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In his inimitable style, Nick unearths the secrets of good leadership from his guests.
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#EdInfluence
S04-E03 with Sir Chris Husbands
Uncover the fascinating intersection of leadership and storytelling as we welcome Sir Chris Husbands, an esteemed former Vice-Chancellor and a key player with Higher Futures.
In conversation with Nick, Chris shares how his journey from a curious history teacher to a university leader was shaped by a student's question about medieval monasteries. Get ready to explore how storytelling can transform leadership, offering insights and context through narratives like those from "The West Wing."
We also shed light on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and its pivotal role in reshaping UK universities' approach to teaching quality, much like Ofsted inspections in schools. Chris offers a unique perspective on the collaborative evaluation of teaching standards, emphasising the need to move beyond stereotypes and recognise true excellence in education. This discussion not only highlights the importance of assessing teaching quality but also the broader impact of these efforts on educational settings and student engagement.
Our exploration of leadership traits uncovers the vital importance of curiosity and flexibility. Drawing from Chris's experiences with Ofsted and the TEF, we reflect on maintaining core values while adapting to ever-changing educational landscapes.
Through personal anecdotes and examples of influential leaders, we also discuss strategies for effective communication and engagement within large teams, underscoring the relentless effort required to maintain genuine connections and support educational opportunities for all. Join us for these valuable insights for leaders and educational enthusiasts alike.
Welcome to the latest episode of Ed Influence. I'm Nick McKenzie from Brown Jacobson and today I'm delighted to be joined by Sir Chris Husbands, former Vice-Chancellor of two universities and now partner of Higher Futures. Thank you, chris, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting you to tell me a story from your life that would give me a picture of who you are.
Sir Chris Husbands:Well, let's start with a story of sort of professional life and we'll go from there. Although I ended up running universities, my earliest career was teaching in urban comprehensive schools. I taught history and I can remember very clearly. I'm teaching a bottom set and, for some reason best known to myself, the class are drawing and labeling a picture of a medieval monastery and and this kid, mark, sticks his hand up and says here, sir, uh, what did they use for bog paper? And I thought I had no, no, no, the answer to this yeah, I did a history degree so I said well, mark, they use leaves.
Sir Chris Husbands:And he said and what did they use in the winter? Then holly and I and I thought that was a really interesting comment from him because he was somebody who was just looking at the world differently from me I'd read the books and I thought I'd got the answer He'd actually thought of that thing from a practical point of view and I've always come back to that story, which I've told in no end of settings, and it is a reminder that and we might come on to this later that when you're running organizations and then when you're operating in the education space, you're always working with people who look at the world differently from you, and and you've got, you've got to spend a bit of time building an imaginative connection with people who look at the world differently thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:So could you share a story, perhaps, how you've drawn on that and use that then in your leadership?
Sir Chris Husbands:well, I tend to I, I, I, I, I do tend to lead um by telling stories that I tell. I tell them a lot, um, I often find ways to diffuse challenging uh situations by just finding a story that I can tell and that one comes in, as you know. Let's look at this. You know there are different ways of looking at this problem and I've always found it interesting when people are and we might come onto this a bit later in terms of the sort of leadership influences on me it's people who can set the problems that you're in in a context.
Sir Chris Husbands:I frequently say that my major source of leadership advice is watching endless repeats of the West Wing, which I loved when it first came out. And there's one episode when President Bartlett, the president who's the centrepiece of the series, is going to the funeral of a former president, and because it's a funeral of a former president, lots of other presidents are all sort of arriving and they all tell stories about the problem. It's called the stormy present and they all tell problems about the problems that they had to deal with when they were running the United States, and the point of the episode is that everybody thinks their present is a stormy present and actually everybody has got different challenges and we have to find ways of overcoming them. So there you are. I've told you another leadership story and I keep telling these stories, but just keep thinking. You know what's the story here, what's the point at issue? I think some really interesting things to hang on to.
Nick MacKenzie:And how important at all do you think storytelling is for a leader? Is it a must-have or is it good if you've got it?
