With many thanks to the Durham Laidlaw office, I have participated in a series of workshops over the past two days to prepare for my Leadership in Action project this summer. Led by Graeme Taylor (Centred Coaching) with talks from Durham University academics Dr. Nikki Rutter (“Voluntourism vs. Volunteering”) and Dr. Bruce Malamud (“Communicating Resilience to Hazards”), the training emphasized the importance of utilizing character and ethics to have an impactful LiA.
I, and the rest of the Durham 2025 cohort, had met Graeme before as a speaker in our pre-research leadership training held at the beginning of last summer. Like then, his sessions focused on using personal values to motivate action and ultimately achieve a vision. Identifying what we find most important through self-reflection and example scenarios enables easier, more confident decision-making under pressure. However, while Graeme’s message is consistent, its application is vastly different in the LiA setting versus the research one: in addition to being alone in an unfamiliar environment, the work we are doing is directly impacting another community’s daily life. There is a responsibility to do excellent, honest work for not just ethical, but pragmatic reasons. Re-examining the sense of self I have established across the initial leadership training, my research project, and Oxford Character Project sessions explicitly through the lens of my LiA pushed me to consider my character not as a component of my inner self, but as the driving force for my actions, and thus noticeable change.
In the flurry of securing an independent LiA organization; completing necessary paperwork and receiving approval; and accounting for inoculations, visas, and other practical concerns, it can be very easy to see the project as one more external complication to balance alongside coursework and extracurriculars. What the workshops provided was time to invert this and realize that all of it, from the application process to snap decisions made throughout the six-week period, is a reflection of internal character, and moreover a set of opportunities to re-evaluate how my own personal values manifest in the real world. Understanding the underlying current beneath my actions enables me to better tailor them to achieve different goals, as well as to alleviate self-doubt, since I am more confident that my decisions align with what I believe. Going into my LiA, it will easier to both recognize the broader picture – applying the my past experience to serve others – and execute each smaller step throughout.
The two talks provided more knowledge specific to the execution of the LiA: ensuring an organization is doing ethical work and using different methods to communicate important technical information effectively. In the first talk, “Voluntourism vs. Volunteering”, we considered how malicious individuals may take advantage of work done by volunteer organizations, and the role of the “voluntourism” model in enabling this. Volunteers must take care not to undermine the knowledge and skills of the community members they seek to support, and that they see their opportunity as one of sacrifice and giving back, since their presence there is due to privilege, even if they have altruistic intentions. Additionally, examining what safeguards the organization has in place, as well as national and local laws, is essential to identify all possible harm and protect vulnerable communities. In “Communicating Resilience to Hazards”, we discussed different strategies to ensure communication regarding hazards is best relayed to people from a non-scientific background. The use of tools such as serious games and different writing styles can improve the public’s ability to respond to natural disasters and understand the risk they are in. Gaining insight from academics was a useful supplement to the training, as it highlighted researched pitfalls that may arise in the LiA, and what practical action can prevent them. Ultimately, like all community engagement work, the project must result in real positive change with minimal drawbacks.
Graeme closed the training on the second day with Keyes’s Hokusai Says, a poem which depicts the prolific Great Wave printmaker imploring a reader that “…Everything has its own life / Everything lives inside us…” and to “…Let life live through you”. This encapsulates the main takeaways: the LiA brings together a plethora of unique people, places, and experiences; but while cultural norms may be different, the desired outcomes are shared by all individuals committed to the project, and authentic work will emerge from viewing all actions through the lens of steady character values.