Having it 'all' as a woman in the voluntary sector

Heading the UK’s leading dementia charity is exciting, but it’s a daily challenge. At Alzheimer’s Society I lead a large staff, many of them women, and many young women who will be tomorrow’s leaders.

My advice to young female leaders is always that you can ‘have it all’ – you just need a very tight and realistic grip on what ‘all’ is.

Obviously, like any woman CEO I’ve made sacrifices. The question I ask myself is ‘Do I have any regrets about those sacrifices?’ Over the years, I missed school nativity plays, my kids never took home-baked cakes to the Christmas sale (probably a blessing!), and they never went to school during Book Week dressed in an amazing fictional costume. I did a deal with myself that these weren’t going to be the most important things to me. They were trade-offs I was going to make, and I’d live with the consequences. That wasn’t – and isn’t – easy, but my job is an important part of me, what makes me happy and whole. I’m not embarrassed to say that.

There have also been times I didn’t speak at international conferences, go to high-profile events, or put myself forward to chair government committees because my family – including my Mum who is going through her own Alzheimer’s journey – needed to come first. Yes, my career has probably faltered at times as a result, but I can sleep with the decisions I’ve made.

I’m very proud that at Alzheimer’s Society women make up a healthy proportion of our executive and senior leadership teams.

I suspect that in the voluntary sector, there’s far more opportunity for women to develop into leadership roles than in other sectors. In my own experience of working with chief executives of our corporate partners or major donors, I rarely ever work with female leaders.

That doesn’t mean the voluntary sector is the gold standard – there’s still more that can and should be done. To make this happen we have to focus on breaking down stereotypes and redefining what it means to be a female leader.

There’s an expectation for female CEOs to be everything to everyone – to be hard-hitting and extroverted, to be able to charm your way around a room. But to be a good and effective leader of a voluntary organisation you’ve got to have deep values around compassion and understanding your workforce, high levels of empathy with your beneficiary groups, and not just the traditional values associated with being a chief executive.

I’ve mentored outstanding women who will go on to make excellent CEOs, but are naturally introverted, softly-spoken, caring, and reflective. Women who by conventional ‘standards’ may not fit the mold of a good CEO.

All of this has implications for women of colour and for women who belong to other ethnic minority communities. If we hold onto this stereotype, we will ostracise and hold back many talented and aspirational women.

As both white and now living a relatively affluent lifestyle, I find it hard to consider myself to be someone who has been discriminated against. However, there have been times that I have felt that both being a woman and having a working-class background have changed peoples’ behaviour towards me.

But on the whole the challenges I have fallen most strongly into are those felt by male and female colleagues across the sector – the total lack of understanding about the complexity of voluntary sector roles and the belief that those jobs are for ‘almost rans.’ I have more than once been told, ‘you’re a really amazing chief executive, you would have done so well in the real world.’

While grotesquely patronizing, comments like this show a residual, deep-held lack of understanding of what the voluntary sector is and what it entails from those in the ‘real world’ (!), not only in the corporate sector but across government and statutory bodies.

So what do I do to help women up the ladder? I try hard to role model imperfection. I’m very candid that my mental health hasn’t always been great and I have experienced periods of anxiety. I’ve openly talked about the mistakes I’ve made throughout my career, periods of self-doubt, and the wrestles I’ve had with myself about how to manage my confidence.

By being transparent with all of that, I hope to demonstrate to other women that it is okay not to be okay. I’d love to think that I’d encouraged authenticity and inspired confidence in aspiring women leaders that being a good person, trying their best, is the most any of us can really hope to achieve and that is enough.