The scheduled guest speaker for the Forum’s meeting on the 14th of March became unavailable at short notice so one of the Forum’s members Ivor Thomas stepped into the breech.
Ivor spent most of his career as an educator, firstly in the RAF and then in the civilian sector. He entertained the members with a talk titled Some Thoughts on Leadership starting with World War One when the troops were famously described as lions led by donkeys.
It was realised by the powers that be that trained leadership was necessary but by the Second World War little had changed and in 1942 Winston Churchill sacked 2,000 commanders.
Training courses in the UK were started by the armed forces and Ivor discussed the different approaches to leadership, for instance is leadership by consensus or assertiveness preferable. The Forum members joined in with the discussion mainly restricting their examples to the world of home and international politics.
After a long discussion Mike Earle brought the meeting to a close, thanking Ivor for providing such an interesting talk at short notice.