MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing action - leadership
He also describes his own journey from ‘doer’, negotiator, to someone
who rose above that responsibility and the circumstances in which he
arrived at this new role:-
I took the decision in October 1998, as it was clear that the
merger was going to happen, although there were some troughs
when we thought it might not, that I would start to back out of
dealing with Nat West in anticipation of the merger eight months
later. That caused a bit of a stir, not only with my management
committee and executive but also with the officers and staff here
because the role of the General Secretary had always been to
negotiate and to be the lead negotiator with Nat West. But it
was very clear that if we did merge, that is not a job which I
would be doing in the new union and we had to have somebody
in place because I wanted to make sure that the Nat West
person, a staff association person, was the lead officer in Nat
West. So I took a step back.
In that he suggested earlier that, to be the lead officer with the Bank,
one had to be a leader, perhaps he saw both roles as having a
leadership content, despite the first one having a high ‘doing’
responsibility.
He said at the Glasgow meeting that ‘innovation’ is a key issue in trade
union leadership and he does use the word ‘vision’ in his interviews:-
What I want to do is take initiatives but initiatives by definition, in
my view, of things which people have not thought about anyway
and my job is to be visionary for them.
That's where my skills are. It is combining, if you like, the
wreckage of something to try and build something up. In
building something up, you have to have a vision of what that
building is going to be like. If you can convince people along the
line with you, all well and good but I am very clear in my own
mind that you start off on day one that you are the only one.
He seems to have an image here of the lonely leader, thinking great
thoughts with which he must inspire the ‘led’. One manager singled out
his innovative character for comment:-
We have found him very supportive. He is very prepared to be
innovative so that has allowed us to do things with some
members of staff probably would not be countenanced
elsewhere in the union that we have gone with it and he has
been there to sponsor it. (Interviewee J)
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