Am I a good leader? Do I communicate well? Can I manage resources? All these questions and more will be coming to me tomorrow afternoon, so being as well prepared as I usually am, I will work on the answers tomorrow, just before midday!
To be honest I have been working on the answers all day, well at least since about 11am - as technically I managed to get up late, a first for me so far in NZ, and then I decided that the paperless office is a myth...I needed to print, and print plenty...print what? Job papers, position specifications, emails...print why? Today I just could not concentrate on anything for longer than 30 seconds, so I thought that by printing handy A4 sheets and using my trusty pen, I could force concentration through underscores, arrows and boxes.
Did it work? No! But I now have a small pile of paper with scribbles on, a large inkjet scanner fax thing, less ink in my pen, and an increasingly dull sensation of doom. The printer purchase itself took about 40 mins and has proven that you can haggle in NZ and get things thrown in - I got, or should that be won, a ream of paper - NZ$7 - But I did spend NZ$90 on the printer which was a reconditioned customer return. Now you know I asked what the problem was with it before I purchased, and the answer gave me hope that my particular brand of IT support will work out here. Apparently the customer could not get the thing to print, so he returned it, they tested it and found that the print cartridges were not installed - a simple fix, which is up there with SIOAOA (Switch It Off And On Again).
Why the feeling of doom then? Well it is hard to explain, but earlier in the day I was contacted by the HR lady from the government department who will interview me this week. All very straight forward, and a question to see if tomorrow at 1445 was OK - and time wise it was - she then emailed me a list of the competencies that will be the topic of the interview. What a good situation to be in, you may think, because now I could concentrate on exactly what it was I needed to provide evidence for. But 10 hours later what do I have? A handwritten list of the headings with blank space in between, oh, and a feeling of doom!
I don't know, maybe I am a traditionalist who likes to work on the edge and be reactive to situations without too much planning? Maybe that is why I have not done that well in interviews in the past? (I seem to remember my ISO interview preparation was 2 hours the night before!) Either way it is now 1/4 to 11 and what am I doing? Typing this blog entry! What am I not doing? Thinking about how I will answer the questions tomorrow.
OK, don't panic, I do have a cunning plan, and that plan is a good nights sleep, and a nice shower! But before I go, I can give you an update on the other activity of the day, namely organising dates - yes more than one, in fact, two so far! My profile is still doing OK, as I have 9 smiles (these are limited sorts of 'hellos' ), and 7 conversations on the go, which as I said, 2 of have got confirmed meetings. Any other day for this to happen and I would have been pretty excited, but today I am just a little flat (as you may be able to tell from reading this).
Of course there could be one reason for my current feelings....
A fairly obvious reason....
The elephant in the room reason....
No one is saying it but everyone is thinking it reason....
...yes, it could be...
... the chicken sandwich I had earlier which has given me a bad case of wind!
So, am I a good leader? Well, right now I will lead from the back, as I for one, would not want to be behind me!