Lesson 1: Developing self-awareness at work

Through building self-awareness we can have a clearer perception of our personality, strengths, weaknesses, motivations, emotions and beliefs. Learning and Personal Development stems from recognizing areas of strengths and identifying areas where we want to make improvements. Self awareness can be especially beneficial when working collaboratively. It can help you recognize and navigate varying communication, learning and conflict management styles.

Readings:

  1. Explore how Carolyn Linton’s self-awareness about her emotional sensitivity channels into her career in Big girls do cry.

Wonder: How can sensitivity and emotional intelligence support the introduction of new digital tools and practices in your team?

  1. Being self-aware is an ongoing practice. To start, understanding your own biases can help you learn more about yourself, your communities and organization. Read Sarah Margles’s guide how to begin exploring your biases as a Public Service employee in Public servant, face your biases.

  2. Self-awareness not only includes looking for ways to improve and apply constructive criticism to yourself – but also involves being compassionate and caring towards yourself. Paula Vital shares how they apply mindfulness practices in their leadership and within teams in Managers in the public service: what can only you do?

Quizzes/Activities:

1. Self-Assessment Tool: PLUM Profile

Fill out the PLUM Discovery Survey:

The PLUM Discovery Survey is a tool often used by job seekers but it’s a great way to find out what your Top Talents, Work Style and Work Preferences are. Think of it as a professional personality test related to your careers.

Wonder: How do your top talents and work style align with digital government?

Wonder: Where do your work preferences stem from? (e.g., past experiences, influences from social circle, relationship with management)

Lesson 2: Nourishing a growth mindset

With a growth mindset, you will be able to generate a practice of continuous improvement.

Adopting a growth mindset will increase your comfort levels in taking calculated risks, initiating changes and transformations in any project, big or small.

Readings:

  1. Applying a growth mindset is difficult when polarization is a looming obstacle. Matt Leighninger sheds light on how public officials can adopt unfamiliar tools and systemic reforms to encourage dialogue and collaboration in Why governing in a time of polarization requires different tools and processes. They specifically focused on scaling through technology, using digital tools to “bridge-build” and facilitate discussion.

Wonder: Can you think of a time where incorporating a digital platform or mindset encouraged growth, goal setting or reduced conflicts related to opposing thoughts/opinions?

  1. Introducing different goals or processes can be challenging, especially when you may not be equipped with the right communication tools to describe them. Becoming accustomed to specific phrases and styles of language is natural but breaking away from that and expanding your ‘communication palette’ may be useful when discussing unconventional topics. Hilary Sutcliffe explores this idea further in their article: Weaning ourselves off buzzwords to communicate more clearly. Using alternatives may function as an inclusive practice, involving more people in your ideas and goals. These people now have a greater understanding of what you’re communicating and contribute to a collective growth mindset.

Wonder: Think of a time where a colleague, manager brought a new idea to your table that would enable growth or improvement. Was there anything that prevented you from understanding their perspective or vision? How did you address it?

  1. How can people with growth mindsets thrive? What conditions must exist for growth to occur? In the article, Explore how your department can deliver better services, an exploratory framework based on digital practices, roles and structures are discussed.

Understanding where growth is necessary involves understanding your current environments and structures.

Answer: Think about a time where you were in space that allowed you to exercise your growth mindset? What encouraged/supported your initiative? What did you learn from that experience?

Quizzes/Activities:

1. Set a SMART goal

Choose a digital skill, like:

  • data analytics
  • user experience
  • digital marketing

Set a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goal for it! Read this article Practical Steps to Reach your Goals in 2022 to help you.

Lesson 3: Cultivating empathy

Holding empathy in your workplaces can alleviate discomfort by providing people safety and a judgment-free space. When creating any government products and services, practising empathy will channel into your research, testing processes and allow you to resonate with the public and your end users.

Readings:

  1. Actively listening can support your empathy practice in workplaces. Listening carefully can help identify which ways you can offer your empathy - is it regarding brainstorming? User research? Addressing reasons for setbacks? Genuine empathetic responses require an understanding of context and varying perspectives. Read the article Learning from the Apolitical community: Active listening to learn how to apply this technique in government.

Answer the questions prompted in the article yourself:

  • How would you define “active listening”?
  • How will it help you do your job better?
  • Why is active listening important in digital government, specifically?

  1. Have you come across empathy training in your workplace before? In Why empathy training is unlikely to work, Williamson shares the outcome of mandatory training for empathy and questions its objectives, while exploring alternatives. Have any of the following supported your empathy practice? An academic experience (any course, training modules, conference), a specific workplace experience, media (Any TV show, movie, book)? If so, jot down 1 -2 examples for each.

