General Manager

You'll be responsible for the overall strategic and operational leadership of one of the National Trust’s busiest visitor businesses (with 350,000 visitors per annum), with a unique heritage and farming at its core. You'll manage a Property Leadership Team across diverse departments. Leading from the front, inspiring, and motivating your team, you'll encourage innovation and turning strategy into daily operations.

Reporting to the regionally based Assistant Director of Operations, you’ll be the figurehead of the Wimpole Estate, holding key partner relationships on behalf of the organisation, both internally and externally. You'll lead your team operating across a complex and dynamic commercial visitor operation, with exciting plans to deliver more for nature and climate.

You’ll have the opportunity to have significant impact on the estate’s 50-year master-plan development and its delivery, leaving Wimpole more financially secure and cared-for, for future generations.

Leading a team of department heads and working with a large network of national and regional specialists, you’ll develop new ways to engage our supporters, deliver great experiences, meet our conservation requirements, and commercially diversify the estate. You’ll support departments to develop the right priorities, balancing access and conservation while providing the resources and inspirational leadership, ensuring their care, confidence, and capability in delivering our strategy.

Behind all this work sits a strong culture of risk management and compliance. You'll ensure that all our operations are safe and managed to the highest standards and you’ll understand, anticipate, and manage issues that could affect the Trust’s reputation, finances or assets.

Some weekend working as well as occasional evenings will be required.

For any questions or an informal conversation please contact wimpolehall@nationaltrust.org.uk marking for the attention of Oliver Burke, Assistant Director of Operations.

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.

We'd love to hear from you if you have the following skills and experience.

• A forward-thinking approach to managing the complexity of a large estate ensuring, balancing the needs of heritage, nature, and people.
• Understand the need to be highly visible to both your staff and volunteers and able to share your vision in a clear and compelling way.
• A natural motivator and coach with an ability to lead through others and help your team achieve their full potential.
• You’ll be adept at prioritising and able to keep calm while balancing the urgent with the important.
• Able to focus energy and resources not just on where we can improve the most, but on how we ensure all our supporters feel valued.
• You’ll understand what makes a great visitor experience and will be keen to make sure your high standards are evident across the whole portfolio.
• A confident communicator, accomplished decision-maker and natural collaborator, adept at building effective working relationships with a wide variety of people.
• Adept at managing operational risk, understand the underpinning need for compliance and know what it means to hold others to account.