We were very proud to sponsor the Aspiring Heads of Volunteering programme, developed by Dr Helen Timbrell and Charlotte Witteridge. As part of our sponsorship, we were able to offer one lucky recipient a free place on the programme.
Our winner was Pippa Vidal Davies, Volunteering Manager at Culture Leicestershire (Leicestershire County Council). She’s been kind enough to supply us with her reflections after each session, you can read her Aspiring Heads of Volunteering programme diary below…
(Use the ← arrow → keys on the book to navigate!)
Using a screen reader or just prefer plain text? You can read the text-only version of her reflections on the next page of this blog by clicking here.
Final Reflections Q&A
(Monday 5th October)
Pippa also joined us for a final reflections call where we asked her a few questions about the overall programme, here are the highlights from our chat…
How did the Aspiring Heads of Volunteering programme align with your expectations going in? Was there anything that surprised you from the experience?
Charlotte and Helen hold so much expertise themselves, so anything that’s got their name on it, you’d know that it’s going to be good. The thing is, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good!
The fact that there were fidget toys available on the table for you, or the fact that they had postcards when it’s very difficult to describe how you’re feeling, you could just go to a postcard. They’d just considered every single little aspect of the course, which made it really, really wonderful.
What was your single biggest “aha!” moment?
There’s been quite a few! I think the biggest “aha!” moment was just that investment in reflection. Reflection does not come to me easily.
My previous roles have always been very operational and hands on. I went from [being] a volunteer coordinator, to now managing a team of volunteer coordinators.
I do think my preconception of a role in a managerial position, in a leadership position, is that you need to be an expert in your field and be shown to be an expert throughout by doing things and holding all the knowledge. But that “aha!” moment, that reflection, that investment in yourself of going “actually, let me think about this before I go straight into doing”.
In what ways has the programme shifted your perspective of what it means to be a head of volunteering as opposed to a volunteer manager/coordinator?
One came quite early on in terms of the breadth of the head of volunteering role. It’s no longer head of volunteering by itself. You can be an expert within volunteering. But that’s not the only thing that has been expected of you. It’s ‘Head of Volunteering and Marketing’, ‘Head of Volunteering and People’, ‘Head of Volunteering Communities’.
So it’s making sure that, if it is something I want to explore in future, I need to focus on other skills away from volunteering. Or skills that I can transfer over to volunteering, rather than just become a subject expert within volunteering.
It’s just made me realise how much in my infancy I am. It’s not from lack of confidence in myself, it’s just appreciating that I’m at the very start of a leadership position and wanting to build up through there. It doesn’t feel unattainable. I just appreciate all the things that you need to accomplish before you are even confident to apply for a head of volunteering role.
A key part of being a head of volunteering is shifting from the daily operations to the strategic and strategic vision. What do you think you got out the programme that best equipped you to do that?
Quite a few actually, there were so many frameworks! They talked about T shaped leadership, so making sure that it’s both operational and strategic.
They also gave us a leadership reflection wheel, so you can score yourself in terms of the skills that you’ve got and then know which areas that you need to focus on yourself. And then I kind of merged two models together that were incredibly useful – a stakeholder map alongside their circle of influence.
It made me realise some of the areas that I was putting the most amount of resources in terms of time, in terms of attention and brain space, were areas that I couldn’t control or influence. And in terms of the stakeholder group, sat very low versus all of the stakeholders. So that was incredibly powerful.
How confident do you feel now about advocating for volunteering at an executive or board level?
Oh, well, actually really confident. That’s where I would have said I’ve seen the most improvement.
Previously, I might have shied away from difficult conversations with my line manager or from my senior leadership team. So it’s given me a lot of visibility within the senior leadership team and also within regional networks.
Did the programme change how you approach stakeholder management and cross departmental buy in? If so, how?
Yes. I did it alongside my line manager, so it was touched upon with the Johari Window Model. It basically acknowledges that people only know what you tell them. It’s making sure that you appreciate what information you’re keeping about yourself and what you’re open to share. It’s pushed me towards being more open and more vulnerable about what I require and what I need.
By being able to be quite self aware with my line manager and also having more confidence in being open and vulnerable with them in terms of who I am and what I need, I was able to do that stakeholder mapping alongside her. So that’s framed my mind my way of working much better.
And she’s also been made aware of, you know, there are a lot of pressures towards focusing on areas that I don’t have much control over. So “how can I best support Pippa to address that?”.
What’s the first change or new initiative you plan to implement in your current role based on what you’ve learned?
The action learning sets!
You can designate some time within a group of people whereby each of you presents a challenge. As a group you decide what challenge you want to focus on, and then the presenter has got the ability to expand on that challenge whilst the rest of the group ask open questions to allow that person who’s presenting to come to the solutions that best suit them.
I think it’s a mindset that I’m most excited about. The fact that you don’t go in into problem solving mode or advice mode, you’re actually empowering the person to come to the solution.
What do you anticipate being the biggest challenge in applying the learning to your organisation?
Historical workings. So being able to overcome the “Oh, but we’ve always done it this way”. The bureaucracy and red tape within council settings specifically, that means that things have been done a certain way for decades and being able to have that culture change shift without exhausting yourself.
Where do you feel you may still have some skills gaps? And what ongoing support/resources do you think you might want/need from the alumni programme to become a head of volunteering?
So, actually, the first session [on the AHOV Alumni Programme] that Helen and Charlotte announced, in terms of what to do if you’re supposed to be motivating people that you don’t directly manage. That is definitely an area that I was very excited when Helen and Charlotte announced that. Because I think that’s a challenge that particularly applies to myself. So it’ll be good to hear the tips and tricks with that.
How will you measure the success of the new strategies that you’re going to implement?
The development plan. That was one of the things that they encouraged us from day one, is being able to have a development plan for oneself. And I think I just need to hold myself accountable.
They also made us do an exercise around values. So the Values Institute in terms of what values we’ve got, and practical ways that I can continue staying true to my values, or reflecting on how my values are being met week-by-week. I think that that’s definitely another tool that I’ll be using.
Out of the way the programme was structured, what did you get the most out of?
I think the face-to-face of having the start and the finish allowed to build relationships that, if we didn’t have that face-to-face at the start, it might have been a little bit harder, especially with the icebreakers that we had.
I think the pre-coursework was really well chosen and one that would directly was relevant to what Helen and Charlotte were presenting on the day. All the case studies and the pre-work that they gave us, I would say. And the fact that they gave us time to do it was the best bit.
If you had to summarise the experience overall, what would be your closing statement about it?
So it’s that reminder to invest in yourself, in your learning, in the networks that you have. Well, that can be made available to you through being part of this. And just the reminder that. You need to put that time and that effort to realise who you are as a leader, who you want to be as a leader and what you need to put in place to make sure that that happens.
The next steps for me really are just that commitment to doing that, using the alumni programme as a way to be held accountable through it, and the development plan.
And just… anybody should do it- Everybody should do it!
Want to find out more about the Aspiring Heads of Volunteering™ Programme?
Applications for the 2027 programme are open from Oct 12 – Nov 6 – visit their website via this link to find out more information and apply.
You can also get in touch with Pippa to talk through anything she’s mentioned in more detail. You can find her on LinkedIn by clicking here.
