Tom Riordan talks about leadership and his career as a public servant including 5 years as CEO of Yorkshire Forward and 10 years as CEO of Leeds City Council.

Mistakes? Proudest achievements – and why they are not on his official Council Bio, Mayors and why they are good and bad, climate, inequalities and what on earth do we do…?

Can Kindness really be the answer?

Glasgow born and educated, David was the Chief Executive of GTG Training from 2004 until 2014 and a specialist adviser on Youth Training and Development to the Board of Arnold Clark Automobiles, the parent company of GTG Training, where he originally started work in staff development in 1999. Previous roles with Arnold Clark included Direct Marketing Manager and Sales Development Manager. Immediately prior to assuming his appointment at GTG Training he headed the project team responsible for the Arnold Clark Management Development Programme and subsequently championed the introduction of their highly successful Sales Academy in his capacity as head of Group Training & Development. David has been a member of the Goodison Group in Scotland since its formation in 2004 to bring together experienced people from the worlds of business, government and education to focus on particular themes to do with learning, skills and productivity and served on the Glasgow Employers’ Board/Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Youth Employment Advisory Group. He serves on ad-hoc advisory groups for Scottish Government initiatives such as the Scottish Business Pledge and is an assessor for business growth funding and support competitions such as Scottish Edge and the Unlocking Ambition Programme.

Some within the Scottish Business Community may also recognise him as Lieutenant-Colonel (Retired)

David Scott where his final appointment was as a Staff Officer at Brigade Headquarters prior to which he had been Commanding Officer of 51 (Scottish) Brigade’s Regional Training Centre, an Army Reserve establishment working to standards set and audited by the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Prior to 1999 David worked mostly in his own family-owned businesses in wholesale distribution to UK

FMCG clients and his own retail outlets. He funded his early years in more junior ranks within the Army Reserve by employment within the Financial Services industry.

When not working, studying or researching, David is a Marine Mammal Medic with British Divers Marine Life Rescue and a Level III trained specialist with their Large Whale Disentanglement Team. David has also served as a Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian with operational experience in Taiji, Japan, Seal defence campaigns around Scotland and as a member of Sea Shepherd UK’s covert operations team in the Danish Faroe Islands documenting illegal whale and dolphin massacres.

I met Ruby at the NHS Leadership Academy in Leeds where we both work on various programmes. Ruby is a talent and leadership developer an executive coach, facilitator speaker and pracademic – practitioner and an academic!

We come from different generations, different backgrounds, different cultures, and different cities. In this podcast we explore what has shaped us and what continues to shape us in our leadership practice.

We talk about doing and being, collusion, Born to Run, race, gender and what growing up taught us. We also talk about social mobility, straddling two worlds and the pain that can involve…

 

Mike Chitty and Brigid Russell in conversation about #spacesfolistening.

Rebecca is part of Kaizen Arts Agency based in York. Rebecca’s mum has been a nurse in the NHS for 40 years.

Kaizen say of themselves:

“We are design activists.

Everything is both learned and designed.

Dogmatic assumptions inhibit enquiry.

We are the in between.

We are an ecosystem that spans planning, measuring, mapping + acting.

We won’t stop improving things, and we won’t ask permission or apologise.

 We design space and time. We are designers of the past, and of the future.

Art asks the questions, science sets the scales, design finds the balance.

We work on continued research and practice in interdisciplinary arts + science.

You might want to work with us on some of these examples, you might not. Whatever can happen will happen.

• we consult on strategic thinking and planning
• we cultivate and facilitate playful and meaningful projects for people and their spaces through continued public engagement and audience development – through constant and continuous exchange of power and perspective
• we empower organisations and communities listening to each other, and find ways we can work together to deliver lasting change with, by and for our ancestors
• we collaborate. we are collective – we are not just one, we are also one. we don’t do IP we do sharing. Trust is our only currency, and the only form we are willing to fill in 
• we design for distribution, inclusivity and with dynamic social purpose
• we work within the arts and sciences to find out what stories have been told, question perspectives, and we re-write”