I finished guiding a group through the Quiet Leadership journey this morning: leadership in the smallest of actions. One of the ideas we explored today was about ‘the weight that we carry’, and specifically, that which is imposed on us, or that we generate ourselves.
Through our actions we can impose weight on people: expectation, stereotype, belief, things which are hard to quantify or explain. Similarly we can generate our own weight: by thinking about what we should be doing, what is expected of us (reasonably or otherwise), what others have done, and again, stereotypes and cultural roles.
Use your sixty seconds today to consider this: what is something that is expected from you, by others.
For example: as a female parent, maybe there is an expectation that you will take a day off if your child it ill, or as a male parent maybe there is an expectation that you will be able to flex your diary more easily. Or as a young employee maybe there is an expectation that you will be willing to move for opportunity, or as an older one, maybe an expectation that you will not be flexible.
Then consider what you expect of others, and how much of that expectation is bound up in familiarity or stereotype
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Day #254