Nick Bowen

It doesn’t matter whether you are building a school or building a business; what you are actually doing is building a community.
That starts with the Power of Belonging.
In this keynote, Nick will draw upon his extensive leadership experience using a powerful blend of uplifting, humorous and poignant stories to explore with you how important it is for us as leaders to discover for ourselves a strong sense of belonging which gives us our dignity and which in turn enables us to feel fulfilled.

We all need to feel that we belong in order to be comfortable and safe enough to perform well. We all need to have our dignity in order to get the best out of ourselves and others. We all need to experience fulfilment so that we can elevate ourselves to our very best and challenge ourselves on where we set that bar.

The audience will leave with a much better understanding that the onus is on us as leaders to create a workforce culture where people catch themselves wanting to belong, where we fan the flames of dignity and where fulfilment is born. In doing this we can deliver transformational success for our workforce and our organisation.

As leaders, whether we like it or not, we have a tremendous power to create the climate in which we operate. As the famous teacher Haim Ginott said about teachers, we have as leaders the ability:

to make someone’s life miserable or joyous

to torture or inspire

to humiliate or humour

to hurt or heal

to decide if someone is to be humanised or de-humanised

In this keynote, Nick will draw upon his extensive, personal, senior leadership experience to explore the importance for leaders to create positive workplace cultures that ensure transformational success for our workforce and organisation.
If we were to think of three people who had had a positive impact on our lives then at least one of them would be a leader. But if we were to think of three people who had had a negative impact on our lives, the chances are one of them would be a leader too.
What we do as leaders makes a difference to people’s lives.
Nick will help you to explore that as leaders we need to really understand and appreciate that the good news is we make a difference, but also that the bad news is we make a difference and so the onus is on us as leaders to constantly shine a light on the dignity, value and worth of the people we work with.

The audience will leave with a better appreciation of why they became leaders in the first place, a better understanding of the far reaching and lasting impact we have as leaders on other people’s lives and the importance of our role in the organisation and society.

Change and uncertainty scare people. There isn’t a person in the workforce who hasn’t experienced the fear that change and uncertainty can sometimes bring.
All sorts of things happen when a community experiences significant upheaval which can leave people feeling threatened, isolated and lacking in confidence.
Ultimately, change and uncertainty can deprive people of their sense of belonging, which in turn can strip them of their dignity and ultimately leave them feeling unfulfilled. This can lead to losing good staff you can ill afford to lose and to poor productivity and outcomes.

In this keynote, Nick draws upon his experience of closing two greatly loved, but underperforming, schools and replacing them with a brand new £50 million super school for 2,300 students. It would be easy to imagine that this would be an exciting opportunity for the whole community.
But never underestimate the powerful effects that change and uncertainty can unleash upon a community!
Through this example of navigating huge change and uncertainty, Nick weaves a powerful blend of dramatic, often traumatic, vulnerable yet ultimately uplifting stories to explore with you the importance of understanding and preparing for the rollercoaster such upheaval can bring to a community.

The audience will leave with a better understanding of the different ways that change and uncertainty can affect people, as well as strategies and a greater confidence to manage such upheaval in their own organisations.

The language associated with fulfilment is often seen as being glib or twee: encouraging people to reach for the stars is just too simplistic; telling people that nothing is impossible is simply untrue.
Setting unrealistic goals is the surest way to make people feel unfulfilled.
Fulfilment isn’t about being the very best there is out there. Rather, it’s about being the very best that we can be and challenging ourselves on where we set the bar. Understanding that we may not be able to make the impossible happen, but that we can make what seems impossible to us happen.
Nick believes that people feel truly fulfilled at work when they have a strong sense of belonging and a strong sense of their own dignity.

In this keynote, Nick draws upon his success as a leader closing two significantly underperforming, schools and replacing them with a brand new £50 million super school for 2,300 students to explore with you how he created the right workplace culture to enable him to challenge people to set their bar high. The uplifting story of the success of this new school dramatises how we really can make what seems impossible to us happen.

The audience will leave with a better understanding of how to motivate their workforce to achieve exceptional things by focussing on creating a workforce culture where people feel truly fulfilled in their work, where they are then more open to empowerment and accountability and where they are eager to share their successes and have them rewarded.

Empowerment is giving people a share in important decisions, giving them opportunities to shape organisational goals, acting on their input and giving real leadership opportunities.
Accountability without empowerment is like asking someone a question and then telling them to shut up!
But accountability is NOT a dirty word. Accountability is necessarily holding people to account because a lack of accountability often leads to low expectations and low aspirations.
Empowerment without accountability is like giving someone a voice but then not being the slightest bit interested in what they do with it.

In this keynote, Nick draws upon his extensive senior leadership experience to explore with you the need to create a workforce culture of belonging, dignity and fulfilment in order for the perfect balance of empowerment and accountability to work its magic.

Nick believes that authentic leaders:
ask the right questions, but genuinely support people and listen to the answer;

Empower people to deliver so as to build trust; celebrate and reward success as if that success had absolutely nothing to do with themselves take responsibility for organisational failures, whilst shining a light on the successes of others.

The audience will leave with a better understanding of the importance of getting the balance between empowerment and accountability right, so that people genuinely feel empowered but accept and even welcome accountability and that empowerment and accountability will only find the perfect balance to work its magic when the fear of change and uncertainty has been replaced with a culture of belonging, dignity and fulfilment.