Leadership

My personal beliefs about leadership – 

Picture a group of five-year-old girls adorned in glittery tutus at their first dance class. The dance teacher instructed us to skip around the room as a warm up. I’m sure you know how to skip, you lift one leg up and then follow with the other and repeat that in a bouncing motion. Instead of the recognized and correct form of skipping, I, in all of my sparkly five-year-old glory, began doing a one legged skip that resembled more of an awkward galloping than it did skipping.

The point of this story isn’t that I was a unique kid, which I definitely was, but that I did my weird skip with such confidence and conviction that the other kids in the room, who were skipping correctly, stopped what they were doing and began to skip the same way I was because they believed it must be the right way. This was an important life lesson in leadership and in life for me. It revealed to me a simple fact which has become one of my key beliefs: that anyone can be a leader it just takes confidence, commitment, and maybe a little bit of humor.

My parents provided me with a great example and foundation of what leadership is. As a kid, my mom was the president of my co-op preschool, and my dad, a successful small business owner. Now, they both are successful small business owners, parents, and citizens. I know few people who personified leadership better than my parents did then and do now. From them I learned that a leader: Listens, is a problem solver, communicates, engages those around them, is honest, knows not only how to handle the task given to them, but also how to delegate, is committed and confident, has a sense of humor, and inspires others. Of course if I were to list all of the qualities of a leader this would represent only a small sample, but an important sample nonetheless, and qualities I seek to epitomize in myself.

From this point on in my life I have and continue to place myself in leadership roles in whatever I’m doing. In my future, I know leadership will play a key role no matter what path I find myself on, whether its as big a role as running for President of the United States, being CEO of a major company, working as a volunteer coordinator for a cause I am passionate about, or even raising a family. Leadership has its role in every part of life; it is my ambition to apply leadership to the greatest benefit for others and for myself.

xoxo J