Consulting to the leadership of a professional organisation Authority, difference, and institutional responsibility

A professional membership organisation approached this work during a period of significant internal difficulty. Members from minoritised backgrounds were experiencing distress, and a range of complaints and concerns — varying considerably in their nature and weight — were placing pressure on the organisation's leadership. Working with a colleague, a discreet series of fortnightly reflective consultations was offered to the chair and chief executive jointly. The work attended to the presenting difficulties while remaining alert to what else was present: the tensions between the two roles, the gender and class dimensions operating in the background between them, and the broader institutional question of how a professional organisation takes collective ownership of issues around difference and inclusion — rather than leaving that work to those most directly affected by them. There were no straightforward answers. The value of the work lay in creating conditions in which the questions could be held with sufficient complexity, and in which leadership could act from a more considered position.

Leadership consultation — authority and difference — institutional responsibility