Summary of the week

This week I have been so fortunate to take part in a variety of activities at BGH, alongside working on my main project. Highlights have included sitting in on a leadership meeting on Wednesday, which I found an invaluable opportunity to observe leadership from experienced leaders in a small organisation. What especially stood out to me was the incredibly welcoming and supportive working culture cultivated from the top-down; to give one example, there was a dedicated time allotted in the meeting for team members to express gratitude to others for their support this month, and for people to highlight exceptional work by others. For me, this concrete example of leading with humanity and collaboration at the forefront is something I will hold with me as I continue honing my leadership style in the future. 

It was also a real highlight of this week to begin to see my survey come together. Following a meeting with my supervisor and the communications manager at BGH, I felt confident to draft the survey incorporating all aspects that BGH most would value feedback on. I also enjoyed learning more about the process of mass communication (the survey will be sent to around 1400 caseworkers, who range from maternal health workers to social workers, teachers, doctors and many more). This included drafting a persuasive email to explain our primary goals and output aims, alongside researching best practice to ensure as high a return rate as possible. The caseworkers I am surveying act as the intermediary between BGH and the vulnerable families it supports, so hearing their opinions is crucial to ensure BGH’s continued growth to best support families. 

Outside of work, I also had the incredible opportunity this weekend to visit the Grampians National Park, which is around a 3-hour drive from Melbourne CBD. It was a day mainly hiking to extraordinary viewpoints where I saw a huge cloud inversion, and baby wild kangaroos as well!

Challenges:

This week was bittersweet in that three of the other interns finished their time at BGH. It was challenging to say goodbye after what has felt like only a brief time knowing and working alongside them, but the goodbye morning tea we held for them was another example of the value that BGH places on acknowledging hard work, a sentiment I share and have reflected on how I can best incorporate this into my leadership style. 

Furthermore, I have continued to find it a steep learning curve to adjust to the request processing work I have been doing alongside my project, in part as I am very inexperienced with the different types of baby equipment! I have also continued to find it challenging when we cannot fulfil all the items requested by families. However, this week I feel I have grown in confidence to move into a more vocal leadership role to partially address this; if I noticed we were running low on stock on things that other volunteers could make, for example, I have begun to act as a leader in discussing with other senior volunteers what I think are priorities for that particular day so that more requests can be completely fulfilled.

Using the 3Cs: Applying character, values and leadership capacities.

In combining both observation of effective leadership and moving beyond project management to aspects of people management, I feel I have grown my capacities as a values-driven leader. I hope this has strengthened my ‘good’ value – in working on what continues to feel like genuinely meaningful work, I hope I am continuing to mould this quality as a leader.

Looking forward: goals for the next/coming weeks.

As I officially move into the second half of my time in Australia next week, I am looking forward to my survey being released for responses and (hopefully!) starting to see some results come in for analysis. I am also looking forward to continue growing in confidence to engage with operations on the ground at BGH, in a way that hopefully will increasingly allow me to exercise my growing leadership capacities.