Tag Archives: leadership

Dear Solon The Lawgiver

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When I first heard of you, I thought you were from Star Trek or Game of Thrones. How wrong I was!

You were one of the seven great sages of ancient Greece. A real human being who lived and breathed – and whose name has endured through the ages. More than 2,500 years on, your leadership legacy is rattling in my modern mind. You sowed the seeds of democracy; of giving power to the people; of equality before the law. You enabled social mobility.

Back in 594 BCE, Athens was a city state on the verge of collapse. Athens was polarised between the wealthy high-born few and the low-born many in their debt. The laws of the infamous Draco prevailed. He who made Draconian laws – capital punishment for pretty much everything from murder to petty theft. The few lived well; the many lived short lives of privation and worse.

Then came Solon The Lawgiver. Called to power for a year – chosen because of your wisdom; your poetic prowess; your noble birth balanced with real-world skills and feeling for your fellow man.

You made laws: dismantling the grim and bloody regime of Draco. You sought to reconcile the elite with the common people. You cancelled all debt. No longer could the impoverished be sold into slavery to extract payment of their dues. You opened the assembly to all – well, all but women and slaves… You took what were radical steps towards making all equal before the law.

Looking back through the ages, from my tiny point in a future that not even your giant mind could imagine, your leadership is inspiring. Your sense of fairness. Your willingness to remake the world around you. To include and empower – or at least to raise up.

Leadership Learnings From Solon

Two things particularly strike me about your leadership, dear Solon.

Firstly, unlike the tyrants before and after you, it was clear that you could sense the corrupting power of… power. You told your city that you would rule for one year and one year only. You would then disappear for 10. Rather than being drawn in by the trappings of power, you removed yourself.

Secondly, you recognised the fundamental inevitability of failure in the situation of your political leadership. You knew that you could not win; but, equally, you knew that you could improve things. Centuries before Enoch Powell’s famous pronouncement about the unavoidable fate of all political careers, you knew that truth. Even in great success, even when you enjoyed apparently universal admiration as a ruler, you knew that you would be criticised. For not doing enough to empower the poor; for doing too much to limit the wealthy. As a reconciler, you would please and disappoint both and all.

So, it is said, that you remarked: “Everyone hates me: I have succeeded!”. As a reconciler, perhaps this was the inevitable truth that only your wisdom could immediately grasp. Until, perhaps, Lydgate’s famous line was fed to Abraham Lincoln. “You can please some of the people, all of the time; you can please all of the people some of the time; but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.“.

You were asked:

“Did you give the people the best laws?”.

You replied:

“I gave the people the best laws they would receive.”

They didn’t hate you, Solon. They admired you. And they needed your skill for reconciliation; your practical wisdom.

What price such wisdom now?

If you’d like to find our more about Solon The Lawgiver, have a listen to this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb

Dear Praepostor

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Every year, a number of senior pupils at Shrewsbury take on a distinctive leadership role. They become Praepostors. Or Postors, for short.

A Praepostor is ‘one who is placed before’. Not placed ‘above’ but placed ‘before’ (or in front of) others. Their job is to serve the School.

Each Praepostor has her or his individual strengths and aptitudes; enthusiasms, weaknesses and quirks. Lead by the Heads of School and their Deputies, you work as a team to set the tone of the school and help things run smoothly.

You are the ambassadors, public speakers, listeners; the doers and makers; the movers and shapers. Custodians and change-makers. You are the organisers of lunch queues. You are doers.

You are listeners and watchers; the eyes and ears of the pupil body. You are a key channel of pupil voice in the School. You give of your time, your talent, your kindness to others; your concern for the best interests of the School.

Praepostors 2023-2024

We give you a waistcoat. We give you a tie and a pin. We give you a few privileges: you are allowed to ride a bicycle – a ‘time-expander’ – so you can get swiftly from one thing to the next. But most importantly, we give you an opportunity to give back to the School.

As you wrote your name in the book of Praepostors, you took your place in the living history of Shrewsbury School.

The volume you signed this year contains the signatures of your predecessors going backwards in time – term by term, year by year – to 1913. 110 years of Praepostors. One of this year’s signatories flipped back to 1955. And found the signature of his grandfather.

Their handwriting is all we know of their service to the School. Each signature is a personal pledge, an individual mark of commitment – and an honour. The Praepostors of yesteryear took lessons, disciplined fellow pupils and acted like junior members of staff. Nowadays, you are servant leaders, each leading out of who you are. Together, you embody the values of the School: the Salopian Virtues of kindness, wisdom, courage; self-mastery; integrity and spirit.

Thank you, Dear Praepostor, for setting the tone and leading the way. May you lead with humility and integrity: Intus Si Recte, Ne Labora.

Further Reading:

For a list of other uniquely Salopian terms, have a look here:

https://www.shrewsbury.org.uk/about-shrewsbury/school-history/salopian-terminology

Dear Gareth

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Written on the day of the Euro 2020 Final, 11 July 2021

I remember when we met in 2017. You kindly joined the Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA) Conference in York when I was Chair of the BSA. We did an ‘In Conversation’ session in front of an audience of boarding school headteachers. You took questions from the floor. You gave us 90 minutes of your time. Then you went to visit Martin House – the children’s hospice where my wife worked at the time – and spent the rest of the day with the families and staff there. You did it all for no fee and with the utmost of respect and attention to all those you met.

When we were ‘In Conversation’, you did not know that a journalist had found his way into the audience. You had spoken with candour and honesty about your own experiences of adversity; your insights into leadership; your sense that schools and football clubs have a lot in common. You spoke about mental health and the need to speak out and encourage dialogue, especially amongst boys and men. The reporter focused on your answer to a stray question about whether young footballers were paid too much. I’m still sorry today that we let that happen. You were noble in making light of it. However, I knew it had caused unwelcome noise. You rose above it. And your words had the insulating effect of integrity. And truth.

Thousands upon thousands of people have a Dear Gareth story. You have become an icon of leadership; a national treasure; a hero. The values you showed on that day in York have been on display, with unerring reliability, in recent months. No wonder so much has been written and said about you. Your virtues have been written large in the media. And rightly celebrated. Humility, integrity, honesty, compassion, care, endeavour, courage, spirit. The authenticity of your answers on that day in May 2017 was merely a snapshot. 90 minutes that showed the authenticity by which you live and work.

I’d like to add my letter to the pile, the mountain, of praise and appreciation. Not so much for what you have achieved – though your accomplishments are remarkable, proud and historic. This letter adds to the billions of words of admiration for the way you have gone about your work. The way you have lead; the values you have communicated; the template you have set for others; and the players you have inspired to be athletes on the pitch and activists off it.

This letter is written on the day of the final of the Euro 2020 competition. You have led the national men’s football team to a first major final since 1966. I don’t know who wins. I don’t know if it’s coming home…

What’s come home to me – as I have followed and admired your leadership, your work ethic and your communication – is the mighty power of sincerity. Whatever the result, these qualities (and many other things besides) make you a winner.

Gareth Southgate, In Conversation, at the BSA Heads’ Conference, York (May 2017)

LFS23