Emma Sykes – Page 2

1st August 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Day 6 – Adaptive Leadership

In the last of the facilitator-led online sessions, the introduction by Vajaya Nath reiterated that Aurora should not be about changing us as women, but rather about giving us an understanding of our space in leadership. She also mentioned the upcoming election and that we may wish to do what we can, within our power, to build the society that we want to see.

I made a lot of notes on this session, but it was quite “bitty” in that there were lots of concepts that I felt didn’t clearly lead from one to the other. I felt like the Adaptive Leadership title was a sort of catch-all that meant it was somewhat ill-defined by the end. Again I imagine this was due to time limitations and the vastness of the topic.

Barbara Bassa and Rachel Witton co-delivered the session and started by talking about their background, key values and interests. This helped build an understanding of where they were coming from, and for allowing me to connect where these intersected with my own interests, and values. They also encouraged us to bring our whole selves to our working environment, including things not typically part of our work approaches. We should be trying to use all the tools and identities that are available to us as only we have our unique combination and those differences are key to a varied and balanced workspace.

Adaptive Leadership

I definitely felt like I needed to do much more reading on this to understand the concepts more clearly, but our speakers presented this as a more accessible (and effective) form of leadership. Adaptive leadership (as I understand it from this session) is differentiated from formalised and top-down traditional structures. It is a more social, collective process without a small number of specific individuals holding all the power.

I looked into a summary of Adaptive Leadership and found this:

According to Heifetz, the adaptive leadership process has three stages:

Observing events and patterns.

Interpreting and developing hypotheses.

Designing interventions.

These steps are iterative, so once you’ve completed them all, you repeat the process and refine your observations, interpretations and interventions until you’re satisfied with the solution.
https://www.mindtools.com/a9irp3t/adaptive-leadership

Adaptive leadership utilises a collective purpose to tackle specific types of tough challenges.

Adaptive challenges

Some issues aren’t supposed to be addressed with these adaptive techniques but how we know if this is a an adaptive challenge? In the session, non-adaptive challenges were described as technical, and whilst both may be complex or critically important, they can be described differently.

Technical Challenges

Known solutions.
Available expertise.
Procedures and structures are already in place.

Adaptive Challenges

Can only be addressed through changes in peoples attitudes, habits, etc.
Moving beyond expertise and existing authority.
Decide what to keep, what to get rid of, and what new ways to work.

Tools Of Adaptive Leadership

There were some tips on how we can gather information on a situation to help diagnose and resolve adaptive challenges that need addressing. These are continuous processes that we can use at any stage.

Balcony vs Dancefloor

From the balcony we can get distance from what’s happening and see it in it’s wider context. Observing all aspects of the big picture allows us to see patterns and themes more clearly.

On the dancefloor we become part of the action – we can engage with people who are directly impacted and being up close with the issue allows us to understand it better. We also get more diverse stories and clarity on challenges.

To my mind, this approach complements what I know of Continuous Improvement methodology. Taking a local problem, then giving those who are closest involved the opportunity and tools to take a step back and view it from the balcony. They then suggest small, iterative changes, based on the understanding they bring from the dancefloor.

With this technique we can ensure we’re getting both the hands-on detail and the bigger picture.

Head and Heart Check-in

If we’re going to challenge the status quo, and risk our political capital at work by doing so, then it’s advisable to check-in with ourselves to be sure that we’re not missing any clues.

As well as logically assessing the issue with our “head” (intelligence) we can also check-in with our “heart” (intuition) to ensure we’re not missing anything. We can observe our own feelings for an indicator – how do I feel about this? Am I having an emotional response that might be disguised as something else? If so, what does that tell me about the situation?

We can also do a check-in at a Social/Organisational level. Just like we might run a practical process by a colleague, we could instead ask others for feedback on how they feel about an upcoming change. Or we may see spontaneous emotional responses coming from colleagues that suggest that we might need to give people reassurance or more information, or even amend our approach.

Success

One of the other aspects of adaptive leadership that I liked was the idea that rather than throwing out everything and rebuilding from scratch, we take more considered approach.

Preserving what’s essential, discarding or rearranging what no longer serves the current needs are ways that we can enable a thriving environment. If we clearly communicate this, and involve people in picking out what needs to change, it can help us get buy-in for change.

Exploring Adaptive leadership

There were three elements that we were asked to take away with us about how we continue our Adaptive Leadership journey and I think that these are the same for our more general career paths too.

Don’t do it alone – Being alone can make you vulnerable, so where possible seek out allies with a common purpose.
Resist the leap to action – Often we’re pushed to do something, but take the time to consider and diagnose the issue first. Make sure you’re taking the right actions.
Live life as a leadership laboratory – Experiment and be playful. Don’t aim for perfection – change and iterate.

2nd July 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Using Linktree for Networking – Part 1

A speaker at a conference I attended recently gave her Linktree address at the end of her presentation and I saw how useful it was in summarising your key links and contact points.

I had seen Linktree being used by businesses, but never by individuals in a professional capacity. I find LinkedIn to be be a bit unwieldy and overblown for what I need it for – making contacts and sharing useful links, so it was an appealing solution.

Inspired by this, and by trying to be more proactive in my networking, I decided to set up a Linktree account to take along to the in-person Aurora session. I thought that this would allow me to share a simple link with people I met, that would point them to my contacts and content.

Creating the Linktr.ee Account

I logged into Linktr.ee and found my FirstnameSurname as my Linktree address had been taken by some other user. Instead I added my middle initial between my Firstname and Surname and set up my account as linktr.ee/emmahsykes. My initial appears already on my work email address and felt like it was a more professional option than a nickname or a number.

I was tempted to add something to reference the University of Leeds in there, but whilst I can’t see myself leaving, I didn’t want to lock myself in place. I also kept it separate from the name I use on my social media accounts, not because that name is too silly or or inappropriate, but because I like to keep my personal and professional accounts separate.

I found it really easy to set up and customise without a guide, although as a disclaimer – I’m a confident tech user. There is a help site with a step by step guide on how to get started with Linktree, for those who might need it. I chose a free account, but it was clear what paying for an upgraded plan would offer you.

Preparing for the event

Thinking forward to the Aurora event, I created a few links that I thought may be useful on the day. I thought about questions I’d been asked in the past and things I wanted to share with other Aurorans.

Under a header About Me, I added my email address under Contact for Aurorans so people could download my address to their contacts easily and would be more encouraged to reach out.

I had links to this Aurora Blog in case it got brought up in the session, and my LinkedIn page for those who wanted to connect.

Under Other Links I added a link to the University of Leeds Aurora page and the Advance HE page, in case someone asked about Aurora more generally.

Finally I added a link to Ask A Manager a wonderful (albeit American) site giving useful advice to work problems, including those in leadership or management positions. I’d mentioned this a few times at Aurora sessions and hoped others would find it useful.

What happened next?

Anticlimactically, I didn’t use my Linktree link at the Aurora in-person event. It was such a packed day, with limited time for general networking so there wasn’t an opportunity. I met some lovely people on my table, who I chatted with and exchanged contacts with, but there wasn’t a need for me to share my details in that way. Rather than force it, I’ve squirrelled it away for another time, and will update this blog with a Part 2 when I’ve used it.

Stay tuned to find out more!

2nd July 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Capital at Work

I came across political capital as a work-based concept on the Ask a Manager site. Also called social capital, it suggests that we all have a metaphorical “bank” of good will with our colleagues. One of the commenters on that site phrased it like this:

“You build social or political capital by building relationships and establishing a good reputation and track record for yourself. This type of capital is your reputation, credibility, and value to the organization, which translates into influence and power to change things.

If you are a star employee, you build up lots of capital. So if there are things you want to see changed — whether for yourself, or on behalf of others — you can ‘spend’ that capital by advocating for change. And there’s a good chance that change will happen because the organization wants to keep you happy, or even because people think, ‘If Star suggested it, it must be a good idea.’ On the other hand, if you never get your work done, you’ll be seen as complaining. Even if you’re a star employee, if you argue about every little thing, you’re exceeding your capital and you may start to be seen as a troublemaker. For most of us, we need to pick our battles and decide how to spend our capital.”
CM – Ask a Manager comments section – 20 March 2020

It is a useful concept for understanding some of the hidden politics of the workplace. I’m sure I’ll come back to this at some point, but here are a few initial thoughts on how to build and how to spend your capital.

Building your Capital

You can build capital by generally being a trust-worthy and likeable co-worker:

Do what you promise, or communicate in good time if you can’t deliver.
Only say yes to what you can manage.
Say thank you and acknowledge good work.
Engage with colleagues respectfully

Even when things don’t go to plan, you can help mitigate that by being proactive, acknowledging the problem and trying to fix it. Going above and beyond occasionally may look good, but don’t over-do it as it can start to have the opposite effect.

Good ways to spend your capital

Advocating for others – especially those in minority or disenfranchised groups who don’t always get heard. They can also find it harder to build capital due to prejudice.
Suggesting improvements to working practices.
Challenging poor behaviours.

Social/political capital in the workplace is important at all levels, but especially if you don’t have much influence traditionally (through job title or position). Recruiting colleagues with more capital to join you in proposing a change may get you more traction than trying alone.

Read more on Social Capital on Wikipedia.

29th May 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Day 5 – Politics and Influence

Whilst the content for the fifth Aurora session was interesting I didn’t feel that I grasped the content particularly well as we were going through. I think this was possibly a pacing issue, as I frequently felt like as soon as a concept was introduced we were on to the next before I’d had the chance to note things down or even fully appreciate the idea. A fellow Auroran said she felt like it could have easily been presented as two full day sessions and I’m inclined to agree!

A busy workload meant that it took a while before I could revisit my (sparse) notes and the slides. In fact, I’m writing this out of work hours but I’m pleased that I’ve managed to do so as I’m finding it has allowed me to better grasp some of the key topics.

Again, this isn’t a full document of the day, but a few topics that I felt were interesting to me:

The point of politics

In order to make a difference in our areas of work, we need to understand how things get done where we are. In some cases there are explicit processes that we can use, but often there are other elements that are less obvious that might be blockers, or shortcuts to the outcome we want to achieve. Ideally these would all be documented, but realistically we need to develop a sense of the politics in our institution to help us navigate these opaque mazes.

Woods and Weeds – a short hand

The Four Metaphors of Organisational Politics (Jarrett) are the Woods, the High Ground, the Weeds and the Rocks, referring to different positions (organisational or individual) and power sources (formal or informal). These can give us a shorthand for the sort of dynamics at play with decisions that we want to progress, and help us find ways through the political landscape.

One thing I particularly liked with this model was the view that no position was inherently good or bad. For example in the High Ground, an institution having a defined series of committees is great in some respects – people know what to expect and that there is due process to consider things carefully. However if this process prevents action from being taken in a timely manner, and people are attempting to bypass it, then it is actually a barrier. The position isn’t the problem, it’s how it’s used.

Emotional Intelligence

This could have been a whole day session on it’s own, but essentially, Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a skill that allows us to be more influential in the workplace. It’s partly about understanding and regulating our own emotions, but also understanding others and adapting to accommodate them. A key takeaway was that we can improve our aptitude in EI, but sadly there wasn’t time to discuss in detail much about the ways we could do this, or what it means for neurodiverse people. I think there is definitely more reading I can do in this area to help me understand my own strengths and weaknesses better.

Guest Speaker – Jo Martin

Jo Martin had some really great, practical tips for getting people in positions of influence to look favourably on your work. One of my favourites was finding a way to link your work to a specific project or an organisational objective that the person is invested in. Another was when you get feedback on a document, try adding the names of the contributors as an amendment history, so that you can demonstrate the buy-in that you already have had on it. She also had some tips which were essentially good storytelling – giving punchy messages, using simple but powerful graphics, and tailoring to your audience and what they’re going to react to most.

Credibility

Credibility was identified as another factor in how successful a leader you might be. We were encouraged to think about the ways in which we were more or less credible in the workplace. Credibility builds capital which allows us to have more sway with our colleagues. Being reliable, consistent and capable, managing our workloads, communicating clearly, and interacting well with others are all ways that we do this.

Sometimes we may find that our colleagues perceive us differently from how we see ourselves and we need to work to build our credibility with them. One of the ways we can do this is to ensure that our achievements are made known to people – Invisibility doesn’t build credibility.