Sir Chris Husbands:It's a great question Is it a must-have? Well, I'm always slightly slightly apprehensive about saying almost anything it a must-have. Well, I'm always slightly slightly apprehensive about saying almost anything is a must-have. I, I think that the the thing about being a leader is that you, you bring yourself and and you bring your assets and you bring your weaknesses, and if you're going to be remotely successful, you have to find a way of capitalizing on your strengths and finding ways especially by working with others, uh, that that mitigate your weaknesses. So, is it a must-have? I'm sure it's not uh and um, but, but, but I, I find it, it's the way. It's the way I think. I think through stories. I, yeah, I can do numbers. I've taught myself to do, do numbers, but stories is where I'm happiest.
Nick MacKenzie:And you mentioned history and you did. I think one of your degrees was a history degree. Have you found that useful? Because historians have to try and be balanced and construct a broad range of views and sources. Is that something that you think has influenced you?
Sir Chris Husbands:Yeah, I mean, you're going to ask me some questions about what's influenced me, and I suspect that any of us are always the least well positioned to say what has actually influenced us. We are what we are and sometimes we're more or less reflective about that. I think about evidence, um, I I there was somebody who taught me, um, who who dinned into me that the most important question as a historian is is what do we know and how do we know it? And, of course, the point about historical evidence is that it's almost all misleading. Yeah, some of it is overtly misleading, some of it is unintentionally misleading.
Sir Chris Husbands:The really gifted historians are the ones who can get very, very uncrepossessing evidence to tell a really compelling story. And and I don't know this history I read that I find really interesting is where people have picked up, you know just staggeringly complex or difficult or remote evidence and and put and built, built stories from that. So what do we know and how do we know it? And I keep coming back to you know what's the story here? What's this picture telling us? What's this data telling us? Which of the data here? Some of it's very noisy. Is that what I should be paying attention to? Some of it's not very noisy, but actually it might have more in it. So, yes, I think that's right.
Sir Chris Husbands:Um, and, and when you are, uh, I I don't think of myself as a historian. I think about somebody myself as somebody who did a history degree. It's quite different, um, but, but, but I do do. Yeah, what's what's? What's the story? What's the evidence? What's what? What's? What do we need to pay attention to here? What do we need to get right and what is less important, what can we perhaps pay a bit less attention to?
Nick MacKenzie:So if you're not a historian, how would you describe yourself?
Sir Chris Husbands:Well, so I had a very, very atypical. I think it was atypical.
Nick MacKenzie:So I did a history going.
Sir Chris Husbands:I then did a PhD in a geography department. I'll tell you the story of that. You might want to edit it out because it's a bit dull. I came into my end of second year exams and I wanted to do quite well and there was a geography lecturer in a college. He was a historical geographer and I thought if I went to talk to him I could learn some technical terms like map that I might be able to deploy in my uh second year exams. And I did. I did that quite well and then he he said to me in my third year that the geography department had got some phd studentships that they um handed out before finals and history department waited till after finals. So I thought about hedging my bets and I went off to the geography department. Uh, the most useful thing I think I've got out of my phd in geography department is where I met my wife. Uh, but that's that's. That's by the by. So I did a first degree in history, I did a second, I did a phd in geography where I got a lot of quantitative training. Um struggled with that, really, really struggled with it, although it's come in pretty handy later on, um. And then you know, early 1980s. Um, there weren't jobs.
Sir Chris Husbands:In higher education I got really interested in thinking about education. I became a secondary school teacher, taught in pretty challenging urban comprehensive schools, and I often say that that's when my education really began. That's when people started to tell me that what was in the books about leaves and the winter needed to be thought about quite carefully. And it was. And from there I was promoted pretty quickly in schools, thought I would carry on going up through the school structure, but my eye was caught after a few years with a job training history teachers. So I became so.
Sir Chris Husbands:Having been a historian, having been a geographer, having been a teacher, I became an education policy walk and that, crudely, is what is where I've spent most of my time thinking and writing. But but I do sort of think that that really quite eclectic educational, educational background was something that has given me a wide range of points of reference. I think I like to draw on a whole range of stuff and, having been an education policy wonk, I worked out that I wasn't top class. I'm clear about that. I think I'm second rank and I think there are lots of people who are better policy analysts than me.
Sir Chris Husbands:So once I found myself in higher education, I thought that it was probably a better use of my skills to create the environments in which other people could do really good work. So I focused on the leadership and management track and so I ended up running running departments. I ran chunks of universities and ended up running a couple of universities. Um, so it's a bit. It's been. I would say. I've had sort of four or five different careers and they've all been, they've all been quite interesting.
