David W Duffy
Director at health and life sciences consultancy Prospectus
Confronting the notion of leadership in the later stages of my current career [there will be one other career!] is not something I had anticipated before being asked to take part in this programme.
I have had all sorts of leadership positions to date from the Boy Scouts (this was a lot more formative that I ever imagined), to captaining soccer and rugby teams, to being chairs of boards and lastly the most rewarding of all is starting, developing and leading a blue chip business strategy called Prospectus to greater success than I could ever have imagined.
My simplistic notion of leadership to date has been either, to lead, follow or get out of the way. I did my best to lead where I could, as I am a hopeless follower. I suspect none of my siblings or my 26-year-old son who all run their own businesses on three continents are great followers either. Must be in the family DNA.
I did all this without looking in the leadership mirror. So here I am trying to get my head around leadership in some considered manner for the first time ever. I don’t know how I have got by to date, so I must have done something right, but it’s hard to bottle it.
Was it my entrepreneurial father who started a business to earn more money than he did as an employed baker so my mother would marry him, or my rugby coach at school, my year at IMD Business School in Lausanne or a particularly inspiring partner in the consulting company I joined on leaving business school.
We are three months into the course now and I am really struck by how little I know about my own strengths and weaknesses and what I could be famous for. It’s worrying that I am still searching for this notion. Maybe I will be like one of George Best’s former wives or girlfriends, who was famous for being infamous.
I am really taken by the notion of interaction authenticity which we have to assess and record in our dealings with others at the beginning of the course and again right now. We record this for every half hour of every day for a week and again right now.
The question is to what extent are you being authentic to your own beliefs or values in an interaction versus putting on a front or just pretending. So I find myself being much more reflective on discussions with colleagues, friends, supermarket check out girls / boys etc. It’s a different lens. It’s better. They will be all horrified that I think about our conversations like this if they read this blog.
Coming back to the notion of leadership and authenticity, for me, good leadership is having that emotional and authentic connection with people that is genuine, deep rooted, based on shared values and with an abiding focus on a common goal.
PotentiaLife has the capacity to lead me in a different direction from where I was three months ago…which is the exciting bit. Life is not a straight line thank goodness. There is opportunity around every corner.
