This week I attended the Future Shapers Workplace Integration presentation held by the Committee of Ballarat. At the halfway point of the Future Shapers course, it's an opportunity to bring together some of the participants and their employers to discuss how things have been going. This is important because most of the participants have been sponsored by their workplaces to be part of the course. This can cover not only the fees for the program but the 22ish days they’ll be out of the office and that excludes the time it will take to complete the community project. It is a pretty major investment.
Getting feedback from employers is vital to make sure that the course is bringing tangible value back into the workplace and it was interesting to see how this is happening in different organisations. I think the strongest evidence of the success of the course is the amount of businesses that reinvest every year by sponsoring candidates.
Given the fact that Future Shapers has run (in some form) for nearly 20 years, there are lots of alumni that are now managers and executives that are sending staff members through the course knowing the benefits of doing so. There were some first time businesses that had sent in a staff member and we’re already seeing the benefits of increased confidence and engagement from their people.
One thing I did notice was that people who had already gone through the course were really fabulous supporters for their current Future Shapers. Being able to reflect upon similar experiences is clearly making their relationships stronger. The businesses that made space for their Future Shapers to share and talk about the course were obviously perceiving the most value from their investment. I obviously share all of my reflections with Matt and the HUCX team but I also like to include you dear reader.
Measuring impact of a course like Future Shapers is tricky to gauge because although its primary focus is community leadership, I’d argue that it's more a very profound journey of personal growth and discovery. This realisation hit me when I was sitting in this presentation listening to employers fondly talk about their employees and all the growth they’ve witnessed and I looked at Matt who had been staring at the carpet for the last 20 minutes.
I made Matt come to this meeting because since I’d received a scholarship, I felt it was important for us to show these other businesses (who could afford to send people through) how profound this whole experience had been so far for not only me but us as a business.
I had 100 things in my head that I wanted Matt to talk about - I wanted him to say how much fun it has been to host all the Future Shapers when they came into HUCX for our Digital Economy program day. I wanted him to say how many fantastic connections we’d made by just being exposed to so many different people and experiences. Most of all I wanted him to scream from the rooftop that me doing Future Shapers had helped define our purpose and direction as a business and create more motenum than anything else we’ve done in years.
I was sitting close to him silently screaming, ‘SAY SOMETHING!! COME ON!’ This is your chance to say all the wonderful things about me and the growth you’ve seen and all the cool shit we do and he didn’t. He said a few things when pressed but it wasn’t the mighty ducks moment I had envisioned.
I was so cross.
On reflection I realised something pretty profound. I understood and truly felt how much I’ve changed in the last 6 months of doing Future Shapers. My expectations of myself and what I’m capable of have shifted completely. For the last 6 or so years I’ve been tinkering away at investing more in myself. Reading a bit of Bene Brown here. Doing a bit of mediation there. The last 6 months however have turbo-charged this transformation to a point where I need to acknowledge that I’m no longer the same person.
Supposedly we completely shed and grow a new set of skin once every 7 years so you could argue that I am technically a new person. What I realised was that Matt’s behaviour wasn’t acceptable to me in that sitatuion. To his credit, I made him go and he really doesn’t like networking things especially when there are pressing matters at work. That's no excuse but I should have perhaps been more explicit about what my expectations were.
What I’ve come to understand is that these sort of situations ARE my strength. People and engagement are my jam. I didn’t appreciate just how much until people I really admire and trust have told me so (both within and outside the course). My confidence in these situations has changed. No longer am I the one in the back row but I want to be talking and sharing and finding out more. I can now see why mature age students at uni always ask so many annoying questions, it's because they give a shit and they no longer give a shit about what other people think of them.
Without sounding like a complete wanker I would almost put it down to the removal or muting of ego. To be in the service of others just because. Not treating people as a means to an end. This can be the difference between perceived ‘leaders’ versus ‘community leaders’. It’s about ‘we’ not ‘I’.
‘We-ness’ or Community leadership is all about cooperation, shared goals and collaboration. ‘I’ leadership is all about hierarchy, controlling others and ‘The Great Man Theory’. Just look at the shit show that is US politics right now with two old white men both claiming to be everyone’s saviour. Imagine what the states would look like with someone like Jacinda Ardern at the helm who led with kindness and empathy.
I’m not suggesting Matt doesn’t give a shit by the way. Far from it. We just choose to spend our shits in different ways. This is when understanding your strengths becomes really important, especially when you work with your one true love. My time so far in Future Shapers has given me countless opportunities to exercise and express this new version of myself. With the support and encouragement of my teammates and the relationships and connections I’ve made in the last 6 months I feel like I’ve gone from a ‘Level 2’ to a ‘Level 10’ version of myself.
These sort of transformations don’t happen in vacuum. They happen because you open yourself up to experiences that you wouldn’t normally have. You step out of the comfort zone and into the growth zone as they say. Most of all it is because you engage with other people. The shift from ‘I’ to ‘we’ is the catalyst. It’s always about the people.
