The Leadership in Action project has been a rewarding and fruitful experience for me. I was engaged in a remote Think Pacific summer programme in which our team has been researching on mental health issues for the Psychiatric Survivors Association. Although it is a pity that we had to stay in Hong Kong due to the coronavirus pandemic, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with my teammates and was inspired by the Fiji culture.
Throughout the 6-week programme, I worked with other Laidlaw scholars to conduct a project which aims to promote mental health awareness in Fiji. To help us brainstorm the topic, a variety of activities were arranged by Think Pacific, such as skill sessions, culture workshop, talks given by guest speakers and weekly reflection sessions. The hosts from Think Pacific, Naomi and Lavenia, were cheerful and engaged us in joining different sessions. We have learnt a lot about the culture of Fiji such as the welcoming celebration “Sevusevu” and had fun during the session. We had learnt how to say “Hello” in Fijian and used it to greet each other in the Zoom sessions. The skill session was inspirating as well. One of the skills that I found the most useful was “sandwich method of criticism”, which means wrapping negative feedback in positive comments to create a pleasant atmosphere for the discussion. Sometimes when I wanted to make some negative comments, I was struggling about how I should say it in order not to hurt someone’s feelings. Yet, things may get worse if I did not mention it. I would try to apply the sandwich method for giving constructive feedback when I work with others. I realize that the sandwich method would be better to motivate teammates, instead of using criticism to harshly attack someone. This sandwich method can be applied for everyday life conversation, such as informing my groupmates of some mistakes in the project or telling my friends something they may not want to hear. I realize that giving feedback is also an important leadership skill which helps the team work better and smoothly.
Speaking of the project, it is quite challenging for us to think of an appropriate topic to present since we were working remotely and so not every teammate were present during the discussion. Fortunately, all our teammates were very helpful and clarified information whenever there were misunderstandings. To raise public awareness towards mental issues and educate public on how to take care of people who are suffering from mental illnesses, we have decided to select twelve different types of mental illnesses to provide simple yet comprehensive introductions of different mental illnesses to the public. For each mental illness, we created several posters which includes a brief introduction, symptoms and/or causes, treatments and found related videos for further details. By working with different Laidlaw scholars from various backgrounds, I have gained valuable skills for my personal growth. I am truly grateful to work with my teammates who were supportive and motivated to complete the project. When I had some technical problems about using Canva to make the posters, my groupmates were all very willing to help me solve the problems. The Think Pacific host were encouraging and very nice as well. They responded to our questions promptly and gave constructive comments on how to modify our posters. Overall, it is a great experience to work with them in the project.