Time: 
2015-04-26 13:30-2015-04-26 14:30
Room: 
CC-236

Session Track

Building Community

"Why are these people following me?"

Frances Hocutt

You've had an idea, or noticed a gap to fill, or wondered why no one's talking about an issue you care about. Like the motivated and competent person you are, you start working, or writing, or talking. People start noticing you, listening to you, even asking for your opinion about their own projects--and one day, you realize they're treating you just like you treat your own role models. You find this unsettling. Surely motivation and competence aren't that special, you think. You, a leader? Can't be. And if you actually are a leader, what do you do now?

Many of us—particularly those who’ve never thought of ourselves as outgoing, charismatic, or particularly talented—don’t think of ourselves as leaders. We save that for someone who’s a “natural leader” or a “people person,” or for our own role models (who may well feel the same way that we do!). What if we instead thought about leadership as a set of transferable skills that we could practice in our daily lives?

This talk is for anyone who’s not sure how “leader” or “role model” could possibly apply to them.  I'll tell the story of how I learned and claimed my leadership skills through my experiences as an organic chemist, a hackerspace founder, and a new developer coming into open source. I'll draw on current social psychology research on leadership, authenticity, and assertiveness and argue that leading is about what you do, not what you are. I’ll address impostor syndrome and other barriers to sharing our authentic selves, and will finally suggest ways to look beyond our implicit biases to recognize and foster leadership skills in those around us.

Frances Hocutt has previously given a version of this talk as a keynote speech at Open Source Bridge 2014 on leadership, mentorship, and building communities; spoken about MediaWiki web API client libraries at WikiConference USA 2014; and given a lecture on using APIs to create datasets for the fall 2014 Community Data Science Workshop in Seattle.

Short Link: http://lfnw.org/node/3592