Last semester, I was part of a fantastic program on campus called Emerging LEADs. It is the first session of seminars in a series on leadership and diversity education conducted here at Stevens. Having completed the first semester’s program, I was able to sign up to be part of the second session: Advancing LEADs. Emerging LEADs had a particular focus on the self, your individual beliefs, who you are, and how society influences who you are. Advancing LEADs has a more group-oriented approach, focusing on how you operate in group settings, your positions in groups, and how to make groups run more effectively.
The thing that is particularly interesting about Advancing LEADs is that right off the bat, our first assignment incorporated what we learned about ourselves in the past session. We were supposed to create a PowerPoint outlining our ‘personal brand’ to effectively get across what kind of asset we are to a group.
Immediately, my first thought was to include how I am family-oriented. Talk about how my experiences as the second child of six are unique and how they have helped me to develop my leadership skills. However, something kept telling me that though it is a nice thought and it could help show that I am able to manage people I have known their entire lives, it might be difficult to convey I am perfectly capable of collaborating with strangers.
As a writer, I have learned to express myself differently to get my point across correctly. Instead of saying that I am an older sister and that it helps me be a leader, I can use it to say that I spend countless hours a week negotiating and debating with individuals to come up with a compromise we can all agree on. My classmates do not need to know that my negotiations are usually with a nine-year-old over a bedtime and that the debates I have are over whether or not the three-year-old is allowed to wear his dirty shirt as opposed to the clean one I had laid out for him. I can say that I am creative, that I have learned to bring all ideas together to create one good result that people are happy with. I have told stories about Power Rangers fighting Luke Skywalker and ultimately helping him and his father find peace over a bowl of Lucky Charms when my brothers could not decide on whether they wanted a story about Power Rangers or Star Wars.
Being an older sister has taught me much about coloring inside the lines and not being upset when you stray from where you meant to go. It has taught me to be compassionate and adventurous. It has taught me to never let a moment pass, to always say the things you mean, to apologize when you are wrong. It has taught me that when ice cream cannot heal a wound, a five-dollar bill can. Being an older sister is the most powerful weapon I have; it has taught me the most valuable lessons I have learned in life because being an older sister makes you realize that you are here for so many more reasons than just yourself. Being a leader is realizing that you are responsible for so much more than just yourself and I don’t think anything has taught me that better than my siblings.
Be First to Comment