Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the On Purpose Year Programme –an unlikely insight into leadership

As Ferris Bueller famously warned us, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it”. As I approach the half-way stage of my On Purpose year, it seems that this year is also moving pretty fast. Yet speed is relative. The On Purpose programme, populated with work placements, weekly training, one-to-one mentoring and executive coaching, may not be equivalent to Ferris’ coming of age ‘Day Off’ (I’m yet to drive a Ferrari 250GT California Spyder) but it has provided an opportunity to stop and look around.

And there’s plenty to look at. There’s the surging energy of the social enterprise sector, cutting-edge projects to be involved in at your placement, knowledge to absorb and skills to develop in training. Yet what I have perhaps valued most is the opportunity ‘to look at myself’ (ok that either sounds very vain or a shallow attempt at depth), lets try ‘understand myself better’ (ok, now I sound like Dear Deidre in the Sun, not that I read her column, well not every day) hmm — to get better acquainted with ‘the man in the mirror’ (MJ — this is getting worse). Anyway, you know what I mean.

I have always been somewhat sceptical of the phrase ‘personal development’ and the rather ‘touchy feely’ techniques that are applied to focus on this. However thinking about leadership requires you to think about what sort of leader you want to be, what your strengths are, what you are passionate about, how you influence and motivate others — the answers to these simple questions define what many of our trainers have referred to as our ‘personal style’ (and not in a fashion sense).

What is my personal style? I’m still working on that but I have some of the answers. I have realised that I am less the too-cool-for-school extrovert Ferris Bueller and more his too-sick-for-school introvert friend Cameron Frye. I have realised, with a little help from Susan Cain’s book ‘Quiet: the Power of Introverts’, that being introverted has particularly beneficial leadership traits and capabilities — ability to listen to others, to think more deeply, to take a cautious approach to risk and to focus on meaningful work and relationships. It is with this understanding that I have a better sense of how I may make an impact (however silent) in any future career I pursue.

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Click on the image above to view a TED Talk with Susan Cain: “The Power of Introverts”[/caption]

And I have also learnt to admire the extrovert qualities that many of my On Purpose colleagues shout about — their ability to energise the room, to be assertive, to focus on many issues at once, to share their thoughts and to take chances. Understanding each other’s qualities also enables us as a group of Associates to know how best to work together both now and in the future — much like Ferris and Cameron but without the destroying of the Ferrari and with the occasional sing-a-long to ‘Twist and Shout’.