Networking

The day 5 presenter Vajaya Nath told us that she has a “panel” of people in her life that she uses to help her fill in gaps in her knowledge. She has a young person, a predictor (looking at emergent topics), a critic, and others. She suggested that having a range of people, from cheerleaders to challengers, can help us understand more viewpoints and better equip us to successfully navigate the politics in our workplaces.

For situations where more “cold” networking is required, the suggestion akin to a dance card appealed to me. You identify a few people who will be at an event that you want to speak to, and perhaps reach out to them in advance to say that you’d like to connect. You can also think of some topics that would be beneficial to discuss and go prepared.

What next?

Usually writing these posts is a great way for me to organise my thoughts and absorb the messages from the Aurora sessions, however I think the sheer volume of the ideas has made this difficult this time. My next step will be to take three of the topics: Credibility, Emotional Intelligence, and Networking and work out how I’m going to reflect on these separately. I might do some more reading and then work out where my own strengths and weaknesses are in each area. Then come up with some ideas on where I can improve, and where I can capitalise. I’ll let you know how I get on!

20th May 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Job Crafting

Job crafting is something I came across at a LUBS Alumni session and I really liked it as a concept.

The idea is that everyone chooses to engage more with parts of their job that give them more satisfaction. Even two people with the same role will have executed it slightly differently. Giving people the scope to customise (within reason) their role to their strengths can increase job satisfaction.

An example might be two people working as receptionists, one is very sociable and finds value talking to people, bonding with colleagues over the front desk, and welcoming visitors. The other likes problem solving and is great at finding solutions for others. They are both valuable staff, and not only will they have job satisfaction from doing the things they excel at, the institution benefits as well.

My dad says about a job “if all of it was enjoyable, they wouldn’t pay you!” and of course there are always parts of a role that you might like less, or find more challenging. However allowing people to craft their role into something that is an even better fit for them, benefits them (improving retention) and benefits the institution by capitalising on each person’s strengths.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Job Crafting but I may return to add more to this page in future. In the meantime, here’s a few links that might help your understanding:

If you have any experience or knowledge of job crafting that you’d like to share, please comment below.

6th May 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Day 4 – Action Learning Sets

Most of our fourth Aurora day was spent in breakout rooms, but to help us prepare, at the start of the day we were given some guidance and tips about techniques to make the most of the sessions. Action Learning is a problem solving methodology that involves using a structured series of roles, steps and questions to help address the issue that the participant brings to the group. I’m not going to go into full detail about the process as I won’t do it justice, but it was very methodical and process driven.

Perhaps as a result of that, parts of the methodology felt somewhat at odds with more naturalistic group work. Asking questions from a set list felt a little clunky at times and I admit we sometimes tweaked the questions in our group. It was also hard to simply listen whilst the participant answered, and not because we wanted to talk over or digress from the topic, but more that we wanted to reassure and encourage the person. I found I replaced it with a lot of emphatic nodding, and what I hoped were sympathetic facial expressions!

Having the support at the start to say “you might find this bit tricky” was useful as it meant we all knew that it may feel counter-intuitive, but sticking to the format is the way to make the most of the activity.

After the questions came the reflections and action-setting which was rather lovely, as all of our group had supportive and/or complimentary observations for each other when we were feeding back to our participant. It did feel rushed though, with <25 mins per person in total and only 5 minutes for 4 people to sum up and offer advice.

The question list we were given seemed designed to widen your perspective and challenge your mindset. Some were expected – “Who can help?”, “what will you do next?” but others were more surprising. They allowed you to explore things by looking at them in a different way – “What happens if you do nothing?”, “what would you like do be saying about this in 6 months?”, “what would someone you respect do in the circumstances?”.

As we all had the opportunity to ask the questions and to answer them, with minimal interruption, it felt very equitable, with no room for egos. I would have loved more time to reflect, talk about solutions with people (both when on my topic, and on other peoples) and make copious notes on my take-aways.

Whilst it wasn’t really covered in the plenary part of the day, it would have been useful to note how these techniques have been used in a work environment. Reflecting on it now here’s what I can see:

Supporting colleagues and mentees – Allowing them to develop solutions themselves and empowering them – after all “you came up with these ideas yourself”
Teams needing a solution – asking teams to find a way forward on a stuck issue
Self support – Asking yourself these questions when you’re struggling to see a way forward.

