Royals 5

My most important leadership experience was the greatest challenge I’ve experienced with being a leader of a small group. This experience is when I was a junior and I had to navigate, pitch, and follow through with a project that was designed as a group and corporative effort, this is not to highlight where part of the team failed me, but to highlight challenges I overcame despite the lack of effort. I was a junior, and 20/20 Leadership assigned all the members at my school to do a project that would help our school and community. It was a way for children to use their voices and advocate for change which is something not a lot of kids have experienced before, so it’s safe to say that this project was not just important, but stressful especially since it was a group of people who never really communicated with each other before. In light of it being a group effort in a leadership program, I initially went into the project with the mindset that was structured more on a collective leadership style, since no one was designated “in charge” or leading the group. This was my first challenge because it went on for months where we couldn’t agree on a topic to fix and incorporate for the reasons that they were; going to be solved at a later date, the weather conditions in our area were harsh so we couldn’t start an outside project promptly, it only focused on one area of the school and it would have little to no impact on the students and no upkeep after the project was gone. With there being a lot of people with different ideas and different personalities, it became harder to agree on a project that required equal participation. The brainstorming lasted for months until I pitched the idea that our school should incorporate real-world learning into our education. It was a flexible way for people to voice some ideas that could be incorporated into their learning and also a unique way of being more active in our community and making school more of a meaningful experience with a strong learning style. By the time the idea was pitched the group agreed and we brainstormed for a couple of weeks at most until it became others’ last priority. During this time, this is when I became the unassigned leader. I had got my idea together on a slide doc with help from two people left in my group and a staff member pitching and giving me feedback on the project at hand. I was still communicating with the entire group, so when pitching our idea to the principal and the team responsible for incorporating our real-world learning department, I expected the group to show, which the majority of them did. It was a challenge working with all of the members because they weren’t actively playing a role or making an effort towards the project. After the pitch, we went in to revise some of the ideas and structure the slides more efficiently to present to the rest of our peers and judges at the next 20/20 Leadership assembly. During this entire venture, I was learning about how to take initiative and how to navigate people and myself through a project that they weren’t dedicating their time to, I learned about communicating and being a bigger person even if things didn’t go my way, and most importantly, I learned about failing as being a leader and trying to attempt at it again. I ended up facing one of my biggest challenges, public speaking, with only two members of my team up there to support our project because of my will to follow through no matter the difficulty. This experience was one that I will never forget because it taught me how to persevere and it taught me how to be a better leader and manage a project with a group of people. This event has inspired me to further my education and pursue a major in Management and Leadership and a second major in Finance. While I was working on this project, I was also working on graduating early and moving forward in my education, this was a very difficult project to navigate and it was even harder to find the time and dedicate that time to something important for my school. I want to also highlight that this project wasn’t completely a failure because I got an award for my hard work and influence and my team got an award for collaborating nicely. Later that year and leading into my senior year, my school incorporated more real-world learning and a more structured education system. Some students get to pursue their interest in the field of public service or business and I think that my idea gave my school a bit of a push to implement more of those community factors in our district education. I am now inspired to make change wherever I go because I know the power that I have to make change and I would like to thank 20/20 Leadership for that opportunity to learn.