Leslie Billy Chief Executive Viewpoint

About Viewpoint Viewpoint is a service user led Charity which supports people with mental health or drug and alcohol problems to use their expertise and experiences to bring about change for the better. Through local forums, user representatives, training and education, our members help to improve local services and try and increase the understanding of the challenges people with mental health or drug and alcohol problems can face.

What prompted me/Viewpoint to ask for the Advice and Guidance service?

I was aware of Learning Champion training in previous job as an Assistant manager for Guideposts Trust, I did the preliminary work to find out more about training. Then changed jobs so it went on back boiler. I was made aware by HTDC of the opportunity that instead of doing the Learning Champion (LC) I could work with one, this seemed to be a good way of working alongside a LC whilst learning the processes and tools which I could use in the future, in a way embedded learning at a pace that suited me and the organisation. I wanted to look at ways which I and the organisation could improve, both internally and externally as an underlying basis for doing this work.

How did you find out about Advice and Guidance service?

I found out about the Advice and Guidance service through Mark Gwynne (Senior Learning and Development Officer) sending out regular updates on training and learning opportunities (PVI). Also through my previous organisation who were a member of HTDC.

How I experienced the service i.e. the process of communications; meeting scheduling; content of meetings;

I found the advisor flexible in their approach to scheduling meetings and was able to rearrange meetings at short notice to meet my demands and felt she understood our operational needs; however she also kept me on task between meetings; and always maintained momentum of our work. I found that the breadth of the advisors Mental Health knowledge was helpful and mutually beneficially through this process.

Journey

The language used by the advisor put me in the position as the expert in my area of work; the advisor was here to guide, coach and mentor me to find what worked for me and the organisation. During the process of our work together, there was a big change in my role, from being operational manager and being managed by the Chief Executive to becoming the CEO, giving me a very different view of how the organisation should work going forward. A metamorphosis happened between our conversations at the point when my role became very different, I had more control of the decision making process, and with being leader of the organisation I carried a particular level of responsibility; gradually becoming a more confident and comfortable leader

A key learning to come out of this process was about Change management, having been supported through transition period helped to solidify the process in my own mind, we talked about organisational structures and implementing change in detail i.e. the potential of widening existing job roles i.e. Project workers would undertake supporting people who present with either mental health and/or drug & alcohol involvement issues thereby making the role more generic. This I believe enables the organisation to be more “cross cutting” i.e. working across two services but with shared common themes; stigma; discrimination; isolation. With current underlying financial challenges, if we can demonstrate to commissioners and funders that we can be prudent and flexible with public money then we are better placed when we have to do contract reviews of our service and hope that this will reflect realistic resources in community.

How your organisation benefitted from the service

We now have a regular reporting process from staff in place which generates information for the CEO who in turn uses this information to report to Trustees and Commissioners. We are now in process of developing a contact logging sheet which will give us the benefit of measuring, quantatively and qualitatively, levels of contacts with members and gives a better understanding of issues and what actions need to be taken by our organisation or externally; this feeds into reports for funders. What has come out of taking over CEO role and using this service together has created a new way of thinking about streamlining information gathering not just for existing funders but also potential funding streams in future.

Normal level of insecurity to challenge yourself with what you need to do to grow – good leadership less about control;