# Transcript

JUNE SADD:

If we look at leadership, it’s a word I think, that is misunderstood because, for me, leadership is actually about enabling others, so you are a leader if you can actually facilitate and enable others to actually be part of decision-making, all of those things, so a leader is thought always to be rather like somebody out at the front making all the decisions and I don’t think that’s right. I think the enabling role of a leader is more important. I think social work students need to understand that and practitioners need to be understand that. You are leading if you’re enabling, I think also that the need to develop leadership and management skills because they are managing caseloads. They are managing working with other agencies. They are managing in difficult situations, and so if they were practitioners who weren’t used to being able to think about management and not being helped to do that, I think that would limit them. They would be so task-focused that they would just be filling in forms and, actually, they need to show leadership and management skills to the other professionals. They can be chairing a child-in-need conference. They can be involved in child protection conferences. They can be involved in mental health tribunals, type of work and, actually, they need to be able to show leadership and management in those situations. So, not just working in a little bubble, social work bubble, there’s a wider world out there, and I think actually that leadership skill of enabling can support their work with service users. They can enable people to develop their own thinking, develop their own responsibility, all of those things, develop their solutions, so leadership’s important.