Leadership, focusing energies, content designing (Weeknotes 13–7 December)
6 weeks since my last weeknotes! I’m struggling to find the mental energy to write. But I’m making myself do them because I know my head feels clearer afterwards. I guess it’s a bit like going for a run.
My mood has been a bit up and down over the last few weeks, emotions always close to the surface, but lots of learnings and things to be thankful for.
Leadership
Over the last 6 weeks I’ve listened to another 2 senior leaders in GDS talk about their career journeys. Once again they were candid and inspirational and gave me much food for thought. It makes my heart sing when I see authenticity, humility and vulnerability in leadership. It gives me hope.
These leader career sharing sessions have been so good in ‘lifting the veil’ that often hangs across senior roles — so often most of us have no idea what our senior leaders actually do on a day to day basis, how they got their role or what their journey looked like to get there. And we rarely get to see the person behind the job title. And that causes a barrier to progression. Openness and transparency enables people to see and say ‘maybe I could do that’. Good leadership is empowering others to grow and become their best selves, to open doors for others to walk through. I see a lot of that kind of leadership at GDS and that makes me proud to work for it.
I’ve started reading Dare to lead by Bréne Brown. I’ve only read the intro so far but it’s good. I really love the way she defines a leader:
“Anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”
Her research identified 4 key skills of courageous leadership:
- Rumbling with vulnerability
- Living into our values
- Braving Trust
- Learning to rise
Other lines from the intro chapter that resonated with me:
“Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead.”
“Daring leaders must care for and be connected to the people they lead.”
“Honesty over politeness.”
Focusing my energies
I’ve been reflecting recently on what motivates me at work. In my blog about dealing with stress and overwhelm I wrote about figuring out the things that are mine to focus on, and what to leave to others. I’ve been doing a bit of that recently.
I’ve realised that seeing a worthy cause and caring about the worthy cause does not mean I should volunteer for it.
I’m being more intentional about what I put myself forward for. For example, does it makes me feel excited? Does it set off some kind of light inside me? Does it sparks ideas in me? Does it energise me?
I can be guilty of rushing sometimes. I see something that’s needed or something I want to do and I want to get it done right now. I’m trying to remember that things take time to unravel and unfold and grow.
Content designing
Some highlights from the last 6 weeks:
- Working with government departments to make updates to GOV.UK content — keeping the words accurate, clear and simple so users can do important things.
- Conversations with content people in other government departments — always enjoyable to connect. We talk about what content updates are coming our way, what challenges we can support with and if there are ways to smooth out our processes.
- Starting my responsibilities on a couple of regular rotas — examining and triaging content requests that come in to the GOV.UK content support team from other gov departments.
- Wrapping up an experimental project with folk in another gov department that explored how we can work together on rapid content improvements. Obviously, we wrapped up with a retro and looked at what went well and what we’d do differently next time — encouraging and highly valuable!
- Doing a content review with Michele of a new service on GOV.UK as part of the service assessment — really interesting and we made some recommendations for a few changes.
- Supporting a cross-government Heads of Content group, looking at exploring and fixing cross-cutting challenges.
Other highlights from the last 6 weeks
- A week in the Lake District — SO therapeutic!
- Reaching out to people for advice and learning from others’ experiences — had an uplifting conversation with Matt White at Citizens Advice — wise words shared.
- Welcoming and getting to know two lovely new folk who’ve joined our team.
- Volunteering for things I feel excited about and align with my passions — both in an outside of work.
- Picking up 2 line reports — such a joy and privilege to line manage others and I’m really looking forward to these two joining GDS!
- Saturday morning bike rides across muddy fields.
- Monday runs — also across muddy fields.
- Creating a ‘passions and purpose’ montage of words and pictures to frame and hang on the wall at home — this helps me remember who I am, what’s most important to me and what motivates me.
- Snuggling up on the sofa with the kids to watch cheesy Christmas films.
- Reading Lord of the Rings again (must be about the 15th time). I felt I really needed to go on a big adventure!
- School runs — such a lifeline!
- Friday night dancing with the kids —song of the month is Sky full of stars by Coldplay
- Mulled wine, fairy lights, fire pits.
Final note — safe harbours
It’s good to spend time out on the ocean, exploring and growing. But it can get stormy and tiring and sometimes the weather gives you a battering. You have to know when to turn the boat towards land, and navigate into a harbour — a sheltered place to get rest, stock up on supplies, maybe carry out some repairs to the boat. So, so important.