Gillian Smith, Deputy Director in Civil Service Resourcing, has been a keen supporter of Civil Service Local and the East Midlands Academy. For the 2014 academy she agreed to attend as an inspirational speaker and captivated the delegates with her moving and personal story about her career progression in the civil service. This year we asked her to come back to perform a different role - a Dragon in our Dragons Den. This is what she thought about it…
I was delighted to be involved again this year with the East Midlands Academy. It has been a privilege to work with staff from across the region over the last few years, and I have enjoyed coaching and mentoring people I have met at previous academies, watching their successes and development with pride and pleasure.
This year I am taking a different role and with some trepidation! I don’t like to think of being seen as a dragon and I won’t be breathing fire down the necks of anyone in the project group that I will be working with. They don’t need that. They are a fantastic group of people and they will deliver on their project without that added pressure from me!
What I want to do is offer support to the group, an opportunity to seek my advice and constructive challenge, drawing on my experiences as a civil servant and using my little black book of contacts as they put it, to help them get to the leaders they will need to influence to make their project idea fly.
Their project is all about connecting people in frontline jobs across the region by providing opportunities to share success stories and solutions to common challenges across Departments. Initially this will be through face to face events, and if successful, the ambition is to go digital at the end of the project. Keep watching the blog to find out more!