Nick MacKenzie:The um, interesting that that, talking about teaching and and teacher education, um, because one of your roles was chair of the teaching excellence framework, which was a a new initiative and I imagine a very interesting role to the chair. To chair that. What did you? Perhaps would be useful if you explain. Some of our listeners may not be familiar with it, so it might be worth just a little bit about the framework. But then I'm just interested about what you learned, perhaps about leadership in yourself through doing such a complicated and I will use the word I imagine having to lean quite a lot into influence and not having that same direct control as you might have as a vice-ch, vice chancellor of a university.
Sir Chris Husbands:Yeah, thank you for that. So just a word about the teaching excellent strain work. It was a manifesto commitment of the government that won the 2015 general election that they would establish a system for assessing teaching quality across universities. It was, and it's quite unusual because it is not an inspection based, it is just a drawing of another discipline. It's a bit of an archaeological exploration that you're looking for the evidence of good teaching in other things that universities do. They advertised, I think in the middle of 2016, it was just after I started my job at Helen, but the task of chairing it as a part-time commitment, and I thought, well, if anybody's going to do this, I'd quite like it to be somebody I trusted. So I thought I might as well apply for it myself and I was very surprised, for a whole range of reasons, that they appointed me. But our task and we did two cycles, one between 2017 and 2019 and one in 2022, 2023.
Sir Chris Husbands:Every institution in the country and that means what we would conventionally describe as the universities that we recognized recognized sussex, essex, reading, warwick, plus the specialist institutions, so royal college of music, royal agricultural university, plus further education colleges offering he plus independent HE providers, some of them hyper-specialists. Every institution was assessed on the outcomes of their teaching, based on a series of student metrics and what they said about how they achieved those outcomes through an institutional submission and it was a bit more complicated than that comes through an institutional submission, and it was a bit more complicated than that. And I had a very large panel, about 70 people in the first round, slightly smaller number in the second round, two-thirds academics, one-third students, but drawing especially in the first version on additional expertise from employer and professional bodies, and it was my job to reach judgments, or to steer the panel to reach judgments, on teaching quality, teaching excellence in every single one of those institutions and we're required to give them a rating gold, silver, bronze across a couple of criteria. There there's differences in methodology. For the second version, one vice-chancellor and I'm not going to ever name who phoned me up and said we don't like anything about the TEF, we certainly don't like the fact that you've been asked to chair it, and so that was the sort of environment that we were in and it had sharp critics in, and it had sharp critics and it was my job to steer this through, to establish consensus across a very diverse panel, to reach judgments and then quite significant part of the job I think to to be the face of the test, to talk the sector through the way that we had reached those judgments, and it was great. I loved it. I loved it.
Sir Chris Husbands:I thought that the discussions that those panels had about what was going on, why the results were looking as they did I remember saying that you know it was all anonymized later, but I wish we could have just filmed and taped some of the discussions because they were really sophisticated and people tried to use the data to get absolutely on top of teaching excellence processes across the sector. My deputy, janice Kay, with whom I now work very closely on Higher Futures, said that it wasn't the first time that people had tried to audit teaching excellence in the sector, but previous attempts had and it's her phrase, it's a great phrase not touched the sides that they'd sort of been bureaucratic processes and what the TEF did and I don't think anything else has quite succeeded in doing this was to get teaching excellence and teaching quality as a strategic issue onto the agenda of the executive team of the university, and that was that was. I think that's a great plus and I think we've learned a huge amount about what excellence looks like, what excellence looks like for different groups. We've learned about the fact that there are institutions that look as though they're doing a pretty good job, that look as though they're doing a pretty good job, but they may have white working-class males or mature Muslim females who they're just not getting through to, and so there's a lot of working about what is the engagement process is going on in institutions, and it was. I say it was a real privilege.
Sir Chris Husbands:I think I learned a huge amount.
Sir Chris Husbands:What did I learn, above all else?
Sir Chris Husbands:So all of us, however hard we try, if we're not careful, come into higher education with a set of stereotypes.
