Moments of lightness on the Future Leaders Scheme (FLS)

Emerging at last, blinking in the light

Quote by Emily McDowell: “Personal growth is misleading, because it sounds like it’s going to be fun. But if we called it “deliberately making yourself so uncomfortable it’ll feel like you’re dying,” nobody would do it and we’d be totally screwed.”

“Future Leaders Scheme is building a diverse, robust pipeline to senior roles. You’re part of the high potential, talented civil servants who can get there.”

The Future Leaders Scheme (FLS) is one of the UK Civil Service’s Accelerated Development Schemes, aimed at high-potential grade 6 and 7 civil servants. You can read my previous reflections on the scheme here:

The art of endings on the Future Leaders Scheme (FLS)

Hello dear reader,

I haven’t known what to write about. There is a lengthy list of notes from my time here. But instead I’ve been caught up in endings. The tipping point between the closing of one chapter and the start of another. It is uncomfortable and unsettling, healthy and necessary.

So, here goes.

This blog post consists of my concluding thoughts on a scheme that is shaping my life — for better or worse — in public service.

The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.

I have been writing for the last two years about who I am in this strange world on the Future Leaders Scheme. I started writing with no idea of where it would go, or even whether anyone would want to read what I had to say. I just needed to unburden myself of the swirling thoughts in my head. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

For a long time, it has felt like staring into the abyss. My world was clouded with sadness, anger, and fear, and I needed somewhere to put myself. There are things in this place that I needed to find and face. I have not touched this degree of inner darkness in a long, long time. It is impossible for me now to see the world any other way, and I don’t want to.

Gif of Ethan Hunt, an IMF agent and leader of an operatives team (played by Tom Cruise) riding a motorbike off a cliff to parachute onto a speeding train below.

I write to remember that I am not alone. Something scarily resonant and uncomfortably honest. I wish I could tell you I had some sort of revelation from my time here. But I have learned from wandering. I feel less afraid and more human by having done so. It is a reminder of versions of myself that I don’t want future versions to forget.

Doubting things and doing them anyway

I’m an intense person, a worrier and anticipator. Without being cognisant of this, I would spend all my time worrying about each thing, drifting entirely from the present. Now in decoupling myself from the scheme, I am unsteady in moving toward the next chapter.

Embarking on the scheme has meant swimming in a sea of self-doubt. I was encouraged to falsely equate confidence with competence. To be clever and likeable, and to cover up the cracks in myself. Inside, however, I have often felt confused, terrified, and despondent. In a place that made it hard, often terrifying to be my truest self…it’s no wonder I felt unsure of who I am. I was stuck in an echo chamber, seen by very few.

I experienced a lot of anguish over something that wasn’t right. No matter how I moulded myself into something, I felt off, misaligned. I contorted myself into a version of myself I didn’t love, that felt untrue. I acted out the decisions of the person I thought I should be, forcefully slotting myself into an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle because I thought the end picture might necessitate it. These deep-seated feelings made any rational solutions to my ‘irrational’ problem feel like trying to negotiate with a grizzly bear.

Gif of Ethan Hunt, an IMF agent and leader of an operatives team (played by Tom Cruise) in a small yellow car with Grace (played by Hayley Atwell), a professional thief. They’re in a lengthy car chase with U.S. agents and other operatives. Grace says to Ethan, “Who is that person?!” who replied, “I have no idea.”

So I had to keep going and going. I told myself that I never quit anything, and I shouldn’t start now. I simply had to carry on through the two years. So I summoned my capacity for endurance. It propels me to keep trying, to keep making dents in situations that are beyond my control. But I now understand this journey in a way I didn’t previously: that walking away is its own form of strength. It taught me that not all discomfort must simply be endured, and not all struggles are things that can simply be fixed.

What we give up to “be good”

“Be careful who you pretend to be, because we become who we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut

Tweet by Simon Parker: “One of the things I heard a lot in Whitehall was that people tried to be ‘good civil servants’. This felt like a code of behaviour that did not come naturally and had to be striven for, beyond the standard impartiality etc. I am still not sure what it means. Views?”

There has been a story swirling within me about the scheme that I told myself I couldn’t spend the time or energy writing about because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Much of it went unexpressed because I was not ready. I did not have the language to recognise what it was.

The pressure to be a “good civil servant” has stuck with me. Words often spoken, ill defined. Here a person’s influence is based on both their likability and ability to remain acceptable to the system. It is about trying to control the way others perceive you, to seek their approval. Individual entitlement over public good. Which is a bad barometer of the kind of civil servants we need. But life is full of trade-offs. And I’ve come to understand that it means avoiding being all parts of who I am to progress.

I’ve gotten more comfortable with having the ability to think critically and independently. With being seen as a flawed and complicated human. I’m differently free in ways others are not. But I feel like the collective sum of this indicates to people that I’m not a “good civil servant.” Because I don’t fill in the details the way people expect. I’m being harsh with this interpretation, but I’m at a crossroads. Being made to choose. Between the kind of civil servant that we need, and the one we say we want.

I’m damned if I fall in line; I’m damned if I don’t.

Gif of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, the former director of the IMF and director of the CIA, in the film Mission: Impossible. He is saying, “You need to pick a side.”

The scheme teaches how to fit through complex mental acrobatic hoops such that you get lost yourself. It’s hard to understand this choice when wearing a mask is required here. You forget what it is like to exist without one. I got so used to performing that I hardly noticed I was doing it anymore. This undercurrent sweeps people away on the scheme, driving you away from yourself. Away from groundedness. It seems like a hostile environment to me, and that lack of ease has hung inside me…for years.

And here I am, in the undercurrent, lonely and lost. It feels to me that I was never not coming to this place. I am exhausted all the time here because being a somehow insufficient person is par for the course. I was designing myself in the image of what the scheme wanted: a “good civil servant.” It is painful to not like the version of myself I was meticulously shaping to try to be accepted. Perhaps noticing these patterns and shining a light where it’s needed…helps? What I do know is to keep practising being seen is the most intentional act I can do. Because it matters.

Every ending is a new beginning

To speak is still a bold act.

My feelings and opinions about the scheme are not fixed. But after years of being on it, one thing has not dissipated: I’ve lost my taste for Civil Service leadership development schemes. I’m less inclined to opportunities that require me to mute qualities I value within myself. And this was not a place where I was encouraged to become more aware of my lens on the world and shift my ways of working to be more responsive and relational.

I’m still figuring out what I want to do next — the scheme seeped into all areas of my life. The things I’ve learned over the past few years feel the most potent because they are relational in nature. I’m curious about what knowledge I’ve acquired here will lie dormant until I am able to meaningfully understand it, when enough time and experience has passed.

Until then, I’ll keep plotting and scheming and making change in government. I’m discovering that the path is remembering and returning to myself, over and over again, amidst everything. Sometimes, it’s as simple and complex as that.

You can read all my reflections on the scheme here:

Future Leaders Scheme

I have developed a wiki to openly document my learning journey:

UK Civil Service Future Leaders Scheme Wiki