“Chartered Manager status gives me credibility”

Dayle Lynch CMgr FCMI has spent most of her career working in the public sector, including 19 years at Leeds City Council, and she is now director of operational partnerships at Sewell Advisory. With offices in Hull, Leeds, Manchester and beyond, Sewell Advisory works to support organisations, predominantly across the NHS, to understand, plan, manage and improve their estate and facilities, from big-picture strategy to hands-on delivery. 

An accidental career

Leeds-based Dayle is responsible for operational services delivered across the business’s interest in 84 healthcare buildings, and managing and developing key partnerships. She says she’s come a long way from the graduate with a general business degree, with no particular career focus – something she puts down to hard work, lifelong learning and development, and a number of women who have influenced her along the way. 

“I’ve had an accidental career,” says Dayle. “My first job was in recruitment. The hard sell aspect really wasn’t for me. So, after six weeks, I left, went home and within an hour of sitting there, the phone rang and I was offered a temp job working for a healthcare company. I ended up being taken on permanently, got a couple of promotions and stayed there for four years. I loved it. 

“From that point on, I decided I’d like to work in the public sector. I was lucky enough to make this aspiration a reality when I got a job at Leeds City Council.”

Dayle says one of the first managers she had was a nice woman, but “used to refer to us younger females in a slightly derisive manner as the ‘bright young things’. I thought to myself back then: I don’t ever want to be like that, seeing people as threats. I want to encourage people and support them to grow.”

From 2005, she moved into more senior council roles and worked in a team that was headed by “a really great woman”. 

“I ended up following her around a few different teams. She never did formal mentoring or coaching, but I learned a lot from her. She referred to some of the people in her team, surveyors or other professional people, as ‘skilled specialists’. And another group she called ‘talented generalists’, and I was very much in that bag.” 

That manager was supportive, Dayle says. “I learned a lot of skills, and she gave me invaluable advice when I returned to work after having children in 2010 and 2012. She said: don’t come back part time unless you need to, because most people who work part time invariably end up doing a lot more hours. She gave me permission and support to work flexibly. She was about outputs and outcomes, rather than clock-watching.”