Rachel Ellison learned to be a leader in Afghanistan, heading up a team of local women making a version of Women's Hour for the war torn nation. Now she's helping other high flyers cope in stressful situations.
March 21, 2019 10:10
ByKeren David, Keren David
Never has the need for good leaders been more glaringly obvious — and, looking at our government and opposition — never has it been so lacking. But how are good leaders created? And how do you maintain and enhance leadership skills in stressful circumstances?
If I were running either of our main political parties right now, I’d be urgently calling in Rachel Ellison for Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Ellison is an experienced coach, who has worked with top managers from an array of global private companies and public bodies, and what’s more she has just written a book about how to flourish under intense pressure.
After a psychology degree at Birmingham University, Ellison started her working life as “head of photocopying “ at the Mail on Sunday, then moved over to a small TV station to work as a camera woman, all the while dreaming of a career at the BBC. Her big break came when her parents sought her help for a fund-raising event at Ealing United Synagogue. The good cause was a premature baby unit in Israel. When the film she made about it was shown at the gala dinner, the charity raised £80,000 in four minutes — and a BBC executive in the audience asked to meet her. “It shows how if the front door to your chosen career is closed, a side door can open,” she says.
She was 28 when she joined the BBC and absolutely thrilled, partly on behalf of her grandparents. On one side they were Jewish refugees, on the other lower middle class non Jews, both sides “passionate about education”. Ellison saw herself as representing diversity at the broadcaster, a value that’s still very important to her.
After years as a news reporter for the BBC, she transferred to Woman’s Hour: “My positive energy and creativity zoomed up. The way the team was led was fantastic.” From there she was recruited to a World Service radio initiative using BBC programmes to bring aid to developing and war-torn areas. In 2005 she moved to Afghanistan, to create a version of Woman’s Hour for the country, just as a fragile peace had settled on the region. Ellison had to recruit and run a team of Muslim women journalists, in a language that initially she didn’t know. “There was a need for massive rebuilding of civil society in a nation traumatised by three decades of war,” she says. Some of her team were illiterate, but that didn’t stop them being able to find stories and talk to people.
The programme was broadcast to Afghanistan, and to the huge diaspora of Afghan nationals, listening in places like Germany, the UK and the US. Ellison, then 34, was briefed by the BBC on the risk of kidnap, which was “very adrenalisng’ , and in an old banger with a cracked windscreen, festooned with faded plastic flowers, drove a different route to work every day for her own safety.
It was a challenging place to learn to be a leader, and at the same time Ellison was training to be a coach, part of an internal BBC initiative. She’s very proud of the programmes they made, which were put on three times a day to address girls, mothers and grandmopthers in cities and rural areas. “We weren’t anti-men. It was important because men often had control of whether women could listen to the radio,” she says, and was touched when male listeners told her her programme had made them more aware of the needs of their wives and daughters.
She never mentioned being Jewish as it might have made her a target. But, she says, “I was proud to be a Jewish leader of a team of Muslim women.” She was later awarded an MBE for her work in Afghanistan.
The coaching programme at the BBC “gave me energy”, she says, and she volunteered to coach different people around the Corporation including people working on programmes like Strictly, and Blue Peter. She started to see the possibility of a second career, and eventually set up her own business. Since then she’s coached top executives from a wide range of organisations ranging from the Foreign Office to Hyundai Motors.
The new book is aimed at those under “intense pressure” at work, whether that’s in a war zone, a refugee camp, elite sporting competitions, a hospital or even a supermarket. She delves deep into the psychological, ethical and practical factors that create good leadership in any circumstances.
One case study is a coach to a team of Paralympians, another is a former prison governor. Ellison also draws on her own experience of having a very premature baby, in a chapter about the experience of being in an neo-natal intensive care unit.
Leadership coaching should be holistic, she says, drawing on all aspects of a person’s life to help them understand their working patterns and environment. It’s a challenge for people who are prepared to change, she says “ They go into it knowing they would like to grow in some way, to become more effective, to reach their maximum potential.”
Part of the process involves examining the ethical underpinning of a leader’s philosophy. And that’s just one reason why our political parties should rush to hire her.
“Coaching is not a cosy chat or a whinge,” she says. “I’m passionate about higher standards and higher ethics in leadership. And right now, we see the need for good leadership every day.”
Global Coaching and Leadership: Flourishing Under Extreme Pressure at Work by Rachel Ellison is published by Routledge. Rachel Ellison will be speaking at a panel event at New North London Synagogue on April 3