Sir Chris Husbands:You know, we think that because this place is what it is, certain things about its quality flow from that, and I think the tech demonstrates that that's at the very, very best. You know a quarter truth. You know that there is excellence throughout the sector. There is outstanding progress in some FE institutions who are keeping highly marginalised student groups on track, on track success, and delivering real added value for them. There are specialist institutions that have got such a sophisticated analysis and understanding of the pedagogy of their discipline that they can perform miracles with their student cohorts, and then you've got the really big multifaculty universities that are trying to juggle comprehensiveness and specialism and there is excellence to be found throughout that and I hope that we significantly upped the breadth and depth of the feedback we were able to provide for the second cycle of the TEF and I hope that what we've created there is a sort of massive resource that people can use to shape their own thinking about their teaching strategies.
Nick MacKenzie:Really interesting that you started life as a teacher. There's obviously a different framework in the school system through Ofsted in terms of as a formal inspector against an absolute framework Not to replace that. But I'm just curious with your experience of teaching educators, is there anything that you think from your work that could be interesting in the in the school system, particularly as they're moving to larger, larger groups are particularly taken by what you're saying about connecting the executives to the teaching excellence yeah, that's a really, really good question.
Sir Chris Husbands:I I I've done, I did a lot of work with Ofsted in the past, well before I was involved, well before the TEF was thought of and although I think that there are a whole series of very challenging questions the School of Inspection on balance, I'm pretty sure that Ofsted has been a force for good since its establishment in 1991.
Sir Chris Husbands:It's not a universally popular view. I once read a blog post called In Defence of Ofsted and I think they have done some really impressive stuff and I think that conversations across sectors are really, really important. I think Ofsted is absolutely unrivaled in its command of evidence, in the comprehensiveness of its review. I think some of the recent trimmings for cost reasons of the Ofsted methodology have slightly degraded that. I think we in the TEF it's a different enterprise, much, much smaller scale and much lower cost but I think we were really good at shining a light on the trajectories of different student groups. I've had conversations with not with the current chief inspector because he's relatively new in post, but with the previous chief inspector about what we might learn and what we might not learn from each other.
Sir Chris Husbands:So, yeah, and it is this where I've the position that I've found myself in. Yeah, through having run the Institute of Education, through having run the Teaching Excellence Framework, has given me an absolutely fabulous ringside seat on quality policy intervention education systems, which I just think I've been. I've been really fortunate um, I'm curious.
Nick MacKenzie:So, um, my daughter one of my daughters is currently really fascinated in evolution at the moment, and um, so I did some reading to try and better equip myself for discussions with it, because I was finding myself out of my depth very, very quickly. Um, I came across a dull charles darwin quote that interested me. And it's it's not the strongest of the species that survived, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Yes, in the context of leadership and organisational effectiveness, does that resonate?
Sir Chris Husbands:Yes, and with a caveat, I've absolutely loved my leadership career. Some things I think I've done quite well, some things, yeah, haven't done as well. Leadership is interesting, uh, fundamentally because it's about people. Yeah, it's about people and people are different in in you know. They are different motivation, experience, effectiveness, etc. Etc. Etc. And your job as a leader is to um, is to mobilize that. That that's that's what. That's what jobs as a lot of flexibility there, no, but nobody ever has quite um the leadership team they design, if they were sitting at their desk sketching it out. You know, you work with the, you work with real people. That's really interesting.
Sir Chris Husbands:Flexibility is really important. I was reading something this morning, um, that came through I had more daily mailings that I had that I have time to read, but, but there was mckinsey leadership mailing that was talking about 21st century leadership as being about, you know, evolution, empowering, flexibility, agility. For this I get all of that. I think it's fundamentally right. I think you've got to have an underlying core of values, commitment, that that sits underneath it. Um, so it's. It's not just about being flexible, it's not just about being adaptive. Those things are, are really really important. It's also about having that underlying sense of the moral value commitment of being leader.
Sir Chris Husbands:And the point where any of these things become interesting is how different ideas intertwine at different stages. At what point do you hold onto your values tightest? At what point do you need to be most flexible? At what point do you need to devolve most accountability and responsibility to teams? At what point do you need to centralise and pull things together? When do you need to challenge? When do you need to support All those things? Those are questions of balance, and I think that anybody who ever says they've got this sorted is wrong. You know, it's a constant shuttling between the different perspectives. Uh, that that, I think, makes this engaging and interesting.
Nick MacKenzie:Thank you, I was could you share a bit about what you think of?
