What went well
- Interacted with research volunteers to understand what part of the collection and entry process needs to be prioritised/streamlined – Recorded how long the baseline usually takes
- Consolidated in charity funders; expectations and standards for the longitudinal project whilst familiarising myself with the wider research plan of Body & Soul
- Directly changed the excel coding format of some logging systems to allow interview scheduling to be more automated and streamlined
- Proud of having independently researched and implemented what I’ve learned to create efficiency within their systems
- A curiosity for learning, interacting with the team and learning from their experiences
What could've been done differently
- What I thought was going to be an easy way to find the correct lines of code for data processing (because I've seen previous demonstrations of it before) turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought.
- I do not have the expertise and realise there are gaps in my knowledge and learning I need to address before being able to complete the project
- Stalled: A running work laptop that could run R studio; supposedly was going to get the laptop fixed and have a better one this week but never received confirmation from the IT person of when they’re coming in.
- Misjudged priorities in my tasks and helped out with other mundane tasks for a good 2 hours during the week.
- What I can do differently: Keep referring back to the partner’s priorities and reduce manual labour as much as possible, step by step, instead of trying to reach impossible standards with my current knowledge. I can still make small changes while developing my skillset at the same time.
Laidlaw Values
Most visible values this week:
- Ambitious, Curious, Brave: Challenged myself to reach for the best possible outcome for the organisation’s data processing framework. Stretched my curiosity and passion for learning to the maximum on one of the most complex fields I’ve ever worked with, and could never have imagined working with 2 years ago.
- Determined and Fast: Learning ways to make small changes every day. Once my supervisor asked if I could make any immediate automating changes to a current dataset (interview scheduling and status updates for hundreds of participants); I found the solution within a morning and made a process which would manually take a whole morning, into a few seconds.
Tension in values – Ambitious and Fast: Due to my ambition to reach for the best possible outcome, I’ve put myself at a standard where I must take my time and set smaller milestones to reach the outcome step by step. This indefinitely clashed with the Fast value, and I found myself feeling discouraged and apprehensive about the amount of time it would take to develop my skillset. However, I realise I can still make small changes alongside learning, so I focus on being Curious and Brave to continue working in collaboration to make small changes while developing my skillset in a complex field.
Tested in Character
- Drive, Transcendence, Temperance: Realising my skillset isn’t quite at where I’d want it to be to complete my ambitious task, it was easy to resort to easier tasks for a sense of direction. It was also easy to be pessimistic, anxious, and impatient. However, to balance back to the virtues, I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the next small steps I could take on the day to ensure I make small but still meaningful progress.
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Humanity: As my work focuses in the field of data processing and management, sometimes I find myself being quite technical and stoic in my language and the way I interact with the data, and sometimes even with my colleagues. I had a gut feeling this isn’t who I am, and is not the kind of leader I want to be in handling such sensitive topics such as suicide, and vulnerable people who experience unimaginable adversity in life. I believe this is partly due to a cultural conflict, as in Hong Kong, most have a professional persona that detaches your inner human from the work you’re doing. At this charity, it’s very much integrated, and I am still finding my grips around work culture in the UK and at Body & Soul. I am very lucky and grateful to be working with a wonderful team that supports each other and creates a comfortable work environment especially in supporting vulnerable groups.
- I sense I need to do some reading on the side, especially on intensive DBT and how it helps individuals who are at their most vulnerable stabilise from a crisis stage. I’d imagine this would not only help my approach go from stoic to a bit more human, but also keep in mind of the wider purpose of this longitudinal study. This would motivate me to learn and overcome the challenge of learning code.
- Collaboration: Taking tasks that weren’t related to my goals; I was almost too compliant but came back to flexibility in finding possible solutions and names that my colleague could explore further, and informed them about the solutions I’ve found. I reshifted my focus to my priorities
Laidlaw Capacities I relied on most – People and Performance: In communicating and collaborating with others to enrich my approach and priorities in my project. Also communicating with others to understand the charity’s mission and vision, and understand the culture at the charity – which isn’t your typical mental healthcare service in the NHS, and encourages a much more holistic view on suicide prevention and talking about suicide. Process: Feeling stretched in prioritisation and time management of skill building and problem solving in terms of reaching my wider goals of my ambition. I must prioritise research and learning, whilst being honest about my capacity and making small but meaningful impact
Ethical engagement
- Interactions with the people directly involved in the manual data entry and processing of the work – this way I know what to prioritise in facilitating the automation of this process.
- It seems I am facilitating and leading in an area of expertise that the charity doesn’t have. I am also supporting in developing meaningful research questions from their existing work with my background in research and data analysis.
- I find myself needing to interact with staff that weren’t present this week to make progress in my ambitious task however.
- Unintended impact was the spontaneous Excel work; I’ve yet to see tangible impact in relation to my ambitious task
- Upon reading the funder’s expectations, and feeling the workplace environment here; I got a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in the work I’m doing, and feel very fortunate and grateful to be contributing to prevent a UK-wide crisis of youth mental health and suicide rates.
Next steps
- Being focussed and organised with my task and learning – touching base with my action plan and tailoring my curriculum to what needs to be prioritised
- Drive and Curious
- For data management: Build my skillset whilst communicating with who leads the research on making impactful adjustments.
- For research question development: Consolidate on pilot data, brainstorm meaningful questions, present my expertise and knowledge and collaborate to create meaningful and impactful action steps.