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7.4 Being led Despite your instincts perhaps pushing you to take charge, there are times when it is better to recognise that someone else is far more suited to be the leader. This is not a sign of weakness in you and you should not always be in the lead. Rather it is a sign of maturity in that you recognise there are circumstances where the team will benefit more from you taking on a different role. Pat often finds himself in a support role at work when an event is planned, he can be seen sticking up notices, printing things off or even moving chairs around. In those situations, the people who have put the event together are in the lead and his role is to support them in whatever way is necessary to get the project finished. The important thing to remember is that you still have a role to play and you should not sulk because it isnt you calling the shots. 7.4.1 Feedback We describe how to get feedback from lecturers in Chapter 4 but this is such an important topic we are also going to discuss it here in the context of leadership skills. Pat remembers working with a consultancy which had this mantra: feedback is a gift At first, he thought this was just consultant waffle how can it be a gift? Feedback is often difficult and unpleasant. But after a while he realised what this really means. If we want to become better at our job and especially if we want to be able to take on more responsibility (i.e. be promoted), we have to develop new skills. The best way of improving our performance is to seek out feedback constantly and then act on it. The key thinking in this area comes from Donald Schn (1991) and is summarised in Figure 7.2.

FIGURE 7.2 Learning from feedback

In some ways this is pretty straightforward. The difficulty comes in actually doing it. It is often difficult to admit to yourself that you need to change the way you are working and even more difficult to admit that you are doing something poorly.

As a member of the Professional Mentoring Scheme at my university, listening skills were very important when it came to meetings with my mentor. Sometimes I have a habit of talking for England and not allowing anyone a word in the conversation. My mentor soon noticed this and sat me down whilst forbidding me to talk for five minutes. He explained how when it comes to interviews they have an allocated time frame to get through all of their questions and if I spend too much time talking about one subject and do not finish all the questions it would reflect poorly on myself. As I was forbidden to talk for five minutes, it meant I paid full attention to what he had to say resulting in me changing my ways of talking too much. The knock on effect of this resulted in me securing a placement as I knew exactly when to talk and when to listen. Lewis Boot, BSc International Business and Management

We love the example from Lewis as he illustrates a great awareness of his weakness, talking too much. Our main advice stems from this and it is important to be specific about what you are looking to change. It isnt useful to say I need to do better in team meetings. First work out what you did well and what you need to work on. For example, did you speak enough? Or did you speak too much? Did you take on too many tasks personally? Or did you hide in the background? Once you know what to work on, then you can set yourself some goals for change. So, if you are someone who talks too much in team meetings, set yourself the goal of not speaking at all for the first 10 minutes of the meeting. Or if you dont speak out enough, set yourself the task of saying something in the first five minutes, for example. The key is you should always ask for feedback especially from people who you trust and whose opinion you value. Tell them why you are asking and ask them specifically. So you might say, I have a feeling I am speaking too much in team meetings. Id really like to work on this as it must be annoying for other people and is preventing them from contributing. Tell me honestly, do you think this is the case? Then you can ask more specifically about instances where you spoke perhaps without adding value. Then you can ask about things you might try differently. But make it specific and something you can work on. And always come back for more feedback after you have worked on it. This shows you have listened and are trying to improve.