Sir Chris Husbands:you talk about values there and calls key personality traits you do think are important as a in a leader yeah, um, so the leadership literature has slightly moved away from trait theory as as a, as a, as a basis, and partly because, um, the evidence tells us that the traits of successful leaders in some contexts don't are not successful traits for in other contexts. It's often why you find people who've been really good headteachers or football managers with one school or club and then they move somewhere else. They try to do the same things and it doesn't work. So traits, I think, is only part of the story. I think it is fundamentally about being endlessly curious. You've got to keep asking questions what is going on here? Why is this interesting?
Sir Chris Husbands:And I've been really lucky, right, um, but I've worked in some quite challenging situations. Um, I've always taken my job incredibly seriously, uh, and I've always thought really hard about it, and there have been some times that I've got very emotionally tied up in some of the stuff, but I have also tried to hang on to a sense of humor, trying to be able to put things in context. You know, I always say that one of the things that is different about running a university as compared to really difficult jobs, different about running a university as compared to really difficult jobs like being a heart surgeon or an air traffic controller is that, however difficult the situation is, you go to bed at night, you wake up in the morning and you get another chance to look at the, the issues or the problems or the challenges. You know it's, it's, it's't crash, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I've tried always to say to work with the grain of people and just to keep a sense of perspective. But for me the fundamental thing is to be curious. I'll tell you the story. It doesn't quite flow, but it's sort of fun.
Sir Chris Husbands:So a couple of years ago actually probably 18 months ago, uh, when I ran sheffield helen, we had a research nursery in a very, uh, materially impoverished part of east sheffield and I was cycling back from uh nursery and somebody knocked me off my bike. So the first thing he said, uh, when he, uh, when he knocked me off my bike, was that he was very sorry. He stopped. He's very sorry, but his cataract operations had been cancelled in the pandemic and he couldn't really see where he was going. So that was right, got us going, uh. And then he said he thought I was really a road sign because I was wearing a red cycling jacket.
Sir Chris Husbands:We were standing around looking at my slightly mangled I was fine, my bike was a bit mangled, and I phoned for somebody to come and pick my bike up. And he and I are standing there and it was upon a shuffle where you don't really get many people in suits and ties. So he said so what do you do then? So I said, um, well, I've run sheffield health. And he said, oh, right, right, so well, my granddaughter's doing a nursing degree with you and she's got real problems with her timetable. And that's what we had the conversation about for the for the rest of the time. And I went back and I did a bit of hunting around as to what, what the timetable problems would be. But it is this you've got to find a way of being, you know, in any situation, of finding out. You know something that piques your curiosity, and for us we got there. We got there, it was the timetable.
Nick MacKenzie:So on curiosity, then, one of the things I think it's interesting to to look at. I thought you were perhaps going to say this earlier, but I'm not sure you you did where. Where do you go outside the traditional sector that you're in to look for inspiration? When you're trying to solve a challenge, take an opportunity, get that inspiration. When you're trying to promote your curiosity, what do you do?
Sir Chris Husbands:okay. So, um, there's various answers to that. Um, I've already said one of them. I my endless repeats of the west wing, you know, really interested in politics, really interested in political decision making. I've worked with politicians right across the political spectrum. I've got my own very strongly held political views, but I've always been able to build relationships with people of right, centre and left. I think there are limits on that, but we'll park that as good.
Sir Chris Husbands:I read a lot. I talk to people a lot. I've got something. This is a podcast, not visual, but I have my little black box. My little black box is quite a big black box but I've used it to scribble down ideas and insights and notes on leading and leadership in various sectors and at various points. They're all indexed. So there's a little pile of index cards on group on team. There's a pile of index cards on group on team. There's a pile of index cards on coaching. There's a pile on strategy. My black box has made me a figure of fun in every job I've done for the last 25 years, but actually I found that it's a really useful resource. Now, when I'm giving talks, my black box is very helpful. I've been able to draw on people.
Sir Chris Husbands:There's a couple of great leaders I think I've learned from. There's one who I always quote, a guy called David Watson. David Watson was. He became vice-chancellor of Brighton. Well, he became, actually not quite true. He became director of Brighton Poly when he was 40.
