Weeknotes #1: a whirlwind week
I’ve been threatening to start #weeknotes for a long time but never seemed to build up enough courage to write about my week. This week has been a bit of a whirlwind and I thought writing about it might help me reflect, so I’m finally taking the plunge.
Monday
Monday was a good day. Not least because we had our weekly product owner roundup session and they’re always useful conversations; but I also had a number of productive chats with colleagues about ongoing projects and was able to get on top of a few outstanding tasks. A good solid start to the week.
Tuesday
I attended my first session for the Senior Leadership Experience run by Academi Wales. It was held at Swalec Stadium in Cardiff and this was my first opportunity to meet my cohort and receive my official 360 degree feedback report, which I’d invited 22 people to contribute to (called my ‘raters’).
The morning session was all about how to understand the charts and data in the report, then we received a hard copy of our reports for the first time and I had 20 minutes to read it before going into an hour coaching session. I found it hard to digest all of the information in the report — there was so much data and the verbatim comments were really thorough (thanks to everyone for being so constructive).
All the feedback is valuable. It’ll take a while to work through it with my coach to understand it all and come up with a plan of action. But here are some sneak peaks for anyone interested:
The positive:
- It seems I already have a good selection of leadership styles in my toolkit, including visionary, participative, affiliative and pacesetting, with all 4 being in my ‘dominant styles’. Coaching style is slightly lower, and my directive style is virtually non-existent. More on that below. But overall, an extensive range of leadership styles. My leadership impact was also seen to be in the top quartile. So far so good.
- My manager and I were pretty aligned on our scores across my ESCI (Emotional Social Competency Inventory) so it looks like he knows my strengths and weaknesses pretty well.
- I was pleased with my organisational climate results, which indicate my team are getting what they want on the whole (lots of green bubbles). My own scores for my organisational climate weren’t quite so positive, with some big amber and red bubbles, indicating I don’t always feel I get what I need. This surprised me, and I wondered if I’d completed the survey at a point where I was particularly frustrated. Sure, I get frustrated when I see barriers but I think I’m fairly resilient and don’t let it eat away at me. The positive from this is that any frustrations I encounter it looks like I don’t pass onto my team.
There were also a pile of really positive comments from my raters, mentioning working openly, championing diversity and being positive; which was heart-warming. A comment that probably sums me up:
“… she knows her way around a post-it!”
Areas for development:
- I need to be more aware of my own emotions and how these effect me. I hold my hands up to this. And this is part of the reason for finally taking the plunge with writing #weeknotes. I’m hoping some time for weekly reflection will help me process my thoughts and emotions and how I could have done things differently.
- My coaching leadership style could be improved. And then let’s talk about the directive leadership style… this doesn’t come naturally to me (my teenage son would disagree!) I am aware of the benefits of directive and I use it when I need to. However, it’s a short term leadership style and one that I rarely need to use. I put this down to having an awesome team. I also wonder if a previous experience of a former manager has tricked my brain into thinking directive = negative. So my challenge is to retrain my brain and seek out good examples of directive styles (I won’t ask my son).
- Interestingly, some comments related to maybe becoming more sensitive to other people’s feelings; which is probably what I took closest to heart. I’m aware of a couple of occasions in the last few weeks where I’ve appeared a little strong-willed and possibly dismissive of the other person, so to those people I apologise. (I have and will also apologise in person). If I ever do this to you, call me out straight away; I’m grateful for the feedback and I promise to do better.
So after what I now like to call ‘Intense Tuesday’, I had…
Wild Wednesday
I had the day off work and had a bit of a lie in. A nice easy start to the day… and then I had my interview for the Civil Service Future Leaders Scheme. Eeek!
The interviewers were lovely and put me at ease. But these situations are never natural and I always end up feeling like I undersold myself. It was my first experience of the strength based interview questions and I much preferred these to the competency based ones. It just felt way more natural. It was my first attempt at applying for the Future Leaders Scheme and if nothing else it was good practice and a brilliant opportunity to join up with others who had also applied to the scheme.
I spent the remainder of my day off trying not to overanalyse my interview answers by taking several trips to the recycling centre to declutter my house.
I then made my way to Cardiff for the weekly One Team Gov meetup, which was particularly energising as we shared productivity hacks*, book and podcast recommendations**, as well as talking about some of our most inspiring leaders *** (prompted by my experience of the earlier FLS interview). We were also very decisive and made plans for next week’s meetup – where we’ll use some of the time to write blog posts we’ve been meaning to write but haven’t got around to.
After the One Team Gov meetup I rushed off to my very first Product Tank Cardiff session in Cardiff (how many meetups can you do in one evening?!) This one was different. No other government people and I got to meet new people working on some pretty exciting and innovative products. It was a great way to finish off the day, oh and I even managed to bag some freebie coffee too!
Thursday
I spent Thursday back in the office. I attended the monthly leadership team meeting, a portfolio assurance group with colleagues from BEIS and GDS, and a fantastic session with team leads from across the digital services department.
Friday
I was at an away day to look at our digital strategy on Friday. This was an excellent day with colleagues from digital services, where we were honest, enthusiastic and able to constructively challenge each other. It really felt like a team effort. More to come on this.
It was also a great idea from our director to hold this off site and in turn support the Wallich Centre in Cardiff with their work on homelessness.
Finally, an exciting opportunity has come my way in work. I can’t say much more about this at the moment, but I’m excited and nervous and just generally buzzing about trying something new and interesting. I’ll write about this as soon as I’m able to.
Sorry if this is too long for a weeknote. It was a busy week and I’m a novice!
*Productivity hacks included:
Forest app
Noise cancelling headphones
French chill music (not convinced so far Jess Neely :-))
Classical music
Pomodoro technique
Take regular breaks
**Book and podcast recommendations included:
One Team Gov podcasts
99% invisible podcast
Social engineer podcast
Stuff you should know podcast
The intersectionality of things
The strategy is delivery book
Do you talk funny book
How to be right… in a world gone wrong by James O’Brien
**Inspirational leaders mentioned:
Kit Collingwood
Clare Moriarty
John Manzoni
Andy Dudfield
Tom Loosemore
Justin Trudeau
And others…
