Although I do take the initiative, I do enjoy people giving me the platform to lead on a project or brief that requires getting different people together to solve a problem, which has a sense of urgency — as this keeps me focused, while also putting the building blocks of longer term change in place. When I constantly have to take the initiative, this can be exhausting. So if I’m in a session and you’re surprised I haven’t commented, it may be because I’ve had to push to get involved or lead on several other projects previously.
I work across so many different projects that I can find it difficult to focus. I try and identify what role I’m best placed to play, and start by empowering individual people in my team to lead on each of these so they can feel a sense of purpose and those projects gets dedicated support. Sometimes I end up feeling disconnected from those projects as I really need to root myself in a real life issue, to avoid getting into the abstraction of how to navigate change. If I do get involved in your projects more intimately at particular points, it’s because I’m excited about them and because I want to use them to influence how we should be working more strategically across the organisation
Equally, I need regular feedback, not just validation of the work I’m doing, but ideas to feed into my work and how it can be improved as well as other opportunities people can spot to connect it into their agendas. I don’t enjoy it when I lead an agenda all on my own or when I don’t get feedback. So do give me feedback and share your ideas on how my projects can improve.
Lack of sleep and exercise don’t help either. I don’t tend to find it difficult to get to sleep, but sometimes can wake up in the middle of the night where my brain gets into gear and starts coming up with ideas to respond to issues I’ve identified during my sleep. In many cases, these are creative ideas so I wonder if I should try and capture these so that I still remember them in the morning when I’m really tired, and another part of me thinks I need to shut them out to get back to sleep. I did find it difficult to sleep a couple of years ago and found mindfulness helped as did CBT, and walking fast into work really helped too. While I still do daily walks, I think I need to use up more physical energy.
People might misunderstand me when I…
Am very passionate about an issue or a project and I might talk about the different reasons we should tackle the issue or different ways the project is making a difference.
Use metaphors to describe a challenge or way of working. I think visually but with constant online platforms or meetings, if I don’t have a diagram to hand, I will use metaphors instead, which I can mix up.
