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Ep 17. Kate Lee, CEO Alzheimer’s Society: Care Deeply and Be Honest
97 Plays4 years ago
“(As a leader) if your head isn’t above the parapet, it’s in the sand”
Kate Lee is CEO of Alzheimer’s Society. In this interview we talk about how the organisation supports people with dementia and her own experience of dementia with her mother, who has been living with the disease for over 16 years.
We also explore the principle of Radical Candor, as introduced in the book of the same name by Kim Scott, and that in order to be effective as leaders, we need to care deeply and be honest. Giving honest and constructive feedback is key to achieving this.
Kate reflects on her own emotional resilience and ability to recharge. She also shares her belief that given the enormous emotional toll of the past year, what is needed now is for everyone to embrace kindness and compassion.
Recorded April 2021.
Guest Biography
Kate Lee joined Alzheimer’s Society as Chief Executive in March 2020. Prior to this role, she was CEO at children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent for four years, during which time she rebranded the organisation, setting new values and building a culture of total team working. She successfully lobbied Government to fund the funerals of all children under the age of 18 and founded the Children and Young People’s Cancer Coalition. She also recently joined the Board of Trustees of World Child Cancer.
She was previously CEO of Myton Hospice, an adult palliative care charity in Coventry and Warwickshire, where she worked with many individuals with dementia and their families. Before that Kate spent 16 years at British Red Cross leading UK service delivery, before becoming Director of UK and International Strategy and Deputy CEO in 2005.
Kate is a proud Yorkshire woman and lives in Coventry with her husband and two teenage children. She loves gardening and tea.
Links
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/
RANKED NO. 6 IN TOP 25 CHARITY PODCASTS TO FOLLOW IN 2021 (May 2021 edition)
https://blog.feedspot.com/charity_podcasts/
Kate Lee is CEO of Alzheimer’s Society. In this interview we talk about how the organisation supports people with dementia and her own experience of dementia with her mother, who has been living with the disease for over 16 years.
We also explore the principle of Radical Candor, as introduced in the book of the same name by Kim Scott, and that in order to be effective as leaders, we need to care deeply and be honest. Giving honest and constructive feedback is key to achieving this.
Kate reflects on her own emotional resilience and ability to recharge. She also shares her belief that given the enormous emotional toll of the past year, what is needed now is for everyone to embrace kindness and compassion.
Recorded April 2021.
Guest Biography
Kate Lee joined Alzheimer’s Society as Chief Executive in March 2020. Prior to this role, she was CEO at children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent for four years, during which time she rebranded the organisation, setting new values and building a culture of total team working. She successfully lobbied Government to fund the funerals of all children under the age of 18 and founded the Children and Young People’s Cancer Coalition. She also recently joined the Board of Trustees of World Child Cancer.
She was previously CEO of Myton Hospice, an adult palliative care charity in Coventry and Warwickshire, where she worked with many individuals with dementia and their families. Before that Kate spent 16 years at British Red Cross leading UK service delivery, before becoming Director of UK and International Strategy and Deputy CEO in 2005.
Kate is a proud Yorkshire woman and lives in Coventry with her husband and two teenage children. She loves gardening and tea.
Links
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/
RANKED NO. 6 IN TOP 25 CHARITY PODCASTS TO FOLLOW IN 2021 (May 2021 edition)
https://blog.feedspot.com/charity_podcasts/
Recommended
Transcript
Emotional Burdens of CEOs
00:00:00
Speaker
As chief execs, we've held a huge amount of emotional burden this year. It's taken me a lot to accept that and to just say, we should just all give ourselves a little bit of a break on social media, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, just we should just give ourselves a little bit of a break. We have held the most amazing emotional burdens for all our beneficiaries.
00:00:25
Speaker
Every single person that's emailed me about not being able to visit a loved one in a care home or the death of a loved one has hit home, seeing my staff struggle has hit home. And we should just all just give ourselves credit for that and not think about the mistakes we've made.
The Charity CEO Podcast Introduction
00:00:50
Speaker
Welcome to Season 2 of the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders. This is the show that gets beneath the surface of issues, engaging in meaningful and inspirational conversations with leaders from across the sector.
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm the Rio Connor and each episode I will be interviewing a charity leader who will share with us their insights, knowledge and topical expertise on challenges facing our sector in these turbulent times. This show is for everyone who cares about the important work of charities.
Kate Lee's Leadership Journey
00:01:23
Speaker
My guest today is the one and only Kate Lee. And this is an interview with Kate, the likes of which you have not heard before.
00:01:31
Speaker
Most of you will know Kate as the CEO of Alzheimer's Society and as the chief exec, Kate cares deeply about curing dementia. We talk about how Alzheimer's Society supports people with dementia and her own experiences of dementia with her mom who has been living with the disease for over 16 years. We also talk about the principle of radical camber and Kate's belief that as leaders, we need to care deeply and be honest.
00:01:59
Speaker
but sometimes caring deeply takes its toll. And Kate reflects on her own emotional resilience and ability to recharge. Because when the chief cheerleader's batteries run low, the whole organization feels it. And above all, Kate holds that with everything going on in the world at the moment, what is needed right now is truly compassionate leadership. And this, she endeavors to role model every day by being authentic and speaking from the heart as she does here too.
Childhood Dreams and Professional Superpowers
00:02:28
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed the show. Hi, Kate. Welcome to the show. I'm so thrilled to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me to view. So the show always starts with an ice break around. And if you're ready, we can dive straight in. Question one, as a child, what did you dream of being when you grew up? Oh, I wanted to be a tattoo artist.
00:02:53
Speaker
And there are days where I still wonder whether I should have followed that plan. I don't even have any tattoos now as an adult, but as a child, I was very fascinated by the thought of not only art, I love art and I love being creative, but I like the thought of the permanency
Alzheimer's Society Mission and Challenges
00:03:10
Speaker
of, I don't know, drawing on someone and not being able to wash it off, I'm sure.
00:03:16
Speaker
Well, nobody's given me that answer before. Brilliant. Random. Question two. What would you say is your professional superpower? Oh, that's such a good question. I think my professional superpower is probably being able to listen to quite complex information and kind of get to the nub of what's been said or what the problem is quite quickly.
00:03:40
Speaker
So I think I'm quite good at solutions. I'm quite good at kind of saying what about this, what that, but I have been told that I'm quite good at processing lots of quite complex stuff quite quickly and making it quite accessible for people. Excellent superpower to have as a chief executive, certainly. Yeah, absolutely. Question three, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the world right now, what would that be? I'd care for dementia. I'm going to have to say that.
00:04:10
Speaker
I truly believe it. My children have been fascinated since they were little in saying to me, if you had one wish, mummy, what would it be? And I've always said that people couldn't break the law because I've always thought if we just all followed the rules, you know, with so much place. But since I have become ingrained in the dementia world over the last year, I just think this disease is horrific. There is no cure. There's no treatment. People are still being told.
00:04:38
Speaker
you've got a dementia diagnosis now, kind of go home and plan to die. And it's just horrific. It's the UK's biggest killer and it has so little interest or focus on it. So yeah, I'm going to go for that.
Dementia Research and Funding Issues
00:04:52
Speaker
As a good chief executive, of course, do me out of business. Wish well-served, I must say. Question four, where would you like to go on holiday right now? I mean, let's pretend the pandemic never happened. Where would you go?
00:05:07
Speaker
I'll say next on my list is the Philippines. I've never been to the Philippines. I have been to as many countries as my age, so I do like to try and visit a new country every year. And that has obviously been challenging, although I did get to Croatia last summer, so I was able to do it last year. But yeah, next top of my list, my next trip is the Philippines.
00:05:26
Speaker
Very nice. And our final icebreaker question, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and what one question would you like to ask them? I think the answer to this question for me probably changes almost daily. I'm very interested in Malala Yousaf, probably likes to interview her and I would like to ask her
00:05:50
Speaker
what her one piece of advice is to empowering young women. How do we make our young women in this country as strong and as resilient as she is? What would be her advice to young women?
00:06:03
Speaker
Brilliant. Yes, I'd like to know that myself. Kate, you are the chief executive of Alzheimer's Society and most people may know that dementia is, as you mentioned, the biggest cause of death in the UK and with 850,000 people currently living with dementia in the UK, your work is hugely important. Tell us a little bit about dementia and what Alzheimer's Society does. What is your organization's vision and mission?
00:06:30
Speaker
We are just having a bit of a rethink about Alzheimer's Society at the moment. Obviously, I came in as chief executive last year and we've learned a huge amount through the pandemic and we're thinking about our organization going forward. Really, what is the focus of our work? Where can we make the biggest difference?
Support Services and Early Diagnosis
00:06:47
Speaker
So that's great discussions going on at the moment.
00:06:50
Speaker
Alzheimer's Society works at present with people both diagnosed with dementia and those affected by it. So that might be carers, particularly unpaid carers, but also lots of healthcare professionals. We have a ride wide range of support right from long-term research at the moment we do biomedical research into a cure.
00:07:10
Speaker
right through to our policy and influencing work. So high on our agenda at the moment is adult social care reform in the UK, because 70% of all people with dementia use some form of social care through to our direct service delivery. So we have our amazing Dementia Connect, which is we have face-to-face advisors. We have telephone support, both in-going and outgoing. Something we're really keen to strengthen is our online digital support. We have peer groups.
00:07:41
Speaker
So a huge wide range and we support lots of other organizations in their areas of dementia work as well. As well as of course our dementia friends program and working with local communities to kind of develop them as dementia friendly. So tons going on across the whole organization. One of the big issues in dementia is it's just really, really difficult condition. Very difficult to manage. Everybody's journey with dementia is slightly different.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so at the moment where, you know, there's lots of prejudice faced by people with dementia in the UK. We don't know what causes it. We don't know how to treat it. We know increasingly more about what helps families cope with dementia or with a loved one with dementia.
00:08:25
Speaker
but it's a constantly changing picture. So the sad thing is that only projected to rise significantly, both with our aging population, but it's not only old people that get dementia, which is also a real challenge. Some people with dementia develop it in their late 40s, early 50s. And it's often seen as an old people's disease. Sometimes it's still seen as an inevitable part of getting old, which it's not. It is a disease of the brain.
