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Identifying when I was a leader

The next important exercise was to get each person to think of a time in their own lives when they took on a leadership role.

At first many people thought they had never been a leader. However when we defined leadership as someone who 'takes control', 'makes a difference', and 'makes someone else stronger', then nearly everyone was able to contribute.

I explained the stories could come from anywhere, including Scouts, Guides, school, sports team, or as a mum or dad. As people told their leadership stories to each other in small groups, I asked the rest of the team to identify the behaviors that these people demonstrated in order to be leaders.

The interesting thing to the team was that the behaviors they identified turned out again to be the same simple things that they had identified in the previous exercise. Things like, 'spent a great deal of time with the person', 'listened to them without judgement', 'expected more of them than they thought they were capable of', 'challenged them to do something beyond what they thought of a capable of'. Again, like the previous exercise, it was disappointing that very few stories came from the world of work. And again we asked people to think about a work environment where we all helped each other grow and be stronger.

The most important thing about this exercise was the way everyone realised, they’d already been a leader, they’d already made a difference in other parts of their life, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t do it more often at work.

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