Please do respond in the comments if you have any other ideas as to how Action Learning Sets could be used in the workplace.

16th April 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Day 3 – Core Leadership

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.

30th March 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Reflections – Leaning into Imposter Syndrome

Our guest speaker on day 2 of Aurora was Melanie Eusebe MBE – a great speaker who had a really engaging style. She had three points for us (which I won’t spoil for future Aurorans), which included a suggestion that if we’re feeling imposter syndrome then we may need to see this as a challenge that will develop us further.

I have heard the “fake it ’til you make it” approach to imposter syndrome before, and also how important it is to speak up to help others understand that we all have these concerns. Melanie’s suggestion that we use it as a development tool was a new one to me, and as I thought more about it, I realised that leaning into imposter syndrome does several things:

Helps us identify our strengths

Imposter syndrome is about feeling that we can’t do things that we can actually do. Some of those things are well within our grasp (it’s just a pesky internal voice telling us we’re not good enough) but there are also things that are more difficult but still achievable. If we never stretch ourselves, we will struggle to tell the difference between a self-sabotaging “you can’t do this” voice when we are capable, and a natural caution we feel in trying something new.

If we regularly move outside of our comfort zone into things that are more of a challenge for us, we should begin to identify the difference between the sabotaging voice and the cautious voice. When we can reliably recognise the voice that tells us we’re not good enough, we can start to understand that these things aren’t our weaknesses, and might actually be some of our strengths.

Helps us find and target our challenges

Imposter syndrome flags when we think we’re not so good at something and we can use this to examine our fears more closely. Being able to identify the difference between the sabotaging voice (when we’re doing an activity that’s within our abilities – see above), and the cautious voice (when we’re stretching ourselves) can help us set aside the unhelpful noise and concentrate our efforts on where we can actually improve. When we recognise that we are being sensibly cautious about something, we can then target it with preparation, training or other tools.

Helps us feel more used to that discomfort

Using imposter syndrome to help us develop, isn’t about going completely out of our depth immediately. We should think about it more as building up our resilience to the feelings that we have around challenging work. As we push ourselves towards bigger challenges we’re going to feel uncomfortable, but being familiar with the sensation, and recognising that in ourselves will make it less troublesome.

After just two jobs in 18 years at the University, I felt very much out of my depth in my first few weeks in my new team. I began to panic that I’d made the wrong move and that I wasn’t suited to the role. It was only when speaking to friends and family (who had all moved jobs more frequently than I) did I learn that these feelings were normal and that I should expect to feel that way for at least 6 months. If I’d had more experience of pushing myself into new roles, then I would have understood that these feelings were normal, and worried a lot less!

So it is possible to harness the discomfort around imposter syndrome in ways that can help us build skills and improve our practice. Start by examining it, discarding the noise, listen to what it’s telling you about the real challenges you’re currently facing, and get used to the sensation. That we can see pushing ourselves as a positive challenge to embrace, rather than an uncomfortable one to be avoided.

29th March 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Day 2 – Identity, Impact and Voice

This was the first full-day Aurora session, officially running from 10-3 but with additional questions running until 3.30.

The session is entitled Identity, Impact and Voice. The pre-work was very much focused on identity (which is something that I’d like to develop) and examples of good practice that we’d seen in our institutions and I was excited to discuss these. Unfortunately there wasn’t much on these topics. It felt like a lot of the pre-work wasn’t relevant to the session, and we weren’t asked to reflect on what we’d prepared.

However there was plenty of helpful advice on presenting yourself well through video and through use of your voice and we were given some brief breakout room opportunities to try good and bad practice. The lead presenter was obviously well experienced in delivering on this sort of training.

