Leadership
I have gone through several experiences that have shaped me to be the person I am today. I believe I have become a better leader. My definition of a leader is someone who brings the entire group together and keeping them motivated. I think the skill sets of a leader should be;
- Leading by moral authority- I have learnt that a group is more likely to listen to you when you "walk the talk" and lead by example. A person with just positional authority is likely to have only a short term and a very superficial impact on his team while someone who does what they say are more likely to be able to have a greater impact on their team.
- Humility- I have seen over the years that several leaders believe that the idea of taking helps makes them less powerful, however I have learnt that its OK to outsource and take help despite being the leader since one person can not have the multitude of skill sets required for a task.
- Letting go- There have been several times that I have wanted to lead but was not allowed to since I would always take initiative, initially this annoyed me a lot since I felt jealous of the others, but as I grew older I realized that the bigger job of the leader is to bring out one's best and sometimes by giving others a chance that's what you can achieve, hence I now try to give everyone an opportunity to lead and take a step back.
- Accepting failure- A lot of times in the past I have not handled failures well, there have been several times in the past that I have broken down because my team didn't win and have blamed judges for being unfair, but as I got more experiences of leading I realized that failure is part and parcel of leading and it's also the role of the leader to digest failure but still keep the team motivated.
President, Sewanee Asian Organization
The Persistence Program
At the riverside school we believe in the idea of doing good and doing well, and therefore there is a lot of importance on giving back to the community, I have touch based more upon this in the "giving back" section. Just to explain we have different initiatives that work every Saturday and look to HEAL others. All these different initiatives have head called CEO's. I started out as the the CEO of an old age home known as Suvarna Mandir, for about 2 years. I had been elected CEO by means of voting done by people in this particular initiative, I was honored to get this role and received a lot of appreciation for my engagement with the grandparents. While I was the CEO of this initiative I think I started understanding the boundaries between personal and professional life, I know this sounds unreal coming from a twelfth grader but I truly did understand this. There were times when I was driven into having fun just because my friends asked me to, and times where sub-consciously I sided my friends despite knowing they hadn't honored deadlines and didn't complete their work, on being pulled up about this I reflected and realized that I was mixing my role of a leader with the love for my friends, and since that day I have tried to keep this in mind and therefore tried not to mix professional and personal lives. Since I took such a step I saw a change in the way my friends did work while also seeing how I was also able to reach out to others now that I had looked beyond the people I know and am comfortable with.
After this we as students decided that we also need someone to spearhead the entire idea of persistence, the people elected would be the CEO and COO of the entire idea and therefore look at all the operations, work and mentor and inspire all volunteers. I was elected the COO of the idea of persistence through the means of voting by the entire grades from 8-12 comprising of over 120 students. Once elected I had several roles and responsibilities, these included inspiring volunteers on a regular basis, managing accounts, logistics (in terms of the number of volunteers) structuring the reflection and planning formats and many more roles. Through this experience I learnt a lot many things, this was a major experience that taught me the lesson of moral authority.
After being offered such a role I saw how everyone in the key-stage were looking up at me and my colleague for inspiration and I realized that even slipping once in delivering what I have promised would result in the loss of a lot of my credibility, this brought me to realize that it is important to follow what I tell others myself, so if I say we got to be at the old age home on time then I my self cannot be late and exploit my position and power. Such instances brought me to understand the importance of "Moral authority" and the importance of the fact that your team looks up, and therefore listens to you.
Another skill that I developed through this was tolerating , I understood that a few people were jealous of me and therefore would try to trigger me to do something I shouldn't like shouting at them, there were times when people wouldn't do work just to get on my nerves, I remember falling for these things a few times, however, the idea of reflection came to my rescue again. I reflected and saw these patterns in some people and I mindfully tried not to loose my cool when around them, I also tried to ignore the sly comments I would hear about me and saw a great change in these people after I employed these strategies. I think since the beginning I have been a person who strongly thinks that it's better to talk to the person than about the person and hence try to apply the same every time.
Another essential thing I learnt was ways to get people together and motivate them. In the beginning, it was super difficult to bring so ,many people together, on the same page, however as time passed I learnt a lot many strategies so that I can have every ones attention, As CEO and CEO we started using more ways to communicate like videos, masterclasses and discussions rather than just us talking and the team listening. We also started making standardized planning formats etc. to get everyone on the same page.
