I know a few people in the SQL Server community who have been involved in Scouting. A couple of them have taken or helped lead Scoutings leadership training program known as Wood Badge. It’s an amazing program. I won’t even attempt to tell you what Wood Badge has done for me and what it does for Scouting. Suffice to say, Wood Badge helped to make me a better person and in return, I helped make Scouting better.
What’s this have to do with SQL Server? Not much really. But, what does it have to do with you and your career? Tons.
It was pointed out to me that there’s an Oracle users group that actually runs a leadership program. You can read about it here.
It strikes me that, maybe this is something we in the SQL Community ought to have. I’m posting this to see what kind of interest there is, if any. So if you regularly just read this blog and never post, sorry, today is the day it’ll really matter if you respond. So please, read through my general thoughts and let me know what you think.
First up, this needs to cover generic leadership principals such as vision, planning, communication, goals and measures and all the rest. It’s not about management. It’s about leadership. These are different and will be differentiated. This also has to have available some mentors, people who volunteer to monitor & guide attendees through the process. There will probably also be volunteers leading the classes, possibly independent of the list of mentors, we’ll see. Additional training would be on, well, easier to say what it won’t be on. It won’t be on speaking, technical stuff of any kind, or any company or technology. Instead, it would be about leading, maybe community building, running a user group, setting up and running an event, that sort of thing. It’s not going to be a single class. It’s going to take time. Let’s say, somewhere between 6 months to a year of commitment to the leadership courses (done remotely, anything else is too insane for me to consider managing) and then another 6 months committed to delivering on your project(s). And yes, this means that there will be an expected amount of work to be delivered as part of the whole thing. I’m not suggesting holding a class and then printing out certificates. I’m suggesting something similar to Wood Badge, something that you would be proud to put on your resume, something you’d be clamoring to help out with after you complete it. One more thought, it would be best if we could get an organization to back it. Barring that, we’d need to create an organization to back it. There would probably have to be a charge for this, and not a trivial one either (I haven’t thought it through, but let’s say more than $500, less than $5000, figure it out as needed). It won’t be open to anyone. I suppose an open call for application, but since it requires commitment, it might be invite only. Something to talk about. It needs a name.
This is not a course outline or an abstract. It’s really just a stream of thoughts to act as the starting point towards building a structure. My question to you is, what’s the interest? Please post. If I get my usual three responses, I’ll just write this off as an idea that won’t fly and move on.
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