Yes, it has been several months, but it is time to get back to blogging from time to time. This post's topic is putting yourself out there, a key component of small-l leadership.

In a large organization that lacks strong centralization like the University, there is a lot of opportunity for small-l leadership. In fact, there are many more opportunities than the official leadership opportunities at the University. The challenging part is finding the right opportunity and deciding to take the risk of putting yourself out there. I'll use myself as an example.

The first step to putting myself out there was volunteering to join the program committee for the campus IT professional conference. This act though really wasn't the risk - the risk was what I did with my involvement. I suggested that we needed to start having at least one session that dealt with professional development of IT professionals at every conference. While there were a couple scattered around in the previous years, there was little consistency in offerings. These conferences seemed like too great of an opportunity to pass up when we could do something to change our culture of cynically isolated IT groups who felt they could do little to positively impact the campus.

Once I was part of the committee, I made sure there was at least one session on relationship management, leadership, organizational change, or professional development at each conference for the 2+ years of my time on the committee. At the last conference earlier this month, I was no longer on the committee, but the cultural change was in full effect - there were multiple sessions on leadership, professional development and other similarly non-technical subjects.

To be honest, I am really proud of this change, and I feel like I have received some recognition along the way for my role in it. Chuck Thompson and Dan Jacobsohn asked me to help start a community of interest around leadership and higher education. Brian McNurlen thought of me to be involved in the peer coaching group he started. Mona Heath invited me to attend the follow-up workshop to the IT@Illinois symposium and to facilitate a workshop to gather ideas. In the present, I have been leading a group to move into a pilot of a new role for IT on campus, and the CIO's office has even asked me to lead the web management components of the IT@Illinois project.

While I do say these things with a little bit of pride - you should be proud of the things you've accomplished - but my greater goal is to convince other IT professionals like you that you too can find new opportunities by putting yourself out there on a subject you believe in. Whether you are a sys admin or manage a small IT department, you can make a difference and get a great feeling of achievement when you see your original risk taking become something very positive.