Sir Chris Husbands:He was very young. He'd been promoted very quickly, very gifted leader, did that job 15 years and then just decided he wanted to become a jobbing professor at the Institute of Education, which is where I really got to know him, where I really got to know him, and David then went on to be a master of an Oxford college, tragically died about 10 years ago now, far, far too young. He was in his mid-60s. But David was just endlessly curious about the world and he's somebody who I, if I get I used to. When I was really stuck, I would go and talk to David. He wrote a lot. Now, when I get really stuck, I would go and talk to David. He wrote a lot. Now, when I get really stuck, I go and read something that David wrote and it's my substitute for talking to David.
Nick MacKenzie:Could we delve into your black box now? If you've got it there, what comes out of it? Wow? I can see it, why don't you just choose something?
Sir Chris Husbands:out of the box. So well, you know, we've got you know. So here's his heading. Number one is is change so what's up? Give us something from change well they have this little chart on decision making biases. We have something on. I'm looking for a nice chart really, but leading during disruption and I write very detailed notes but everything fits onto an index card.
Nick MacKenzie:I'm very jealous of your black box.
Sir Chris Husbands:It looks brilliant it's for successful meetings, something on nice little chart there that I picked up on having better arguments. But I save these things. I print them off onto these little six by four index cards and the sections I had in there's probably about 200 of these now but change coaching, contexts, strategy, self organizations, team. Some of them are my own ideas. This is one I'm particularly fond of called purpose, people and performance, and I always felt that those are the three things that you need to hang on to in leadership. If you think about if you have any one of those taken away, you get into dysfunctional behavior.
Sir Chris Husbands:But it's our job as leaders to think about purpose, people and performance. What are we doing? Who are the people who are going to do it with us? How are we going to assess performance? I'm going to run through the whole party piece on this, but if you take purpose and performance without people, that produces cynicism and authoritarianism. You're only concerned about purpose and performance without people. That produces cynicism and authoritarianism. You know you're only concerned about purpose and performance. But if you only think about people and purpose, you don't get the cutting edge. Focus on accountability and delivery. So purpose, people and performance is my little three-ring model of leadership which comes out. But I'm very proud of my black box and it is a black box, as you saw.
Nick MacKenzie:It absolutely is a black box.
Sir Chris Husbands:It existed as a pile of index cards until about 10 years ago. It ate not into this black box and, as you saw, it was right beside my desk. You know, if I get stuck in a conversation with somebody and they'll be talking about you know we've got a problem. I think okay, well, I think I've got something on that and that gets my ideas going. They're triggers.
Nick MacKenzie:And on communication. I was just wondering we haven't got too much longer left, actually, but I was just curious You've had several different roles In communication. I think we probably all recognize is in a more hybrid world and this sheer amount of information that bombards us. You mentioned the, however many mailings you get every day, all the various different apps and sources of information come at us, but, um, communication with organization within, I think, can sometimes feel like broadcasting a message rather than that human two-way communication. What have you learned? What would you draw on in terms of effectively communicating with staff?
Sir Chris Husbands:Yeah, that's a great. It's a great question. It's one that I've really, really struggled with. So when I ran the Institute of Education, I had essentially about 1,000 staff and about 7,000 students and 1,000 staff sounds quite a lot, but actually it's just about enough that you know roughly who everybody is. And we were in a contained site in central London so I could walk the building, as I did every day, and I used to say that I was walking and trying to catch people out doing good stuff, so that was really important.
Sir Chris Husbands:When I took over at Allum, where I had 5,000 staff and 37,000 students, I found that really, really difficult, and I don't think there's a simple answer to it. I think you've got to spend a massive chunk of your time finding ways to engage, and that means I did and I do. I did walk the corridors every day in different parts of the building. We ran a lovely thing called Random Coffee. Everybody put their name in a hat if they were interested and you got matched up randomly with somebody that you had a cup of coffee with once a month. I used to say that if I didn't have a job to do, I'd spend all day, every day, uh, doing random coffee, but that, that small but it but build, builds up. Um, during the pandemic I was and this is broadcast, I accept, but I was recording video every week that went, went, went out, um, we'd sit at home. My wife, would you know, point, point a little camera at me and I'd talk. She worked out pretty quickly that if we'd pointed the camera the other way she would have done it better than me. But that's by the by, worked a lot with LGBT group, race equality group, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Sir Chris Husbands:But the lesson is it's never enough. Whatever you do is not enough. You know that you've got to, you got, and then you've got all the formal things. You know because you're a big organization. You've got formal structures, formal hierarchies and you work through them. Somebody once said to me uh, it was on a training program I went to and this was actually the guy who ran bp africa. So you know really, really big organization. He said that you couldn't get on top of the whole organization but that you always got misleading messages if you relied on your direct reports. And so he said he spent his time focusing on two tiers down from where he was and that, for him, got him. You know enough that he felt he was getting it, but it is a constant, constant battle.
