How my career shaped my desire to join the CIH NI board

Life is about the journey not the destination. I can’t recall where I read that, but it certainly resonates. If I’ve learned anything as I have got older, it’s that I should take time to both enjoy and learn from what comes my way each and every day rather than get too fixated with the next goal. Not that I don’t love a good goal (who wouldn’t?!), but metaphorically if you spend all your time looking at the horizon, you miss what’s at your feet.

So, my journey into housing has been a varied one, across different roles, sectors and jurisdictions, which in many ways has prepared me for the challenges and opportunities of being a chief executive of a housing association (HA). As my colleagues will attest, no two days in social housing are the same and you need to be adept in a range of skills if you are going to achieve the right outcomes for staff, tenants, partners and communities. But why did I want to join the CIH Northern Ireland (NI) Board?

Well, you could tell from my well-developed calculator finger that I started off in life as a ‘numbers’ person. I did an accounting degree at Warwick and then a similar post-graduate diploma in Belfast before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. That was the first ‘destination’ achieved and maybe not surprisingly, the next goal was to become a partner in practice. I was fortunate to fulfil that ambition in my late 20s. And then, the first reset.

It became very clear to me as I turned 30 that I didn’t want to be in practice for another 30+ years. Numbers were all well and good, but it was the people around, behind and above them that actually made life far more enriching. So, I moved into an international management consultancy working out of Dublin and focused on helping organisations with leadership development. And I had an absolute ball working with large corporates, central government and business schools across Europe and North America.

I then spent a number of years working in London as the rather grandly titled ‘global head of innovation’ for a professional membership body. That taught me lots of things. Firstly, that it was easier and often quicker (and a lot less stressful) to walk between meetings in the centre of London than to descend and use the tube. Secondly, and more importantly, I learned a lot about the tortuous journey from idea generation to garnering support across peers for something that they didn’t really want (because change is harder than ‘business as usual’). Time for another reset.

I had spent far too much time in airport lounges and resolved to get a role closer to home. Which turned out to be as business development and bid director in a large services-based PLC. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the private sector is always nimble and agile, as in this stage of my career I spent far too long in senior team and board meetings reviewing project issues and risks, checks and balances. Too little governance is obviously a bad thing, but too much can also be counterproductive. And then the most recent and significant change of direction.

I had noticed but originally discounted the recruitment exercise to appoint a new CEO at Helm Housing. However, the more I looked at the position and its responsibilities in detail, the more attractive it became. Fundamentally, I love a challenge and given the circumstances that I was about to inherit at the troubled HA, there were plenty of issues to resolve. From there, roll on into my current position at Choice, and I am fast approaching 12 years working in a sector which has been hugely demanding but also lots of fun.

So how do you start to connect the dots of my career and make sense of my desire to join the CIH NI Board? Well, I think that professionalism is the golden thread that binds everything together. I would commend Chartered Institute of Housing for their work on a professional standards framework and all housing professionals should consider it carefully. This is a fantastic piece of work which in my view is the cornerstone of CIH. Rather than repeat the seven dimensions of that framework here, let me share a couple of ‘north stars’ which have guided me in my working life, namely the importance of trust and of self-awareness.

In my view, trust is core to being a professional, whatever the sector. Whether I’m dealing with colleagues, tenants or partners, I am acting professionally if they regard me as being trustworthy. And I will instil trust in others if I am perceived to have the right character and competence to do my job. In relation to the former, I should do what I say and act at all times ethically, with integrity, and promoting equality, inclusivity and diversity. With regards to competence, I should be perceived as having a level of knowledge, skill and leadership capability that reflects my position.

This is where self-awareness kicks in, because you should always be assessing whether your behaviours demonstrate the values you espouse and if your knowledge, skills and capabilities fall short. And if you think there is nothing that requires improvement or development then you’ve strayed from self-aware to being deluded. If you’re struggling to think of personal learning opportunities then ask your friends or your colleagues and you will soon fill the page.

As I said at the start of this blog, life is a journey and this is never more the case than aspiring to be a professional. Our teams and customers want to trust their housing association but this requires us all to be trustworthy and high performing. It’s the frustration of regularly knowing that I can do better and the occasional joy of getting something right, that makes my work in housing so rewarding. And it’s my passion for promoting the importance of professionalism in our working lives that attracted me to the CIH NI Board.

So please take the time to consider the CIH professional standards, reset your development goals on a regular basis…and enjoy the journey, wherever it takes you.