It is gradually coming to light  in Rotherham Borough that many of our so called “Leaders” and others “in authority” are  from the school of “Common Purpose” – Joyce Thacker, Mahroof Hussein, Darren Hughes, Sarah Champion … …

 (Not sure about Kimber and Stone as they seem to imagine themselves as born leaders, but I have written to ask them and for a list of elected members who have experienced “Common Purpose Courses”)

According to their website  http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk                       

Common Purpose runs courses which give people the inspiration, skills and connections to become better leaders both at work and in society.

Sounds good.

Common Purpose is an international, not-for-profit organisation that has been running leadership development courses which mix people from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors since 1989. We help people, organisations, cities and regions to succeed, by broadening the horizons of their leaders and developing their ability to work together to lead complex change.

Complex change ? Imagine certain skills are needed in this respect. 

Common Purpose deals with real life issues and insights, so our courses are neither classroom nor lecture based. We go beyond standard leadership models and learn instead from the successes and failures of leaders from all sectors. Participants are taken out of their familiar environment so that they examine why, when and how they lead.

Learning from others successes and failures is surely, always a good idea.

So,

How does Common Purpose educate people to be better leaders ?

Julia Middleton CEO of Common Purpose tells us how in this 113 word, 56 second video

http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/courses/methods

Here is the transcription :

Education for me is self education. It’s teaching yourself it’s teaching each other it’s learning from each other. The task of common purpose it to get an incredibly diverse group of people together and to create a framework and a situation in which they teach each other and in which they work together to ask questions of many speakers and  contributors that come in to the programme and together they ask them questions to sort of reveal their stories either their stories as leaders or the stories of what’s happened and the history of the place they operate in and our task is to create the framework in which people educate each other.

 Hmm, no prizes for spotting the key word in all of this.

But,

if Common Purpose is all about doing things TOGETHER and teaching and educating each other, why would using the Chatham House Rule be necessary or even a benefit ?

The Chatham House Rule reads as follows:

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The world-famous Chatham House Rule may be invoked at meetings to encourage openness and the sharing of information.

I can see that it might encourage openness and  the sharing of information but, doesn’t it also allow others to discuss, debate and make decisions, without the public knowing who in the end can be held responsible for the decisions and the outcome of actions ?

# Just saying … …

More to follow