How High Impact Senior Leadership can transform your work
15th May 2025
With our next High Impact Senior Leadership course beginning on 23rd September 2025, we caught up with a previous attendee of the course, Gennie Joy. Gennie is a musician and music education consultant who has worked in music education for over 10 years, working in partnership with music hubs, charities and education settings to plan, deliver and evaluate music-making projects. Here, she shares with us how what she learned from the course has impacted her work.
My name is Gennie Joy, and I was a participant on the High Impact Senior Leadership course as part of my role in senior management within Southwark Music in the academic year 2022/23.
The course was structured into six modules, with each module having two sessions. It was really helpful to have a clear breakdown of the course in this way, as we were able to cover a lot of content as well as having time for discussion and reflection. There were also a lot of opportunities to discuss thoughts and ideas with the other participants on the course which was extremely helpful.
Although we discussed a huge number of topics around leadership, there were a number of immediate actions that I took as a result of the course. A reflective practice approach was embedded throughout the course, and this is something that I have continued to do ever since.
Consistently carving out time to reflect has meant that I have been able to make much more impactful judgements on the best next steps in various situations. I also found our work around your ‘circle of influence’ versus your ‘circle of concern’ to be very useful, and I have adopted that outlook into my approach to work and life in general!
During my participation on the course, I also planned and led a meeting for the senior management team at Southwark Music around one of the leadership topics which had been covered on the course. It was a really interesting discussion, which gave us all a chance to reflect on certain aspects of our work and an opportunity to put some of the first steps to change into place.
The biggest changes for me and my career came from the mentoring sessions I had as part of the course. My mentor was extremely helpful in opening up discussions around my current portfolio of work and how I envisaged it being in the future. Our conversations led to numerous immediate actions from me, including becoming a trustee of Sinfonia Smith Square and a school governor at a local nursery school. I found it really helpful to be mentored by an experienced musician and music educator, as they were able to give me very valuable insights into future pathways that I could consider.
I would definitely recommend the course to others – I found it to be a thought-provoking, insightful and collaborative experience which has had a direct impact on my work. My learning from the course is still having a significant impact on my work and I’m sure I will continue to revisit the learning from the course for many years to come.
Find out more about the High Impact Senior Leadership course and book your place here.