00:08:49
Speaker
So so much misunderstanding around it. So the organization really focuses on how do we help people navigate their dementia journey? And our research is very much about how can we create more choice for people with dementia? So I understand that there is no cure for dementia, despite it being the UK's biggest killer. So if somebody listening to this podcast is concerned that a loved one might have dementia, where can they go for more information or resources?
00:09:19
Speaker
So everybody forgets things from time to time. This is our Alzheimer's Society mantra. We all have memory lapses. And yep, they do get a bit more common as you get older. But there is a point at which you will possibly be worried
Impact of COVID-19 on Dementia Care
00:09:33
Speaker
about somebody's memory lapses, which feels more than just, you know, they're a bit stressed and they can't remember where to put the car keys.
00:09:40
Speaker
If somebody starts to repeat themselves very frequently and not realise they're doing it or there's all sorts of different things, I mean, actually write down some of the symptoms of early dementia, things like people falling over for no apparent reason, all sorts of different symptoms come about from dementia.
00:09:58
Speaker
But it's really about getting someone to a GP in the first instance and getting that assessment done and to not be frightened about that. There is no cure for dementia. There's no treatment that can slow down the progression of dementia. But there is lots to be done to help people in those early stages plan so that they can still live really healthy and productive lives for a long time yet. And we know some people don't want to face up to the fact that they're getting some of those memory problems,
00:10:26
Speaker
maybe stumbling over words a lot, but also just things like, you know, when my own mom started early in her dementia, we noticed she was repeating herself a lot. She would ask what day it was a lot. And then some tasks which she would be really used to doing, she seemed to really struggle to do. And I remember watching her one day making a cup of tea and clearly was quite confused about the kind of teapot kettle, teabags, like just looking at this, like thinking, how does this all work then?
00:10:55
Speaker
And I kind of left up and said, mum, what are you doing there? You know, but she said, actually, I've been having feelings like this a little bit more frequently recently. So I think at that stage, Alzheimer's Society has a support line. You can go to our website for the number for that, our dementia connect support line. You can chat that through with someone.
00:11:14
Speaker
They will probably encourage you to just go and talk to your GP about how you're feeling if you've got those symptoms. But there's loads that can be done once someone does get a dementia diagnosis. We know it can seem really, really frightening.
00:11:28
Speaker
Ignoring it means that people often can't access the proper help and support they need. So important to seek the support early. And I think it's important that people are aware of the symptoms and are encouraged to do that. Even if we're in sort of pandemic lockdown, but not to ignore symptoms and to seek help as appropriate. Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:48
Speaker
I'd like to talk now about the dementia moonshot. So it is estimated that by 2040, dementia will cost the UK economy over £94 billion. 94 billion? Wow. And so the UK government have committed to investing 800 million in dementia research over the next decade, which is being called the dementia moonshot. What is this money going to be spent on? And what do you hope it will achieve?
00:12:16
Speaker
Well, in the first instance, Divya, unfortunately it hasn't actually been agreed yet, which is incredibly frustrating to the whole of the dementia sector. So it was promised in the conservative manifesto that there would be a doubling of investment in dementia research, which would have doubled the investment by, or would have increased investment by 800 million, which is obviously the figure you were just talking about there. I mean, dementia is one of the biggest health and social care challenges we face.
00:12:44
Speaker
As you rightly say, there are 850,000 people affected by it in the UK at the moment, which costs the economy right now about £40 billion a year. Dementia research is estimated to be 20 years behind other conditions like cancer. We've approximately, as a country, spending about £90 million on dementia research each year at the moment, and we spend £550 million on cancer.
00:13:11
Speaker
So it just gives you that indication of how little investment has gone into dementia. And if you think about it this way, this is always the figure that's most shocking for me. For every 10 pound we spend on disease research in the UK, we spend one pound and eight P on cancer and we spend eight P on dementia. And yet it is the UK's biggest killer.
00:13:36
Speaker
So, I mean, for us, we obviously desperately want this additional 800 million pounds to cover research over the next 10 years. That's a doubling from the current 80 million, 80, 90 million. And that needs to be spent on a whole range of different things. Yes. Some of that biomedical understanding of the brain. We still don't really understand why dementia develops.
00:14:01
Speaker
One of the things to me that's really fascinating is we don't understand why two out of three people that develop a dementia diagnosis are female. And we don't understand if dementia, particularly Alzheimer's here, I'm talking about, we don't know if Alzheimer's is related to hormonal change. So there's just so much to be understood at a very, very basic chemistry lesson level before we even get to the stage of finding out what the cure might be or the
00:14:26
Speaker
injection or the pill that would make you go away. So yeah, I wish I had that magic wand, but that magic wand is going to be incredibly expensive, Divya, and it must be done because we are just struggling to have proper research. And even with organizations like Alzheimer's Society investing significantly in dementia research, there's so much to be done because actually we need to also research about the best care techniques.
Adapting to the Pandemic
00:14:52
Speaker
A really good one we've been debating this week,
00:14:54
Speaker
We're really interested in looking at the symptom of delirium. People with dementia will often get delirium, become delirious and unpaid carers, family carers find that incredibly hard to manage at home. So someone ends up in hospital and then we'll often end up going straight into residential care as a result because it's just really complicated to manage someone with delirium at home.
