This is my final entry in my blog journaling my journey of identifying, designing and implementing a Personal Leadership Development Plan (PLDP), as part of a course in Contemporary Leadership (EDU7275) through the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University. It also marks the end of my coursework and the move to working on my research project and dissertation.
When I considered the five dimensions, well-being stood out as an area I needed to focus on for my area of growth. The dimension of well-being includes aesthetic appreciation, boundary setting, self-care, self-control, and time management. The concern for well-being has been on my mind for several years; however, as a wise person once said: “life is what happens as you are making other plans”. I am often distracted and overwhelmed, seldom taking time to smell the flowers and to care for myself properly.
In creating a PLDP, I want to create balance and at the same time, a path to renew my creative and emotional energy. With the summer holiday at my disposal, it seemed wise to take the opportunity to refresh and prepare myself for the start of the next school year. My goal was to optimise emotional and physical health by creating a habit that will last into the busyness of the school year and beyond.
I thought of some practical things to do over the summer like regularly swimming at the public pool that just opened up, spending time doing photography again, exploring, listening and playing music. These all work together to build my mental and physical well-being.
However…
I successfully did it the wrong way.
Yes, I exercised more, went for walks, watched sunsets, listened to music, spent time alone, prayed. I did all those things, but it was not doing those things that helped… It was sharing about experiencing my reactions to them that allowed me to become vulnerable, and enabled me to receive support and affirmation from others. They say leadership can be lonely, and when living in a foreign country separated from family. Where you can’t speak the language, and all your team are from different countries and cultures. It makes that loneliness seem more acute. Blogging allowed me to let my voice find its way into the ears of distant friends and hear their love reflected. It was in a community that I found refreshment. It reminded me that I’m not crazy, irredeemable or alone. I did not just write up my PLDP, I lived it, experienced it, and I reacted not to what I did, but how I felt. In my blog, I shared the feelings and emotions that welled up, not what I had done that week, as that seemed trivial and trite compared to insights that emerged as I continued on the journey.
Insights Found in the Course Literature
An unexpected discovery on this journey was that central to my developing well-being was the support of my virtual team in our Contemporary Leadership (EDU7275) class. As an introvert, this came as a surprise, as I believed alone time would reap the most benefits. This revelation should come as no surprise as soft skills, and especially, communication skills, are the centre of both leadership and management (Darics, 2020). Darics (2020) notes that it is not just communication and language skills but also an awareness that makes a meaningful difference. A task that requires even more considerable effort in the virtual realm, but showing care and respect for team members, encouraging others, and “listening to them” are essential for having a positive influence (Darics, 2020).
It is an example of fine-grain interactions acting as a community-building mechanism leading to a sense of belonging and shared identity, thus creating a shared experience (Hazy,& Uhl-Bien, 2015). It is also an example of adaptive leadership where leading and following is a socially complex and adaptive process that works as part of the social system as a shared influence process, and any member of the social network may exhibit leadership at any time. (Derue, 2011). Within my group, others became the leader, giving me the support that I needed to function as a productive member of the group.
For myself, it is of particular importance as working in a foreign country requires one to deal with the broader contextual requirements and boundary-crossing activities found in a global context (Reiche et al., 2017). One has to learn to master paradoxes and dualities found in a role characterised by significant complexity in the task environment (Lundby, & Caligiuri, 2013; Reiche et al., 2017). These involve “intense demands that arise from a need to respond to multi-fold, variable and changing task conditions while also constantly adjusting to exchange relationships across a wide and dispersed range of relevant constituents. As a result, the demands from the task and relationship contexts commingle to further raise the contextual embeddedness” (Reiche et al., 2017, p563). Petrie (2014b) observes that much of the stress they see in leaders has “less to do with workload and more to do with the strain of trying to make sense of an environment that has become too complex for their current stage of development” (Petrie, 2014b, p 7). The value of having a team whose members are sensitive and can pivot into a leadership role to provide needed care and support is critical to my survival, effectiveness, and most importantly, well-being.
Links to the Wellness SAIL Dimension
In creating my PLDP, it was in reference to the Northeastern (NEU) Self-authored Integrated Learning (SAIL) outlined on the SAIL Framework website. The SAIL Framework identifies five overlapping learning dimensions and a set of complementary foundational masteries that consist of lifelong skills for success. These learning dimensions are Intellectual Agility, Global Mindset, Social Consciousness & Commitment, Professional & Personal Effectiveness, and Well-Being (SAIL, n.d.).
After reviewing the five dimensions, I chose Well-Being as an area I needed to focus on for my area of growth. The dimension of well-being includes aesthetic appreciation, boundary setting, self-care, self-control, and time management (SAIL, n.d.). The SAIL website notes that in addition to optimising ones emotional and physical health and pursuing, embracing, and valuing aesthetics. To achieve well-being, one needs to “build and sustain meaningful relationships with individuals who provide guidance and support” and to “effectively balance autonomy and interdependence” (SAIL, n.d.). In addition, one needs to “Continually reflect on and align behaviour with personal values, beliefs, meaning, and purpose” (SAIL, n.d.). While I began with focusing on the easy, tangible aspects of “doing things”, as I began to reflect weekly on my progress, I found that this was not enough. Instead, it was in the reflection on why I did what I was doing, and the underlying motivation, beliefs and values that I gained more in-depth insight into my wellness as a whole person, and hence started to reflect on the deeper issues within my wellness. This reflection occurred as I formed relationships and created interdependence on others for support, sharing my thoughts through the blog.
Impact on my Work as a Scholar-Practitioner
As a scholar-practitioner, we are invited into another’s life, their world, maybe even allowed to glimpse their hidden world. The journey of creating and doing a PLDP reminds me that it is essential to not look at what they do but to hear their heart, to listen with grace and understanding as a fellow traveller. To provide them with a safe space to be vulnerable, where we provide solace for them from the dry, hot winds of life. When experiencing the great outdoors in New Zealand, there was a famous motto, “leave it better than you found it”. Oh, that this might be the case for us as scholar-practitioner, not only do we receive the treasure of knowledge, understanding and insight from those we journey with, but that we leave them a little better for it.
It is also not a journey that must be done alone; we need fellow travellers, those we trust with our inner souls, who are willing to both support us, but also challenge us to deeper understandings of ourselves and those around us.
References
Darics, E. (2020). E-Leadership or “How to Be Boss in Instant Messaging?” The Role of Nonverbal. International Journal of Business Communication 2020, Vol. 57(1) 3–29 Communication
Derue, D. (2011). Adaptive leadership theory: Leading and following as a complex adaptive process. Research in Organisational Behavior: An Annual Series of Analytical Essays, 31, 125-150.
Hazy, J.K., & Uhl-Bien, M. (2015). Toward operationalising complexity leadership: How generative, administrative, and community building leadership practices enact organisational outcomes. Leadership, 11(1), 79-104.
Lundby, K. & Caligiuri, P. (2013). Leveraging organisational climate to understand cultural agility and foster effective global leadership. People and Strategy, 36(3), 26-30.
Petrie, N. (2014). Future trends in leadership development. Center for Creative Leadership.
Petrie, N. (2014). Vertical leadership development- Part I: Developing leaders for a complex world. Center for Creative Leadership.
Reiche, B., Bird, A., Mendenhall, M., & Osland, J. (2017). Contextualising leadership: A typology of global leadership. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(5), 552-572.
SAIL (n.d.) Self-Authored Integrated Learning. Retrieved (2020, July, 17), From https://sail.northeastern.edu/about/
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