The third Aurora session was called Core Leadership which wasn’t very self-explanatory as a title and was a bit of a mystery to me beforehand. However there was some resources in the workbook on values and identity which made me hopeful that it may address some of the gaps on identity that I felt from Day 2. Here are some of the things I noted from the day.
Preparation – I’m really glad that I took time to do the pre-work and look ahead to some of the exercises for this session. The Aurora programme really emphasises that knowing yourself and your values is important in shaping your leadership identity, but I’ve always found this incredibly hard. When I saw the values list and values map in the workbook I decided to give myself a head start, and I made a few attempts at highlighting what’s important to me in different ways. In the session we were given 10 minutes to do the exercise and given that I probably took about two hours in total – I’m glad I did!
Elevator Pitch – The pre-work was to come up with a 30 second “elevator pitch” and I felt that I’d produced an effective pitch for my scenario. My breakout roommates hadn’t prepared a pitch in advance and it seemed that it was much harder to pull something effective together off the cuff.
[Update – In a later conversation with an Auroran, they pointed out that in real life situations, we’re unlikely to have a script ready for every circumstance so in this exercise they chose to note the key points and build their pitch around that. It’s a really good point, and I do sometimes struggle to be succinct and get my point across in spontaneous conversation so perhaps I need to be better practiced in “winging it!”]
In writing my pitch I came up with a simple framework that consisted of Overview / Reasons / Call to Action and it worked well so I might use it in future. Someone in my breakout room said “my passion is x” in their opening sentence which I could see this as a good way to grab people’s attention and get invested in the topic.
Storytelling – Sometimes a real-life example can be more effective than a whole host of facts and figures in getting the core message across. Especially with emotive subjects, it can clarify that these are people’s experiences, not just a collection of data.
Reflection and beyond – Reflection is only one stage in the Kolb Cycle and it’s important to be sure you’re reflecting and not ruminating. Think about what you did, then work out what you’ve learned from that. Plan your next steps and what you might do differently next time. I think I’m getting better at reflecting, but I need to build up the other steps so I can make real changes. I should try and consider how I can do this in a way that makes sense to me.
Finally, identity – You may note that there’s not much here about the identity work that we did in the session, although I did find it useful. Partly I’ve not included that because it’s personal to me and what my values are, but partly it’s because I’m still mulling it over. I do however like the idea of recognising other people’s value drivers to understand their motivations, and I can see how you can use values to help guide your actions. I have some reading that was recommended in the session so will continue to investigate this over the coming weeks.
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