What are my core leadership values, and how do I centre them in the pursuit of inclusive leadership?

On Monday, we had a talk led by Nabeela Kajee, a medical doctor who also works in leadership consulting. She spoke about leadership, with a focus on what inclusive leadership looks like across borders. Through discussion, we considered the difference between performative inclusion and genuine inclusion in leadership. Genuine inclusion fosters an environment where everyone feels comfortable to share their perspective without judgment and knows that their ideas will be taken into consideration. The importance of inclusive leadership lies in the fact the being a leader is ultimately a shared effort, where people collaborate for an end goal.

A key point that was raised was making leadership inclusive for yourself and for others - being an inclusive leader starts with you even if you aren't in a traditional position of leadership. By allowing yourself to 'take up space', this can inspire others to do the same. I really liked Nabeela's suggestion that inclusive leadership is a personal risk you take, based on the position you’re in. To me, this highlights the need for authenticity and integrity while leading, as these values help you to remain true to yourself. When placed in positions of power, it is too easy to forget why you wanted such a position in the first place, which can lead to you doing out of character things. Maintaining a core set of values that you use to inform the decisions you make is important for building a strong character of leadership. 

I think that my core leadership values are respect and humility. Respect is what allows meaningful conversations to occur, even with the people you find most challenging. Being humble enough to recognise the strengths of the people you work with is important in fostering a productive team, where people have the opportunity to share the skills they have to contribute to the end goal. 

This week focused on collecting data and analysing our findings. Due to the timing of our research (with schools being closed for the summer), it is taking a little longer than expected to collect our desired data. However, we are working with what we currently have access to which is secondary data. I have found that working with secondary data can be slightly more challenging, as there is so much background context to the data that we do not have, which makes choosing the right data visualisation tool more difficult. However, I think our research is starting to come together a bit more especially as I have had the chance to to delve a little deeper into the existing literature, which has helped me to put our research into context. It was also really helpful to directly speak with our community partner, who was able to provide insight into how our research can be of practical use for them. This week also offered a key reminder of the ethical values that underpin research such as maintaining confidentiality and privacy to prevent harm to participants. 

Looking forward to Week 5!