It is nearing the end of Foundations week 1 and one of our final challenges is to write a blog post detailing what we consider to be our identity, our core values and our personal strengths. First off, writing a blog does not fall under my strengths category. Writing a blog post exclusively about myself and the inner workings of my being feels even further out of my comfort zone. Part of me wishes I was struggling with Git configuration again, but I signed up for this course even after reading about the potential side effects of personal growth, so here we go…..
This was a difficult question to answer initially. I realised I hadn’t asked myself these kinds of questions in a while, despite, or maybe because of, the amount of change that has happened in my life in the last two years. The answers became more obvious once I took an evidence based approach and asked myself ‘how do you live your life?’ This is what I chose to share about myself for our ‘introduce yourself’ challenge on Slack:
Core values of mine include empathy, kindness, authenticity and treading as lightly on this planet as is feasible while living with privilege in a capitalist society. Doing work that aligns with these values is of great importance to me. Other significant sources of joy and satisfaction are meaningful involvement in my local community and my personal relationships. My previous career in healthcare meant managing a lot of overtime, shift work and an on-call roster, with not much room for flexibility. It felt like a continuous balancing act between fulfilling my career duties, my commitments to the projects outside of work that bring me so much joy, my own well-being and the health of my personal relationships. I am attending Dev Academy for many reasons, a big one being the autonomy and flexibility that tech seems to offer. In such a vast and increasingly ubiquitous field I feel I can be more selective in what I put my passion and energy into, and possibly even merge the two worlds of ‘work’ and ‘community’. A work-life balance is super important to me and I hope that honing a skill like software development will empower me to keep that balance.
Satisfied with my self probing but seeking further blog post inspiration I indulged in an online personality test -The VIA institute’s Strengthsfinder.
While taking such online personality tests with a generous pinch of salt, I couldn’t help but feel validated by the signature strengths it produced from my input:
On the other hand I was not at all surprised with the traits that VIA politely identified as ‘lesser strengths’:
It was a useful exercise in backing myself to remind myself that these are traits I do not necessarily lack, they just don’t come to me as naturally as my ‘signature’ strengths. These are certainly areas I want to work on as I enter into this new chapter of my professional life, and traits that could only enhance my personal life and relationship with myself.
In the 18 months prior to leaving my healthcare job, a particularly toxic combination of middle management and ongoing staff shortages caused a serious drop in morale. Some of the younger staff in particular had confided in me that they had been feeling targeted by middle management and overwhelmed with workload. Some of the stories relayed to me I considered to be outright bullying. I had the role of Health and Safety representative in the department I worked in, and considered the mental wellbeing of staff to fall under the definition of this role. I at least felt I should take the opportunity to have a difficult but hopefully constructive conversation with middle management in my capacity as a H+S rep.
I knew that this conversation ran the risk of a target being placed on my back, as the two individuals in middle management hadn’t exactly been showcasing their professionalism up to this point, but I knew the younger staff weren't in a position to open this conversation. It probably also helped that I had already decided I would be leaving this job and had less to lose. The opportunity presented itself one day while having a meta conversation about workplace burnout. At the time the feedback was taken surprisingly well, but by the time I left I had not seen any measurable improvement in how they managed the department. There were no negative consequences to my actions. The positive consequences came from sharing my actions with the other staff.
A lot of staff thought they were being singled out and were comforted in knowing it was a management issue and not a reflection on their work. Some of the staff started standing up for themselves and in classic bully behaviour, middle management pulled back from engaging in that behaviour with those individuals. Unfortunately I think the only real fix in this case would be a different combination of middle management - a story far too common in the workplace.
Growing up in Catholic Ireland, while my family were no more religious than most, there was a certain culture that came with catholicism, of which two key themes come to mind ‘guilt’ and ‘family’. My mother comes from a quintessential Irish catholic family of 12 siblings, meaning I grew up around a couple dozen cousins and with a strong sense of the importance of family. Living in New Zealand means I am physically far away from my family but we remain just as close. The importance of family relationships has bled out into my chosen family - my friends in Ireland and here in New Zealand. My relationships continue to be one of the greatest sources of joy and wellbeing in my life, and I choose to put my energy into them.
My mother has influenced me greatly and continues to do so. Growing up in a matriarchal family I had no idea that women were perceived as anything other than powerful, strong, intelligent and resourceful until I stepped out into the big wide world. She taught me that a quick wit will get you far and a sense of humour will get you through most things in life. She has taught me resourcefulness, integrity, treading lightly on the earth, being involved in community, and how relationships matter above all.
And now for the ‘catholic guilt’ piece. Take cultural catholicism, combine it with an overachieving tendency and graduating from university in the aftermath of the great financial crash of 2008 and you’ve got yourself a pretty neurotic young adult. Moving country has certainly helped me to hold a mirror up to myself and examine many unhelpful patterns of behaviour, and feelings of unworthiness and undeservingness. Meeting a partner who grew up in southern California and to whom words like guilt and self doubt don’t exist certainly helps too. I look forward to using this time at EDA to do some more rewiring :)
I am a very organised and systematic person. When engaging in a project either personally or professionally I like to do the best job I possibly can. This tendency can serve as both a strength and a hindrance. I have burned out on a number of occasions during my studies and in my career as a medical scientist. This was partly because of the nature of the field but largely because of my own need for perfection or excellence even at the cost of my mental and physical well being. To me EDA represents a real opportunity to break these habits. The style of learning is so starkly different to my university and professional experience. The genuine emphasis on personalised learning style and mental wellbeing is very refreshing and I am at a point in my life where I understand the need to prioritise care in my learning journey and professional life. A major limitation is self doubt, again I am so excited to work towards breaking this habit during my journey with EDA. I work well in a team and really enjoy the collaborative aspect of building something or working towards a goal with others. I am confident that this will be challenged during bootcamp but bring it on :)
An example of resistance when trying to work productively with people pertains to my experience within the activism space rather than professional. In 2018 I was part of the first wave of people getting Extinction Rebellion (XR) Te-Whanganui-a-tara off the ground. The energy and vision were irresistible but it took me almost a year to realise how inefficient we were, largely due to lack of real processes and stark differences of opinion as to our message and how to run the local and national group.
The strategy I chose at the time was to play to my strengths and jump into specific roles in activism self care and street performance . This helped somewhat but at this point I had already burnt. I also failed to put clear boundaries in place i.e I allowed myself to get dragged back into the general running of things. These tensions eventually caused the Wellington XR to largely disband due to mass burnout and irreconcilable tensions, a situation all too common in the front line activism space.
With the benefit of a bit more maturity and hindsight, if engaging in activism spaces I will remain on the sidelines and observe how things are being ran and how people are treating each other within the spaces before throwing myself in, and even then I will define strict boundaries for myself. There are so many issues in the world that require people power and movements will take as much of that passion and energy as you are willing to give. My activism now looks less like front line fighting and more like community based work around local food and clothing redistribution, which funnily enough is a lot more gratifying than shouting.
If anyone has actually made it this far...thanks for coming to my TedTalk xoxo. Click here to return to my homepage ft. cute cat