00:15:16
Speaker
Alzheimer's Society is really committed to finding treatments for people that are already got dementia. If we could find out a way of treating that delirium really, really well, reducing that symptom, we know we could keep significantly more people at home rather than making that move into residential care that would be unplanned and feel like an emergency and a family hadn't really got their head round that that was the right route for someone.
00:15:39
Speaker
So dementia research, incredibly important. And we need the government to commit now through the next spending review to that dementia moonshot money it promised.
00:15:48
Speaker
Well, that figure you quoted there, Kate, of one pound eight spend on cancer research versus eight p spend on dementia research. That's something I didn't know. And both you and I in previous roles being in the cancer sector have always been pushing for more research spend into treatment, particularly around cancer. And a lot of the research focus needs to be on treatment, as you say, in order to find more effective cures and breakthroughs.
00:16:16
Speaker
And it's really self-fulfilling, because one of the things that happens is you don't put the money in. Young researchers, people wanting to study their PhDs, those researchers don't see dementia as a kind of viable proposition for them to become a specialist in because there's no money in it. You know, you're not going to land those big multi-million pound research projects in the future.
Compassionate Leadership Post-COVID
00:16:36
Speaker
So we're not attracting those really vibrant young researchers.
00:16:40
Speaker
coming out of university who are going straight into cancer research because that's where the money is so unless there's an investment right from day one to attract people in.
00:16:51
Speaker
We'd love to see attraction of many more dementia researchers from different backgrounds, different types of ethnicity, really to really properly unpick about the dementia journey. And that won't happen without more investment. Absolutely. And you mentioned there about care and care homes. And I know that your own mother has been living in a care home. She's had dementia for over 16 years, I believe. Yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I know that I, along with everybody else in the sector, I suspect was so moved when you shared that video on social media of yourself outside the window of your mother's care home. You were looking in and trying to connect with her while she was kind of just looking at you blankly and it was so heart-wrenching. So Kate, I'm really keen to hear your thoughts on the government's
00:17:37
Speaker
Covid recovery action plan as it relates to the situation in care homes and we've already mentioned about research and the government need to put more money into it. What more would you like to see happen right now? Is the government doing enough? I mean we've talked about this so much over the months over the last year of course the main topic I don't know even just the hot topic of debate in Alzheimer's society has been about this whole piece about care home visiting
00:18:04
Speaker
More than one in four deaths from COVID-19 in the UK have been someone living with dementia. People with dementia have been absolutely unquestionably the hardest hit and a large number of them have been people in residential care. So the reality is this virus has been very, very dangerous to people in residential care who have been very vulnerable and susceptible to it.
00:18:28
Speaker
It is not just saying it's important to keep people safe in residential care. That's not just something we can say, yeah, but, you know, visiting is really important. That safety issue is of course a huge and primary concern.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think what we have felt all along firstly is that social care was really badly treated. We know things like PPE was diverted from social care
Social Media and Personal Branding
00:18:53
Speaker
into healthcare and that that created a lot of problems in the early days for people in residential care particularly. And then moving through the months, we know that keeping families out of residential care has meant that we've seen a lot of excess deaths of people with dementia. This is people who haven't died of COVID.
00:19:12
Speaker
or COVID related complications, but we've seen a lot more people die in residential care of purely of their dementia over the last year and we know that lots of that is associated with the fact that they've been kept away from their families, they feel abandoned and that's not encountering all the grief and guilt and heartbreak for families who've been kept away from loved ones.
00:19:34
Speaker
So it's been such a difficult balance to strike. We need it on the government scientific advisory panel, brilliant, brilliant doctors with medical backgrounds, very little psychosocial input. So nobody's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, the best way to keep people in residential care homes safe is this clinical model. But actually, we also need to think about the mental health and wellbeing of people with cognitive decline. So it's been really, really challenging, obviously,
00:20:03
Speaker
visiting restarted in early March. People can have a visitor too in Scotland, visiting restarted in Wales and has just restarted in Northern Ireland. But it is really challenging about the balance between getting visiting and care and resident safety right. What's the concern is where we've got some residential homes, I think still reluctant to allow visiting without necessarily good reason and
00:20:33
Speaker
just trying to unpick why some of those residential homes we know are really struggling with staffing
Maintaining Wellbeing as a CEO
00:20:39
Speaker
and there will be increasing issues about no job, no job. So what do we do with a social care workforce that refuses to be vaccinated or those people for really good reasons, whole mix of reasons, don't wish to be vaccinated. But that means that visiting in care homes will not get back to normal for a long time yet. What do we think and feel about that?
00:21:01
Speaker
So it's a really complex debate. And I think we just need to make sure that the government is doing as much as they can now to educate those people who work in residential care that are nervous about having the vaccine. There needs to be work going on to reassure them. That will be the way of getting visiting back as it was pre-COVID.
00:21:21
Speaker
Well, I understand that your parents' 60th wedding anniversary is coming up later this month, so I do hope they will be able to be together that day to celebrate that special occasion.
