"To set goals, aims and a collective vision that brings out the best everyone has to offer and work as a team towards the best results.” This is exactly how I defined leadership 2 years ago. And while this has not fundamentally lost all meaning, my definition of it has extended to be more about inclusivity. Leadership, to me, now is about accommodation, support, and consideration. My biggest realization has been that while setting goals and aims is important, the prerequisite for that is building an inclusive environment to learn more about the team, recognize individual strengths and ambitions, and then, finally, establish a vision that incorporates everyone.

I want to be an inclusive leader, and that requires the ability to work with differences of opinion. Being an inclusive leader also means being able to estimate, ahead of time, the challenges that could arise from different working styles, backgrounds, and availabilities. To work through these and contribute towards the goal is leadership to me. Through my Laidlaw experiences, I have been able to cultivate empathy, diplomacy, and resolution skills that have helped me translate raw emotion from interviewees into structured evidence that can be written in a policy paper. It was a process of balancing empathy with responsibility. Finally, as a leader, I also want to develop a holistic understanding of social systems and cultural nuances to ask better questions and lead honestly.

I came to the understanding that leading should be a flat hierarchical structure through my experiences on the program. I started with a more top-down understanding of leading. However, working with a brilliant team in my Leadership-in-Action project instilled appreciation for a collaborative approach to excellence. I have implemented this collaborative outlook by believing more in team synergy. Investing more time in organizational tools and tests that can help the team realize individual strengths and aims has developed a more cohesive environment for the team. Through this, my approach to leading a project has altered to reflect a more synergistic method.

Moreover, I have also adapted my outlook on team upskillment. Through my group research project, I have become aware that while self-development is essential, team development is equally as essential. I would strongly emphasize taking up team upskillment before commencing on a project now. These developments have made me develop into a collaborative leader. I would now approach leading with an inclusive and synergistic approach. For instance, my first task would now be to analyse group strengths and passions before commencing a project. This is also largely due to the creative and in-depth training sessions I have received from the Laidlaw administrative team over the 2 years of my program. Having witnessed a structured approach to helping establish a cohesive group environment has enabled a similar vision of leadership for myself.

Because of these realizations and developments, I would now approach any leading roles very differently. The program has thus helped me develop into a better leader. Moreover, because of my leadership-in-action project and the research project, I have also been able to understand myself more. I have been able to identify that my strengths lie more in organizational management, idea-planning, and structuring a project. Similarly, I can admit my weaknesses, like managing ambiguity under tight deadlines in team projects.

Being able to understand myself in this way will really help me seek roles that play on my strengths and work on my weaknesses. Moreover, I have gained confidence in being a leader, so I will be able to actively seek leadership roles that can help me mould my character further. In addition, because of the research project, I have acquired research design skills, interviewing skills, and timeline management skills. All these together have formed a strong work ethic that I can take into any workplace and be able to perform collaboratively and inclusively. All of this has given me a solid foundation to step into the professional world and contribute meaningfully from the outset.