Noving

Leading a Moving Noving

I’m Noving’s current team leader for this spring. What this means is that I’m going in a team leading forum with other team leaders in Novia where we share our experiences in leadership, read relating literature and reflecting in how we could develop our leadership within our own team!

I’ve made a concrete teamleader-contract which says what my learning goal and achievements I'd like to develop in my leadership and what my concrete duties as a team leader are. These duties have also been decided with the team; the team has also came up with a few of the duties they expect from me as a leader. Few of my official duties that we have decided are:

·    Taking care/keep track of common deadlines

·    Make decisions when team is stamping on one place

·    Lead the team (obviously)

·    Be the week manager if the supposed one is sick

·    Try to find a solution when team is facing problem’s and dilemmas

Some of these tasks are the most concrete yet the smallest tasks I have...!

In the team leader contract, I’m supposed to make my goals measurable and concrete so I can after spring see black on white what went good and what didn’t. However, one of my biggest insights this spring has been that leadership is not always so concrete and measurable! There is not one way to be a leader that everybody sees and can say what exactly that leader is doing.

I’ve realized from this time as a leader that leading a team is very moveable and abstract. It’s about adjusting your leadership and methods towards the situation as it occurs, and sometimes these methods are not even official methods, but a way of being, a way of interacting.

With other words - Leadership is so much more than just managing. So far one of my feedbacks have been more like a manager – focused on tasks and results. It haven’t been all in waste, that was good for that moment – but the team is moving all the time, which means I can’t stand on one place and do the same drill, I have to move with them to see what’s needed for this moment.

So now I’ve been focusing on having inspirational and positive energy as a leader in order to inspire the team to fight these two last weeks of school before internship – which is not very measurable or result focused, but being motivated and feeling work-joy can give a lot of great result itself!

The rest if my very short time I have left of being a team leader, I’ll work a lot with myself so that I can keep that “moving leadership style”, not to get stuck on leading in a certain way, focused on certain thing, but to adjust, and really see where team is heading at… Where team Noving actually is heading at, we’re going to clear once and for all when we are creating team Novings common goal on this Thursday’s training session. To be continued…!

Happy & sunny greetings, Minerva :)