Advice for New CEOs
00:21:32
Speaker
15th and then my dad is 80 on the 29th, so I think at least I'm actually hoping that next week I'm able to go and do another window visit with my mum, but actually with my dad indoors, visiting with my mum at the same time, which hopefully should be a bit more productive. Fingers crossed.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yes, I hope so. So Kate, we are now in April 2021 and it's just over a year ago that you started at Alzheimer's Society and indeed just over a year ago when the full force of the pandemic hit and the whole world went into lockdown. So looking back one year on with the benefit of hindsight, what do you think you might have done differently?
00:22:12
Speaker
It's been such an extraordinary year. I think the organization handled things really, really well. I think we've pivoted very quickly to online services. I think we had staff go off on furlough very quickly. We planned a restructure of the organization to just ensure that we would survive financially really quickly. And I'm really
00:22:36
Speaker
pleased and proud of the team for doing so well. Most people will know we kind of entered COVID already in a bit of a media storm. Brand new chief exec at the same time. The poor team were probably hit sideways in like, just how much change can we handle at once? And did the most superb job
00:22:55
Speaker
I'm really proud of them. For me, thinking about what we could do differently, my heart always goes straight to people with dementia.
Self-Compassion and Leadership Reflections
00:23:03
Speaker
Did we let them down? What more could we have done? Should we have taken more risk? Should we have pushed government harder? I'm comfortable in living and knowing that in the moment we did the best we can and
00:23:16
Speaker
Lots and lots learned for us about whether virtual groups have worked as well for people with dementia. Lots of issues about some people with end-stage dementia find it very hard to use a telephone. How has that worked for us? Having a lot of telephone support services when you can't back that up with face to face, which is what we would usually do. So loads of learning, but actually full credit to the team. They've done the most incredible job, including our fundraisers who have pulled off the most.
00:23:44
Speaker
Amazing year really we thought at the start of the pandemic, we would be over 40 million pounds lost we have an events heavy portfolio and we'll probably end the year about 15 or 16 million down, which is just.
00:23:58
Speaker
amazing given the years. I worry they've been robbing banks. I don't know what they've been doing off fundraisers. They've pulled it out the bag. People have been so incredibly generous. I mean, the public have been so incredibly generous and supportive. So yeah, really proud of them.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yes it's so important for charities to be able to pivot as you said there and to really be innovative and thinking of new ways of fundraising because that's what's going to really take things forward and allow the charities to really thrive going forward.
00:24:30
Speaker
So talking about learning and sort of life post-pandemic, later this month you are speaking at the Civil Society Spring Summit which focuses on success strategies for a post-COVID world and I'm really looking forward to attending that. So this podcast is going to be released after that event and therefore I wonder if you might share with our listeners now some of your reflections from your keynote address on creating a culture of kindness and why this is important now more than ever.
00:25:01
Speaker
This whole issue about kind of compassionate leadership and kind leadership in the sector is obviously very much of the moment for all the right reasons, you know, the bullying accusations across the sector, you know, bring despair into all our hearts, but how do we tackle this? How do we properly move this agenda forward along with kind of the equality diversity and inclusion agenda? You know, these things will come together for me and about how do you really create a properly
00:25:27
Speaker
Compassionate organization i'll say a little bit more about how I define compassionate at the moment, so I think what I talked about the spring summit was to say. The first thing for me is we talk a lot about self actualization in the sector, we talk a lot about saying.
00:25:43
Speaker
People come to this sector because they want to do good. They want to feel like they made a difference to someone's lives. But if we go back to that age-old Maslow's Hierarchy of Need and we look at our staff and our organisations, giving them that self-actualisation, that top of the pyramid, that feeling good that they made a difference can't happen if they feel psychologically unsafe at work.
00:26:04
Speaker
So the truth is that it isn't good enough to say the ends justify the means, you know, okay, there's high pressure environment, it's highly stressful, you know, people don't know if they're going to be made redundant tomorrow or not, people aren't paid properly, we don't have a great culture for listening, but all that is okay because our staff comes to work because they want to make a difference and they are making a difference and we reached 100,000 more people this year than we reached last year.
00:26:28
Speaker
I just don't believe that model. I don't think even in our sector, I think people put up with a huge amount because they feel like they're making a difference and we employ a lot of rescuers and a lot of people who want to make a difference and really feel very passionately driven by that. But I don't believe they can do that successfully and be properly motivated by that if they just don't work in an environment where they can bring them whole selves to work, where they're worried about people finding out that they're gay,
00:26:58
Speaker
or they don't feel they can challenge that kind of racist joke in the kitchen. So for me, I think it really important to address the basics in organizations in order for that real sense of we are making a difference to work. And the second thing that I talked about is I'm a huge, huge fan of radical candor. So the book by Kim Scott was very life-changing for me for lots of reasons.
00:27:27
Speaker
And in that book, Kim talks about the need to care deeply and be honest. And I think that one of the things that happens in our sector is we care deeply.
00:27:42
Speaker
and we struggle to always be honest and give really direct feedback. And that's partly because we're rescuers, partly because we are desperately compassionate, partly because we are born to make things better for people, make people feel good, make them feel right about themselves. We've put that out in the terms of careers. We've made this our absolute mission in life to deliver this for other people.
