What it was:
Talks and conversations with senior leaders and alumni of development schemes, mainly from within defence, at the Ministry of Defence on 5 March 2018
What I learned:
- Action Inquiry: Every moment is an opportunity for development, experiment, reflection
- Exploit your competitive advantage
- Seek out role models
- Who you work with is more important than what you work on
- Need to be sharp and concise on commissioning the right work from the right person
- You can’t afford to have an off moment, especially when in large groups
- Have respect for the people in your team; that means preparing properly when speaking to groups
- As an introvert you need to be an actor, and build in recovery time on your own
- “Positive deviance” – the ability to challenge and do things in New ways. Leaders need to be able to observe and enable this behaviour
- In the second year of the schemes there is more onus on self organising networks. There is not an anchor – it becomes a fight to stay in contact with people.
- Need to challenge the other people in your cohort, if they don’t contribute they are taking a place away from others who wanted to be on the scheme
- FLS makes you better able to succeed at SCS interviews as it helps you frame your style, think about the emotional impact, talk about your corporate contribution
- End of scheme reviews are in December January
What I will aim to do differently as a result:
- Try to pursue partnerships with specific individuals who are likely on a similar development journey as me
- Look up the “two pies” approach (?) that was mentioned
- Make a concerted exploration on doing a secondment to industry
- Practice being more precise in commissioning work from others
- Take more time to prepare for speaking to the team
- Gather contact details for others on development schemes and try to maintain the network