We talk about the importance of listening, reading the room and Kantor’s Dialogue model, grief, vulnerability and boldness and much more. We talked for over two hours…

Brigid says of herself I have been a self-employed coach and leadership consultant for the past five years or so. Before that I worked in the public sector in leadership and team development, as well as working as a management consultant within an international consultancy for over ten years. I have lived and worked in Scotland for just over twenty years. I was born and brought up in Oxford, though my family origins are in South Wales and the West of Ireland.

I’m at a stage in my life where I want to support those who can make a real difference to our public services, and our civic society. My husband, Jim, died of leukaemia in February 2020. He believed as much as I do in making a positive difference to others, of being kind; he wanted me to be doing meaningful work.

I see leadership as being all about the relationships between people, and across parts of a system which are inter-connected and inter-dependent. It is about connecting with purpose, making a positive difference to people’s lives. I’m particularly interested in exploring how leadership develops in practice. I believe that developing leadership goes way beyond expertise in theories and models. It starts with who we are as people, our humanity, and our relationships with the people with whom we work and right across our communities.

This is why I believe in a relational approach to leadership development. It is also why I’ve been so drawn to finding and creating more spaces for listening to each other, and having more open conversations. And that’s part of the inspiration for being involved in #SpacesForListening with Charlie Jones.

Find Brigid on twitter at @brigidrussell51

Kay Sidebottom is a lecturer in Education and Childhood at the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett University. Her specialism is teacher education (lifelong learning) and her background is in community and further education, where she has taught a range of subjects.

In addition to teaching on Childhood Studies, Kay is involved in the delivery of the new Post Graduate Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring.

Kay’s current area of focus in research is the application of critical posthuman theory in teaching and learning. She is currently researching the ways in which educators can work with posthuman thinking in order to reimagine education for the 21st century and beyond.

Other recent research projects include the use of restorative practice and Thinking Environments in education leadership; using interdisciplinary approaches (such as art and poetry) in teacher education, and employing philosophical enquiry as a pedagogical method for pro-social education.

In this podcast we discuss…

• The privilege to speak our truth without fear…Black Lives Matter…Leeds and Whiteness
• Spinoza and from pain to joy
• Indigenous Leadership
• The architecture of the Civic Hall and its purpose
• Art Activist Barbie
• Why Me? Why Here? Why Now?
• De-centring the man from human and the human from everything else…

Anne Cooper had had a long and distinguished career as a nurse in the NHS and is now a non-executive Director at Yorkshire Ambulance Service and Clinical Director of Ethical Healthcare. Until recently Chief Nurse at NHS Digital, Anne is immensely experienced and highly regarded figure within healthcare informatics.

A national leader in driving the digital nursing agenda, she has experience in strategy and leadership development, requirements and design, clinical safety and deployment. As a T1 Diabetes patient, she is also a passionate advocate of ensuring the patients and citizens have an equal voice in the health and care system.

Outside of both work and being a Twitter addict (@anniecoops)

In this podcast we talk about the humaness of leadership, leadership as friendship (and what we do about bad friends), women only leadership development, matriarchy and patriarchy, slime making, and the nature of female only community – where Anne breaks the code!

Lou Mycroft has been working nomadically for several years now, guided by an ethics of joy.

She brings people together in community, to think, make decisions and implement plans which change cultures, choosing work based on Nesta UK’s 2018 definition of Good Help:

“…enabling people to feel hopeful, identify their own purpose and confidently take action.” 

She is a Thinking Environment facilitator, writer, public speaker and coach and her work translates well to online spaces. She is co-founder of the #JoyFE💛 movement and its influential ‘Ideas Rooms’. She has particular strengths around engagement, digital resilience and the creation of effective, bespoke culture change programmes. She tries to be joyfully militant in everything she does.

She is very interested in wellbeing, particularly mental health and developing personal agency (her first career was as a Public Health Specialist). She is a member of the @MHFECrowd and is currently developing new thinking around health, wellbeing and empowerment, particularly for women.

She has been nominated for an EduFuturist 2020 Award as a Staff Wellbeing Champion, even though she doesnt have a ‘staff’.

Find her on twitter @loumycroft and on the net at loumycroft.org

In conversation with Emma Bearman of Playful Anywhere we talk about play, Leadership, being side by side rather than following someone who is in front. We talk about the power of provocation and discomfort, innovation and novelty.

Playful Anywhere CIC is a Leeds-based social enterprise with a mission to catalyse creativity, inventiveness and playfulness, where we work, live and travel.

They have a proven track record of delivering high-quality fun participatory events, programmes and activities. They have devised and delivered festivals, open space events, civic participation, networks, playful tech labs, young inventor programmes, building launches, panel events, team builds, place change activities, websites and community activities. They take care of the smallest detail, creating meaningful experiences whether it’s a one to one or a huge family festival.

They bring teams together to deliver high quality experiences, and have a long-standing reputation for excellence in culture and heritage, public art and realm, art and urban landscaping, fundraising, digital and social media engagement. 

Blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, encouraging participants to get creative with all manner of media, from cardboard to code.