Blog from Tamara Taggart, Assistant Professor, Department of Prevention and Community Health
Participating in GWALA has been one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences I have had in my career. I am grateful for the dedicated time this program provided to focus on academic leadership and community building. The blend of training sessions, guest speakers, resource sharing, discussion groups, and role-playing activities changed the way I approach leadership and helped me clarify my leadership goals and style. There are many key leadership lessons—both formal and informal—that I took away from this year that it is hard to narrow it down to a singular blog post. However, two key lessons stand out, as they have had a tangible impact on my interactions with colleagues, authenticity and intentionality during difficult conversations, and sense of empowerment as a leader, especially as a junior faculty member, within my academic community.
1. Negotiation and effective communication: In navigating challenging project meetings with multiple stakeholders and complex power dynamics, I have adopted a more inquiry-based approach to my communication style. For example, I often find myself asking questions like, "What would enhance your connection to this project’s mission and goals?" or "How can we integrate aspects from your previous successful projects into this new project?" or “What excites you about the opportunity we have with this new project and how can we tie that to your role moving forward?” I also spend more time summarizing key points during discussions and making sure I heard and correctly articulated people’s concerns and support of the project. Implementing these strategies over a couple of meetings fostered greater engagement and provided space/time for everyone to process and share their thoughts without feeling like they were derailing progress. Moreover, while completing the exercises for this topic, I realized that my tendency to quickly process information and want to push forward might unintentionally hinder authentic discussions. By focusing on implementing strategies from the lesson on negotiation and effective communication, I observed a positive shift in how people responded to me and the project.
2. Emotional Intelligence: This topic was discussed later in the year, but it was one I was most excited to tackle. Though I was aware of my need for improvement, taking the emotional intelligence test and seeing my scores across different dimensions of emotional intelligence was eye-opening. After discussing the validity of the test and our scores, we were given a worksheet with different strategies (behaviors, practices, cognitions, etc) aimed at enhancing our lower-scoring areas. We also discussed some of the strategies on the worksheet and how we could implement them in our academic roles. This worksheet, and the following discussion, were invaluable to me. I have since printed it out and try to work on a new strategy each week. While it is still too early for me to gauge the impact on my leadership style, having a structured plan to enhance my emotional intelligence is incredibly reassuring.
In all, GWALA was such a transformative program that I wish I could do it again. I am extremely grateful to my Department Chair and Dean for their support and endorsement and the opportunity to be part of this year’s cohort.