Despite conducting my project online from the comfort of my family home near Glasgow, I felt rather out of my comfort zone throughout the five weeks. Last summer, my research focused on the Central American region, but it is still a relatively new area of study for me, and there is a huge amount to learn. My learning about the socio-political context in Central America, and the operations and projects carried about by the organisation I worked with, Trees Water & People (TWP), continued alongside my project. The tasks I worked on were also very new to me, particularly that of searching for potential funding avenues and assessing their suitability for TWP. I quickly discovered  that this can be a rather thankless task, involving a fair amount of dense reading, and many a dead end. For a while I let this get to me and was frustrated with the lack of tangible progress I seemed to be making on paper. It led to me feeling quite demotivated for a while as I trawled through different websites searching for grant opportunities - especially when the sun came out! However, I think persevering with this new task has been really valuable for developing my resilience, and has also underscored for me the importance of SMART goals which we have discussed at different points on the Laidlaw programme. Ultimately, in the context of my research into potential funders, I had to persevere, adjust my expectations and goals and also re-frame the dead-ends as being findings in themselves.

My experience has also developed my organisation and communication skills, which I think are key aspects of effective leadership. The former, I will admit, doesn’t come all that naturally to me, however through conversations with my supervisor I learned new methods of managing data and research, and also how to make resources that are more easily accessible and readable for colleagues who may only have time to take a quick look at them.

It is a shame that for myself and some others the ‘action’ in the leadership in action project has involved largely independent work online. This did lead me to question, at points, the extent to which I was practicing leadership in action. Furthermore, I questioned how I could ever practice leadership in this context when ultimately I was collaborating with an organisation with the relevant skills, positionality and expertise. How could I lead anything? Upon reflection and through helpful conversation with my ALS group, however, I realised that leadership does not necessarily have to involve leading or managing other people. My experience helped develop my self-leadership, and personal skills that will be invaluable when utilised in a different, more team-focused leadership situation. I hope that in the future I will be able to meet my supervisor in person and get to know more of the organisation that I have been so grateful to work with virtually this summer. I am also extremely grateful to Lord Laidlaw and the Laidlaw Foundation for providing the funding and subsequent opportunity for me to be able to spend time working with such a fantastic non-profit organisation, developing my leadership skills and importantly hopefully also being of help to TWP.