To be a person on the Future Leaders Scheme (FLS)
Showing up whole
“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:
Hello dear reader,
It’s hard to see what’s in front of me — the light hides behind a thick fog, shadows and reflections are few and far between. This is a mess of thoughts that seem to have no end or purpose.
You see, I didn’t think I had what it took to write about the Future Leaders Scheme. I didn’t think I had the skill, courage, bandwidth, or audacity. And I didn’t believe anyone would want to read what I had to share.
But writing has been my primary way to make meaning here, to traverse the distance between no longer and not yet. When I write, I tell my truth in the most meaningful, stirring way I can — even if it is only those things to me.
So, here goes.
This blog post consists of:
- closing conference — which focuses on career next steps; and,
- module 1 on DELTA (Disability Empowers Leadership Talent) — a series of tailored workshops which aim to address individual development needs and potential barriers specific to disability.
The story I will tell, about what it’s like on the scheme, is mine and mine alone.
I am sitting at my desk, typing, and thinking about the version of myself that exists on the scheme. Sometimes I’m unable to find the words, even when others have been willing to listen. It’s painful to explain, too many infinite, difficult nuances to convey about this place.
It is paralysing to feel like there’s no room to let myself be fully human here. I’m an ocean trying to fit into a stream. There is only the role or identity of what’s expected to keep me contained. The unending pressure to blend in, to stay in artificially created boxes. I think about how it isn’t safe for me to not try to be that, to step out of it and let myself be seen as who I truly am.
I’ve stayed here long enough to collect stories. I’ve been swimming in the deep end for too long that I can’t remember what it feels like to do anything else. I longed to trust my voice as a whole human. But I was afraid of becoming who I was. So I made myself smaller, never living up to the passion I felt.
I’m desperate for another place, another space, another location to exist in. The truth is that I will carry certain parts of my pain from this place for a lifetime. I will hold different parts and pieces of my experiences that may never fully heal. Not when I carry an invisible sack full of wounds, grief, and longings that are quite literally woven into who I am.
I spy ghosts all over this place. All of them are me.
Driving for a better thing, rather than the same thing but better
“When leaders act as if change is for other people — when they think they don’t need to modify their behaviour — they exhibit Leader Entitlement, believing their titles literally grant them special privileges to ignore the change.” — NOBL, This Change Doesn’t Apply to Me
The scheme looks normal externally, but it doesn’t feel that way internally. The surface layer doesn’t match what is underneath. People are on the scheme because they are thought of as special. This self-congratulatory leadership is reinforced. It results in an ‘elite’ group that live in a parallel universe where the rules do not apply to them in the same way.
This is because we’re absolved from self-examination here. It’s easier to project an explanation outwards than the much harder work of looking within. We’re long on hubris and short on humility. There’s no role or problem that we don’t believe we can do better ourselves. This was demonstrated in the scheme’s conference when a local government official was treated appallingly by future senior leaders (read about it here).
It is horrifying to think about how the culture can go so badly wrong.
There comes a time when we cannot deny the truth any longer: walking down the known path isn’t working. But this culture is all we know. We’ve stopped seeing it as aberrant. It is an unwelcome truth otherwise hidden from view. We have designed systems that do this to people, which means we can fix them. Until we own the size and truth of our problem, we can’t change anything.
Staying silent about the scheme got us into this mess. And saying the scheme “is just the way it is” bypasses the impact it has: the ways it weaves into our self-concept over time, the ways it influences how we let ourselves be seen, the ways it causes us to orchestrate ourselves. That’s why radical options are the only ones left. The ones that disrupt the collective mindset, organisational model, and culture. Because to transform our outside world, a critical mass of us must also transform our internal worlds.
Lifting the lid on the scheme brings to the front a list of big questions. I keep thinking, what drives the scheme? Why bother aspiring to the top? How might we be able to organise it differently? The hardest is, What should we build instead, if anything? It’s one of those forever questions that I’m seeking answers to. The blank page holds endless possibilities. A dreamscape of possibility and explore all the wonders it can contain.
The conversations with others have got me thinking about how we move forward. This can feel daunting, even terrifying. I have the privilege of a platform to write and share from. I want something different — but don’t want to get pigeonholed into this niche. I also don’t necessarily want to constantly write about the future leaders scheme or how to redesign it, because it’s hard enough to live it once, much less to rehash it.
But changing things would be the most unending promise to our future leaders. It is the greatest gift we can offer: to trust ourselves with the unknown path.
Do not be afraid of your own heart beating
“It’s the flaws in the system projected onto me that makes me feel like an imposter.” — Nafisa Bakkar
I started writing this section last week and deleted it all, so here I am with a blank page again. What I was writing about just doesn’t fit what I’m feeling today, so I started over.
I’ve been writing openly about the scheme for 21 months. I do my best to write from a real place. From a place where I’m just being myself, sharing things that are vulnerable and allowing others to see me for who I truly am. The fear, the doubt, the self-questioning, the hesitation, the wondering. All the unfinished pieces of me I thought I needed to hide to fit in.
There’s so much possibility in not knowing. I have come to the realisation it is all part of the process of being a person. But this place is a complex and stark reminder of who I’m supposed to become. I can’t hide from that for long. It encourages people to be “good on their feet,” and say things loudly with innate confidence. Because we often support or defer to the ‘first’ thought shared, rather than the good one.
I’ve noticed I’m terrible in large groups. I never come up with good thoughts on the hoof. My first thoughts are never my best ones. I need to go away, be quiet, and think things through to have an actual good reflection. Most of all, I want a soul-deep connection and real conversation with someone who can think, too.
I have felt as if I’m never really part of the scheme, always on the outside peering in, just hoping to find somewhere to fit in. It’s hard to be myself in a place that doesn’t make it safe or possible to do so out loud, particularly when I’m surrounded by masks and surface-level interaction. I don’t get to see who people really are because of this performance we’re all doing all the time. Whilst I’ve slowly dropped the pressure to fit myself into the tiny boxes that this place provides for me, it is not without constant struggle.
It isn’t lost on me that we miss out on so much by grinding wonderful people down until they become a smoothly functioning piece of a much bigger machine. We edit and mould and morph them into the ideal version of a senior civil servant. We set them up to perform for authenticity or belonging, to never feel seen for who they actually are. This doesn’t happen to everyone, of course. Some people manage to remain themselves in the midst of it all. But realistically, how many people is that? And how long can they hold up?
The future does not fit in the containers of the past
To speak is still a bold act.
I think of the future as a place of better understanding. I want to be a part of making a better world. That’s so much harder than it might sound.
I’ve discovered the real story takes place within me. The things you now know about me that inform everything I do. I’ve tried to find a way to show the fluidity, multi-layered, ever-changing kaleidoscope of my experiences here. I also relate to myself differently now. That is what has shifted everything, even when not everything has changed. Even when so much still lingers. Even when the ache remains.
There is possibility and beauty in learning to show up amidst it all. I look at my capacity to weave together words that light up something familiar in others…and I remember that’s enough.
You can read all my reflections on the scheme here:
