About Bill Mather

Careers advice on leaving school pointed me towards becoming an apprentice in Chatham Naval Dockyard. Instead I became a computer programmer and accountant. Sometime later I became disenchanted and demotivated working in large private sector organisations, resigned and became a full time volunteer in Liverpool before working for the social services department.

 

I had at last started to discover myself and my true vocational aspirations.
I am passionate about social justice and the leadership it requires from those in governments, public services, social movements, civil society organisations and businesses. From the Liverpool turning point onwards, I have been a Cause Leader focused on aspects of social justice. It has involved learning how to be a leader on the job because much of the available leadership training and publications is irrelevant because of the preoccupations with corporate CEO type roles where personal career advancement is the goal.

My positions have not been a straight forward career pathway

but that isn’t unusual for Cause Leaders:

 My journey of self-discovery to become an effective leader contributing to social progress convinced me that leadership of causes needed to be considered in a quite different manner to the normal theories or the narrow focus on style. Over the years I have added to my experiences an accumulating body of knowledge in an eclectic range of disciplines that seem to me to be central to successful Cause Leadership, whatever the cause – trust, social capital, cultural diversity, belief systems about rights and wrongs, motivations, universal values, traditional norms and organisational cultures. The resulting Sphere of LeadershipTM has become my core tool for work on causes and with leaders. Although social justice has been my life’s theme, this leadership model applies to those pursuing causes across the spectrum including for the environment, wild life, humanitarian aid and corporate responsibilities.

Effective Leaders undertake perpetual journeys of self discovery

Bill Mather

MY CAREER JOURNEY

  • Community development worker

  • Social development officer

  • Social enterprise director

  • Charity chief executive

  • Third Sector consultant

  • Health care non-executive director

MY CURRENT PATHWAY

  • Advisor to governments and civil society organisations

  • Co-founder and Managing Director of SocialPioneers

  • Managing Director of Vice Versa Projects Ltd

  • Author of the Leadership Navigation Guide Series for Cause Leader.