They can't all be Maurice Denham

A bunch of us have been sent on a "junior leadership" course as a nod to our moribund and petrified change process. Objectively it's nothing earth-shattering, in fact it's the sort of thing we were doing on a regular basis in a job I had twenty years ago, but it's a challengingly-different kettle of fish for most of the participants. Especially seeing how, as usual, none of us were prepared for the session beforehand by our line managers. A large part of this morning has involved the trainer trying to calm down fears of the unknown. I've found it a walk in the park, which is no credit to me; rather a reflection on the Library Service's lousy approach to staff training and development.

An illuminating piece of work involved our identifying character traits in ourselves and using these to settle into groups. I wasn't surprised to find myself sitting amongst reference librarians in the "Analysts" corner: a lot of the chafing between me and them is down to a conflict of similarities after all. Frog and Salome found themselves representing "Artistes" - extrovert performers who do things and think about them afterwards, if necessary. Nearly everyone else gathered in the "Sociable" corner - friendly, non-confrontational consensus-seekers. And there, sitting on her own, was Maybelle: the one and only "Driver" in the room.

"I'm Billy No-mates," she complained.

"Well," we explained, "if you will want to do things..."