What Volunteering for the Women’s Equality Party (WEP)* taught me about Leadership

My experience as a volunteer of a feminist political party has taught me some pretty significant things about leadership. Things I wouldn’t have learned in my career as a consultant until much further down the line. This is why I encourage tech companies to look beyond their employee’s day jobs and to really consider the volunteer work and hobbies that develop a person’s skills. Doing so captures innovative approaches outside the tech world and brings them in — to all our benefit.

I’ll be talking about volunteering and leadership a lot. Today, I want to talk about how volunteering gave me the option to fail as a leader. And why this was so fundamental in making me better at leading.

Failure is an option

You hear it again and again: leadership is a skill. You can read about it. You can talk to folks about it, but like any skill: until you’ve had the chance to practice, you’re not going to be very good at it.

I co-founded two separate branches of the WEP and now lead the Pride initiative — in which I encourage branches all over the country to participate in their local Pride events.

In my early leadership days, I failed. I failed even though I was able to motivate people. I failed even though I put sustainable processes in place (monthly meetings, encouraging collaboration, booking regular events). Without doubt, I was getting it wrong in terms of my leadership even though on the surface, the work I was doing was bringing results: increased membership, committed volunteers, high attendance at speaker meetings, etc.

I was getting it wrong because I thought I had to lead from the front. This is a fairly common mistake for new leaders because leading from the front is the version of leadership that is promoted and glorified the most. But the truth is, very few people lead from the front well. And I certainly didn’t.

Volunteers of a feminist political party are unlike my tech colleagues in one significant way: volunteers do not hold back. Volunteers will tell you when you’re getting it wrong and they definitely told me. I’ve had volunteers tell me I’m too bossy. One called me up of an evening to tell me what a bad leader I was. I’ve had senior folks in the party message me and tell me when they think I’ve stepped out of line on social media. And every time, my feelings got very, very hurt. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t me that was the problem, but the leadership style I’d adopted. And so, for a long time, I took this negative feedback pretty personally.

But I didn’t quit. Nor did I didn’t stop practicing being a leader. Instead, I looked up and around at the leaders that I admired. I looked for women and men at work and within the party whom I thought were excellent leaders. I looked at the people who inspired me — that I knew personally.

The leaders I admire are intelligent, hardworking and lead from the middle. By this, I mean they see themselves as a fundamental part of the team and are happy to roll their sleeves up and do the unglamorous work when need be. This active participation within the team helps them intimately understand if a strategy is working or if it needs to be rethought. The leaders I admire spend more time listening than speaking. When they do speak, their message is clear, their vision shareable. But perhaps most of all, the leaders I admire most are those that are curious — those that want to keep learning and those that learn from their own failures.

Volunteering over the past 3 years has given me the option to fail and to learn about what type of leader I am. This experience has without a doubt improved my career. I became team lead in 2017 and had a fairly difficult year working with colleagues that felt resentful and unclear about my promotion. I didn’t blame them. Had someone else gotten the role, I might have felt the same way.

But we’ve gotten through it. My time as a volunteer taught me to lead from the middle. So, my colleagues and I addressed the issues face-to-face. We developed a strategy for 2018 based on our individual skillsets and also on the type of work we most enjoy doing. The result is that we get to spend more time doing the work that we find satisfying.

I’m happy to say that we made further changes to the team in August, and I think we’re all happier and more productive. We’re on track to meet our annuity commitments for the year and are offering a much higher level of service to our customers by being able to focus on the areas we enjoy the most.

The Women’s Equality Party has given me something I didn’t expect when I signed up 3 years ago: the confidence to fail, improve, and fail again.

*The Women’s Equality Party was founded in 2015 by Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig. The party works to end gender-based discrimination in the UK. I am a founding member and long-term volunteer of the Party.