World Homeless Day: Reflections on Leadership in the Homeless Sector

World Homeless Day aims to draw attention to people who experience homelessness and their needs locally, providing opportunities for the community to get involved and work together in responding to homelessness. In this year, perhaps more so than ever as we emerge from the pandemic, it’s time to pause and reflect on how organisations in this space came together in the last year to take extraordinary action to meet the needs of the people they support.

What demands did it place on leadership in the sector?

What are the leadership qualities that shone through?

Here at Peridot Partners, we work with many organisations that are responding to the needs of homeless people in a variety of ways. We help them find the right leaders at the executive and board level, to help build and develop robust, resilient, and agile organisations that can continue to evolve to support some of the most vulnerable in society to turn their lives around and get back on their feet. We want to ensure our partners find the best leaders to continue to drive positive impacts in addressing homelessness.

The unprecedented circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic have bought the issue of homelessness into ever sharper focus, and those who are most vulnerable in society are facing more uncertainty than ever. Leadership challenges in this sector were arguably some of the most acute during the pandemic, with no time for analysis and an absence of guidance. There was a need to fill that void and an imperative to get on with doing what was needed in the context of significant uncertainty.

We caught up with three of the leaders we’ve worked with in the sector to capture some of their reflections on how their leadership has evolved over this time.