On Knowing Yourself and Building Relationships – a conversation with Helen Stephenson, CEO of the Charity Commission for England and Wales

Leaders in Conversation with Anni Townend

About This Episode

In this episode I am delighted to be in conversation with Helen Stephenson, CEO of the Charity Commission for England and Wales

We delve together into:

1. How as a leader the main tool in your leadership is yourself, which means you need to understand how you work - your strengths and weaknesses
2. Why getting the right team is crucial and making sure you recruit people who are different from you, and who have the right skills and personality to fit with the organisation and its needs.
3. Why leadership is All about relationships
4. And how there is no perfect leader, and the importance of knowing when good is good enough rather than aspiring to be everything all at once!

Helen’s Three Key Encouragements to Leaders

• Know when you need to dive into the detail on an issue (you can’t/shouldn’t be across everything) and signal to your team that’s what you’re doing
• Being a leader is seeking to be a better version of yourself
• It can be lonely, have some support networks

To connect, follow and find out more about Helen:

LinkedIn: Helen Stephenson

Website: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission

To find out more about Future Engage Deliver, www.futureengagedeliver.com

Buy the book by Steve Radcliffe ‘Leadership Plain and Simple’

https://www.pearson.com/en-gb/subject-catalog/p/leadership-plain-and-simple/

To listen to other Leaders in Conversation with me Anni Townend do go to my website, www.annitownend.com

A big thank you to my support team at the Conscious Marketing Group for helping me with all the marketing of the podcast, to Coco O’Brien for the wonderful intro and outro music, for the lovely design, and for the excellent editing and sound production.

To contact me Anni Townend do email me on [e-mail] visit my website www.annitownend.com, subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting with you, thank you for listening.

About Helen Stephenson

I was first introduced to Helen Stephenson by Steve Radcliffe, who thought we would partner well together in some Executive Team Coaching for Helen’s team. He was right! Helen and I have worked together with her leadership team over the past few years. We have introduced them to Future Engage Deliver, a leadership approach developed by Steve Radcliffe and wonderfully written about in his book Leadership Plain and Simple. And have gone on to share with my colleague Emily Court the Future Engage Deliver approach with the wider organisation of leaders, and their teams. It has been a privilege to work with Helen, and to be trusted by her to lead this programme - her commitment to developing people, and their leadership in particular has never wavered. On many occasions she has joined a development day, and been part of the welcoming and opening of the day sharing her leadership story, her values and beliefs, her passion and purpose. So I was thrilled when we agreed she would be a guest on my podcast, enabling listeners to learn from Helen, to be inspired and motivated in their leadership.