Learning to Lead Despite my Shyness

16 March 2018

At 6:30 a.m. on a February morning, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life—to get up and participate in a leadership training session with the Army at City of Edinburgh Universities Officers’ Training Corps. I had booked this training two months earlier, with the ambition of challenging myself and moving out of my comfort zone. But as the training drew nearer, the feeling of regret began to grow.

Two things were triggering my anxiety. Firstly, my perceived weaknesses. Although I have chosen leadership skills as one of my self-development goals as part of the Edinburgh Award, I rarely think of myself as a leader. My personality traits contrast hugely with the general traits of good leaders, such as dominance, self-assurance, and so on. My previous leadership assignment highlighted that good leaders don't necessarily have to have these traits. Nevertheless, my weaknesses made me afraid.

Secondly, the unknowns of the day! When I booked this session, I didn’t contact any friends because I wanted to force myself to talk to different people and overcome my shyness. However, my courage was getting lost now that the training day had arrived. None of my friends would be in the training session, I didn't know what to expect from the day and I hadn't been on this kind of training before.

I was able to find more and more reasons to give up.

But when I compared the two options: to give up and stay at home the whole day versus challenging myself to do something new, I could see clearly what I needed to do.

Learning from a team

After we arrived, participants were assigned to different teams to attempt a variety of leaderless tasks. This helped us to understand our role in the team and our strengths and weaknesses. After several tasks, I became aware of my weaknesses in the team tasks. Specifically, I was less confident in putting forward my ideas or thoughts. As a perfectionist, I am reluctant to provide the solutions of the tasks unless I am 100% sure that it is the best solution. Besides, I am afraid to be blamed by others so I tend to hold back, which left me feeling unsatisfied with my performance in the team tasks and less energetic.

Simultaneously, I realised that characteristics such as being patient and supportive could help me to be a good team player. Moreover, I learned much more from my team members than from the tasks themselves. Their responsiveness, courage, their attitude towards difficulties or failure, and their approach to problem solving were valuable lessons for me.

Learn by Leading

In the later tasks, every team member had the opportunity to lead the team once to achieve a task successfully. The coach briefed the assigned leader for two minutes and the leader was then given two minutes to formulate a plan. The leader then had ten minutes to brief the other members of the team and lead them to complete the tasks. In my task, our team had to prepare food packages for refugees. The food had to be packaged and had to meet certain nutritional requirements (e.g. calories, salt, fat) The helicopter would be leaving with the food in ten minutes, and we needed to produce as many food packages as possible. I felt great stress when I received my task because within two minutes, I couldn't generate a whole ‘strategy’ to solve the problem. However, I began by dividing our team into two groups to calculate the nutritional ingredient of all the food so that we could figure out what each food pack needed to contain.

Learning from Feedback

After each task, the coach provided feedback on the leader's and team members’ behaviour. From the feedback I learned that leadership is not just about getting things done and achieving the objectives; it is about how you interact with the team. For example, did the leader take on a leading role and assign tasks? Were the team members on board and supportive of the leader?

Moreover, I understand now that leadership is complex. Sometimes leaders are the first person to move and make a decision, quickly getting an overview of the whole situation and assigning tasks. Other leaders are better at observing from the back and adjusting the strategy. While some leaders are good at finding and implementing a solution so that followers can just finish the tasks without thinking, others will generate ideas from the followers and motivate the team to think and act.

Learning from Yourself

Overall, at the end of the session, I learned a lot from my team, from taking on the role of leader and from the feedback. Our team came away with second prize, which was a good enough result to end the day. I became more aware of my limitations as a leader, and it was a challenging day for me. But now, at least I know I can be a good leader.

In short, leadership is a compulsory skill in life. You might choose to not be a leader, but you still need to have the capabilities of a leader. Personally, I still don’t want to be a leader and I don't enjoy the role of leadership either, but I know that I can do it if I have to.

There is no definitive strategy on how to be a good leader. The only way to learn is through experience. Having reflected on my decision to attend the leadership training that morning, I’d like to share that, when you are faced with various options and you don't know what to do, think about choosing the hardest option. Challenge yourself and you will never regret it.

Qingfen, MSc International Human Resource Management (2018)