It was particularly clear that the impact of her teachers – and of the Rank Leadership Award – had been immense and had truly changed her life. She reflected, often, on how privileged she felt to receive the Award in a way that was deeply moving.

Sonji’s candour and openness allowed us as the audience to see how her challenges and even her ‘failures’ had been part of her journey, and she encouraged us all to view such set-backs in a similar way. She also shared the framework she uses to form her ‘compassionate leadership’, and explored how integrity, authenticity, humility and empathy have guided her through challenging moments in her career. As is true for all of us, those challenges are sometimes posed from the work we do, from those around us and even sometimes from within ourselves. Sonji explained how she navigated all of them – from delivering babies in distress or accusations from colleagues, to racism and imposter syndrome – while always remaining true to herself and her values.

It was fascinating to hear how leadership looks and feels for a leader who has followed a vocation like medicine, particularly in the NHS and in women’s health. In the questions from the audience that followed the speech (and we had many!) Sonji shared with us the advice she would have given her younger self: ‘don’t limit yourself – never hold yourself back’.

Huge thanks to Sonji for the generosity she showed us by sharing so much of herself and her journey with the audience – we will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

About the author:

Louisa Searle, a Fellow (Class of 2003), serves as Chair of the Rank Fellowship. She began her career as a secondary school teacher in North London through the Teach First programme. In 2014, she left the classroom to co-found and lead First Give, a charity that empowers secondary school students to engage with and support their local communities through social action, while developing essential soft skills. Louisa joined The English-Speaking Union in June 2024 as Director of Education.

Learning Through Leadership Talk – April 2024

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Leadership in a Judicial setting with Sir James Dingemans (Class of 1980)

In this blog post, Geoffrey Pelham-Lane, our Fellow (Class of 1978), shares his thoughts on our recent Learning Through Leadership talk, “Leadership in a Judicial Setting,” featuring Sir James Dingemans (Class of 1980). The event took place on 17th April 2024 at The Rank Foundation’s offices in Shoreditch, London.

Sir James Dingemans giving the talk

Sir James Dingemans

If there is someone who has most successfully realised the leadership potential that the Rank Foundation looks for in each of its School Leadership Award holders it is the Court of Appeal judge, Lord Justice Dingemans.

The person from Rank who first recommended him for an award in 1980 demonstrated remarkable foresight. Sir James’ talk on Wednesday evening did everything to confirm this as well as highlighting the value that the Rank Foundation has added and continues to add through its great work in bringing out the very best in people and society.

His talk on “Leadership in a Judicial setting” was hugely engaging not just to our next generation of fellows pursuing or about to pursue a legal career but also to all of us who benefit either directly or indirectly from the UK having one of the most envied and fair legal systems in the world. This achievement has clearly been no accident, having been built and sustained by the professionalism, impartiality and, most importantly, leadership of our lawyers.

Sir James described how he had developed professionally since receiving Rank support in his last year at Radley, learning about leadership when he trained at Sandhurst on a short service commission and then about the law when he studied at Oxford University. What was striking about his talk was not just how he applied these skills successfully to lead and motivate over 800 judges, but just how applicable these skills are to leadership elsewhere.

He referred to ‘Transactional’ leaders that work within the establishment and ‘Transformational’ leaders that typically inspire us with a charismatic vision. He discussed other styles such as ‘Situational’ leadership where a true leader adapts to the specific demands of a situation. This, he felt, was most applicable to leadership in the judiciary.

He provided examples of why it is important as a leader to identify your goal but keep it simple, show that you are capable of doing the job of those that you are leading (it is a requirement that judges have to be practitioners unlike managers in the NHS), make sure you do the right thing (don’t simply lead to satisfy media coverage), ensure you stay calm, respect boundaries (such as the law), learn to handle pressure and recognise your team (‘walk the floor’ and say ‘thank you’).

He also mentioned how important diversity is to achieving the best results and how, while the judiciary has made some improvements, this will take time as judges can only come from practitioners entering the law at the beginning of their legal careers.

All in all, a great talk and one where everyone, not just budding lawyers, learnt something. Thank you, Sir James!

