From individual to team to individual to leader

It's difficult to find time to write about one's life when it is passing by in a whirlwind. But the faster life moves the more important it becomes to hold on to those rails of steadfastness which we have created around ourselves.

Keeping in mind what is important and what is permanent. Looking up and around for what should be different and where change should lie. To find direction. Just because we are going at 100 miles per hour doesn't mean we are going in the right direction. And if it's not the right direction, then surely we are moving away from our target, right?

To quote Yogi Berra: We are lost, but we're making good time.

Within my new role, our new team had our first common objective. Deliver an amazing national conference which was going to represent a milestone and a point of change for our organization. We were going to bring the organization back to its basics, get the members enthusiastic about changing peoples live on a daily basis through exchange and leadership.

At the same time we ourselves were about to commence our journey towards building a team. What kind of team? With some experience of being part of a leadership body on one level, I was sure looking forward to starting "all over again". How confident we are, with hindsight, that given the chance to remake all of our choices, we would not make the same mistakes again?

And how blisfully we ignore our incompetence of choice and direction, our inability to predict the consequences of our actions, even after it has been made abundantly clear to us that we do not possess that sort of ability.

We this in mind (or not!) our team was going to be build right. It was going to be built from the start. We have great individuals, we see a common direction and purpose, we are dedicated and passionate and we actually like eachother!!

Yet here we were, only a few days after getting to know eachother, already unsure about eachothers roles, already probing and testing one another, and already concerned about our working together! WOW. I must say it is a truly humbling experience for me. It is actually what makes the concept of a team so exciting. It is hard. Damn hard. If it wasn't, what would be the point or the challenge?

I think we are on the right track though. I think we are starting to see the contours of a team which is ready to perform together, for one another, towards a common goal and purpose and having a great time doing so.

The conference was a great success. The changes we can see in the organization, in the attitudes, in the way people are talking are noticeable. Hey, who knows whether that has anything to do with us at all, but seeing as nobody else is going to take credit I most definitely am. In order to keep believing in the directon one is leading towards, one is absolutely dependent on telling oneself that one is getting somewhere. Sometimes that is tangible, but most of the time I guess it's not. Management is easy to measure - but leadership and the effects of it isn't.

Zip. Point. Finito.

Teambuilding over. Conference over. Members spread back to their old roles, to their old teams, to their old responsibilities. I am spread back to my local reality. And our local joys and pains.

I am probably the person pushing the hardest for delivering a hardcore, kickass transition in order to help our new leadership team "avoid all the pitfalls that we stumbled into". Off course, I know this isn't possible. Some hardships every person has to go through for themselves. But some things can be learned from others experience also - surely. If not, where would humankind be today? Surely not blogging on computers...

So irony has it, that I have to cancel on my new and old EB team when it came to EB to EB transition weekend. Everyone else went. I didn't. Bloody part-timer! Actually people in my family were turning ill and so was I, so I chose to take care of those close to me. Right choice? Probably. Hard choice for me? Definitely.

So I am leading, I am committed, but when it comes down to some execution I am unable due to some circumstances. Does that make the effort pointless? Or was my pushing for the weekend instrumental in it happening despite my non-attendance? Who knows.

Easter.

LX: L+X:

Leading by example. Leadership+Exchange. I keep writing this on my hand, I keep telling myself this, and it is the one concept which I truly and really do believe in when it comes to leadership. I must be the example for myself. Only that is leadership. Only then am I leading myself.

Yet, when does it end? Where does it start? Do you become the role or does the role become you? Are you a leader all the time? What about your personal life? What about in the toilet when you are singing to yourself? What about that morning when you can't even lead yourself out of bed? What about that bad joke you let slip, which you didn't really mean? What about not working out when you should? What about those problems with your mother? How about those clothes you are wearing? Where does it start? Where does it end?

This month I am coming to the end of my 4 month personal development plan. I have conciously tried to develop more awareness of others around me and better incoming communication skills. I believe I have succeeded, but not entirely. These are definitely not off the chart, but I am putting them in second line for now, to see whether effects there are permanent when I take away some conciousness.

This week I will make 3 important choices:

1. How can I be flexible enough to take on the role I am being asked to?

2. Which areas of personal development should I focus on next?

3. In which ways can I create a learning environment for myself that fosters this development?