Sir Chris Husbands:I used to write a blog. I started writing a blog every week. When I started, that became a bit of a struggle actually, I'd sit down at 7 o'clock on a Sunday night thinking what on earth do I write about? So that went down to once a fortnight, but I tried to communicate as much as I could, and one of the things've always I've always said this and it's, it's, it's. It's not meant to sound blowing my trumpet, but it was the best one of the lovely bits of feedback I received.
Sir Chris Husbands:It was almost at the end of my time running sheffield hallam and I was doing um, a set of awards for long-serving staff. We did them every year and we gave them, yeah, awards. I gave him lunch. I sat down next to this guy and he said um, I've been here, uh, for 30 years, so I've seen every vice chancellor. He said I haven't always agreed with what you have done, but you've given more of yourself to this organization than anybody else who's been in your job and I thought that was a really, really nice thing to say. It sort of brought tears to my eyes, actually, and it still does. And I think that, back to this point, that leadership is about people. Leadership is about engagement, and it's not soft and soppy engagement, but it is about taking the people we work with incredibly seriously, listening really hard and trying to engage as best we can.
Nick MacKenzie:Thank you. Taking curiosity is a theme. You talked about your venture going forward. I almost wanted to ask you what's your next career when you said you've had about four. I think earning this. But what's on your mind this week? What are you thinking about?
Sir Chris Husbands:what's on my mind this week. So, um, I've got another card on my desk, which was written by my wife, uh, which says has two letters on it and those letters are n? O, uh, it's because I've said yes to far too far too many things, so I've got a lot of juggling to do, to do this week. Um, I was horrified and and and I was sort of worried that I wouldn't have enough to keep me busy, and so I probably said yes to a few too many things. So at the moment, I've got okay, I've got to sequence all of this, I've got to stay on top of a number of things, so that's important. Like, I suspect, the vast majority of people in this country and others, I'm really exasperated about the American election. Tomorrow, by the time this podcast goes out, it will either have settled in a broadly sensible way or we'll be working out what the consequences are for democracies around the world. Yeah, so, but at the moment a lot of logistics are in my head at the moment.
Nick MacKenzie:Well, thank you for saying yes to me and not no. Um conscious of time, I was curious the last few questions. But um, what would you say is the mission that drives and connects your leadership roles?
Sir Chris Husbands:the mission that drives and connects your leadership roles? That's a really good question. I think George Orwell says somewhere that you should never believe anybody in what they say about themselves, because everybody misleads themselves. I went into, I thought when I if I go all the way back to 1983, I thought I'd have an entire career in school teaching and I really wanted to do to make a difference. It sounds a bit naive, doesn't it? We all say that I wanted to make a difference. I am where I am. I am we haven't really talked much about this, I'll just riff on this for a minute, but we have.
Sir Chris Husbands:I am where I am because of the educational opportunities I received, and that happened because of a particular conjunction in time. You know, free secondary education 1944. Free higher education 1961. Um, they gave me opportunities that my parents, grandparents, never had and I was really passionate about creating opportunity. Uh, education made a difference for me. Why do I care about teaching excellence? Because it makes a difference in education. Why do I care about education policy? Because it's how we deliver change in society. So it is that sense of creating opportunity and creating opportunity as broadly as possible in society, because the only way we get to a more equitable and fairer society is to spread opportunity as far as we can. The evidence is really pretty clear on that. You create more opportunities, you create more avenues for people to succeed thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:So final question for me, then what's the best advice you would give a learning leader based on your own experience?
Sir Chris Husbands:The best advice for a learning leader is to keep learning, and you might not be like me and have your black box, but somewhere along the line you've got to have a reflective ability, a reflective commitment to keep learning.
Nick MacKenzie:asking questions stay curious thank you very much, chris, and thank you for joining me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed our discussion and I do hope our listeners have as well thank you very much for having me.
Sir Chris Husbands:I've really enjoyed it.
