The Leadership Inside Me

            Good leaders are hard to find. Not everybody has given by God with innate ability to lead. Lucky are those who have in-born traits of good leadership since it just comes naturally in them. As I look at myself way back ten years ago, I could say that I really don’t have that ability to lead people. It’s difficult for me to convince my classmates to follow my plans for a certain activity or project because I don’t know how to convince them. I don’t know how to communicate with them that they will believe in me. When I was a high school student, I used to be chosen as a leader in a group maybe because I usually excel in academic subjects. However, in handling the group, I find it difficult to organize, to plan, and to manage my members. I don’t know what should be done. I usually do our group project by myself, which is not good. I realized that I am not an effective leader because I did not give them the opportunity to learn. I did not push them to think and discover things. Although I can say that there are also some characteristics in me that are good in being a leader like I do have the vision and I am also trustworthy, but I know it is not enough to become an effective and efficient leader.

When I step up college, that’s the time where I slowly develop my skills and abilities to lead. I was elected as treasurer for two consecutive years in the College of Education at Capitol University. I believe that not only those who have innate abilities to lead become good leaders, but also those who are given opportunities to lead. Through experiences we develop our leadership skills. Aside from that, leadership seminars and workshops also help us to become effective leaders. However, although I have attended different seminars and workshops in team building and leadership training, I know that my experiences is still not enough to regard myself as a good leader. When I try to look at the characteristics of a good leader, I realized that there are still so many traits that I need to develop. Now that I am already a teacher, there is really a need to improve my leadership skills since our principal and administrators strongly believe in our capabilities to handle different organizations, programs and affairs in school. It’s quite difficult to handle such things, but with the help of my principal and co-teachers I slowly learn how to deal with it. I am actually learning a lot from our principal. She taught me how to build confidence in me and believe in my capabilities. She pushes me to become a good leader because she believes that I do have the qualities to become one.

For three years of teaching, I could say that I was able to improve my leadership skills through the experiences I had. I’ve been into different programs in school where I stand as a leader and I can say that most of the programs I handled are successfully done. However, I still keep on learning how to really become an effective leader because I know I still have so many things to learn. And for sure with the help of the people that surrounds me, I know I would become a great leader someday like the leader I admired most.