How to pause and reflect

Take a few minutes to think about the various leadership roles you have. Consider your work situation, your home life and your social activities – now make a short list. If I think back to when I was a junior nurse, then my list would have been; a minor leadership role with some student nurses, a role with patients that included health education and helping them adjust and comply with their medical treatment and a leadership role in my local church relating to a young adults group. As I look back in reflection, I can see that even at this early stage in my career I had a leadership role in both my work and social life, although I would never have identified myself as a leader. If I had recognised those leadership aspects of my life at the time, then I might have developed them much more at the beginning of my career than I did. I suspect many of us do not see ourselves as ‘leaders’ because being a leader implies, for many of us, seniority and being in charge. However, leadership can be much more subtle particularly when we are at the beginning of our career. Reflect upon the list you have just made about the leadership roles that you have. Start thinking about additional things you do in the various parts of your life that might influence others and help them move forward positively. Did you include them on your list? If not, add them now. At this level of leadership, the distinction between organising, management and leadership are not always obvious and this was explored in the first article in this series (Fowler 2016 a), which discussed the differences between some core management and leadership responsibilities.