Cavendish Elithorn - Senior Director, Services Sectors - Office of Fair Trading

"Senior Leaders Programme showed me the value of different perspectives. Cycling's a great time to think them through."

I’d started my career in the private sector and was just settling into the OFT when I went on my first WIG programme. I was looking to develop some leadership thinking in the context of the public sector, build some broader networks and get to grips with the public sector in terms of its wider challenges.

The OFT is something of a halfway house between the public and private sectors - it’s possibly the single biggest interface between government and business, not so much in a regulatory sense but in understanding and influencing how markets work. After joining, I realised how much incomprehension there is between the two sectors at really quite senior levels. Both WIG programmes were very helpful in making me think really hard about how you need to communicate to the different sectors. It’s what WIG set itself up for originally and it’s a vital part of the programme. The mix of experience and people is incredibly powerful, particularly with the SLP where you draw heavily on your learning sets. As you get to a senior level it’s much more difficult to talk about things in a safe environment in the office, and sharing experiences makes you realise that you’re not alone in facing some of your challenges. My learning set is still active.

The speakers were incredibly influential.I remember two quotes in particular: leadership is about setting direction, setting the tone and picking the people; and that leaders come up with lots of bad ideas as well as good ideas and the job of the people around them is to make sure the bad ideas don’t make it into the organisation.

I’ve brought these back to OFT, and in particular, the recognition that you have to embrace being challenged by your team.

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