Why Leadership is Important
Photo by rob walsh on Unsplash
If I asked you, right now, if you think you can be a leader, what would your answer be?
Sometimes it can be really hard to understand what leadership is. Not only that, but it is also hard for many of us to understand that we can all be leaders.
I know this because, before I joined AIESEC, if you asked me if anyone could be a leader, my answer would be no. And it makes sense, right? I mean, what are we taught in school about leaders and leadership?
We are taught that leadership is for politicians, for business people, for sports players and movement makers like Nelson Mandela or even Greta Thunberg. But, it can be for everyone!
What is Leadership?
According to Forbes, ‘’Leadership is the process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a Goal’’. And we are going to stick with this definition.
Ok, now you’re wondering “if leadership is the process of social influence and all of that, how can I be a leader if I’m not leading anyone?“
For that, we are going to take a look at AIESEC’s leadership model.
For those of you who don’t know, AIESEC is the world’s biggest youth-led organization and its ambition is to achieve world peace through the fulfillment of humankind’s potential. And how does AIESEC intend to do that? You guessed it: through leadership development.
So, according to AIESEC’s Leadership Development Model, there are four big qualities that we all have to develop in order to become leaders.
Those four qualities are:
Let’s have a clearer view of what this means.
1. Self-awareness
Basically, if you want to be a leader, the first thing you have to do is know yourself. You need to know what your personal values, your strengths, and weaknesses are, and you need to be well aware of your passions. In other words, you need to be self-aware.
Why? Because this helps you create a focus and work towards it. It helps you establish what you can work on alone and what you will have to look for help to do. It helps you understand why you want to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve.
2. Empowering Others
Then, you need to know how to empower the people around you. It is not enough for you to know yourself and to believe in yourself, others have to believe in themselves as well in order for you to achieve your common goal. Everyone has to believe in their potential, and if they don’t, it is your job as a leader to empower them and make them believe.
It’s not about empowering only people who follow you, it’s about everyone around you, regardless. You don’t have to be in charge to empower anyone.
3. World Citizenship
After that, you need to be in tune with the world around you and why your cause will make a difference. It’s like a ripple effect, whatever you do will have an impact and you need to be aware of that. You are part of the world and you need to take responsibility for that.
That’s what being a World Citizen is like! It’s taking responsibility and acknowledging our position and in the world, we live.
4. Solution Orientation
And last, but not the least, you need to develop your solution orientation skills. Why? Because you are going to find several different obstacles in your path and, sometimes, the solution won’t be easy to find. But, as a leader, you can’t just leave problems unsolved, so you need to be prepared to solve them.
Now, that we have established the four qualities needed to be a leader, you already have a tool and some clear steps of things you can do to become a better leader.
If you want to see these leadership qualities in action, here is a perfect example.
A great leader and a great inspiration of mine, Malala Yousafzai!
Malala is the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, for those of you who don’t know, and she is one of the biggest advocates for education for women.
It all started in 2002 when her solution orientation skills kicked in and she started writing a blog under a pseudonym, about the increasing military activity in her hometown, and her fear of her school being attacked. This allowed her to shine a light on an issue going on in her country and keep her protected.
Three years later, in 2012, the young girl was shot, on her way home from school, for disobeying Taliban restrictions against female education in her home country, Pakistan.
This event, together with her incredible ability to empower people around her, moved her nation to take action, and, soon after, 2 million Pakistan citizens signed a right to education petition. Because of this petition, the National Assembly ratified Pakistan’s first Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill.
In 2013 Malala co-founded the Malala Fund that aims to bring awareness of the importance of girls’ education and demands change. Showing how her self-awareness has been helping her find her strengths to fight for this cause.
Her actions had a huge impact on the progress for SGD 4 — Quality Education and SDG 5 — Gender Equality. And it’s still impacting our world today. Impacting the world around her and showing us how important it is to be a world citizen.
That’s great Renata but, what about everyday people?
As an ‘’everyday person’’, I’m going to share my experience with being a leader to see if that helps you understand it.
I was in AIESEC, actively, for over 3 years, and I had the opportunity to take part in several different leadership positions, even becoming a local committee president.
It’s a lot of leadership years and positions. It’s also a lot of realizing that I didn’t even know I was doing. It wasn’t until I started job hunting last October that I realized how much being a leader is important.
I was on my second interview for the job I currently have (I’m a part-time sales assistant in a clothing store) and I was asked why I thought I was the right person for that position. And so, I said it was because I was a leader.
When asked to develop further, I explained that I was very self-aware of my strengths and weaknesses, so that would help me learn and improve faster. Not only that, but I’m very solution-oriented, so it would be easy for me to sell things to different clients and meet their different needs. On top of all of that, I like to share what I learn with others so that we can all do better, which helps a lot with teamwork and fortifying a team, that way empowering others.
On that same day, I got a call saying that I got the job. Not only that but, only two months after I started working there, my boss approached me and told me to ask my supervisor to start training to be a store manager because he wanted me to manage a store for him.
So, leadership helped me be successful in my workspace. And, it can help you too.
You can join AIESEC in your city and learn by being a member, or you can also partake in one of AIESEC’s many leadership experiences, in the future. Right now, if you go to aiesec.org, you can explore all the leadership experiences available, for when this pandemic is over.
There are many ways to develop your leadership. Reading this blog is already one of them. The next step in taking action.
