"At the age of 23 I quit full time youth work. I was burnt out and decided to pursue my degree training and get a job in business.
"During the previous three years, along with a team of volunteers, I'd had great fun working with young people. In the course of developing them to be leaders, my creative skills had blossomed and we'd taken the young people on various local, national and international peer leadership programmes. However, fun as it was, I had become frustrated with my team and peers because (I felt) they didn’t do things as well as me. Frustration caused me to think that I was the solution. A very arrogant position which caused me to burn out and eventually quit.
"Eventually I got a job in South Kensington which required lots of commuter time.
"My mentor bought me the book “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham. As I read, I started to see that my peers were not, in fact ‘useless’ but that they had different strengths to me. I realised that while there were certain skills I was strong in, there were other skills my peers would be strong in. The way to get the best out of them would be to allow each to function in their area of strength.