Secrets of leadership

I've just come back from a leadership foundation day, run by Gill Taylor and Tracy Roden. It was energetic, insightful, and fun, and it inspired me to write a blog post for our intranet at Johnnie Johnson Housing. Here's what I had to say:

So, what happens at a JJH Leadership Foundation day? Well I’m glad you asked. Now, *looks both ways* I’m going to let you in on the secret, because I attended my first one this week ...

The leadership programme is an important investment that is helping us achieve our goals as a business. It’s all about developing skills, knowledge, and teams so that we work together effectively, and towards a common goal.

Although it might seem as though this investment is just for leaders, it’s really not. We are being coached so that we can pass on more knowledge and skills to our teams.

Taking time away from the ‘day job’ for training can feel indulgent, stressful, and like a luxury that we simply don’t have time for. With a hundred other priorities, it can be a challenge to switch that out of office message on and leave colleagues holding the fort. But the positive benefits of what we are learning on the leadership programme far outweigh all of that, if we apply it when we get back to our desks.

So what are the skills we’re learning, and how do they help everyone, including those who are not on the programme themselves?

• We’re developing insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our personal leadership styles – and how we might adjust them in certain situations in order to get the best from our teams.
• We’re learning about emotional intelligence: how able we are to manage our own emotions, manage relationships with colleagues and support team members to do the same.
• We’re stepping in to unknown territory by experiencing ‘360 feedback’ – where we ask up to 20 colleagues to offer honest and constructive comments on how they think we’re doing – which helps us build up an unbiased picture of where we could improve.
• We’re taking part in short high impact training sessions to gather more workplace skills to share with our teams, such as time management and having difficult conversations.
• We’re also connecting with each other – leaders from different parts of the business – to break down barriers and enhance communication and relationships.

Those are just some of the aspects of our leadership curriculum, and all of them are designed to support each and every colleague at JJH. I feel very fortunate to be taking part in the programme and plan to chat with my team about all that I'm learning, to share the insights which they too will find useful.

Have you experienced anything similar, and did anything really resonate for you?