On the second-to-last day of my Leadership in Action project, the day before I was going to present my project to the rest of the charity, my supervisor said to me: “I need you to show them the benefits of the Laidlaw Programme, because some of them were skeptical about hiring someone so young”. Or something along those lines, I’m paraphrasing. I was immediately filled with nerves, because what if my coworkers of the past 6 weeks were unimpressed? What if they could see my lack of experience?
The presentation did actually go well, in spite of my doubts. I’m telling you this, because it about sums up my experience this summer. I got ridiculously invested into my research project, I poured my heart into it and showed up at the office every day trying to prove to myself that I belonged there, that Variety had been right to place their trust in me. The point I want to make is that to be a good leader and to be capable of leading others, you must trust yourself. That can be a daily battle, and whether you fight it through cheesy affirmations in the mirror or by putting in the extra hours on your laptop, it can be one of the most rewarding fights you ever put yourself through. At least, it was for me.
For context, this summer I worked at the head office of Variety, the Children’s Charity, whose mission is to empower children with disabilities from disadvantaged backgrounds to live fulfilled lives. I may not have been out in the field getting my hands dirty, and I was working only 20 minutes away from home, but I didn’t need anything more than a desk and my laptop to feel like I was accomplishing something meaningful. What was I doing? With just the prompt of “we don’t know anything about digital assistive technology, solve that problem for us” (again, paraphrasing, my supervisor wasn’t that blunt), I set to work scouring academic databases, analysing incomplete and disorganised spreadsheets, and interviewing a diversity of stakeholders to find anything I could on this niche intersection of technology, disability, inequality, education and healthcare. It was a wicked problem. Pun intended.
And that’s where the imposter syndrome kicked in. As a rule, I’m a pretty anxious person (and have the personality test scores to prove it), and furthermore, this LiA was my first real work experience. For most of the project, I felt like a child surrounded by real adults, which was unaided by the fact that I was researching a field that was completely new to me. I’m a geographer; I may know a lot about inequality, but very little about healthcare and technology. Though it was a key motivator throughout, my experience of having a disability didn’t help me much from an academic perspective; I’ve never needed assistive technology, and my middle class privately educated background means I’ve had few true barriers in accessing healthcare. Particularly in those first two weeks, it was difficult to trust that my research skills were good enough. I wanted this project to succeed, not just because I didn’t want to disappoint my supervisor and my coworkers, but because I wanted my research to be useful to the families and children who currently face a multitude of obstacles in obtaining and using digital assistive technology.
I did get through it. By week 6, I felt I’d produced a piece of work to be proud of, that my supervisor found comprehensive and interesting (!!!), and that I was excited to be showing off to my coworkers. I can no longer be bothered with paragraphs, so here’s a bullet point list of the tactics I used:
- Make the tricky decision first, ask for feedback later. 3 days into my project, I realised that I needed to do a complete change in direction because Plan A was unfeasible and also irrelevant. I felt petrified when I realised that, and all I wanted to do was for someone to take the decision out of my hands. The next day, I walked into my meeting and said “here’s what I’m going to do. This is why I’m going to do it”. My supervisor responded that he supported my decision and was glad I’d made it. That was the first moment where I felt that I could trust myself and my skills.
- Take the leap. You’ve probably heard that advice before, I know I have. I’m an introvert and proud of it, but I find it difficult to reach out to new people and build relationships. By the last week of my project, I felt that I’d wasted the opportunity to become friends with my coworkers because I’d spent most of the time glued to my laptop and avoiding conversation – again, I felt inferior to all these real adults with real jobs. Not wanting to leave Variety with any regrets, I built up the courage to actually chat with one of my colleagues (beyond just asking if they wanted tea or coffee). It was brilliant. We got no work done that day, but I think it was worth it.
- It’s okay to cry, to get frustrated, just get back up on your feet afterwards. I did actually cry once, and it was when a group of people I interviewed told me that I needed to retract all the times I’d quoted them in my project, and let me tell you, I was hacked off. Mostly at myself, because it felt like my inexperience was being shoved back in my face. Plus, I really didn’t want to have to remove all those quotes from my reports. Feeling emotional in response to something so simple made me feel unprofessional, which just made me want to cry more. It was a good learning experience, because it was a reminded that I can’t always keep on smiling and carrying on, and that I had to let myself feel my feelings – and that afterwards, once I’d done that, I could resolve all those upsets through a few nicely written emails and a promise to myself to do better next time.
You’re probably bored by now, so let me end on a high.
The outcome of my project was a report that identified and explored the 4 keys barriers children from disadvantaged backgrounds face in obtaining and using digital assistive technology, and culminated in 3 recommendations for Variety to act upon to overcome these obstacles in the future. With luck, I'll get to see the results of that as I continue to work with Variety in the next two years. I feel like it was an achievement, to do research that would actually go on to help other people, and I hope you do too.
Plus, by the end of my time with Variety, I felt happier and healthier than I had since starting university, not just because I was doing something every day instead of doomscrolling in bed, but because I was learning to trust myself. Every week that passed, I felt more and more that I belonged in the workplace, surrounded by these real adults who turned out to share the same opinions and passions as me, who valued my intelligence and my work, and who really weren’t as scary as I’d made them out to be in my head. Looking forward, I feel more confident that I can deal with responsibility, that I can help other people, and that my opinions and skills are valuable. I’m looking forward to embracing that in this next year with Laidlaw, and in saying yes to more opportunities instead of passing them by out of fear.