A few months ago I attended the Frontrunner Programme for Disabled Students run by Common Purpose in association with Santander, and I wrote about it in my first ever blog post here!
https://elinangharadwilliams.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/common-purpose-frontrunner-for-disabled-students-in-association-with-santander/
Now a couple of months on, I attended the Santander Frontrunner for Disabled Students Alumni Workshop and had just as insightful experience as I did on the course in Newcastle back in July.
 
Passion and resonance
 
The course was held in Nottingham and was open to any alumni of the Frontrunner for Disabled Students programmes. Common Purpose hold a number of these programmes throughout the year in different locations across the country, so it was nice to see some familiar faces from the programme in Newcastle but also to meet other alumni of different programmes from the last couple of years.
In true Common Purpose style, I arrived to be welcomed by a very friendly bunch of people and was immediately made to feel at ease by the fact that all the access requirements I had requested had been met.
 
Side note: I can’t really emphasise how refreshing it is when this happens. It’s a depressing reality that I’ve gotten far too used to my requests being ignored or misinterpreted when I ask for things like work in accessible formats or accommodations for my guide dog, so that when it actually happens it leaves me flustered with disbelief and stammering an inner monologue along the lines of:
“You mean you actually paid attention when I asked for handouts to be emailed to me in Word? But… I only had to ask once…”
One of the things that makes me sing the praises of Common Purpose is that I only ever have to ask once for anything. More than that, they don’t make me feel like a massive pain in the back side for asking for something to be converted from picture PDF to Word or for someone to do a little orientation with me at the beginning. It’s a nice change not to be treated like a chore.
But Anyway! Enough of my wining, back to the workshop.
 
After the initial introductions, the first exercise we did was to get into groups and think about the different qualities possessed by six famous leaders – Oprah Winfrey, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Branson and Mahatma Gandhi. We were asked to think about words to describe them as leaders and afterwards to write down three words that we wanted to describe us as leaders. Mine were approachable, empathetic and fair.
Following a quick tea break, we then gathered to listen to our first speaker of the day; Peter Osborne has previously worked for the RNIB and now works as a Mobility Team Manager at the Hull branch of Guide Dogs. He shared his own personal experiences of leadership and discussed how passion and resonance play a part in effective leadership. I personally found this session very enlightening as a lot of Peter’s commented resonated with me and my hopes and concerns for my future career. It helped that Peter is an extremely approachable man who had the room laughing on several occasions.
 
Communicating your passions
 
Lunch was followed by our second speaker of the day Paul Bisping’s session on communicating our passion. After showing us some examples of both negative and positive ways other people communicated their passions, Paul asked us to get into groups of three to complete the task he’d set. In our groups, one was to be the talker and was tasked with talking for a few minutes about their passion, the questioner who would spend a couple of minutes questioning the talker about their passion after their initial speech and the observer who was to stay silent throughout and give feedback on both the talker and the questioner’s methods of communicating during the task. We were to rotate so that each person should have an opportunity to take each roll, so that’s what we did.
What was interesting to notice was that animation brings out different reactions in people; some people start talking very quickly, some people (like me) have so much to say they struggle to structure their points coherently, others find it difficult to express their thoughts about their passion especially if it’s something close to their hearts. One thing for certain though, there is no doubt that the difference between someone who’s really enthused about their topic and someone who isn’t is definitely noticeable. An important thing to remember in the context of leadership I think; you have a much better chance of persuading someone to believe or agree with you about something if you’re passionate about the topic yourself.
 
Passion in interviews
 
Our last speaker of the day was Jo Miller, a Branch Director within Santander. She spoke to us about the importance of conveying passion during the interview process. We practiced answering some interview questions using the STAR structure (situation, task, action, result) while conveying passion in our answers. The practice and feedback was very constructive and Jo’s insights into the recruitment process were invaluable.
 
Closing thoughts
 
Proceeding Jo’s session, the final session of the day was about reflecting on how to channel our passion into our goals. After taking a few quiet moments to imagine where we’d like to be in one, three, five years’ time, we regrouped and went back to the three words we’d noted down earlier in the day that we wanted to describe us as leaders. I volunteered to explain my words to the group. Standing up and talking in front of everyone was marginally easier than last time but I’m a way off from being able to own the room, though it’s a minor progress that I volunteered without too much hesitation to do it this time. Baby steps!
 
I will end this post by reemphasising how fantastic I feel Common Purpose are and how much I would highly recommend the Frontrunner Programme to any disabled student. Every single person I’ve ever met who works for Common Purpose have been refreshingly accommodating and friendly. Both events I’ve attended have been intense but immensely rewarding and I most definitely look forward to working with Common Purpose again in the future.
 
Find the Common Purpose website here:
http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/