Collaborative Leadership in Action: Lessons from practice

In this post blog, Dr Fidèle Mutwarasibo, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership, explores the practice of collaborative leadership in the Fight Against Hate campaign in Milton Keynes. He also shares the lessons he learnt as a member of the leadership group of the campaign team. He concludes by articulating the importance of collaboration, partnership building and cross-sectoral interventions in addressing systemically societal challenges.

Before I joined the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership as a Visiting Fellow, I had over many years practised collaborative leadership. I did not necessarily at the time call my social practices collaborative leadership. In my advocacy work, I engaged in a meaningful way with other actors in the voluntary sector and unusual allies in the public and private sectors. The determining factor in the choice of potential partners was synergy and alignment of interest on a particular cause. Over time, I realised that dealing with presenting issues in frontline services, was in relative terms, more comfortable to handle than addressing systemic causes of the challenges at hand.  This experience brought home the need to look beyond presenting issues. The realisation of the need for proactive engagement with other stakeholders working on issues I was engaged on was a significant turning point in my leadership development.  As my role in the voluntary sector evolved, especially when working in advocacy and policy development, I embraced partnership building and collaboration.

Three campaigns I was involved in have made a case for collaborative leadership crystal clear to me. These are: Count Us In; Dublin Transport Links, Racism Divides; and the Fight Against Hate Campaign. The first two were rolled out in Dublin, Ireland and the final one in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. The first looked at exercising citizenship rights for minorities during elections, the others focused on hate crimes and used public transport as a vehicle to raise awareness on hate, non-discrimination and diversity. In this blog post, I will look at how the campaign leaders practised collaborative leadership with particular emphasis on the Fight Against Hate Campaign.

Origins of the Fight Against Hate Campaign

Late 2014, as a newly arrived Milton Keynes’ resident, a passionate advocate of equality and social justice, I was shocked to learn of a 39% increase in hate crimes motivated by racial and religious differences in the preceding twelve months in Milton Keynes. I discovered this at the launch of the 2014 Vital Signs Report published by MK Community Foundation. I later realised that there was a chance there would be no reaction to those shocking statistics. I set off on a journey to look for other people with anger to get something done to address the issue of hate crimes. The resolve of those involved in the initial discussions increased significantly following a hate-motivated attack on a pregnant woman who lost her pregnancy as a result of an attack in 2016. As a firm believer in partnership and collaboration, after reaching out to relevant activists, I soon realised that it made sense to work under the umbrella of Citizens:MK. These discussions and meetings would lead to the emergence of the Fight Against Hate Campaign.

The Fight Against Hate Campaign was launched officially by Citizens:MK in April 2017. It came out of the listening exercise that involved many member institutions, including The Open University, The Church of Christ the Cornerstone, MK Muslim Association, Q:alliance and St. Frideswide’s Church, among others. The original campaign goals were: (1) engaging with Arriva Buses to influence and get them to display posters raising awareness on hate crimes on buses serving Milton Keynes; (2) running a poster design campaign in schools; (3) working in partnership with MK Council to host a peer support meeting for victims of hate crimes; and (4) meeting with Thames Valley Police and MK Council to plan and organise an event on best practices in restorative justice. As it were, the campaign goals set the campaign leaders on a partnership building and collaborative leadership path. These goals were realised within the agreed timeframe, and new goals were after that set and by and large achieved.

Partnership and Collaboration

The campaign involved working with many partners and unusual allies. Pursuing a win/win agenda was very critical to the success of the campaign. The buzzword often used in community organising to ensure win/win, is self-interest. I have found brokering deals that benefit the cause of only one the parties involved in a partnership complicated and challenging compared to goals with broader appeal. In my experience, it is easy to work collaboratively, when the interests of most parties involved in a given action are aligned. Over two years, in addition to organisations involved the campaign, we worked with many primary and secondary schools, Thames Valley Police, Milton Keynes Council, Arriva Bus, and Network Rail, among others. Our view was that it was in the best interest of everyone to play their part in making Milton Keynes safe for all its residents and visitors irrespective of their real or perceived differences. This premise is what made collaboration with other leaders and organisations straight forward.

Benefits of Collaborative Leadership 

An important lesson learnt from the campaign is that individuals, no matter how much resources they have, can only do so much on their own, in dealing with the challenges associated with hate crimes. As leaders of the campaign, we were open-minded and were willing to engage with cross-sectoral partners. The collaboration did not mean that we put aside our campaign goals. The need to have as many stakeholders on board as possible, explains why we reached out to the various organisations. Although the campaign is on a break at the moment, recently, we hosted a workshop for leavers and remainers to build community resilience and social cohesion in the troubling times we find ourselves in at this moment in time. Honesty, openness, empathy, giving credit where it is due, transparency, teamwork, predictability, and accountability are some of the values that I have found useful as one of the leaders of the campaign. There are many lessons that I learnt during the campaign about leadership training needs for civic leaders like those involved in the campaign.

Working collaboratively with public and private entities can be a daunting task for voluntary sector leaders. Power differential on the one hand and the perception that there is no alignment between the aims of the public, the private and the third sector, on the other hand, are some of the real or perceived barriers to collaboration. It is essential to realise that there is an opportunity for cooperation and partnership with the private and public sectors. After all, all the actors in the case of the fight against hate campaign were keen to promote diversity, equality, non-discrimination and social justice. In my efforts to engage in collaborative activities I have knocked on the doors of the public sector and private institutions reluctantly; only to realise that the doors were half-open in the first place. Doing my homework in advance on potential synergies with organisations other than the one I represent, has helped a great deal. In addition to individual campaign team members' contribution in reaching out to the different stakeholders; the Citizens:MK's organiser played an essential role in making sure that the team of volunteers received the support they needed. Besides, the organiser encouraged leaders to attend community organising courses run by Citizens:MK locally and Citizens UK nationally. Facilitating Milton Keynes's local Leadership Learning Clubs on voluntary sector leadership using courses developed by CVSL in the latter part of the second year of the campaign, helped me to contextualise what the campaign team was doing in embedding collaborative leadership. The CVSL courses reaffirmed to me the importance of collaborative advantage, the need to respond positively to people asking wicked questions at meetings, and why in my leadership I should give opportunities to colleagues to lead when appropriate. There were many more lessons, and that is why I recommend any leader in the third sector to avail of CVSL resources.

The final lesson of my learning concerning collaborative leadership, from the fight against hate campaign, is the importance of continuous learning and development for leaders in the voluntary sector. The lack of training budgets should not be a barrier. Online resources, such as those developed by CVSL, should be accessed and utilised.

Dr Fidèle Mutwarasibo is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership based in the Business and Law School at The Open University. He is also a member of the Leadership Team of Citizens:MK (a chapter of Citizens UK) and an Honorary Vice President at MK Community Foundation.

6th September 2019