00:28:08
Speaker
So amazing people in the sector. But when we come to looking at colleagues across the table, we still feel the same way. And what we end up delivering is not radical candor. We're not honest with people. We deliver ruinous empathy, which is we are deeply caring and compassionate to each other, but we don't really value taking that moment out to give people honest feedback.
00:28:31
Speaker
And to say, look, I know you are brilliant. I know you're really driven to do this differently. You know, I know you can see a conversation I've just had this morning actually with someone. I know you can see a brilliant way of achieving better impact for people with dementia, but actually you are causing chaos in your wake. You aren't taking people with you. People don't quite understand what you're doing. You know, this teamwork for hours and hours and hours on this product you wanted. And because you'd not thought it through, that was all wasted work.
00:29:00
Speaker
But I know you're doing it for the right reasons, but we've got to find a better way of you working to deliver that. Now for me, that's radical candor. I know that they're trying to do this with the best of reasons, but without that feedback, we can't run successful organizations. So, and my own experience as a leader over the years, I have also been guilty of ruinous empathy. I've really worried about not upsetting people I work with. I've thought, but you know, how can I give this person that little bit of feedback when actually I know they're working their hardest and they're trying their best.
00:29:30
Speaker
And the reality is that that feedback is important. If I really cared about them, if I really wanted them to succeed, I would tell them. So that's the kind of gist of my sense about the importance of creating kind organizations and compassionate organizations is not creating ruinous empathy. It is not saying yes to everything. I think what happens also in this sector is we do say yes to everything.
00:29:53
Speaker
But in truth, we feel like we have been really coerced into doing something we didn't want to do. And that often emerges in quite passive aggressive behavior. So we say, oh, okay, you know, you can have that next time off or it doesn't matter that you were late. I know it was for the best of reasons. And rather than letting that go, actually we fester on it and that that transpires and emerges across the sector at times as bullying.
00:30:17
Speaker
So for me, that kind of moved to getting this whole sector much more confident about radical candor, about just, we know we all care, but how do we really start to be honest with each other and genuinely see that as a gift that someone's giving. So if you were to give other leaders one or two tips in terms of how to really do that, how to really bring that radical candor out through conversations, what might those be?
00:30:45
Speaker
Not everyone struggles with it and I do and I have done my whole career and other people I deeply admire just don't. They're just brilliant at giving really solid feedback. I think never underestimate the importance of really honing your feedback skills constantly. There's two parts to it. So the first is care deeply and you can't care deeply if you don't know what matters to the person you are giving feedback to.
00:31:11
Speaker
So it's all very well me saying, you know, I know you're really driven to create a brilliant outcome for people with dementia. We've got to work on how you're doing that. If I don't know that person very well, and I don't know that that motivates them, maybe what motivates them is I know you're really desperate to get that next promotion when it comes up. Or I know that you really have struggled to work with those members of your team and you've been trying really hard to fit in.
00:31:36
Speaker
So I think for me, it's really understanding people, taking time out to understand people. And I'd say the one thing that's really important in the organization is to role model it and not miss an opportunity to just drive that radical candor. Sometimes that's about creating really formal spaces. I've just had an ELT.
00:31:59
Speaker
a session with my executive leadership team where we literally took time out to say, this is the thing I love. And this is the thing that if you could change it would help me. This is the thing I'd like you to work on. And we did that really formally created time to do that. And when you pressed, it's so easy not to do it, but really important to do that. Kate, you have always struck me as somebody who cares deeply and is also brutally honest.
00:32:28
Speaker
Which brings me now to talk about something that I'm going to call the Kate Lee effect. Because Kate, you are somebody who clearly knows the importance of building a brand. And I think you are absolutely masterful at using social media to do so. And I'd really love to learn how you do that. I mean, are you strategic about where and how you engage? What is your process?
00:32:51
Speaker
No, I am not strategic about it, which is why I think if you look at my tweet feed, you will sometimes see ranting about government decisions to do with dementia and kind of policy change and social care and
00:33:04
Speaker
then you'll see that I'm just liking something that someone else has posted that's made me laugh out loud. And then other times I'm ranting about my two teenage children and the grief they give me. But it works. Yeah, I think it's about being authentic. I think there is something I know that I said many moons ago now that I just don't know how you can totally avoid social media or the use of social media as a chief exec anymore, because the reality is you don't get to manage your narrative. So if your head's not above the parapet is in the sand,
00:33:34
Speaker
And I still feel like that really social media, I still like everybody have a bit of a love hate relationship with it. I feel recently I've been quite exercised about the amount of calling out of behavior that happens on social media, which I think is a shame rather than one to one. You know, I think if leaders in the sector are struggling with each other, we should pick up the phone to each other. Even people you don't know and say, I wasn't so sure about that.
00:34:02
Speaker
as opposed to this real calling out because you don't always get a right to reply. And also a lot of other people pile in. One thing I do do strategically is I really try to think about everything I read. I think, does that ring true? I hear about, well, this person was just sacked with no process. And I think, oh, this person was sacked for doing this thing, you know, putting a mug in the bronca.
00:34:29
Speaker
Before I leap in now saying, well, that's absolutely outrageous. That is bullying. I just want to think about this for a minute. I know HR policy. I know HR process. I know legal rights to redress. Is that quite right? Does that feel like that?
