Leadership is a quality that almost everyone strives for and sees as an indicator of success.
Throughout my life, I believed being a quintessential leader—an outgoing individual who can rally crowds behind a common cause, who always knows where to go and what to do, and who has an immense sense of agency—was a character trait that only few possessed. I did not think of myself as a leader in high school. I was not on the board of any clubs. I did not have any student government positions. I didn’t apply to any positions outside of the classroom.
The most unsatisfying leadership experience I had came from the pursuit of a title without acting from inspiration first. In high school, I was the vice president of a philanthropic organization. This title was just that—simply a designation that inspired no action and required very little in terms of actual responsibility.
For months, I struggled to decide whether to stay with the organization or leave it and pursue something more meaningful—something that maybe did not include a leadership title. But I wanted to stay on board for the recognition and felt worried that colleges would see my leaving as a sign that I wasn’t qualified to lead. In short, I was afraid of failure and of the way my leadership was perceived rather than enacted.
Instead, my actual leadership appeared through my devotion to and empathy of certain experiences. Leading involved learning from hardship and using it as context for helping others, as motivation to reach out and impact those around me. Difficulty fitting into the soccer team in high school, trouble transitioning into a new social environment, and doing poorly on a test caused me to reach out to my teammates, mentor incoming students, and tutor kids in writing, respectively. Usually, we color such difficult experiences in a negative light, but they can serve as springboards toward action—the essence of leadership. From these experiences, titles followed by the end of high school, I was a soccer captain, a mentorship intern, and a private tutor.
I realize that having a title can result in opportunities—the more you can represent your leadership in concrete terms on an application, the more likely you are to be rewarded for your efforts with a new position, and the cycle can continue.
A classic example of this phenomenon is the importance of leadership positions in college, job, and internship applications (or at least that’s what is perceived by those applying). I can name more than a handful of peers from Georgetown and back home who invest themselves in activities, joining clubs, and taking internship positions just to put a title on their resumes—I am in no way exempt from this practice. And while I understand that a genuine interest can lie behind these activities, sometimes the title takes precedence.
What frustrates me about some of the approaches to leadership is that people participate in events to get the degree, to get the title, or to get the position, without considering the experience of getting there or if they care about what they are doing—their moment-to-moment actions—in the first place. Their leadership is a presentation rather than an action; the title is void of any substantial meaning.
People should care about the work that they do first and foremost because, in my experience, passionate action will lead to the desired leadership titles in many situations. Yet I understand that in some cases, leadership titles open up opportunities for individuals who have a passion, but need to get the credentials first.
I know that my experience is unique, and that there are many positions that are substantiated by actions. I have just found that the most meaningful experiences I have had, where I truly feel like a leader, have been those when I have acted from my personal convictions, rather than acting backward from title to action. Organize your life around what you enjoy, not the positions you hold—trust that passion drives achievement, and that leadership will follow.