After being offered such a role I saw how everyone in the key-stage were looking up at me and my colleague for inspiration and I realized that even slipping once in delivering what I have promised would result in the loss of a lot of my credibility, this brought me to realize that it is important to follow what I tell others myself, so if I say we got to be at the old age home on time then I my self cannot be late and exploit my position and power. Such instances brought me to understand the importance of "Moral authority" and the importance of the fact that your team looks up, and therefore listens to you.
Another skill that I developed through this was tolerating , I understood that a few people were jealous of me and therefore would try to trigger me to do something I shouldn't like shouting at them, there were times when people wouldn't do work just to get on my nerves, I remember falling for these things a few times, however, the idea of reflection came to my rescue again. I reflected and saw these patterns in some people and I mindfully tried not to loose my cool when around them, I also tried to ignore the sly comments I would hear about me and saw a great change in these people after I employed these strategies. I think since the beginning I have been a person who strongly thinks that it's better to talk to the person than about the person and hence try to apply the same every time.
Another essential thing I learnt was ways to get people together and motivate them. In the beginning, it was super difficult to bring so ,many people together, on the same page, however as time passed I learnt a lot many strategies so that I can have every ones attention, As CEO and CEO we started using more ways to communicate like videos, masterclasses and discussions rather than just us talking and the team listening. We also started making standardized planning formats etc. to get everyone on the same page.
Science Day
Despite the fact that I a majority of subjects leaning towards the field of humanities and arts, science is a subject that has always intrigued me, I might not know the names of specific laws and principles of physics but love applying my knowledge to solve problems. Over my time in key-stage three due to the introduction of a makers space lab in our school I started getting interested in coding and arudino's as micro-controllers, my interest in application of sciences always drove me to lead science days.
For this year we had a theme that followed helping the differently abled. My group decided to come up with a solution that would aid blind people in their daily functioning. We thought of many ideas, however, after several drafts, we came up with this idea that comprised of the amalgamation of different sensors and electrical components that worked together in order to alert the blind if there were obstacles in the way. This product involved a lot of coding in the language of Arduino, this product worked as almost a torch for the blind.
For this year we had a theme that followed helping the differently abled. My group decided to come up with a solution that would aid blind people in their daily functioning. We thought of many ideas, however, after several drafts, we came up with this idea that comprised of the amalgamation of different sensors and electrical components that worked together in order to alert the blind if there were obstacles in the way. This product involved a lot of coding in the language of Arduino, this product worked as almost a torch for the blind.
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During this experience of leading I realized a few things about myself. I observed that I was not able to digest defeat, I worked on the code for the Arduino once and managed to get it to work partially, I got a lot of feedback from experts in the field of coding and was given tips on how I could improve, however despite trying various different codes I wasn't able to get a one that would give me the wanted result. This really demotivated me, that even after trying so much I wasn't able to get desired results, instead of working harder I started sulking and complaining, at this point one of my teachers noticed this and spoke to me, the conversation we had really made me understand that if as a leader I loose hope then my entire team is going to do the same. Thereafter I have been making sure that I embrace failure as well as I would embrace success |
Radio Nazariya
Radio Nazariya is Ahmadabad's first community radio station. The RJ's on this radio station are children from areas that are considered to be uneducated and under poverty. We as a school were given a client project to come up with a special radio show on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti and design a template that we can give to other student RJ's from different schools in order to make their job a little easier. I lead this client project and we were able to get amazing results and the end and were appreciated a lot by the owners of the station.
This was the experience when for the first time I saw that people could take your work and pass it off as their's and take credit. I personally went through this as people used my work and ideas and shared it with our principal and got her appreciation. I felt furious and felt like leaving the entire project at this point since I didn't see my work getting appreciated. After I decided to stop leading I saw that the entire team fell apart and there were fights between our class and everything has just become a blame game. I soon realized that if this continues then nothing would come out and all our hard work would go down the drain. This was the first time I realized that sometimes you need to put your own ego and fights aside for a greater cause. On seeing how many people we would benefit by doing this show I felt for my self that my little ego was nothing compared to the big impact our idea was going to create.
This was the experience when for the first time I saw that people could take your work and pass it off as their's and take credit. I personally went through this as people used my work and ideas and shared it with our principal and got her appreciation. I felt furious and felt like leaving the entire project at this point since I didn't see my work getting appreciated. After I decided to stop leading I saw that the entire team fell apart and there were fights between our class and everything has just become a blame game. I soon realized that if this continues then nothing would come out and all our hard work would go down the drain. This was the first time I realized that sometimes you need to put your own ego and fights aside for a greater cause. On seeing how many people we would benefit by doing this show I felt for my self that my little ego was nothing compared to the big impact our idea was going to create.