Some of the takeaways that I found useful:

Sometimes you may be leading on something that you hadn’t realised. The presenter gave an example whereby a person who organised a charity run event, didn’t see that she was acting as a leader on it. She brought lots of people onboard to the idea, lead with a vision of it being a family friendly and alcohol free event which she was able to engage others in this idea. She felt that she didn’t do much of the organising of the peripheral parts, but she had actually aligned others with her vision and they had also got behind the event which was leadership.
Leadership and Management can be seen as different. Generally management is more practical, whilst leadership is more strategic. However vision on strategy needs to be backed up with practical actions or it doesn’t go anywhere.
Eye contact is important when presenting – but do it carefully. Neurodiverse people can find eye contact distracting or uncomfortable. Online it can be faked through camera positioning, but in person it’s best to find one or two people who return your eye contact and build rapport with them.
Projection of self worth can be delivered through Stillness / Stance / Speed / Space
- Calm measured voice – taking time to pause for people to absorb what you’re saying
- Purposeful delivery – Not apologetic or too self deprecating – you have a right to speak
- Still and confident in body language – with eye contact
Managing interruptions – Act as an ally for the interrupted, look away from the interrupter, put own hand up to indicate that you’ve not finished. We should also be conscious of own actions, especially with regard to contributors from minority groups – amplify their voices.

I also enjoyed the guest speaker and I’ve written about some of my reflections on Melanie Eusebe’s talk in a separate post.

Although this session wasn’t quite what I’d expected, there were still some useful ideas to take away. I’m hoping the next session on Core Leadership will develop on some of the less explored ideas a bit more…

28th February 2024Emma Sykes No Comments

Aurora Reflections – Leadership and visibility

The guest speaker for my first Aurora session – Sally Jackson, said that the best piece of advice she had been given was “Be less available and more visible”. In our brief breakout session afterwards we talked about how this was a very powerful statement and what it might mean on different levels. A piece of Sally’s own advice was how you should try to align your values and beliefs with your actions and your institution’s actions to ensure that you feel authentic. After the session I found myself reflecting on both of these more and how they relate to one another.

Safeguarding your time – Not just ensuring you have the time you need to do your work but also to ensure you’re working on the right things. The things that align with your values and that you want to be visible for, are the ones you should be aiming to achieve.

Less available ≠ unavailable – Our speaker pointed out that she really values helping others but she realised that her open-door policy for her team didn’t allow her to do the work she needed. I will try to consider how I ensure that I’m present for those that need it, without it being detrimental to my own focus and workload.

Leadership = visibility – Discussing the difference between leadership and management one Auroran said “you can follow a leader, but you can’t follow a manager”. It highlighted that leadership often means a more visionary status, although our facilitator rejected that these were inherently different. However what it did raise in my mind was that you can’t be followed if people don’t see you.

The nature of roles in a university means that the higher you are, the more visible you become. You are asked to talk to or work with more colleagues, other teams, or even other institutions, and your profile is raised. As a result, working towards goals that match your values and beliefs becomes even more important. That authenticity allows you to confidently own your actions and making you more comfortable with your visibility.

Leadership on the small things – Whilst we’d all love to be a beacon of authenticity with noble and strategically important goals, reality is often more mundane. For those of us who aren’t in positions of leadership currently – How do we embrace small goals in a way that aligns with our values and beliefs? Especially when we perhaps don’t get to pick and choose our activities.

If I think of a task that my colleagues and I might be given – producing a instructional guide – I know that the way we approach it will be dependant on different factors: skills, circumstances, but also our internal priorities. One person might prioritise the aesthetic – adding visually appealing graphics. Someone else might who value linguistic qualities would want to ensure the piece is written in very clear English with precise grammar. Another person might value efficiency, and push for the work to be delivered as quickly as they can. All will (hopefully!) produce a guide to an acceptable standard and in most cases, no single way is “right”. Instead the output reflects the skills and priorities of that person.

I can see that even in these smaller tasks, understanding your values will allow you to produce work that you are proud of. If I know I am good at collaborating – I might be pleased that a guide is the work of several people. Working to your strengths and values could mean that you are more confident* in relaying what you’ve done, you talk more openly about your work and are remembered for it. As a result, you might attract people who value the same elements as you, and offer more opportunities. All these would also make you more visible in your area of expertise, increasing your leadership potential.

Having written all this down, it feels sensible and obvious. Unfortunately for me, it requires an understanding of self and values that doesn’t come easy to me. I hope that future Aurora sessions (and this blog) will help me grasp the ephemeral topic of my personal values and begin to work out which are the most important to me.

*as a slight aside, this shows how the fake-it-til-you-make-it approach might work, as you’re injecting the faux confidence at this point, and everything else comes from the confidence, rather than necessarily the task itself.