Mat Cottle-Shaw is the first to admit that his path to chief executive was anything but conventional. “The reality is it’s probably through a lot of luck and opportunities given to me,” he reflects.

Originally aspiring to be an architect, Cottle-Shaw left university early and “fell into a charity role”, an experience that redirected the course of his career. But like many CEOs, Cottle-Shaw acknowledges that one of his biggest ongoing challenges is striking the right balance between presence and interference.

“I’m very passionate about getting involved… but that has to be in good measure,” he admits. His leadership analogy is drawn from gardening, a personal hobby of his. Just as plants require the right conditions to grow, so too do people. He believes that the leader’s role is to create that environment, not to force outcomes. People, he says, should be trusted to do their job.

He advocates consistency, authenticity and a willingness to step back, allowing teams to lead while maintaining a clear strategic direction.

And external recognition has played a powerful role in reinforcing internal confidence at Rotherham Hospice. Success at the 2025 Charity Times Awards, alongside regulatory achievements, provided a moment for reflection for the entire organisation. “It made everybody… sit back and go, ‘Oh wow, we’re an award-winning team,’” Cottle-Shaw says.
For a workforce that had previously underestimated its own impact, this validation proved transformative. It also strengthened the organisation’s position in the local community and supported recruitment efforts.

But to get him, and the charity, to where they are now, he ultimately believes his progression was shaped by others’ belief in his potential; colleagues and managers who spotted something and gave him a chance to prove it. “There’s a lot of people I would thank… without those opportunities I probably never would have stayed in the charity sector.”
And the sector would have been at a loss without him, his work at Rotherham Hospice, where he has overseen a period of striking transformation, has become a story worth sharing.

Listen and learn
It is impossible to separate Cottle-Shaw the leader from Cottle-Shaw the person. His reflections return continually to the individuals who shaped him and he particularly credits female leaders who encouraged him in his roles. “Nearly every opportunity I’ve been given… has come from a female leader,” he says.

Equally formative have been the challenges. He speaks candidly about experiencing imposter syndrome and the importance of affirmation from others who encouraged him to recognise his own capability.

This openness extends to his approach to leadership today. Having lost his dad at a young age and experiencing and benefiting from hospice care, he carries a deeply personal connection to the sector.

Cottle-Shaw is also candid about the impact of mental health challenges in his life. Rather than concealing these experiences, he sees authenticity as essential to effective leadership. “It’s important to be real for the people around you,” he explains. “The reality is I could very easily come in to the hospice or into any organisation and sit in a room and people think ‘oh you’re doing CEO things’ and it’d be okay… be a bit of an absent figure, but actually that’s not being a proper leader.’”

For Cottle-Shaw, being visible, accessible and real builds trust. It reminds staff that their work matters and that their leader understands the emotional weight of what they do. The balance between vulnerability and resilience is not always easy, but he believes it is necessary in a sector built on compassion.

However, when Cottle-Shaw arrived at Rotherham Hospice, he was struck by a contradiction. The organisation was full of, what he says, were “committed, passionate people delivering high quality care”, but many did not recognise their own excellence. “That was the thing that really struck me,” he recalls. “Every day the team were doing amazing work, but they didn’t recognise it.”

His first instinct was simple: listen. He met staff across the organisation, investing time in long conversations to understand both their passion and their frustrations. From there, his approach centred not on imposing change from above but on creating the conditions for people to thrive. “There was a culture of ‘oh no, I can’t do that, I’m not a director or a manager’”, but he challenged that, focusing on empowering individuals and giving teams the authority, resources and confidence to act.

The results have been tangible. Under his leadership, the hospice achieved its first ever ‘Outstanding’ rating from the Care Quality Commission, a milestone he attributes to the team and their work. Inspectors, he remembers, spent little time with him. “I started off doing a tour with three inspectors and one by one I lost them… they spent all their time with the team,” he says, smiling and describing how those conversations with staff spoke louder than any formal presentation.

The outcome validated his belief that leadership is less about directing performance and more about enabling it.

Rethinking strategy
One of the most significant shifts at Rotherham Hospice has been the shift in strategy and how it was developed. Cottle-Shaw recognised early that traditional approaches, documents written by senior leaders, felt disconnected from frontline realities. “The team weren’t talking in terms of strategy… they care about the person in front of them,” he explains.

His response was to fundamentally rethink the process. Instead of top-down planning, the hospice undertook a broad public consultation, placing patients and the community at the centre of decision making. The resulting strategy reflected what staff instinctively knew but had not formalised; the need to expand services, support people earlier in their journey, and reach more of those who could benefit. When shared back with the team, it sparked a moment of collective clarity, “a lightbulb moment,” as Cottle-Shaw describes it.

Crucially, it also shifted mindsets from short term task delivery to long term thinking, connecting day to day work with a broader vision for impact. As part of that broader vision, Cottle-Shaw has taken a deliberate stance that people must not be treated as a cost to be minimised. At a time when many charities are grappling with funding pressures, he argues that “people in the charity sector are highly skilled and should be remunerated on a national level,” challenging the notion that passion for a cause justifies lower pay. This philosophy led to a comprehensive review of pay structures and job descriptions within the hospice, benchmarking roles nationally rather than locally.

The impact has been significant, with the organisation attracting talent from far beyond its immediate area for the first time. Equally important is his commitment to professional development. Despite running a financial deficit, the hospice has protected its training budget, an area he considers non-negotiable. “Whilst people are here, doing their very best, the worst thing we could do is take that away from our people,” he says, outlining investments ranging from apprenticeships to advanced clinical training programmes.
His reasoning is straightforward: support people to grow, and they will stay, or come back. It is a long-term view that contrasts with short term cost-cutting pressures but reflects a broader belief that organisational success is inseparable from employee wellbeing and development.

Familiar challenges
Despite its progress, Rotherham Hospice faces challenges familiar across the sector: rising demand, constrained funding and increasing scrutiny. The organisation currently supports more than 2,000 people annually, but Cottle-Shaw estimates that need could be closer to 3,000.

Expanding services is therefore essential but financially difficult. A key issue, he argues, is the systemic underfunding of hospice care. While end of life care is a statutory requirement in the UK, it is not fully funded by government in the same way as other parts of the healthcare system. The result is a reliance on charitable income to bridge a substantial gap, a model he believes must be reconsidered. “How do you grow and meet rising demand when there isn’t a clear commitment to funding?” he asks.

But if there is a single thread that runs through Cottle-Shaw’s leadership, it is a relentless focus on people, staff, patients, volunteers and the wider community. “I am not perfect,” he says, reflecting on his own leadership. But his willingness to acknowledge that, and to keep learning, may be one of his greatest strengths.

In a sector often defined by constraint and complexity, his approach offers a reminder that transformation does not always begin with systems or structures. Sometimes, it starts with belief, helping people see what they are capable of, and creating the conditions for them to achieve it. And, as Rotherham Hospice’s recent story shows, that can be enough to turn the organisation’s excellence into something widely recognised.

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