First Bus recently launched a short story competition.

 

I listened to a radio programme where many of the competition’s entrants – bus drivers – spoke about their experience of writing.  As you might guess, the experience went far beyond simply putting pen to paper in a competitive process with their colleagues.

 

The bus drivers’ stories were moving beyond belief, and listening to them say they had never imagined they’d be able to write . . . and were now writing poems and short stories . . . with an intention to write more . . . and hearing what they said writing had done for them in their lives  . . . well, it was heart-warming, beautiful, humbling.  Their emotions came out while they were being interviewed – they reflected on their work, they laughed, and they cried with incredible, honest, outbursts of emotion as they expressed their feelings while reading extracts from their work.

It was a wonderful programme, and a wonderful initiative.  Simply amazing.

And I was taken with one particular story from a driver who had previously been a soldier in the Welsh Dragoons.  He spoke about writing to his old platoon commander who, 5 years after his departure, still remembered him and bothered to write back.  What that had meant to that particular soldier was priceless – and he cited it as an amazing example of a wonderful leader.

His story reminded me of a wonderful thing someone did for me recently.  To mark a very special occasion that was personal to me, one of the three most senior leaders in my organisation came down to my office and spent almost an hour talking to me, reflecting on past and shared experiences, and sharing more than a little of themselves – which helped me to gain a real insight into the complexity of their position, and reinforced some of what I already thought was their fabulousness.

Just like the Welsh Dragoons commander, sometimes it’s the little things that leaders can do that people remember for ever.