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Thoughts on Quiet Leadership I’ve always been a quiet kind of person; I’m softly spoken and generally fairly reserved, and I tend to prefer thinking something through by myself to brainstorming in a group.

So why do women choose Crossing Thresholds? Every time I meet a new group I feel a sense of excitement and curiosity.  Each person who comes on Crossing Thresholds comes from such a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and expectations; each one unique. What unites everyone, is that they are about to embark on the Crossing Thresholds journey, learning from and supporting each other.

My time on Crossing Thresholds In 2016, while looking for leadership learning on the Civil Service Learning site, I stumbled across Crossing Thresholds, a year-long programme for women who want to develop their career. Unlike other development programmes, Crossing Thresholds brings people together from across the civil service and I have been learning alongside women from OfQual, the Department for Work & Pensions and the Department for Education as well as from HMRC.  

What is mindfulness and how can it help us? Mindfulness means deliberately attending to and becoming more aware of our experience: our thoughts, feelings and body sensations. This allows us to clearly perceive thoughts, physical sensations, emotions and events at the moment they occur without reacting in an automatic or habitual way. Experiences don’t overwhelm us and we become steady through life’s ups and downs.

Preparing for interviews I often hear people on the Thresholds Programme say ‘I haven’t had an interview for years’. If you are going for your dream job you will want to feel confident, informed and practiced. The best way to do this is to prepare well! Find out as much as you can about the job you are applying for Hopefully you know enough about the role to have decided this job is right for you. If you are passionate about the role this will shine through at the interview, so make sure it is a good fit for you before going any further.

Four Types of Job Shadowing... and How to Choose Which is Right for You Job Shadowing is often associated with people who are new to the world of work and not sure where to begin their career path. In this situation, job shadowing can provide some very helpful insights, both into the role itself as well as the potential work environment.

Crossing Thresholds a year on…….What was I going to learn and what could I expect from an alumni event? To be honest before the event and a year after my cohort ended I felt frustrated, unsettled and I needed to reinvigorate my career.

There are a lot of great reasons to blog about Crossing Thresholds. Here I list just a few...

It was the end of 2016 and I’d just finished as evidence lead on an inspection by the Independent Chief Inspector for Immigration and Borders for our business area. My manager had gone on maternity leave and I was starting to think that I needed to do something different. I’d been in the Civil Service for 23 years and needed help to find a new direction, which I thought at the time would still be in the Civil Service.

There will never be ‘enough’ time to prioritise our own development, so make time. I cannot over-emphasise this. The people who get the most value from Crossing Thresholds are the people who make it work for them. You have already come so far by taking the steps to get your line manager’s approval, sign up and attend module 1, so why not make this the ‘year of you’. Here are a few ideas for ways you can really kick-start your journey, get the momentum going and experience some immediate benefits.

As I stepped into the airport terminal in Abidjan, I had a strange sense of familiarity and confusion. It was an interesting start- yellow fever guards, some enforced passport displacement, navigating around sim card salesman to find the correct minibus to the hotel on behalf of the surprisingly non-french speaking group of hotel guests. It was March 2016 and I feel this way every time I go to a different part of Africa. Somehow comforted by similarities but also aware of the completely particular environment I’m experiencing.

We've had an amazing day, running simultaneous sessions on 'Authentic Personal Branding' at IWD events in London, Bristol and Cardiff. In spite of the time constraints, people really engaged with the challenge of coming up with three "I" sentences which differentiated them from others.