Sport and physical activity initiatives and programmes are built with good intentions and can be incredibly successful, but sometimes they fail to connect with the people who are facing the biggest barriers. Systems can feel outdated or poorly designed to address the inequalities that people experience in everyday life.
For leaders, designing new systems and dismantling ineffective solutions can sometimes feel like an impossible task. These challenges can be exacerbated for young leaders if their work is overlooked due to age, experience or other misconceptions.
We spoke to Lauren Perkin to find out more about her leadership story and the challenges she's faced when working to tackle inequalities within the sector.
Lauren's story
Lauren's always felt like her leadership style is different. She's witnessed more 'traditional' leadership through her journey and has seen it exclude communities, leave societal divides untreated and fail to connect with those that need the greatest support. Within some professional settings, this style of leadership has also made hierarchical boundaries more apparent and co-owned solutions less achievable. Lauren strongly believes that to tackle inequalities effectively, leadership requires fresh perspectives and a collaborative outlook.
"As leaders, it's important to consider how we can create environments for others to innovate."
Lauren's shift in leadership style began in South Tees, working as a Programme Officer on 'You've Got This', one of the Sport England Local Delivery Pilots. Lauren reflects on the bold leadership she was exposed to, working with a Director who consistently embraced creativity and created conditions for doing change differently.
"It was a pivotal moment for me as a leader, not just because of the work itself, but because of who I worked with, a creative agency, and their approach to innovative ideas."
The creative agency exposed Lauren to a completely new way of thinking about leadership and tackling inequalities. It wasn't about doing more of the same, it was about creating environments where everyone can contribute and develop pioneering solutions. Lauren discovered the power of disruptive leadership, challenging the traditional ways of thinking and forming an interest around behavioural psychology and how people learn. These experiences formed the basis of her onward leadership.
After working at South Tees, Lauren's moved on to East Riding of Yorkshire Council. She's leading the charge locally in fostering creativity to tackle inequalities. Starting in her own team, Lauren used 'PRINT profiles' for her team members. The profiles show how each colleague works best and what conditions are needed to empower them to innovate and thrive in a safe and brave working environment.
Lauren's work involves changing behaviours and maintains a focus on exploring and learning rather than being driven solely by outcomes.
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Leader wellbeing
For a long time, Lauren put the work first and herself second. However, in recent times she's found ways to slow down, recharge and think about her own needs, even if her brain doesn't always favour this approach!
"I still haven't fully cracked it! It's something I've had to learn over the last 6 months due to more responsibility and a step up in leadership in my role. I find it hard to switch off."
A method that Lauren's adopted is reflective practice. She dedicates an hour a week to reading in an effort to calm her mind and quench her thirst for learning in other fulfilling ways. Additionally, Lauren finds solace and wellbeing support through:
- Hiking with her dog.
- Taking scheduled walking breaks to reflect at work.
- Creating spaces where it's good to be vulnerable.
- Being honest and open with her team.
Overall, Lauren's learnt that taking care of herself as a leader is essential. It gives her the clarity, energy and confidence to lead with impact.
Facing challenges
Being a young female leader has its challenges, choosing to be disruptive and creative with this leadership capacity intensifies some of these. Lauren noted the following difficulties:
- Age-based assumptions: People within the sector have made assumptions based on her age, rather than her leadership experience. Choosing to be creative with leadership can naturally gather more resistance, a younger leader taking these strides sometimes needs to work harder to be heard by others, who may have more years of sector experience.
"I remember going into a meeting and someone saying, 'Why is this 12-year-old girl facilitating for us?'"
- Idea resistance: Innovative solutions and new perspectives are often met with hesitancy. Lauren's experienced this in some roles and with various sector partners.
- Tangible measures of success: Innovation isn't a clear or linear action. Success isn't always able to monitored in the same way a clear process might be. Lauren battles with this as buy-in is often predicated on the promise of numbers, tangible successes or key performance indicators.
- Increased responsibility: The commitment and success Lauren's had has incurred more responsibility as a leader. Balancing this with her own wellbeing, a commitment to her core values and more can be tricky.
Despite these challenges and other system setbacks, Lauren's committed to creating change through disruptive leadership and has learnt to be comfortable with the uncomfortable in the interest of her core goals and values.
Top tips
Drawing on her experiences, Lauren offers the following tips to other leaders:
Speak up
It can sometimes feel intimidating to raise new ideas, speak your mind or suggest alternative approaches, especially when you're new to leadership. Lauren advocates for being bold in these moments, the inequalities are still present and challenging, so why not be empowered to do things differently and let your voice be heard in an attempt to tackle them.
"We need to reframe how we think about risk; from the risk of doing something differently to 'what's the risk of not changing or staying the same?'"
Be comfortable with the uncomfortable
Creating change as a leader can often be uncomfortable. It's important to get outside of your comfort zone, find strength in the knowledge that this is where real growth and change can happen.
Be honest
Lauren's committed to a transparent leadership approach. Honesty builds trust, with yourself and others. Trust is essential to building relationships, remaining connected to your community and developing the right culture for progress to be achieved.
Don't take things to heart
As a leader, it's important not to take things personally. She advises that setbacks and criticisms are part of the journey and encourages others to embrace them, learn from them and try not to take it personally. Pouring your heart into your work is part-and-parcel of tackling inequalities. It requires passion and dedication, just remember to step back, prioritise your wellbeing and take a moment before assuming any personal criticism from challenging conversations or moments.
Create an environment to innovate
Lauren's key focus is developing spaces where people are empowered to innovate, try, learn and grow. Her key advice is to prioritise creating these kind of working settings as this is where people can make the biggest difference, be proud to use their voice and advance the mission to tackle inequalities.
In this segment, we asked the last leader we spoke to to leave a question for the next, they said: How do you stay resilient and adaptable in times of uncertainty?
"Go on holiday all the time haha! In all seriousness, I've learnt a lot about myself in recent years. In the past, I would always ride the wave, I never acknowledged that I was burnt out or needed to take time for myself. Now that I'm leading a bigger team, it's given me a new perspective on the importance of protecting my time and looking after my wellbeing. I'm now comfortable telling my team that I feel burnt out and just having an open honest discussion with them."
What's next?
Lauren’s focus is fixed – she wants to continue tackling inequalities through creative and pioneering action. In whatever role she finds herself in, Lauren wants to create empowered spaces to think differently and work with others to adapt the system to evoke different results and reduce inequalities.
Alongside her disruptive leadership, Lauren’s currently studying a master's degree on complexity in systems thinking, which aims to equip people with the skills to address complex social and geo-political issues across various sectors. Armed with further academic knowledge and a growing foundation of lived experience, we can’t wait to see what else Lauren achieves.
Do you have a leadership story you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from you, email us at leadingthemovement@sportengland.org and we'll be in touch!
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