Barbara Stocking

Dame Barbara Stocking DBE was elected as President of Murray Edwards College and commenced her role in July 2013. She was previously the Chief Executive of Oxfam GB, which she led for nearly twelve years.
 

I don’t buy the idea that you can be nice or competent but not both – not in the slightest.

I’m only competent because I am reasonably nice! I can still be firm and make the tough calls, but I just don’t see the need to shout or be unpleasant. If you really believe in your people then engaging with them is essential – actually I can’t see how I would get things done in any other way. The people I view as successful are those who can really deliver whilst maintaining their integrity.

As a teenager I already knew I wanted to get into international development. My parents were deeply embedded in their community and were always providing small kindnesses for others. They instilled in me a belief in community service and doing something of purpose. Added to this was a growing awareness of inequality. I saw how many resources our local private school had when compared with my state school. I don’t remember being angry about it, I just thought, ‘I don’t believe these boys are any brighter than the people in my school, but they are getting more opportunities.’

“The people I view as successful are those who can really deliver whilst maintaining their integrity.”

My subsequent career has focused on delivering for organisations that I can get passionate about. That’s been the case at the King’s Fund, the NHS, Oxfam and now in my role at Murray Edwards. When you are running organisations like these, you need to be able to manage other passionate people who tend not to be keen on being told what to do. To make it work, you have to genuinely believe in what you’re trying to achieve; if there is even a piece of tissue paper between me and what I’m saying, then it would get spotted.

As a leader, you need to concentrate on getting the values and culture right, then you have to let go and trust your people to make the right decisions. In my experience they will repay your faith by bringing more imagination and insight than you could possibly bring alone. When I was working for Oxfam, I would turn up in the most remote places, and it was absolutely stunning to see how the staff there would be behaving absolutely according to our values. They would be treating poor people with respect and working with them as equals.

I was very proud to have been part of Oxfam, but after twelve years I knew I was ready to leave. The role at Murray Edwards was appealing, not only because I have a personal appreciation of what it means to be a student here, but also because there is a clear job to be done. It’s not a well-heeled college, and I know I can help with the fundraising and organisation needed for us to realise our ambitions for women’s development.

Our purpose as a college is to do the best by our students and provide nothing less than the academic excellence that is expected at Cambridge. But I also believe we offer more opportunities for young women. As a student, I remember being overwhelmed by these young men who had mostly come from public schools, where they had received much better teaching and were pretty confident about it. New Hall (as it was then) sent a message to state-school girls like me that they believed we could do just as well as our peers. That positive ethos and level of support enabled me to thrive, and I think it is still relevant now. When I asked our current JCR President, ‘Would you try to be JCR President in a mixed college?’ she said, ‘No, I would never think that the young men would vote for me.’

When I left this college, I fully expected it would become mixed by now, but my own life and career experience tell me that its single-sex environment is still needed. Whilst I haven’t encountered much outright discrimination, there has been plenty of stereotyping.
For a while I didn’t notice it, but then you realise that people are questioning whether you are tough enough to handle a challenging role. In interviews I have encountered men who have no idea what I’ve done, or how I’ve done it, so they don’t respect it. Whilst women need the confidence to grab what’s offered, I think men also have to start appreciating how women operate. A lot of men of my age and seniority are not used to working with women, and certainly not as equals. Many of them just don’t quite know how to do it.

“Whilst women need the confidence to grab what’s offered, I think men also have to start appreciating how women operate.”

Nobody’s career goes in one straight line. I have had some really tough times and if I ask myself, ‘Have I ever been hurt by all this?’ the answer is yes, but not so deeply that I didn’t recover self-confidence. There have been times when I have felt that I wasn’t understood, noticed or enabled to do the things that I knew I could do. I have got to points where I thought, ‘It’s never going to happen for me.’ When I’ve hit those barriers, I have drawn on the support of my colleagues and in particular my husband. He has been prepared to listen to me, and believes in women so strongly that he gets as irritated as I do when men put me down. My career has been very hard in parts but very, very enjoyable in others, and there’s more to come.

“Nobody’s career goes in one straight line.”