The Women's Leadership Network aims to develop a strong, dynamic and influential network of women leaders, to promote equality of opportunity throughout the FE system.
Contact: Sue Daley
Telephone: 07734 923013
Email:
sue.daley@wlnfe.org.uk
Guest writers column - Vicki Fagg Principal navigates best route for working life! How I got here My dream gadget would be a digital Sat Nav for Working Life. This gadget would, just like the cutting edge road and traffic navigation devices of today, be updated minute by minute and it would issue instructions to me. It would find my career goal, map out the alternative routes to achieving it, alert me to the career cul de sacs or traps and give advice on major U-turns and diversions. It would even find points of interest or concern and places to take a rest along the way. Career sorted! Well, alas, I am without this device and I am someone with a very underdeveloped sense of personal direction, ambition or career confidence. Thank goodness there have been some extraordinary angels looking after me along the way, forming a sort of vast, personalised human Sat Nav. There were my wonderful parents who gave only encouragement for all my chosen activities - good, bad or pointless. I had many brilliant, inspirational teachers, in highly supportive learning environments, where stereotyping was a crime. Then there have been, and still are, amazingly patient partners and friends who listen and advise and sympathise. There are superb board chairs and members, bosses and other colleagues who have trained me, enabled me to grow and to take on more or who have coached and cajoled me into promotions. Excellent formal networks – yes, including the original women’s network in FE – full of unbelievably generous mentors, role models and real friends. I am relatively unusual in the FE sector as I came into it at a senior level without a teaching background. I have had a career in two halves (so far). Driven by financial necessity, I landed by accident working for an employers’ organisation in national pay bargaining, waving my Bachelor of Divinity Honours Degree as my main credential for that strange world of local government staff’s pay and conditions. There were of course lots of smoke filled rooms and fierce arguments which could last for days in one sitting and disputes and strikes lasting weeks or months. My world was populated by government ministers, civil servants, local government councillors and officers and national trade union leaders and members. There were characters galore, hard left, hard right, cunning, obstinate, silver tongued, powerful, mischievous. There were awful, suffocating mathematical and linguistic details, hundreds of pay rates, conditions of service books of every colour for every different group of staff and burgeoning new tomes of employment legislation. I enjoyed several promotions. I also learned a great deal about the unique skill of survival in a context of ‘plurality’, as a head hunter once told me. My career escape from this mad world came at the time of incorporation of FE colleges in the early 90s, after a few years of sparring with the FE unions’ national officers and panels. The opportunity to transfer my skills into an FE setting was persuasively pointed out to me by a great friend and network contact. He had, so to speak, spotted a slip road connecting a parallel career route to a better destination! I found myself as VP Human Resources in the painful merger of two famous colleges, Willesden College of Technology and Kilburn Polytechnic. ‘Federated anarchy’ was a consultant’s description of the colleges’ prevailing cultures. So, I had secured the exchange of one mad working world for another. But this was a move to a working environment where people can really make a difference! The opportunities to apply my skills and knowledge and extend my experience abounded through the exciting years that followed in the newly formed College of North West London. I also finally discovered that if you accept the title ‘deputy’, events may conspire to pitch you into the full top job you never dreamed of before. And I have enjoyed every minute. Well, almost. We know there is still scope and need for improvement here at CNWL and we are still learning. But we have just celebrated our best success rates ever, a fleeting year of outstanding financial health and a fist full of national gold and silver competition medals. What a privilege to work with CNWL’s board, staff and students. So what I have I learned about surviving and thriving in work?
Maybe there’s a number one tip from me though. Cherish and nurture those support networks which make up your human Sat Nav for Working Life, at least until someone invents a digital version… Vicki Fagg |
Vicki Fagg, Principal,
Annual WLN Conference Scaling the Heights - challenging views of leadership and governance in FE
The Latest WLN News Read our latest Spring e-bulletin 2012 gender research identifies glass ceiling gets lower. Click here to read the new report Two new WLN regional network groups have launched this spring - one more to go! Yorkshire & Humberside Regional Network launch on 17 May 2012 convened and hosted by Barnsley College. Other network dates and more details.. Making Strides is making waves! The results of LSIS funded WLN research into flexible working is now available - download a copy today! If you do not have Adobe Acrobat on your computer you can download and install it from here.
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