I am extremely thankful to be at Nexus International School Malaysia (#NISM) because I have such a progressive working culture where everybody is encouraged to step up and take up challenges from time to time.
Having a great team of leaders is a crucial aspect that will guarantee your growth in any organisation, I think. As part of the teacher leadership program, the Leadership Matters program was introduced and all of us teachers are encouraged to take part in it.
Huge kudos to David Griffiths & Kate Taylor for spearheading the program for all of us the LM team at Nexus!
A new opportunity is always a great avenue for me to see how far I could learn about myself and in this case as a leader, so I said yes to it and off I went with it!
From dissecting my personal qualities to the iResilience report, I came to realise my qualities as an individual and how I could use the strengths to my advantage and work on some of my weaknesses as my reason to continue learning and improving myself as a leader.
I am super intrigued to learn more about Daniel Kahnemann’s approach to fast thinking and slow thinking. Instead of seeing the two approaches as a separate entity, I realised that there is a strong symbiotic relationship between the two thinking systems. One cannot exist without the other. Both thinking systems work correspondingly and are parallel to each other in shaping the way we make decisions whether we realise it or not.
There are influences on our decisions from the leadership point of view and the other main factor would be our personal qualities. It is easy to say as a leader, this is who I am hence
the way I lead, but it is going to be a great leadership approach when I can say to myself
that I am aware of my personal qualities and it is my responsibility to make rational
decisions based on our shared values as a school community and not according to my way
because that is who I am as a person and a leader.
A humbling experience to have a couple of monologues with myself about the essence of leadership and decision making too :)
I have one clear vision for now and that is to explore my own authentic leadership approach.
My top priority next academic year is to build a strong foundation of self-awareness as a leader. Realistically speaking, I do not have to take up any leadership post to make this vision realised, I want to start small and build myself up from term to term.
I will have a quiet time with myself over the summer break and reflect upon the iResilience report and being an INFJ myself, have many things to come to terms with and work on too. I get drained too quickly by excessive social interactions and this is one of the biggest hindrances for me to be out there and understand how to get better at communicating with
others.
Being a leader, regardless of which stage, is always a lonely and cold journey. We overextend our care, acknowledgment, and support to others but often receive the same perks the least. This is one of my biggest setbacks because I need to find my intrinsic motivation in leadership and move past this expectation.
I have a perfectionist streak hence delegating tasks and letting go of things to others has always been a main source of anxiety for me. I know that effective leadership stems from trust and the delegation of tasks is solely done based on this. Letting go is hard but collaboration is key for us to move forward as a team.
I want to learn more about this.
Aspirant Leader Pathway - Checked!
Next up - Middle Leader Pathway :)
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