Leading the Way - a tough question
A few nights ago, Jude posed a question that, on the face of it, seemed very simple to answer. She asked "Consider, how would your life be different if you were leading the way all the time?" Obvious I thought .... and then thought again. Not so obvious. Time for some thinking. So far that hasn't worked out - at least it doesn't feel to have done - so I'm here working it out in the words I write.How did I get to where I am right now?
It has been a gradual process. A sort of quiet withdrawal from mainstream competitive work into a quieter - but less lucrative - way of living and working. My working life has been a series of transitions and changes in any case. 10 years (from leaving school at 16) in the police, a short time working as a retail shop manager, retraining into IT and spending nearly 10 years working for retailers B&Q and Texas Homecare on systems and merchandising until, in 1989, I was made redundant and changed into an IT salesman and consultant. I spent nearly 8 years selling Electronic Data Interchange systems, getting involved along the way in the trade body for EDI and serving four or five years as a Director of the EDI Association which became the E Commerce Association which then merged with the ANA to become e Centre (now GS1 UK).
In 1996/7 I was diagnosed with Diabetes and my health began to deteriorate steadily during that time. I was running a startup division of a middle sized IT Distributor and fighting to keep it open and trading - a fight that was ultimately lost. I moved on to the supplier of the software I had been distributing and experienced my worst year personally and professionally. My health (and that of others around me) was quite poor and the pressure of the role began to tell on me badly. I eventually left that job and decided that I would work for myself.
Self employment has been the way I have survived since then. It has been survival rather than thriving. It has taken several years for my health to stabilise but I am now beginning to feel well and to have energy for the first time in what seems like years. What energy I have had during my self employment has gone into developing training for e-commerce and into briefly teaching that subject at MBA level.
Writing has always been a passion of mine. As with all professional writers, I believe that I have a play or novel inside me and have tried, over the years, to get one or the other out on to paper. I've done Arvon courses with well known writers but as soon as the course ended, so di the writing. In 2001, I enrolled on a post graduate Professional Writing Course in Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. I can see the college from where I'm now sitting writing this. In the eight months of the course, I found it very hard to adapt to the structured world of college but did enjoy the opportunity to write in a number of formats, genres and styles every day. I also fell in love with Falmouth and the surrounding area.
Completion of the course led me back into the day to day worry about finding work and getting paid. With the course behind me, I set about re-inventing myself as a writer. I found freelance work at realtively poor rates of pay and worked towards more respectable pay for professional articles. Information Security chose me thanks to an editor who challenged me to produce an article based on a conference on that topic that I attended in Prague. I went on to write several more articles for that editor and his magazine.
In 2003, I joined the networking site Ecademy.com and began to make contact - online and at meetings - with as many people asc I could. It was as much an education as a search for work. I could see how having an online site would maintain connections between meetings and sometimes without a meeting. There are still many people who I count as friends on Ecademy with whom I have only ever had a virtual realtionship.
I met Thomas Power in 2004 and we hit it off immediately. There was resonance in our meeting and it led to me working with him on a guide for Ecademy Club Leaders. I invested in Ecademy Life Membership in late 2004 and embarked soon afterwards on the writing of a book with Thomas and with Penny Power, Thomas' wife and the founder of Ecademy. The book is in the process of being published by Ecademy Press at the moment. Called A Friend in Every City, it covers the current activity in networking and how that might change, and be changed by, the way we work in the 21st century. The book also gives advice and guidance on networking as an art and science.
It was through Ecademy that I first met Jude. We were both attending a course being run by Roger Hamilton on Wealth Dynamics in London and we were able to chat about some quite important things. Jude has a way of finding information and using it subtly to spring more information out of you. I was not an unwilling subject, anyway, as I'd tried many ways to recover myself and my identity including an intensive weekend course called the Mastery, counselling skills training and NLP Practitioner training. We got together late last year to do the process that resulted in my N-Code™ of 'Leading the Way'.
So what is leading the way to me?
That long and quite involved history is important only in that it shows that I have been involved in leading for quite a bit of my working life. I have managed teams directly and I have managed processes through influence and technical knowledge. So long as I have been able to see where I fit into a process and what I can offer, I have been able to learn new roles and operate effectively in them. I can master a brief quickly and put it into action accurately.
Leading the Way has had connotations of being on the next page (or further) than most of the rest of the organisation I'm part of. It has less to do with command and control and more to do with shaping and directing mostly intelligent and competent teams. I'm a concensus manager but an outfront leader, contstantly learning and applying that learning to what I do.
Being part of something is important to me, though I am unlikely to buy into too much regulation. I need to be able to be in charge of my own workload and direction within a framework of goals and objectives. Working alone has been a shock to my system, as the sense of belonging has been stripped away. I'm now returning to more structured environments with the book and with the publishing company and I have been leading the way within that.
Where could I lead the way more?
I'm overweight, unfit and diabetic. One of those three things will not go away but the others can. I need to start by leading myself into a place where I can find and use the reserves of energy that I need for other development. So wieght down and fitness up. My diabetes is currently well controlled and must stay that way.
I avoid confrontation. This is fine where there is real aggravation because that is just a sensible reaction to have. Where it is a problem, is where the confrontation is imagined or anticipated rather than real. In order to lead the way as part of Ecademy and of BlackStar, I need to put my point of view clearly, argue effectively and come to a good decision with the others involved. I simply don't do that. Instead, I read things that I feel I should get involved with and either feel the sinking feeling of impotence or the flash of frustrated anger. Neither emotion is good for my health - physical and mental.
So, if I were leading the way more often and consistently, I would be less frustrated and feel more in control. I would be clear in my objectives and balancing my work with other aspects of my work. I've been looking after my wife after a major operation recently and our walks, by the sea in the middle of the day, have been excellent for de-stressing me. I live in a great place. I chose to live here and between us we made it happen. I must never lose sight of the reasons I'm here.
I'm getting older now and the incidence of people my age and younger dying is getting higher. If I am to leave something behind that justifies my life, I have to be thinking about what it might be. I've had my part in raising three great children - now all young adults - but I have it in my mind that I want to be remembered for mor than that. It is likely to be something that I write that will do that. Ideally, it would be fiction but, if it is to be non fiction, A Friend in Every City is a good placce to start. What it must do is to inspire and educate generations to come, in the way that I've been inspired and educated by those who left their mark on the planet before me. As a game show host, I forget which, used to say - "It's make you mind up time."
posted by Andy Coote @ 11:59 pm
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