My authentic leadership journey
A little over a year ago, as part of my Clore Leadership Short Course, I had the luxury of spending a little over 24 hours reflecting on myself, my strengths, and how to lead authentically. It was tough but transformational. We’d been set some homework to complete in our rooms the night before the workshop, and I suddenly regressed back to a 15 year old version of myself panicking about making it as perfect as I could. After about 4hrs of thinking, planning, and drawing, I came up with my lifeline.
The next day I shared this with two of my group, who were incredibly generous with their time and listened to my story, asking interesting questions to encourage me to reflect more on the common themes which bring together the things I’m good at, things I’m interested in, achievements I’m proud of and people who have been influential during my life. This was a brilliant exercise for me and really helped me identify some common strands to what drives me. After some more reflection thanks to group exercises on our motivators, I managed to bring it all together to identify my three core guiding principles which I then presented back to my group. I’ve continued to develop in various ways since the day I spent thinking about these, but my values remain the same – and I imagine they will do, as they’re core to who I am. They have been present through all areas of my life since childhood.
My guiding principles
So what are my authentic values?
1. Understanding how things, and people, work
I’ve always been incredibly inquisitive (to the point of frustration for some people!). I love learning how things work; Chemistry and Physics were two of my favourite subjects at school, though I loved most subjects as I just love learning. This has continued into adulthood; personal and professional development is something I’ve always been very engaged with.
2. Sharing my learning with others
I’ve wanted to share my learning with others from a very young age – in reception I apparently used to help other children read (I learnt to read quite early thanks to my parents). I’m fortunate that I’ve always enjoyed Maths, but appreciate many people don’t, so have often helped my friends understand some of the Maths and particularly Statistics needed in courses (I did this a lot during my undergraduate Sports Science degree). One of my favourite parts of the jobs I’ve had in libraries has always been teaching, and of course I have always enjoyed blogging (I currently have four blogs).
3. Showing appreciation for the wonderful people I come into contact with
Appreciation comes in many different parts of my life, and although I’m not great at showing this verbally (but am getting better, again thanks to Clore), I like to do small things to show my appreciation. I enjoy making things for people to thank them; this is one of my favourite things to do in terms of crafts. I also love getting gifts and surprises for people and spend a long time planning these.
Your guiding principles
Of course, the fact that one of my guiding principles is to share my learning means it makes sense for me to share this learning about my authentic values to help others learn more about their own guiding principles. I’ve discussed it with some people in person, and have included some aspects in workshops, but thought it would also be useful to share my experience in a blog post. I’d love to encourage others to do a similar reflective exercise as it was so useful for me.
I was delighted to be contacted by the Leadership and Management Division of SLA who were keen for me to run a workshop for them at the SLA Conference this year. The proposal I put forward was successful so I’ll be delivering the following workshop in Philadelphia in June:
I’m really looking forward to the session, and hope it will start a similar process for attendees as my experience at Clore did for me. If you’re coming to SLA this year and are interested in authenticity I’d love to see you there.
I’ll also be talking about my own leadership journey, my guiding principles, and my experience coordinating the CILIP Leadership Programme in the following session:
Reflections on Leadership: LMD Afternoon Tea with Jo Alcock (Tue 14th June, 2-3.30pm, Philadelphia)
If you’re not coming to SLA Conference but would like to learn more about authenticity, please get in touch as I really do love to share my learning 🙂
Resources
Bill George – Discover Your True North (and the accompanying Fieldbook which has reflective exercises similar to the ones I did at Clore)
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