What It Means to Be a Leader: Personal Statement

A leader’s character comes from the combination of all values they hold: courage, humility, humanity as well as accountability, drive and integrity. A leader can only accomplish as much as the content of their character allows them to do. In what it means to be a leader essay I will briefly cogitate about this based on own experience.

I learned a great deal from my time doing karate. Some of the most important facts I learnt were concerning what it means to be a leader. My teachers were not perfect, and they did not try to hide it either. One could have had issues at home, trouble with school, or they may have just been tired. Often, they would speak about the challenges they overcame while learning karate, which is a sport you never stop learning. They would inspire their students, myself included, to persevere and accomplish my goals.

Understanding that it's impossible to be perfect and being aware of problems that students would have is an incredibly useful attribute when I started assisting and helping teach classes. As a result of coming down to a level alongside the students in that class, I was more relatable and therefore more approachable. They could talk to me about their problems, which gave them more courage to participate. At school as a Link Crew leader, demonstrating courage for new students of the school was critical. Without it, their first experience at Chinguacousy SS would have been detrimental as they would have had no one to look up to and ask for support. (TALK about summer training sessions)

Responsibility for your actions well further adds to the qualities that make a leader great. When I joined the SciTech Academic Committee, being accountable, driven, and integrous were some of the qualities new members needed to have. By my second year in the committee, I was able to lead the PR team for one of our biggest events, Wolfhacks which is a local hackathon. As the PR lead, I held the responsibility of monitoring what the community sees and hears, with respect to promotions, event updates, and the schedule of the day of the event. Evidently, this much responsibly indicated that anything I did had repercussions, either positive or negative, which thereby required me to be accountable and integrous. Unfortunately, Wolfhacks has been cancelled this year due to extenuating circumstances (as with many other extracurriculars), however we expected strong growth in this year’s turnout. Furthermore, being driven to make posters and other graphic designs for the event, without previous experience with graphic software proved to be another challenge. However, I was successful as the current design on the Wolfhacks twitter page was made by me. I signified that it is possible to do anything as long as you are committed to your goals.

Although various situations may require different virtues, they are all required, as a leader cannot use a ‘one size fits all’ rhetoric to lead.