Paul Blakey MBE
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Leadership!6/19/2025 I am just back from leading an amazing team of Festival Angels at Download. This is the first of five festival teams this summer. The Google AI overview of leadership says:
"Leadership is the ability to guide and influence a group toward achieving a common goal. It involves motivating, directing, and empowering individuals to work together effectively. Leadership isn't solely tied to formal positions of authority; it can be demonstrated by anyone who can inspire and facilitate positive change." Here are my post festival thoughts on leadership: Leadership is about doing. The laborious and (often) boring jobs have to be done so that others can thrive! In my case the sorting of rotas, the buying and packing of items we will need, the welfare plans and health and safety documents, sorting of finances. The background stuff, all of which takes hours of time, allows the team and individuals to thrive at the actual role and purpose. A leader should be happy to clean the loos! Leadership is about letting go and letting others. As a leader I don't need to do it all. I should be about empowering, supporting and encouraging others to do even greater things than I could possibly do. Leadership is about becoming and building a team not a one person show. Leadership is not about position. We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. Leadership is about allowing others to thrive. Leadership is about showing up. If we are invited to the table - show up. Don't go to the table just because it benefits you or your organisation and don't only go to tables they pay you to be at. Go to the table because it benefits the greater cause. Go to the table because your presence will encourage, bless, equip, support, stand alongside (in Christian terms this is Kingdom building not empire building). Leadership is walking a couple of miles across a hot festival field because someone has invited you to show up. Leadership is about fun. Seriously! I am a great believer in living life to the full - leadership should be about having fun and encouraging others to have fun. Fun and laughter is infectious! At a festival, yes, we are doing a serious and often challenging role, but we need to be full of fun, joy, energy whilst we do it (and yes there is a TikTok of me dancing!) Leadership is about building people up. Speak words of life and encouragement. Thank people. Take an interest in who someone is and what makes them unique. I may not be the greatest or best in this leadership malarkey - but as a team we get flippin' close and that is the key!
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#TimeFlies6/7/2025 #TimeFlies - 4 years ago I visited Gold Hill in Shaftesbury. Life looks very very different now to then. Some life lessons I have discovered:
* Whatever the season treasure each and every day. * Make the most of life. * Have a general ethos that seeks to live life to the full. * Do more of the stuff that makes your heart come truly alive. * Value time - every second is truly unique and will never repeat. * Love you - you are more than worth it! Paul at day celebrating #NextGenLeaders5/15/2025 Paul was at an event today with #NextGenLeaders - an inspirational day with young people presenting projects and ideas that are seeking to change society and others. Paul has worked with instagram.com/streetflowtah for the last 12months on a project around period poverty particularly amongst homeless women. The group won!!! Congratulations to 4 amazing young women as well as the other amazing groups from across Yorkshire. nextgenleaders.org.uk
#GoGetIceCream!5/14/2025 This photo of dramatic sky from 2019 was taken as I queued for the best ice cream in Savannah!
This amazing, awesome, breathtaking sky was part of a storm a'brewin'! Whatever storm is brewin' take time to find the amazing, awesome and breathtaking. Stand back and get hold of the bigger perspective that the storm is only temporary. Just as the 30minute ice cream queue became a shared experience as we stood in awe at this sky together (and hoping we would be inside before the rains came) so our storms and life journey is best lived out as a shared experience - we need one another! And, most importantly, if it all gets too much go get ice cream! Life is too short not to do and eat the things you enjoy and that bring happiness! And in doing so the storm may pass you by as you tuck in!!! Pope Leo XIV5/9/2025 Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected Pope, believes leadership is about presence rather than position. Networking is about showing up when invited to the table and connecting, not for what you can get out of it, but for the benefit of the greater good!
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