Reflecting on leaving Government

So being only 3 odd weeks out of working in the public sector I suspect, quite strongly, that this is true. I have now moved (to a pretty awesome) company that is in the business of getting contracts for work from Government (and elsewhere) and as such needs to have a client supplier relationship with Government.

This is a bit of a change for me in terms of the actual work, but more than that it makes me think that I need to work really hard to ensure that I do not become one of those people who only engage with the public sector when there is a contract to be won. I want to be seen primarily as a collaborator with the secondary benefit of being able to be hired.

I know that in my 19 years of working in the public sector I have gathered at least “a bit” of knowledge that can help other public and civil servants. To feel that I am fulfilling my place in society and to take benefit from the network I have built I need to make sure that I remain altruistic in sharing my knowledge where appropriate. I already feel that I need to work at maintaining my relationships with old colleagues to develop a productive working relationship that can benefit everyone. For this reason I thank the existence of the One Team Government movement giving the perfect forum for this to happen.

Another thing I have been reflecting on over the past 3 weeks is just how awesome, overall, the public sector has been in developing me as a person. I look back and see immersive team leader development courses, intensive training in emotional intelligence, process re-engineering, unconscious bias, coaching not to forget my masters degree. On top of this over the last year having access to an awesome coach through Civil Service Learning meant I learned a hell of a lot about me and how I operate and how I impact on others.

I have spent some time in my new role meeting lots of people trying to actually get to know them quickly. I have lost my day to day contact with my colleagues in government who had became really good mates and I know for me I need to create that environment again quickly to ensure I stay sane and unstressed and satisfied at work.

Through these conversations I have realised just how passionate about helping develop good people to their potential. I knew I enjoyed helping people out by (mainly informal and often unsolicited) coaching and mentoring (and occasionally mild levels of violence) but I don’t think I had quite realised that doing this is actually one of my driving forces.

So, I am delighted to report that I have a bunch of really, really welcoming and genuinely nice colleagues and I feel I am already building fruitful relationships that potentially will (a) give me the support and friendship I need at work but also (b) allow me to use the development skills learned in the public sector.

I am not sure how coherent this is as a piece of writing, but as I have been thinking and writing it I realised that the purpose of writing it is to help me regain the emotional resilience that I felt I was on the edge of losing yesterday at GovCamp.

I found the event itself inspiring — seeing the mix of civil and public servants being open with interested people from other sectors discussing many many elements of change (and ticking the box for my requirement above to reform bonds with my previous network).

And yet on multiple occasions I found myself really struggling to engage and physically feeling the pressure of engagement, this I simply put down expending huge amounts of my emotional capital (as an introvert it simply burns my energy to be in extrovert mode for too long) for 6 days straight and any downtime I had being swallowed by processing all the stuff I had been learning.

David’s tweet was just the catalyst to start thinking about me again for a bit. I am already feeling better and in part that is why you are my hero David :-).

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