Throughout my Ph.D. journey at UIUC, I have evolved from being a follower to a leader. This self-recognition and personal development have been largely influenced by the Leadership Center at UIUC. As a fourth-year doctoral candidate in Curriculum & Instruction, my only regret upon looking back at the past four years of this journey is not having collaborated with the Leadership Center (LC) much earlier. According to LC, leadership development begins with understanding one’s passions, motivations, strengths, limits, and personal values. Workshops such as Clifton Strengths and Communication styles have led me to recognize what is right with me as opposed to fixating on what needs to be corrected. This mindset has extended itself to my work with student teachers as an early field supervisor, doctoral colleagues as a research assistant, and faculty advisors as a doctoral student.
As a doctoral candidate, I am going to share some intimate details with you concerning my leadership strengths with the aim of inspiring you to further recognize your own strengths, they are unique and needed. According to the Strengths Insight Report by CliftonStrengths, these five strengths guide my work as a leader: Maximizer, Achiever, Positivity, Arranger, and Futuristic. The following includes three tips that may be of use to your further development as a leader at UIUC.
As a maximizer working with student teachers (who are mostly young women) in their early field placement, I learned to intentionally offer generous recognition to their quality work. This has been instrumental in further deepening their confidence in themselves as educators who are cognizant of their own strengths. Through using this recognition strategy for the past two years, I have seen over a dozen student teachers come to understand their uniqueness and therefore create engaging, joyful, and developmentally appropriate lessons for the young children that they are in placement with.
A second strength that I have come to recognize of myself is that of the achiever. Through understanding this inner quality, I now know that I find immense satisfaction in being busy and productive. There was certainly a multitude of external and internal challenges that were presented to me as I moved through the doctoral milestones of qualifying exams and preliminary exams. However, the leadership training taught me to become very mindful in the use of my time and to also identify my body’s natural rhythms. I now know that my absolute best time of productivity is early in the morning. Therefore, whatever task that I have on my agenda that is most pressing and important must be done in my first hours of work in the morning. Tip #1: If you want to achieve, identify your most productive time of the day.
The guiding inner strengths of positivity and arranger have led me to communicate with a diversity of people that have been guiding lights throughout my journey at UIUC. Throughout my own doctoral research, I have often reached out to scholars nationally and internationally in the field of education for sustainable development that is complete strangers to me. More often than not, this act of reaching out to strangers has opened up a wealth of resources and possibilities. Tip #2: If there is someone that comes to mind to you, that you believe can be helpful, reach out to them! The possibilities far outweigh the risk of being ignored.
Lastly, taking time to dream about the future has been tremendously valuable in my UIUC doctoral journey. Through this futuristic strength, I often found myself sitting alone in the Campus Recreation Center hot tub on Friday nights, imagining what could be done with my life in the coming years after graduation. Through this permission to dream and to imagine, I have gained clarity on the career path that I wish to embark on after graduation. Tip #3: Take time to dream and to imagine what would bring you a sense of joy and accomplishment.
In conclusion, as an emerging leader, I am committed to continual self-discovery, reflection, and learning. This habit reaps a lot of benefits, I invite you to explore your own sense of leadership and if you haven’t done so already, please consider deepening your learning with the Leadership Center at UIUC.
