“Tell me about a time you led a team”

One way that I try to sell Girlguiding to potential new leaders is the boost to their CV. You pick up a lot of skills and if you know how to present that to an employer in a way they can understand, it can definitely put you a step ahead of your competition. Leadership, teamwork, commitment, safety – and so on and so on. There’s no paid job that demands such a mix of skills. And you have to be able to show this in a CV that’s supposed to be a page long! Girlguiding do have a page about it but it’s a bit buried and I don’t think it really emphasises your range and your brilliance as well as it could and what it means for your personal development and career progression.

Once you make the interview stage, you’ve got more breathing space to emphasise it. I’ve done it myself – admittedly, for a job within Girlguiding. I will never be as eloquent sitting on the wrong side of a desk, in a suit I’m uncomfortable wearing, while a stranger stares at me, holding the power of my future employment in their hands as I can be when I’m writing and rewriting a blog post but let’s answer that question about leading a team.

My paid job is not the kind where I do any leadership unless my boss brings in a teenage relative for two weeks of boredom-relief (“work experience”) in the holidays. I spend my days staring at spreadsheets and databases in my home office, wearing a t-shirt meant for walks and after-swims which hasn’t been washed in ages. I’m the gremlin in the corner, not the manager. So I would explain that, without using the word “gremlin” and without the grubby clothes and then…

“But I’ve been a volunteer with Girlguiding since 2007. I’ve run units on my own and with a team, which can be any combination of assistant leaders, unit helpers, parents on a volunteer rota, older Guides helping out and Young Leaders, and I’ve run units as a member of the unit team. As a volunteer in a unit, I’m also a member of a district and/or division which means I’m part of a team delivering Guiding in a particular area.

“Part of our leadership qualification involves learning about leadership styles, observing leadership styles in qualified leaders and learning about our own style. I’ve observed that some leaders think it’s all working perfectly when they’re sitting at the big table at the front with a cup of coffee while the girls get on with the activity on their own but I personally prefer to be sitting at the table with the girls, doing the activity myself. That serves two purposes – they have a live demonstration of how to do it, although you’ll always get interrupted by ‘can you do it for me?’ or ‘I don’t know how to start’ and you’ll probably be so busy sorting out the girls’ difficulties that you don’t finish your own. The other thing is that you get to sit with them, talk to them, get to know them. I don’t want to be a figurehead. I like to lead from within the group.

“Another example is planning meetings with my unit team. Everyone contributes – you get ideas from the girls and then the grown-ups slot it all into a timetable. We have a programme to follow, which the girls don’t really get, so you have certain things that need to be included. The younger ones, the Young Leaders and the Brownie Helpers in particular, are new blood and full of fresh ideas and you really need to be listening to them and treating them like you do the adults. You do sometimes have to say ‘That’s a great idea but it’s more of a summer term thing, so keep hold of it for the next meeting’ or ‘That’s a great idea but it’ll take longer to organise than we have this term, I’ll need to contact whoever’s responsible at county or region for advice and we’ll need to fundraise’ or ‘That’s a great idea, do you want to run that?” A leader needs to support their team – you need to know that your Young Leader has exams and can’t do a complex activity that takes the entire evening that week or the other adult leader has childcare issues that week or that Snowy is happy to run the activity but you’ll have to do the shopping for it, for example. Ask them which activities they want to run and which they really don’t want. As main leader, the only way you distinguish yourself from the others is in things like organising the activities that no one else wants to do, so everyone’s happy and no one feels like they’ve been forced into something they don’t want or ends up feeling uncomfortable or taken advantage of. Check in with them – are they still ok to organise that activity in two weeks? Is there anything you can do to help? Do you need me to get anything? Don’t forget to get a receipt – you’re not supposed to be out of pocket for this.

“You’re not supposed to be the one barking orders, you’re supposed to be the one who smooths the way for the team”

It’s all very long-winded and in context, I’d probably use the first paragraph to explain my role and then either the second or the third but probably not both, depending on the precise question or on what the interviewer wants to hear.

You can also use both of these to talk about a time you worked as part of a team. There’s a fine line between leadership and teamwork and my opinion is that if you’re doing leadership correctly, that line should be all the finer.

Now, if you can find a way to fit even a sentence of that into your CV or your cover letter, you’re all the closer to getting to spill the lot at an interview. I got my first job because I was a Ranger leader. I had very little relevant work experience, I had a lower second class degree and I had a handful of A Levels and GCSEs. But what I had was a record of commitment, leadership skills, teamwork and an implication of a lot more transferrable and “soft” skills and those are often worth more than industry-specific experience (also my new boss-to-be’s dog attended the interview and she liked me).