My understanding of my leadership has changed in a way that now I am aware of the area that I am weak at. It took me a long time to just aware of the area that I am weak. Even if I am not able to take care of myself, but I am aware of the importance of the self-care. Meeting my coach over the phone has been one of the best opportunity for me to uncover my leadership challenge. My leadership continues developing as I expose myself with something new. Through the leadership fellowship journey, I was able to understand the importance of the network building. The conferences and events that I attended were amazing, but I am learning more about the importance of follow up with that relationship I build throughout this journey. This is the area that normally I don’t do. Relationship building is a key as a leader in order to grow and to be authentic and the relationship has to be mutual. In order to develop my leadership skills, I continue building the network relationship and spend time with my family when I can, which is a difficult thing to do with school and work. Some of the areas of my leadership development are aware of my weakness. Communication is an area that I needed to work on. What I am learning is that I need to effectively to communicate so everyone is on the same page and this reduce miscommunication. I am not good on self-care and this is also my weakness. I do recognize that self-care is very important in order as a leader to survive we need to take care of yourself. I remember almost on my all reflect, I indicated that self-care has been my challenge and it continues to be one of the main challenges for me. I am confident that I will finish my coursework and slow down at the end of the fellowship.
During this month, I was busy with my school and some networking activities. Some of the conferences I was able to attend was regional economic development discussion convened by Federal reserve bank of Minneapolis. The audiences for the event were manly fed bank employees from across regional and people interested in regional economic development. I was able to build regional networking and learn about regional economic development thinking. Some of the presenters came from Harvard and other institutions to present their research finding of the regional economic development. What was interesting was mapping the income of the neighborhood by zip code. I was worried to know that the neighborhood kids grow up to determine their future success in life. After I heard about the research presented, I was concerned about my kids future because the neighborhood we choose as a parent impact our kids. After listening to the presenters, some of the leaders of color discussed how they felt about the data. Some of them were raised in a neighborhood none of the kids where look like them and they don’t want to raise kids in that kinds of environment. I am not sure if there is any better place to raise kids, but definitely, it is concerning. Also, I attended BushConnect event which was an opportunity to reconnect and discuss the progress of our fellowship.
My school is going well. I am almost about to finish my coursework. According to my plan, I will finish all the coursework by spring and ready for the dissertation. Also, I met with my mentor, and it was going well. All the activities that I listed above has been contributing to my leadership development and helped me to apply at my work. The role of self-care is critical for leaders to perform well.