Hey guys! Welcome back to ADM. I’ve had an exciting week, I spent some time with friends, my cousin came from Colombia and I took her to the beach yesterday! All fun things, haha. So back in April, I went to an event at the college that I’m transferring to, where they recognized young people from different walks of life who were making a difference in their communities. It was an amazing experience. Months after the event, there’s still something that stands out in my mind… and it is the idea that leadership involves not just how you represent a community or a company, but your ability to lift others–in the community/ company–up in the process.
That isn’t easy to do. Sometimes once someone enters into a position of power, of control, they are expected to take on a greater amount of responsibility. Now, I’ve never really been in a position of leadership, but I’ve seen it to be a bit difficult. I know enough about leadership to know what makes a good leader and what makes a bad leader (and I’m sure a lot of you on here can tell the difference, as well!)
As a leader, you’re expected to set an example for what the team, community, etc. stands for. You may even have the advantage to a lot of information about the company, that would help you carry out your role as a leader… So what do you do with it: use it to your advantage to make the group the best it can be or use it for your own personal gain?
Being a leader in the biggest sense of the word is hard, because when you chalk up the description above, it almost leaves the individual with little to no room for error.
What isn’t taught or seen most of the time, though, is the idea that a leader should be someone who wears many hats, someone who is equally as human as anyone else within said group. To me, a leader is someone who inspires others to enjoy what they do and do it well, its gotta be someone is always open to new ideas, is understanding, knows how to motivate people, all while trying to do the job right.
Another huge factor is actually enjoying the job you do, so that one day when you decide to hand over the position, in exchange for another opportunity, you have some candidates who are ready and willing to take on that role just as you have fulfilled.
Now… I get that some of us don’t see ourselves as leaders. Hell, even if we were asked to take on a leadership role within a company or a sales team, some of us would literally cringe at the thought of being in charge of a group of 20+ people. Others would feel a sense of achievement, awe and sometimes a role like this would give them more of an initiative to go the distance for the employees. Who knows?
What I am trying to say is… in some way, shape or form, I feel like we are capable of being leaders in our everyday lives. No, I’m not talking about the scenarios above, (although it would be an exciting adventure to be president and CEO of a business haha.)
But what I’m talking about are the traits that make a good leader. Traits that you can incorporate into your life because well, it’s a whole lot easier (in most cases) being nice.
I feel like we all have the potential to unlearn prejudices and to just be kind and respectful. It’s not easy to adapt to a different mindset if you’ve been surrounded by it your whole life, but it is doable and honestly worth it.
Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies, but let’s make it our goal to make it liveable for someone else (see post here)
This is part of the reason of how I don’t even understand why bullying still goes on today. For me, middle school wasn’t totally bad, but it wasn’t all that great either. I’ve been bullied and despite it being cyber bullying, it still hurt me.
I have always been someone who’s super outgoing.
I always wondered what other people were doing and where they hung out so that I could get out of the house and have something to do after school. I was never a leader. With the way I’m wired, I’m super random, bubbly and like really, really sensitive. A lot of times, however, I often wondered why it was that I was bullied.
Was it because I was vulnerable? It could be. It could also be attributed to my lack of self-confidence. One day, my mom said that sometimes the reason why people bullied others was because they envied another person– to which I would respond: “WHY IN THE HELL WOULD ANYONE BE ENVIOUS OF ME?!?!”
Okay, so maybe those weren’t my exact words, but let’s take this a step further: does having envy, make it okay for someone to go out of their way to make your life a living hell? Of course not.
So why is it that people resort to envy instead of compersion? At least the way I see it, is we are always in competition with each other, more specifically: girls. We see each other as competition, which is absolutely fucked. What is wrong with just saying that another girl’s jeans are cute or that her eyes look pretty or that her hair looks great? Why is it so hard to recognize the beauty that someone else has?
Women and people in general are beautiful and we need to celebrate that. If you talk about how beautiful someone is or how awesome of a person they are, it speaks volumes of who you are. It shows that you are willing to lift someone up, by finding something positive about them. The more you lift people up, the more you are able to open yourself up to people who are going to be more accepting of you.
We need to unlearn the fact that we are “in competition” with one another. We need to understand that people come from all different walks of life, for us to judge and look down on that, is a reflection of who we are as people.
The next time you see a friend, SO, mom, dad, sister, brother, etc let them know what it is that you love the most about them. Don’t be afraid to be completely candid about it either. The whole idea of it is this: we lift ourselves up by lifting others up.
I know there’s some good in y’all. So let your authentic self shine. You’ve got this!
Sending lots of love and light your way,
A Dynamic Mentality 