General Manager

We're looking for a General Manager to join us at our East Down portfolio in an exciting role caring for some of the treasures of Northern Ireland, including Mount Stewart House and Demesne and Strangford Lough.

It's a rare opportunity to lead at a regional level - we're looking for an accomplished leader who is committed to people, driving performance and elevating customer experience.

This is the key leadership role within the property, which you’ll operate with a significant degree of autonomy, leading from the front, inspiring and motivating your team, turning strategy into reality and delivering across a broad range of operational areas.  You’ll support an inclusive and positive culture, where everyone feels a sense of belonging. And you’ll do this for an organisation you can really believe in, as we continue to look after special places for everyone, forever.

The East Down portfolio has a dedicated and committed team, with ambitious plans underpinned by a strong sense of purpose.

Your contractual place of work will be the National Trust office at Mount Stewart. Our hybrid working policy means you can balance office and home working with site visits and meetings at other National Trust places. We’ll talk about this in more detail at interview, but you should expect to be at a National Trust site for 40-60% of your working week.

This is a role where no two days or weeks will be the same. As well as having an eye on the day to day, you'll have a plan for the future in line with the national and regional strategy.

As part of a successful wider General Manager team across Northern Ireland, you’ll work with our internal Consultancy and external partners to achieve our goals and champion our cause message.

You’ll manage a Property Leadership Team, each with their own specialty, using your motivational style to inspire them to deliver outstanding results across all areas of the portfolio, generating the funds to invest back into further conservation and development.

You must be able to drive and direct change across a diverse remit. The scale of this role means you'll need to be brilliant with finances, people and projects. You’ll need to know when to delegate, and when to take ownership. Everything you do will be in harmony with our values and ambitions, but it will also make perfect commercial and financial sense.

With a wide range of skills in your toolkit, you'll need to demonstrate the following skills and experience;

• A forward-thinking approach with the ability to share your vision in a clear and compelling way.
• You'll be a natural motivator and coach with an ability to set stretching targets and drive performance, helping your Property Leadership Team achieve their full potential
• You'll be adept at prioritising and the sort of person who can keep a cool head while balancing the urgent with the important
• Both conservation and commercially minded, you’ll have an understanding of what makes a great visitor experience and will be keen to make sure your high standards are evident in all parts of the operation
• You'll need to be a confident communicator, accomplished decision-maker and natural collaborator, adept at building effective working relationships with a wide variety of people particularly the local community.
• You'll be comfortable managing operational risk, understand the underpinning need for compliance and know what it means to hold others to account