About the author:

Geoffrey Pelham-Lane, Fellow (Class of 1978), is one of the UK’s leading financial communications experts, with more than 35 years of experience in financial PR and investor relations. He is Chairman of APCO UK and Chief Executive Officer at Capital Market Communications Ltd (Camarco), an APCO Worldwide Company.

Learning Through Leadership Talk 2023

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‘If not you then who?’: Rose Fitzpatrick CBE QPM

In this blog post, John Hind, our Director of Education and Leadership, shares his thoughts on our recent Learning Through Leadership talk, “If not you then who?” by Rose Fitzpatrick CBE QPM. The event took place on 21 March 2023.

Rose Fitzpatrick CBE QPM giving the talk

Late March saw a first as the Fellowship’s ‘Learning through Leadership’ programme transferred to Rank’s Garden Walk Headquarters. Those present were privileged to hear Rose Fitzpatrick, Foundation trustee and member of the Fellowship Leadership Team, share her experiences of over 30 years of service in the City and Met Police forces, culminating in her role as Deputy Chief Constable of the newly formed Police Scotland service in 2013.

A pioneering meeting at Garden Walk chimed with pioneering aspects of Rose’s career. A Theology and Philosophy graduate, she joined the city police at a time when only 2% of recruits held degrees and only 8% were women. As a relatively mature recruit with clear potential she was promoted to inspector in less than five years when the average time taken was ten. Her role with the City force was challenging: the force’s counter-terrorist role being stretched by incidents such as the Bishopsgate bomb, but it was the impact of the Macpherson report following Stephen Lawrence’s murder that persuaded Rose that her real passion was for community policing. Transferring to the Met force as a Superintendent, she became the Borough Commander for Tower Hamlets in 2002 as at that time the only female officer in such a position in the Met force. 

Her description of working in a diverse ethnic community as ‘mind blowingly interesting’ is testament to her commitment to true community work and it was this interest that took her out of a very brief retirement from her service into her role in Police Scotland.  Here – pioneering again – she faced the challenge of how best to make the new unitary national force address the differing needs of its various component communities – the needs of policing in Glasgow, for example, being radically different from those in Highland communities. Five years of facing the cultural and political challenges inherent in her role left her fulfilled but exhausted though a second retirement was even shorter than her first. Two days into her family holiday she was asked to establish and chair a new National Suicide Prevention Leadership Group for Scotland, a role which she still holds.

In all of this, a clear part of the answer to Rose’s title question lies in the manifest sense of duty and service that clearly drives her. Indeed, a crucial point she made was the need to reflect before taking on some challenges and to recognise when others may be better placed to take them on. Listening to one’s instinct was vital in such cases and Rose made the point that one can practise this, not least when facing up to the ethical and moral challenges leadership presents. Avowedly assuring us she was not the hero who ran into danger – though some of her colleagues were – she nonetheless showed real moral courage on a number of occasions when determined to do what she believed to be the right thing – even at the cost of temporary unpopularity. That leadership can be lonely is true – especially in situations where one has to stand up for one’s principles – and this was compounded for Rose by the lack of female peers at her level within the organisations she served. She did however make the point that asking for help is vital when facing challenging decisions is in no sense a sign of weakness: rather, it is a way of developing strengths.

Rose spoke on the day the Casey report into the Met police was published. Clearly digesting the report in full was impossible: however, in response to questions from a thoughtful and engaged audience, she did stress the need for proper resourcing of the police service, especially with regard to recruitment, vetting and training. In keeping with our theme, appropriate leadership is vital too. Looking back on all Rose said, it was clear that her moral purpose and sense of duty, coupled with a genuine understanding of the importance of the police’s relationship with their community, made her the kind of leader the police need. Those of us present were fortunate indeed to hear what she had to say.

About the author:

John Hind joined the Rank Foundation in June 2021 as Director of Education and Leadership. He is responsible for overseeing the School Leadership Award and Fellowship, following a career in teaching, most recently as Principal of Dame Allan’s Schools in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 2004 to 2020. John studied history at Cambridge University, completed an MEd at Newcastle, and a part-time PhD at Durham.