Candidacy Building: Leadership Development
Leadership is More Than a Title
As high school students explore the question of how to get into college, they are continually bombarded with advice to embrace every leadership opportunity. If you’ve experienced this, and you find it to be overwhelming, you’re not alone. Leadership is a broad term, but those who believe it involves being an officer of every club, captain of every sport, and manager of every group project are stretched far too thin to effectively lead anything or anyone.
Fortunately, you don’t need to hold a formal title to lead. You simply need to have vision, motivation, and organization. Leaders are often not rulers, but rather people who are consistent, responsible, assertive, and conscientious. Your opportunities to lead will vary, but they will all challenge you to grow your abilities and experience.
Learn Your Leadership Style for Maximum Impact
Consider the leaders who have impacted your life, bearing in mind that not all leaders have formal designations. What attracted you to what they had to say? What about their character, vision, or attitude made you want to be part of what they were doing? Have you ever been deterred from a group or project because you couldn’t connect with the leader’s style?
Your personality type has a great deal of influence over both your own leadership style and the style of leader that motivates you. You can determine your personality type using a free Myers Briggs test which will help you understand how you make decisions and interact with the world. Once you understand more about your personality, you’ll begin to get comfortable with a leadership style that feels natural. Your personality assessment may also give you great insight into why you resonate with your favorite activities, classes, teachers, or heroes. When you identify your passions and purpose as they relate to your personal style, you will naturally grow into leadership roles that support your goals.
Document Successes, Challenges, Projects, and Outcomes
Set a weekly or monthly task to record recent examples of leadership. When you take time to critically review a span of time, you will be surprised at how many times you rose to the occasion as a leader. This documentation effort will help you create your résumé and help you discover your top strengths. Don’t be afraid to log the projects that didn’t go as planned. There are no failures – only learning opportunities. Chart the mistakes, questions that should have been addressed, alternatives that could have worked, and what you learned from the process. Even a short study of history will show you that no great leader experienced a 100% success rate. Embrace the situations that didn’t go well as much as those that did.
When you look back over your high school career during college admissions prep, your leadership experience records will produce a vault of material for admissions essays and interviews. You will also gain a sense of your strengths, values, and interests, which will serve you well in career planning.
Hollenback Consulting specializes in helping high school students prepare for college and career. As your higher education consultant, we partner with you to help you create an educational and activities plan designed for your success. Explore our services for college planning wherever you are in your high school journey.