Article
Comment
Leading
Politics
7 min read

Leaders wanted for these testing times

We need leadership that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes.

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

A deflated looking woman stands aside from a protest rally, holding a small doll of herself that reads Recall Knope'.
Local leadership: Leslie Knope serving Pawnee, Indiana.

We are in a year of elections – locally, nationally, and in the US, and I have been wondering whether it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve, whether political leadership has always felt this way – this detached, divisive, even dangerous? More about ambition than integrity, about individuals more than our common life? Where might we find leaders that can take us into an increasingly hard to navigate, uncertain world?  

I find myself thinking back to local leadership and difficult conversations I was involved in as a district councillor. These were often conversations about priorities, and money – mainly, the fact that there wasn’t enough of it, and what there was continued to be pared back and back until only the absolute essentials were covered. Many council tax bills have recently gone up, usually with an explanation of the reason for the rise. Local authorities in Scotland recently voted for a council tax freeze but only after the promise of funding from the Scottish government to make up the shortfall. During my time on the council, we would write letter after letter to government ministers seeking clarity about grants or cuts. When extra funding was announced we were pitted against other councils to bid for meagre pots of money, taking time away from officers who were already stretched too thin. Each councillor, each officer, each member of the community we served had their own idea about how to approach budgeting and spending. Sometimes those ideas aligned, but often they did not. Councils are in an impossible situation.  

And yet decisions made at this level impact us all. National leaders might set the direction, but local leaders steward and implement and envision and listen – they are close to the people they serve, their decisions impact us all day-to-day: councils are responsible for things like children’s services, highways, housing people, parks and pools, and lots more

The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable. 

Conversations about how to fund local authorities are difficult at any time, but especially so now, with crises coming from every angle – cost of living, climate change, ongoing post-covid recovery, austerity, and so on. To be a leader now – nationally yes, but especially locally, means making sure that essential services keep functioning despite lack of funding or clarity from government, and whilst also tackling climate change and all the other pieces of our fragmenting world. To be a leader now who shows vision and humanity and care despite the seemingly cynical and hurting spirit of the age – is, I think, a test of the meaning of leadership. This test of leadership doesn’t just face local and national government though. It faces all of us right now as we contemplate an unknowable future.  

Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that “our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be”, and we are all capable of helping others be what they can be – whether a neighbour, a colleague, a community, a team, an organisation, others we come into contact with; we can all lead. Author, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The people who have played the biggest role in my life have been the people that made me feel valued, seen, heard, capable. They have seen who I am, and who I could be, and they walk with me as I move in that direction. I think the best leaders do this too.  

It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides. 

In contrast, the worst leaders seem to cling to traditional ideas of power, to control more than setting people free, to achieving their goals through any means necessary. I think of authoritarian regimes that rig elections and limit freedoms, and corporations that pursue profit at the expense of employees and the environment, and political campaigns that prioritise controlling the narrative over informing people. These embody warped leadership traits. And these warped ideas of leadership are given airtime, they fuel our news and our social media feeds and our anxiety. They make us angry, but they can also disempower us and close off the possibility that there is another kind of leadership, one more aligned with the Old English root of the word ‘leader’, meaning ‘one who guides and brings forth’. There are, though, places we can look that point to that other kind of leadership – to something more beautiful.  

One place is my own doorstep. Here, there are people that see a need and organise people to fill it – whether hunger, loneliness, lovelessness, this is a kind of roll-up-your-sleeves leadership, the kind that is famous for fifteen miles not fifteen minutes. It is not glamourous, but, like a lighthouse that shines by just staying where it is, it calls people, lights the way, watches, serves, guides. 

I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want. 