00:34:46
Speaker
And I think that's quite difficult. I try to just be really authentic. I try to just talk from the heart and about how I feel about things. If someone has been an incredible support to me, I will say that.
00:35:00
Speaker
But yeah, I think all of us in the sector have a bit of a love-hate relationship with social media at the moment. I will never not be a fan. I think actually it's a great way of getting a huge amount of support and information and different views. I love the diversity. I love the challenge. I think that's great. But I have a growing amount of skepticism about some of the things I read from within the sector.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I think it comes back to the point you were making earlier about feedback and providing feedback to other charity chief executives or other colleagues within the sector, even if they're not within your own organization, I think is equally valuable and important. And when we're looking to collaborate a lot more across the sector, as we've all seen this past year, the real need for that, then that's important too, to have those honest and trusted conversations. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm, I'm a big fan of that very
00:35:54
Speaker
very old model of the kind of Johari's window where, you know, I'm constantly looking at ways that, how do I find out more about myself that other people already know about me? And that's about consciously asking for feedback, but also pushing myself in different ways so that I discover more about myself as I kind of go along. I don't know. People have been really, really stressed across the whole of society, not just in our sector, but people are
00:36:18
Speaker
We're people, people, and we have been kept away from people for way too long. We need this over so that we can all get back out. We're a whole sector of, well, I'd say not quite the whole sector, but a large sector of huggers and people that like to be with people. This is not great for us. I was just thinking as you said that, that sometimes you read something on social media and think, oh, that person just needs a hug. They need a big hug and then everything will be okay.
00:36:47
Speaker
I think, you know what, I just, that person just needs someone to sit down with a coffee with them and say, you know, are you all right? This is a lot of ranting from you. So yeah, I think we'll all feel better when we are back out in the real world.
00:37:00
Speaker
bring it on. Kate, you talked about role modeling, sort of accessible leadership there, but you, like everybody else, only have 24 hours in the day, and talking about stress, et cetera. How do you balance the demands of the job with your own wellbeing? And what do you do to keep sane and replenish yourself? Was it just drinking endless cups of tea and chocolate? Yeah. You know me well in my tea drinking. You know me well.
00:37:26
Speaker
So I've been exploring this a bit recently. I think I'm not very good at recharging my batteries. And I think I get kind of up and down quite a bit. I have wrestled with depression for most of my adult life. So, you know, under control most of the time, but I do get moments that I feel.
00:37:44
Speaker
overwhelmed and and I got some great feedback from my executive leadership team recently which is absolutely fair that when you have the level of energy I have I'm like a battery in the organization so I'm just a constant kind of energy given like you can do this you know you can do more than you think come on you know and I have always called myself the chief cheerleader but of course in those moments of being very flat or very low it has a really multiplied effect
00:38:10
Speaker
across the organization because people are like, oh my God, the battery is low. It's important for me, I think, I don't know, I've been really trying to explore recently whether I think I've probably got a bit of a hero complex where it's like, I can keep going. Resilience, we all talk about resilience. I want to be resilient. I want to be the role model for resilience. Actually, I've started to really question that word and what that word means. Actually, we can't all be resilient all the time. That's just ridiculous.
00:38:39
Speaker
starting to think about saying actually I need a proper break and I'm going to have a proper break and take some time off and absolutely step away from dementia. With my mum having dementia and working in dementia and I'm even reading a book for someone, a non-fiction book that an author has written which I said I would proofread for them. So even in my downtime I'm reading about dementia so I'm like this isn't healthy as it's really important to have an opportunity to
00:39:06
Speaker
to step away and recharge batteries. So I don't know how I do do it. I just know that I need to be better at making time to do it. And I don't feel like the world will fall apart if I step away. I sometimes think I might fall apart if I step away. And I think that's something I've been trying to learn about myself recently, which is that I know perfectly well, everyone functions perfectly well without me. In fact, they quite love a break from me, I'm sure. But actually coming to terms with that in myself, it's a tough one.
00:39:34
Speaker
I think you've just hit the nail on the head there in terms of you feeling that you might fall apart if you step away because you're just going full tilt. And if you stop and take a breath, Oh God, what might happen? One of my previous guests described it not so much as emotional resilience, but emotional nourishing or emotional flourishing, and that you need to sort of nourish yourself and step away in order to then get back to being chief cheerleader batteries fully recharged and keep going.
00:40:04
Speaker
I laughed recently with my coach and we were talking about downtime and I was saying, I do have hobbies. I garden, I crochet, I run. He's like, yeah, it's like your list of hobbies is like your list of work tasks. It's like, you know, are you sure this isn't, is this nourishment or is this just, you feel like you should have a list of hobbies for when you're asked that question? I was like, maybe.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yes, so reconnect to what you truly enjoy. What is nourishing your soul as opposed to another task? It's an earthing to beat me up. I know, it's just an earthing to beat myself up. Like, you know, other people can crochet and I can't crochet. I need to let's crochet. It's like, is this really like downtime? Is this really nourishing? So, uh, yeah, it's a lifelong journey. I'm going to, one day I'm just going to discover that thing that is total nourishment. And maybe that'll be the day I retire and just do that.
