Notes

What is a leader? A common misconception of being a leader is that you are ranked higher than the others. You’re someone who is smarter and have a lot of skill? Someone who have a higher salary? Someone that is placed on the top of the organizational charts? In short, you are superior. While some of these are traits of a leader that might be true, being a leader is not just based on being superior and ranking above others. A leader is someone who guides and influences others through their actions. There is no limit on who’s gonna be a leader, who knows it might be you, it might be him/her or it might be me.

The answers that I have gotten from my mom is something that I can relate to since I am also a student leader and coincidentally a servant-leader type. I just want share my story of becoming a student leader . I started being a student when I entered college in which I join Council of Student Organization in De La Salle University. It was very nerve wracking at first not knowing what to do and what do they expect of me. As always, I started from the bottom --- as an associate where I assist my Associate Vice Chairperson on her works in the organization. After couple of months of working with the organization members and officers, I finally grasped what to do and was promoted to an Associate Vice Chairperson in which I expect to have more work but knowing that they put their trust on me, I was proud of myself and promised that I will do my best for the organization. As an Associate Vice Chairperson, I lead my associates by sharing my knowledge I got from my months of working in the organization. A year has passed and I was promoted as one of the members of the Executive Board --- the highest position in the organization. It was an exciting and happy yet nervous moment for me because I think it was a different from the previous positions that I held on. I truly agree with my mom that being a leader is someone who is not afraid to do things when no else does since it’s around this time where I truly need to decide what happens with the organization along with my fellow Executive Board Members. Even though I am part of the Executive Board, I am not the type of leader to just boss around, give orders to my associates but instead I work with them and show them what to do and how to do it. That is something that a servant leader does and being a servant leader myself, I can say that I totally agree with my mom’s statement about being an effective leader wherein an effective leader should lead by example, lead with compassion, lead with the purest intent to let your subordinates succeed.