Another place is the gospel, where again and again Jesus turned traditional ideas of leadership upside down. He taught that it must serve, not be served; that it can be great through humility not self-importance. He criticised religious leaders for seeking prestige and personal gain. And Jesus did not just teach this stuff, he lived it – he washed the feet of his disciples, he empowered them rather than wielded authority over them. He lived as a shepherd that leads and tends his flock with his love. He laid down his life for his friends, for all of us. And this I think is where leadership starts to look a lot like love. Jesus showed how true leadership that transforms individuals and communities, that heals division and brings people together, is led and motivated by love, not power. He taught that leadership without love is hollow and even harmful. He showed that leadership, and the love that fuels it, guides and inspires and cares for people. We need these kinds of leaders now more than ever. My own experience tells me that hard conversations become easier to navigate when care, humility, and listening are present.  

In the UK, many of us are trying to get the measure of Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer. An Ipsos poll in February explored how the public view these and other political leaders – a significant number were unclear about what they both stood for, but Starmer was ahead of Sunak in various leadership traits including experience, capability, strength. I want to know what other traits we’re seeking and demanding of our leaders nationally, locally and in ourselves. On the council I served on, I saw elected councillors asleep in meetings, ill-prepared, voted in because people did not think their vote or questions or care made a difference. On some level at least we do get the leaders we deserve – those we are prepared to be curious about, and call out, or encourage, or demand more of; more than just the ability to stay awake during meetings, more than just capability and strength, but also aliveness, care, compassion, humility, love.  

We need to demand more of our national leaders, especially now. But I try to hold on to the fact that we do not need to wait for national elections to call forth the kind of leaders we want. We can call them forth in ourselves, in each other, in our communities – these are the leaders that impact us closely, every day. I think of some of the best leaders I have known: theirs was a leadership of passion more than position, invested in people more than prestige, offering both humility and vision – a combination that feels hard to find in our current political landscape. They call to mind what writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, that: “if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Good leaders will help us see and navigate this endless ocean, these present storms – cost of living, conflict, division, ecological and economic unravelling. They remind us, like the gospel does, that the ship is a means to an end – one of new horizons, of togetherness, of love for this beautiful wide world. 

Article
Comment
Identity
1 min read

Identity is more than mere branding, ask WH Smith

It's not just nostalgia that's being generated by the retailer's demise

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

Cyclists and pedestrians pass in front of a WH Smith store front.

So, alas, no more WH Smith on the British High Street. Then, to add insult to injury, the chain of shops will be rebranded by the private equity firm, Modella Capital, as TG Jones. A move to ensure the stores retain “the same sense of family”. 

Really? 

I was surprised. Not by the news. We’ve seen so many once famous names disappear, another one is hardly noteworthy. But no, I was surprised by my reaction when I heard. 

I’m not quite sure what the emotion was. It nestled somewhere between 

“NO!” 

and, 

“They can’t be serious!” 

Somewhere between warm-hearted nostalgia and gob-smacked incredulity. 

I have loved Smith’s since forever. As a boy, in a small market town in Norfolk, the kiosk at our railway station was where I went to buy my Commando war story comics. As a teenager it was the music and video department I frequented. Then, newly married it was photo albums followed by all the school supplies of pencil cases and folders our growing family needed every August. Our memories exert a powerful influence on us. 

But the nostalgia goes deeper than that. It is a British institution. WH Smith and Sons, as I originally knew it, began life in 1792 in a news vending shop established by Henry and Anna Smith in Little Grosvenor Street in London’s Mayfair. 

Their grandson, William Henry (of the WH) joined the firm as a partner in 1846 and was responsible for their expansion through railway stations. Taking advantage of the boom in rail travel their first news stand was opened at Euston Station in 1848 by securing exclusive rights to operate with North Western Railways. This was swiftly followed with a similar deal with Midland Railways. 

Across the years innovative entrepreneurship has been part of who they are. They pioneered wholesale warehouse distribution through their sites in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Dublin. 

Then, along the way, in 1966 they introduced a 9-digit code to improve their book reference system. Eight years later their Standard Book Numbering (SBN) system had been universally adopted as the internationally recognised ISBN classification on the back cover of every published book. 

Their company history also includes novel initiatives like a circulating library, a travel agency, the DIY chain Do It All, a 10-year ownership of Waterstones, satellite TV with their own sports channel in the mid-1980s, and more recently, in-store post offices and the online personalised greeting card brand, Funky Pigeon. 

