Solat Chaudhry Interviews Dr Shaid Mahmood, Chair of Luminate Education Group
In the third of our key influencer interviews, NCFD Chief Executive, Solat Chaudhry explores how to make an impact with Dr Shaid Mahmood winner of the NCFD 2019 Most Inspiring Individual of the Year award.
Shaid, currently has a senior position at Leeds Council, where he leads on the Council’s work on equality, migration and counter-extremism; in addition he is the first Chair of the newly created Luminate Education Group.
SC: Shaid, what does diversity mean to you?
Diversity for me, is about celebrating difference as much as it is about finding out about the things that we have in common and bind us together and – as a leader – about harnessing the diverse range of experiences and talents that individuals from different backgrounds bring to working together in teams. Whilst I appreciate that there is a lot of evidence to say that having diversity in teams is good for superior performance. In my experience, that superior performance is only ever realised if you have leadership and management that knows how to support and manage that diversity well. You get it because you have trained, developed, challenged, supported, enabled and encouraged your leadership and management to work with diversity. That’s how you land superior performance. It’s the key. And for me, it’s fundamental to the development of a positive culture.
SC: How does that work in practice?
SM: For some people it comes quite naturally. They are incredibly emotionally intelligent and authentic. Those individuals naturally look beyond the person in front of them and are able to work out what makes that person really tick. Then, they sew that individual into the wider fabric of the team they are trying to develop. By doing this, they employ not just that individual’s talents for the role but also their passion and their emotions. It helps foster better understanding between individuals and it creates fertile ground for team mates to find things that they have in common. It also helps them to better adapt to difference. That is fundamental to good team working and contributing to a positive culture in an organisation.
SC: I think we know the answer to this. I ask everyone, on a scale of 1 – 4 (1 being the highest) how important is culture?
SM: Oh definitely 1. Culture is the most important.
SC: And same question about strategy?
SM: There is a time and place for strategy. A time when it is important to have one. But, when your organisation is in a crisis and you’re trying to survive, spending time and energy developing a strategy is possibly the last thing you should be doing, whatever the MBA text books might say. If you got on working together with your staff, working out what the right things you should be working on actually are and trusting your staff to do them. You may well have achieved that which you set out to do and be in a position to define what your value proposition is building on the positive culture you’ve created in the process. That approach only works though if you have the underpinning openness to diversity and the effective leadership in place that can harness the talents of a diverse range of skills and backgrounds to deliver impact.
SC: Picking up on impact. You have had an enormously positive impact with your work in Leeds and in the Leeds City Region both in your role at Leeds City Council as Chief Officer for Communities and as the Chair of the Board at the Luminate Education Group, which includes one of the largest further education establishments in the country, Leeds City College, as well as higher education institutions and academy schools. How important has that work been for you?
SM: Oh! Massively important. The challenge and the journey has had a profound effect on me. It’s shaped me and made me who I am today. Whilst I originate from Pakistan, I have been in this country since I was one year old. I obviously have an affinity with the community of my country of origin but I also have great pride in being someone who is there for and actively engaged and participating in the cultural and civic life of all communities, irrespective, of country of origin, race, creed, or colour, sexual orientation, gender or ability. What I’ve found, as part of my life journey, is that there is beauty in the many traditions, customs and cultures of the many different communities that make up the rich tapestry that is our society today.
What drives me is an innate aversion to injustice and the desire to make a difference in the short time we have on this earth. To provide opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to embrace all that the UK has to offer and to achieve their goals in the same way education helped me to achieve my goals. Whether that’s in my role as Chief Officer, as Chair of the Board, or more recently, as a patron of your organisation. It makes me a better person and drives my values and the desire to do the work I do.
SC: Sport is a passion of mine, as you know. This is also an area you have been a huge influencer as a football coach. Sport is going through a difficult time in general. What more needs to be done?
SM: I think we’ve been getting it mostly right, especially, at a local level. Obviously, not all the time and there are well publicised incidents of where it’s gone badly wrong. Nevertheless, many grassroots football coaches don’t just coach junior football. They also instil the right values and behaviours in the children and young people they coach and also challenge inappropriate behaviour that we would not want to be seen in wider society. For me, it’s the national and international authorities that have been slow, quite remote from the issues and, in my view, the leadership we have needed to really tackle the issues hasn’t been there from them. When they do intervene, there appears to be a lack of sure-footedness in their approach.
So, for me, leadership around this agenda needs to come from grassroots sport instilling strong British values in the young people they are coaching. Good coaches work with parents; and become part of the extended family, developing positive relationships with those young people. When I look back to the young people I coached; who are now 16, 17, 18 years of age, they are getting on in their lives and have grown into fantastic young men. It’s honestly such a wonderful sight and a really proud moment when they achieve their potential.
Take young Liam, playing rugby league for England, or young Josh, a black belt in a martial art and coaching himself now. These are the things that make me proud. Whether they have gone on to be professionals or changed to other sports they have taken the experience of working with me and my coaching team and become strong, well-adjusted young men who really value themselves and others.
SC: That is it! We need to develop excellent role models. Perhaps the English cricket team could take a lead. Look at the diverse background of the team that won the world cup, can we build on that?
SM: I’ve coached football in a range of different communities but have deliberately spent the majority of my coaching time in white working class communities in different parts of Yorkshire. This is important to me because even in 2019 some young people may still not interact with a person of colour in authority. By getting to know me, developing relationships based on trust, they and their families see that I care about them and that I’m just like them deep down whatever other differences might exist. I’d like to see more coaches from ethnic minority backgrounds coaching in these communities to demonstrate that they have a stake in their lives. If these young people don’t see us role modelling British values and behaviours, they will never have an affinity for who we are and where we came from.
In relation to the England Cricket Team there’s a great TV interview by Eoin Morgan; the world cup winning England cricket team captain, where he was asked about the fine margins of the England victory. His response was that the performance was epitomised by the diversity in his team and that it was this diversity that was fundamental to England winning the world cup.
Going back to where I started this conversation with you Solat, I would argue that it was the leadership of the England Cricket Team harnessing that diversity of talent and different backgrounds that led to such a superior performance.
SC: We have just launched the 2020 award nominations. This year you received one of our most prestigious awards – Most Inspiring Individual. Well done, a fantastic achievement. How did that feel and how can you take that further? What do you want to do with that?
SM: Thank you Solat. I was genuinely shocked and humbled. I found I was too emotional to make a thank you speech. I would have liked to thank the people that nominated me and those that helped me along the way as well as paying tribute to those brilliant people who had been nominated alongside me. I think that when you get awards like this, you think back to those people who have shaped you and moulded you, touching your life in some way, sometimes not even realising that they have done so. It is those people that help you to achieve such an accolade.
What do I want to do with it? I have always been the kind of person that does work with a social and moral purpose; I like to get things done and achieve things and I would like to use the award to underpin doing more to help others to achieve and make that difference by unlocking their potential.
SC: What a lovely sentiment Shaid. Just one last thing bringing it all together, you are a great influencer, what more can be done within the college sector? What input would you like to have as a legacy for your time at Leeds City College by the time you finish your term of office?
SM: Colleges work with more learners from diverse backgrounds and from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods than most other educational institutions. Leeds City College alone has some 20,000 learners attending its courses. Colleges also take on learners who have given up on themselves or other people have given up on them. And yet, you won’t see protests outside a college front door saying please keep our college open as you would at a school.
Firstly, we really need to punch our weight in FE and be much more vocal. There is a real opportunity with whatever government administration comes forward, to really position the FE sector at the heart of the education and skills challenge in this country and sell the benefits. We need articulate, charismatic, experienced leaders and managers to enhance this case. Governors work hard for their organisation, they have a key role in this venture and they are well connected locally and nationally but they are not necessarily deployed to best effect in the endeavour.
Secondly, I think the sector has been in competition with itself and college finances are in a poor state due to chronic underfunding over the past decade. We need to explore new structural arrangements with new governance models that serve our learners and their communities much better. Current governance models may not be sustainable and there is inherent inbuilt cost inefficiencies. There is a need for more place based leadership by FE Colleges with horizontal integration of smaller colleges and vertical integration of education bringing together higher education institutes and primary and secondary schools through academy trusts in a new arrangement. All this whilst maintaining a low centre of gravity for decision making, with the group enabling the member institutions be even more responsive to the communities they serve. It can be done.
The Luminate Education Group (formerly known as the Leeds City College Group) which I chair is now a £115M concern, grown in a measured and considered way rather than in an aggressively acquisitorial way. The group has the critical mass to make a real positive difference to the economy of the city region and the new £60M Quarry Hill campus will provide a fantastic modern learning space in the centre of Leeds, which is easily reachable by public transport. My philosophy is that every learner should expect that the staff, managers and governors of our member institutions and the group are straining every sinew to provide the best possible standard of education, skills and training to help our learners achieve their potential. I would want that for my children. Why shouldn’t I want that for other people’s children?
SC: As always Shaid, you are a beacon of inspiration! Thank you.