  2. How seeking and speaking the truth about racism can transform individuals and organizations

  1. Learn about how empathy supports digital collaboration and enhances workplace relations in 3 lessons from leading virtual teams.

Quizzes/Activities:

  1. Self-Assessment Tool: Apolitical Future Skills Tracker

The Apolitical Future Skills Tracker helps you find out what your strongest abilities working in government are. You’ll see your scores across eight key abilities and links to resources you may find useful for further development.

Pre-Assessment: BUT, before you take the assessment, write down three key abilities you think the Skills Tracker will showcase as your strongest.

Post Assessment: Match your results and guesses for your strongest key abilities.

  • How many did you guess correctly?
  • Are there any that surprised you? Which ones?
  • How can practising empathy enhance your present abilities?

Other resources:

Lesson 4: Cultivate culture

A creative outlook can help one navigate both personal life and workplace scenarios. For example, using brainstorming techniques to find creative solutions to problems in the workplace can help lead innovation and change. In this sense, a creative outlook can also help to encourage motivation and productivity in the workplace.

Readings:

  1. Creativity is a necessary tool in finding solutions to difficult problems. Creativity also serves as a launching point for ideation and collaboration with others. Read the article How creative thinking thrives and dies.

Activites:

1. Free-writing exercise

Try a free-writing exercise to brainstorm solutions to a problem. Set a timer for 10 minutes and just write out any and all thoughts to come to mind. At the end of the 10 minutes, you can try making a mind map or brainstorming your thoughts on a digital whiteboard like Miro.

2. Journaling activty

When you are working on a problem, do you tend to look at it from various perspectives? If not, try thinking about the problem as a sum of smaller parts and create an approach that tackles the problem one step at a time.

Do you seek out and appreciate new experiences and approach new experiences with enthusiasm and passion? Try at least one new experience and see how it feels!

Lesson 5: Resilience and recovery

Just like Rome, building resilience is not something that can happen in a day. But we can practise resilience whenever we are approached with a problem or situation in order to gain experience and perspective over time. The first step is having a positive outlook on the outcome of your situation. We can do this by practising mindfulness in the moment and avoiding overthinking or ruminating when it comes to our thoughts.

Readings:

  1. In Talk about it - Support Network, Rell Deshaw discusses how with courage, humility, and an open mind public servants can learn to lean on one another in difficult times to help strengthen their resilience.

  2. In Resilience can train you to become an Optimist, Rosalinda Scalia explains that no one teaches you how to become an optimist. She gives tips on how to remain resilient as a public servant.

  3. In Let’s talk about public servants’ hidden superpower - Resilience, Brigitte Metzler talks about how a public servant’s secret power is resilience. Metzler explores how public servants have a unique sense of dedication and determination to keep on moving forward.

Activities:

1. Self-refecltion:

In the realms of Digital Government, how can you be resilient when there is lack of encouragement or support when transitioning to different/new ways of working and thinking?

  • List 3 different support networks in your organization and mention how it would benefit you if you joined them (e.g., drop-in, group channel, wellness team, networking).

2. Journaling activity

Do you approach every challenge as though you can work through it somehow? Sometimes, simply having this positive outlook can help you to build resilience around a situation! Think of a complex problem, and try to tackle it with an optimist mindset.

Other resources:

Lesson 6: Practise inclusion

How can we ensure that we are fostering an inclusive environment? The first step is having an awareness of our surroundings and paying attention to our colleagues and their experiences. A way we can better attune ourselves to our surroundings is by teaching ourselves how to recognize our own biases. You can learn how to recognize your own biases by practicing mindfulness. If you pay attention to the thoughts and associations you have about people with different characteristics and identities, you can learn to reflect on a thought that is biased and then take action towards educating yourself.

Activity:

1. Implication Association Test

Take this quiz on how to recognize bias: Implication Association Test

What support groups have helped you feel more included in your workplace or community, how would you bring those inclusion practices into your workplace/team?

Readings:

  1. The article Women are being left offline costing government billions, urges governments to practice equality as failing to close the digital gender gap will result in a huge loss of business, creativity, and culture.

  2. How do marginalised groups experience subtle discrimination in contemporary workplaces? Explores how managers must educate themselves and empathize with the lives of minorities to ensure subtle discrimintation does not take place in their work environments.

  3. Inclusion is no longer a nice bonus outlines how inequality is putting a break on economic growth.

Activity:

1. Self-reflection

Have you noticed that not everyone is able to speak up during a meeting? Try asking others if they have anything to add if you notice that they have not yet had a turn to speak during team meetings.

Are you conscious of any personal biases you may have? We want to try our best to keep personal biases from interfering with our decision-making processes. To practise this, first we can acknowledge if any biases exist, and then we can adjust our perspectives to open our point of view.

Other resources

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