00:40:57
Speaker
going to be a tattoo artist on a beach somewhere in Thailand, Philippines. Brilliant. I must say, Kate, I somehow don't see that in your future. Hi, you never know, Sophia. You never know, indeed. And so talking about journeys and thinking about your own leadership journey then, what advice would you give to yourself on day one of first becoming a CEO?
00:41:22
Speaker
just know your limitations. So I think on first day of becoming a chief executive, I felt a huge weight of thinking, well, now you've got the top job. That means every time in my whole career, I've thought, Oh, this is rubbish. This thing in the organization, if just the chief exec could just change this. And then suddenly your chief executive thing, Oh my God, you can't just change it. I didn't quite realize that it just doesn't work like that. I just don't go like, I want a different culture here. And then suddenly there's a different culture.
00:41:49
Speaker
So I think know your limitations, understand how much what you do affects people rather than what you say. So that real role modeling that people are looking to you constantly for what your actions show you really value. And you really like, you know, and you say, no, no, no, I want everyone to switch off their computers at six o'clock, but you're still emailing at eight that what people think is nice doesn't really mean that.
00:42:15
Speaker
You know, she really valued stopping at six o'clock and she really valued me stopping at six o'clock. She'd have stopped at six o'clock. So I think for me, really, really understanding the influence your actions have rather than your words. And I would have probably told my first day chief exec, you know, you can't do everything, best will in the world. You can't change everything just because you're chief exec. You are not omnipresent in the organization as chief exec, but your actions will change things faster than your words will.
00:42:45
Speaker
And talking about being the chief exec, what would you say is the most inspiring thing about being CEO of Alzheimer's Society?
00:42:54
Speaker
The most inspiring thing about being chief executive anywhere is you get to interfere in loads of things. You get all the credit for the nice things that happen. You go to dinner parties and say, I'm chief executive officer. I'm a society and people automatically think you're a lovely person. You must be marvelous. There's so many advantages to it. And we don't talk about the advantages enough. We all get down in the pits of despair about it, but you get spend loads and loads and loads of time with people with dementia and that just, there's a
00:43:22
Speaker
point at which you can just reground yourself in the why this all matters by just reading some of the case studies we have listening to in on conversations with people with dementia with their dementia advisor. I've been privileged to be able to with their agreement listening on some calls that our support line workers make where people have carers have been suicidal and our dementia advisors have
00:43:49
Speaker
talk them down from that position, really giving them hope. They've gone off the phone saying, look, I can do this. I can do this. You know, you just hear that. And it just makes you think, goodness me, that is why we do it. I know when I interviewed Deborah Orcock Tyler, she had a brilliant line about some of the toughness of being the chief exec. And she said that by the time the ship gets to the chief exec, it's really stinky, which I thought was just brilliant.
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, yeah, that's also true. But, you know, you also get to take a lot of deflected credit and a lot of glory for the organization when things go well. One of the things I really, really love is, and I must say, I do absolutely adore this about being chief exec, is that I am a big card writer. Everyone knows this that knows me. I send a lot of
00:44:43
Speaker
Thank you cards and notes. I try to send, I have a rule that I try to send every time if I've needed to be kind of firm about something that I haven't liked or picked up on some behavior. I haven't liked to always make sure I've sent at least two cards out to people doing things I do like. So I write a lot of cards and that is one of the best things. Cause there's something about being chief exec where that really, I know that means a lot to people, not because of who I am, but because I'm chief exec and what a lovely thing to be able to do.
00:45:11
Speaker
for people, just lift them, just give them that little bit of lift. Yes, I can see that now, Kate, sitting on the beach in the Philippines, being tattoo artist by day and then writing all your cards to everybody by night. Absolutely. You've got my career planned out there. That's perfect for me. Brilliant. So in closing now, Kate, do you have any final thoughts or reflections that you'd like to share? I mean, what is one thing that you would like listeners to take away from this conversation?
00:45:39
Speaker
We've all had a really tough year and I know everybody has, but the amount we've all juggled people who've had children at home during this period, you know, mine are older as teenagers, but people have done jobs, juggling little ones, working from home where home isn't a safe space or a nice space. As chief execs, we've held a huge amount of emotional burden this year.
00:46:05
Speaker
It's taken me a lot to accept that and to just say, we should just all give ourselves a little bit of a break on social media, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, just, we should just give ourselves a little bit of a break. We have held the most amazing emotional burdens for all our beneficiaries. Every single person that's emailed me about not being able to visit a loved one in a care home or the death of a loved one has hit home.
00:46:32
Speaker
seeing my staff struggle has hit home and we should just all just give ourselves credit for that and not think about the mistakes we've made because we've all been making it up and I think we've all done marvelously. Absolutely, well thank you so much Kate, it's been so wonderful talking with you, thank you for being a guest on the show. You're welcome Divya, thank you for inviting me.
00:46:57
Speaker
What a powerful and honest conversation with Kate Lee, CEO of Alzheimer's Society. I really enjoyed chatting with Kate and her insights and reflections on her own leadership have given me real pause for thought. Carrying the emotional weight of our organizations has been a heavy burden for Chief Execs this past year. And I agree with Kate that what is needed now is for everyone to cultivate a culture of kindness and compassion.
00:47:23
Speaker
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00:47:49
Speaker
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