Weeknotes #6
This is really late and incomplete. I’m sharing ‘cos I got this far and the now-lazy-perfectionist in me doesn’t want to completely miss a week.
I’ve said before that my rubber duck was to start doing different things outside my 9–5.
I recently joined legup.social which is a collaborative effort in Sheffield set up by Paper to help small businesses, charities and social enterprises with digital. legup.social pair people with others who would like help and and it’s free to attend. My first event was last week. It was a great night and I’m hopeful there’ll be other events to follow. If you’re based near Sheffield and it looks like legup.social could help — please get in touch with them.
My joining is a direct response to my writing out loud and a good person (who I worked with years ago) reading what I’ve shared and asking me to be a mentor after I got in touch. Cheers Jon Rhodes
The event reminded me of the importance of listening and not just thinking of the next question to ask. That a pause and thoughtful silence can be as productive as constant chatter. That working hard isn’t just about time served but how much someone works to ensure their time is spent well — on the correct activities in the right order.
Maybe that’s why I fell into business analysis as I enjoy asking questions, helping people think out loud and encouraging others to work through their discomfort when trying something new or struggling for answers.
It’s also prompted me to start reading/watching more about how to further develop my mentoring skills. If anyone has resources or information to share, that’d be great.
What I’ve read (not enough last week — again)
Dyfrig Williams outlines a couple of ways people can be supported and guided into talking with people outside their silo. Great timing for me as I’m looking at ‘traditional’ mentoring. Could it be adapted to help ‘quiet ones’ network if the action of walking into a room of strangers is just too difficult at first?
A good reminder from Dave Floyd on the importance of understanding (listening) as I’ve mentioned above and to ‘seek to make things work from the inside rather than trying to disrupt’.
Sam Villis and Julie Byrne weeknotes continue to ring true. They write about, ‘listening and thinking’ and ‘writing things down seems much easier…..’ (than talking). I agree although…I’m finding that writing things down does then make it a bit easier to say things out loud. So — it’s all good.
And finally..
I’m cheating now as I found out about this a couple of days ago and it’s too good to save til next time. I’m pleased to announce that Sheffield has a ‘talking bench’. The Winter Gardens is warm compared to the outdoors this time of year and this bench has just made it a whole lot warmer. Enjoy.
