Leadership for me today is something that is inexorably intertwined and grounded by teamwork. Before the program, this free-floating ideal of ‘leadership’ brought up someone in front of the crowd, someone elevated above the rest, coaxing and leading them towards some ‘promise’. The concept seemed rudimentary and linear, with a single person being vested with authority, and the rest having to listen, with the ‘skills’ of leadership being how to bring forth this state in the group. However as I grew through this programme, both during training sessions and on the ground in the Leadership in Action and Research Projects, I came to find how leadership is not something so simplistic. It is instead deeply rooted in ever changing dynamics of negotiation, give and take, and sometimes even conflict. This complication of my understanding of leadership has deeply enriched the way I will approach positions of leadership in the future. I now see leadership as something contentious and ever evolving. I now conceptualize it as when I have been vested with the authority to make decisions and move a project the way I see as the best, while also always checking in with my team members, and aiming to produce an environment conducive to debate, discussion, and argumentation. This more dynamic understanding of leadership has helped me navigate my Research Project, where large issues regarding acquiring visas have made it so we had to communicate across different time zones and let the research process unfold with a lot more trust and patience due to these complicating factors. 

I believe I have developed extensively in my role as a leader through this program, but certain skills have stood out due to the steepness of their development. The specific skills I want to highlight are adaptability, initiative, and communication. On the topic of adaptability, I used to be a student who would get extremely anxious over unexpected hurdles or derailments whenever I would take up a project. However, the experience of being on the ground in leadership positions, such as in my LIA project in Literacy Pirates or the Research Project, had the quality of ‘tempering’ me to adversity, and hence I learned to be more adaptable and overcome issues as they arose (such as students misbehaving in my LIA or interviewees ghosting me in my Research Project). In addition to adaptability, I also developed the interrelated skill of initiative, as I had to deal with the sobering truth that problems that arise will not solve themselves. This was especially the case with my LIA, where I was often in a classroom setting, and had to make split second decisions on how to react to students, what would be the best way to guide them/ talk to them, or which student to give more attention to. This practice in taking initiative for myself, and not waiting to be told what to do by a senior teacher, was later transferred to all aspects of my life. Lastly, I learned some valuable lessons on communication due to the unfortunate hurdle of having my passport delayed in the Chinese embassy for two months while my Research Project had planned its international data collection. This meant I had to take on a more online role, and communication became key in order to coordinate the delegation of tasks, and the passing along of information between my team who was travelling across Southern Europe.

Having completed this program will help me in three distinct yet interrelated ways as I progress out of my undergraduate and enter into the new chapter of my life. The first first, and in my opinion the most salient as I embark on my postgraduate study applications, is the research training that I took part in through this program. This is especially the case since I aim to pursue a career in academia and higher education, so the independent, transnational, and team-based nature of the Research Project is particularly important to prepare me for a graduate, and hopefully doctorate training. Additionally, the Leadership In Action project over the summer of my first year also had a sizable teaching element, which also helped me discover and improve on my passion for teaching. The second is the soft skills that I acquired through this process, which is felt not only in my professional life, but also personal. These are too numerous to count but the one which saw the largest growth, as mentioned earlier, is my self-efficacy. For this point, my LIA project helped the most, as my line-manager fed me feedback on topics in which I can grow in, and one feedback that stuck was that I need to believe in my skills more. I then took this lesson to my research project, and it allowed me to overcome large setbacks. The last aspect is the people I met through this program, and the strong friendships it helped forge. From the research training days to the weekend in Cumberland Lodge, becoming connected with a global community of like minded people have added so much to my life, with many of them becoming valued friends and inspirations. I believe creating this network of support has been one of the most important aspects of the Laidlaw Scholars Program.