So what makes an inclusive leader? Our talk from Dr. Nabeela Kajee covered exactly that.
On Monday, we discussed how inclusive leadership is not only about ‘who’ is in the room but ‘how’ they’re held in the space as both an individual and in the collective. I found the talk especially thought-provoking, especially when we spoke about subconscious “voices” that remind us of our insecurities and that we are not good enough. As someone who learned English as a second language, for many years I’ve had a “voice” that told me that I would never speak English well enough. I’ve constantly felt silenced in rooms with native speakers, not feeling seen nor heard despite sharing the same space – hesitating in speech for fear of stumbling over my words, and finding greater ease in writing than in articulation. This is why I believe the distinction between “representation” and “inclusion” to be especially important. It is vital that we have both representation and inclusion in different contexts, as one does not necessarily guarantee the other: it is possible to be present in a room and not be “seen”, or to speak and not be truly “heard”. As a result of this, I found it incredibly refreshing to see both representation and inclusion in the slides and videos Nabeela showed us, and in the room we shared on Monday.
We were also invited to reflect on our core leadership values, and I would say that mine would be to ensure the inclusion of differing voices, to accommodate the views of all those who come and sit inside our room, and to listen to the stories of those who lack the means to enter our spaces. Leadership is more than just intention, it encompasses the actions we take to make our communities better for those we serve, and the courage and humility to accept and implement critical feedback.
Throughout the week, we worked on our literature review, created a survey for Sports Ambassadors to obtain qualitative data, and edited our R codes for the project – all of which contribute to our report write-up. The sports ambassador feedback will give us a more holistic view of the programme, as what we mostly have so far are quantitative data. We are still waiting on endline data for analysis, but I have been working on the coding elements for baseline data this week for our quantitative analysis. It was initially a bit complicated to get all the graphs to include all the information we need, on top of making them line up nicely for the report, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it!
This week was mostly data analysis and report write-up, with a sprinkle of socialisation with the other Laidlaw scholars (always appreciate good food and a good chat!).