Smiths is a company that is deeply embedded in the life of our country. It’s deeply embedded in my life story too. Of course I’m going to feel nostalgic about it. But, do you know what, I can’t remember the last time I went into one of their iconic shops and actually bought something! 

And that’s probably it, at least in retail. Any nostalgia on my part is, at most, only of the wistful variety. 

As important as our personal history and heritage are in helping us understand ourselves, life is provisional, and our identity can change. 

While the High Street shops do remain a going concern, it is their travel hub network in airports across the world that make the serious money and will retain the WH Smith branding. Hence, the change of name to TG Jones and the source of my “gob-smacked incredulity”. 

Now it is easy to understand how a move from WH Smith to TG Jones makes a lot of sense. Modella Capital were swift to affirm that it is “business as usual”. All the stores will remain open, doing what they do now, with all the staff retained. Two initials and one of the most common surnames is replaced by two initials and one of the most common surnames. 

Now the juxtaposition of Smith and Jones is very tempting in its offer to reference specific 1970s or 1980s TV shows. From a marketing perspective it is so cheesy, at least to anyone over 60. But to put that aside: what is in a name? 

WH Smith is a 233-year-old company and remained in the hands of the family until 1972. It has a heritage that has real substance behind it. It is the genuine fruit of all that has gone before. TG Jones is a fiction. A necessary invention to fill the gap, to provide a new name in place of an original that has migrated elsewhere. As Charlotte Black, chief strategy officer at Saffron Brand Consultants observed: 

“It feels incredibly close, a poor mirror of WH Smith and not necessarily very well thought through … I would say it feels hasty – an ‘insert here’ strategy – and a bit of a missed opportunity.” 

Ultimately, it’s about identity. Superficially it appears that a genuine history is being supplanted by pure fabrication. Any “sense of family” in TG Jones is vacuous because TG Jones never existed. There is no back story. 

WH Smith, on the other hand, does have a back story. Yet, having been a company run by shareholders since shortly after the second world war, how real is the “sense of family” there either? This is not the proverbial ‘mom and pop’ store. It is actually a corporate leviathan. There might be a sense of rootedness in the name, but a “sense of family” disappeared a long while ago. 

Now, with the name gone, the High Street shops have even lost that sense of rootedness, however tentative it had become. Where does that leave their identity? I’m sure the branding consultants and marketing departments have been all over this. However, identity is not established just by saying that something is so. 

Thinking about Smith becoming Jones then sent me down a rabbit hole of thoughts. So, bear with me here. 

We all know about identity because we all have one. 

At any given moment in time we are the product of a complex interplay of things. From our families and where we grew up, to the choices we’ve made and those that are foist upon us. The experiences we’ve had shape us. They make us into the people we are and help define our identity. 

Yet nothing is set in stone. There is something intrinsic to life that is dynamic, ever-changing and open to all kinds of possibilities. It is dynamic and multi-dimensional and alive to endless possibilities. 

In this sense, life is not deterministic, and our identity is not fixed. How we see ourselves and how others see us can change. As important as our personal history and heritage are in helping us understand ourselves, life is provisional, and our identity can change. 

That change can be evolutionary or revolutionary, it can come from inside ourselves, or result from our responses to what comes at us from outside. Life is a constant process of becoming who we are. Our choices matter. They have consequences. Nothing stands still. 

The possibility of turning life around, the opportunity of making fresh starts and hopeful visions for a better future have proven to be the bedrock of human resilience. The essential ingredients to ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again’, to quote the famous 1930s standard. They’re also foundational insights that underpinned what Jesus stood for and taught. Proven across the range of human life, activity and ingenuity 

But back to TG Jones, I think I’m with Charlotte Black, the renaming is hasty, ill-thought through and a missed opportunity. Maybe the name will go the same way as Royal Mail’s abortive makeover as ‘Consignia’ in 2002. Identity is more than branding; we will know it by its fruit. 

In the meantime, when the new regime has established itself, I may swing by to see what they’ve done with the old place. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief