Courageous Leadership – Michelle Carruthers, Food Train

• Written by: Michelle Carruthers — The Food Train Ltd — CEO
• Published: 4th June 2021

Michelle Carruthers, CEO of Food Train, shares her thoughts on Courageous Leadership.

Food Train supports older people in local communities in Scotland by making regular food deliveries, helping with household jobs, and delivering books as part of a library service. The organisation was founded in 1995 with a vision to enable older people to ‘eat well, live well and age well at home’.

What does Courageous Leadership mean to you?

I see it as embracing failure and vulnerability. Leadership is about getting it wrong as well as getting it right and being ok with that.  Being comfortable that your best is good enough and conveying that to your teams is important. During the pandemic, particularly in the early stages, my leadership style had to change.  What our staff needed was concise, confident and very clear decision making so they could focus on scaling up our services to meet the sudden increased need.  It was not a time for collaboration and consultation on plans and strategy, it was about making the daily decisions to keep our services running and keep everyone as safe as possible.  I had to communicate clearly that in making those decisions I might not always get it right, but I was listening and making changes as needed.  Embracing your own vulnerability, particularly in a period of crisis, is a big part of building resilience and growing as a leader.

What attributes of Courageous Leadership are important to you in your role?

Kindness, listening and holding your nerve. I find keeping aware of the scope and scale of my responsibilities helps me work through making decisions. Listening is usually more important than talking, and though everyone might not be fully in agreement with you all the time, making sure decisions are communicated on time, clearly and with rationale is essential.

Poise is important. Displaying personal and professional poise helps others sense your confidence in your skills, knowledge and expertise. Poise is a demonstration of confidence that can help displace judgements and bias.

I believe kindness underpins courageous leadership. You might be saying things that are tough and difficult for people to hear, but you can make that experience easier with kindness. Seeking improvements in yourself remains constant in leadership; every day is a school day with something to learn from everyone around you.

Is authenticity important to you and how do you bring it to your position?

I believe it is a fundamental part of leadership in our sector. You need to be committed to your organisation’s vision and purpose and the understanding that your role is about service to others.  Acknowledging you cannot work alone is another part of being an authentic leader. It takes the coordinated and committed efforts of thousands of other to keep Food Train on track. Seeking out and nurturing those relationships are a big part of my job.

I embrace when journalists are writing articles about Food Train and describe me as ‘passionate’ or ‘committed’ or even ‘formidable’; it is exactly what I am and what I believe our organisation needs from me. The people I need to impress with my leadership are our charity’s beneficiaries, I do that by knowing our vision, working to our standards and trusting my instincts.

Throughout your journey what, or who, has been influential in shaping your leadership style?

I had an experience in my late teens as a student nurse when I uncovered abuse of patients and became a whistleblower.  I was young and naïve but very driven by a profound and deep sense that something was very wrong and any failure to act would have made me complicit.  I was treated very poorly in the processes that followed.  This has had a deep and lasting effect on me, and I believe that has underpinned how my leadership style has developed.

When I first joined Food Train one of the founder members was a very formidable lady, Jean Mundell, she gave the last fourteen years of her life to improving the lives of local older people in her neighbourhood and set up Food Train for her peers.  She spent her retirement years until her death in complete service to other people.  Age discrimination was something she became very aware of and seeing her act strongly and with such passion as an older people’s champion was remarkable. The commitment to purpose, it all comes back to that.  Jean had an unshakeable belief she could change society for the better and was enormously influential in my leadership journey.

Bill Brack was a Food Train volunteer, helping in the office when I first started.  He had recently retired following a career in forestry in which he had been at the forefront of improvements for workers in the industry.  He rapidly became my right-hand man, my go-to person for advice and support.  He has a wealth of knowledge on a vast range of subjects and offered wise counsel whenever I needed it.  He questioned and challenged and his own leadership standards became the bar I sought to follow.

Finally, there is a dear friend of mine who reminds me we all need scaffolding to prop us up, she continues to be a good influence on me.

In your opinion what, in terms of leadership, is required for the future of health and social care in Scotland?

Leadership in health and social care needs honesty and bravery.  Continuing to skirt around the truth of our current landscape, will not bring forward the improvements Scotland needs; open honest conversations with the public are long overdue.  Those who have leadership roles now and, in the future, must act with bravery to create the changes people have been asking for.  Leaders should place high value on dignity, choice and respect rather than systems, processes and criteria. Power struggles are a barrier to listening, collaborating and acceding control.

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