Growing up as a dual sport athlete and being involved in many extracurriculars quickly exposed me to different leaders, and within no time, my very own leadership positions. You’re never really told when you’re little what a leader is; you just show up to activities in life and follow whoever is instructing. Throughout middle school, my dad started to preach to me about what leaders do and why we have coaches and other leadership positions to lead teams to success. I even remember the first “definition” of a leader that he told me. He said, “leaders lead by example. They show up even when they don’t want to and still choose to lead their people by example.” This has resonated with me my entire life and began my internal career as a leader, which I have carried into Minnesota State University, Mankato’s (MNSU) Honors program. Through the experiences that I have been able to participate in throughout my undergraduate studies here at MNSU, I have successfully been able to discover my defining leadership values and use those values in different group settings.

 

I began my leadership journey at MSU in the Honors 201 introductory course when I took the Strengths Finder assessment and discovered my top core values: restorative, achiever, learner, consistent, and futuristic. Honestly, these came by no surprise. I saw this generated list and it truly resonated with who I am as a person, in and outside of school. I was able to use the Strengths Based Leadership book to read more about these and relate them back to my own life and the leadership positions that I had already held.

 

Upon learning about my own leadership values, interpreting other leadership styles also really struck a chord with me when I took an Honors 401 seminar called “Leadership and Interpersonal Communication.” Here, we spent much of our time analyzing different leadership and communication styles, and I really started to connect with these findings when I interviewed one my old soccer coaches for a Case Study assignment. It broadened my scope on leadership values and how they look different for each person and can even be different based upon the situation at hand.

 

I soon became better able to reflect upon my core values used in group situations, such as in my English 271W course; here, I was able to delve deeper into how I really use my leadership values in my day to day life on campus. Working in a small group during this course allowed me to seek out how I generally function as a leader, reflect upon why I take on certain roles, and how I can improve my weaknesses to better reach toward the common goal of the group. This experience also helped me better appreciate different leadership styles and the general idea that someone else can find strength in my weaknesses, and vice versa; we all hold different qualities and values for a reason.

 

This idea of further defining my leadership values and philosophy continued into working with community organizations, such as the Open Door Health Center in Mankato. Throughout this experience, I learned how important it truly was to articulate a general leadership philosophy for a group, and how it was important that this philosophy be dynamic and malleable in order to tackle different situations effectively. I was able to acknowledge my role in this group and help keep others accountable for their roles in order to complete tasks successfully, efficiently, and on time.

 

I really began to effectively establish my role as a leader within group contexts holding more major leadership positions when I was appointed Vice President of MSU’s Premedical Club and also hired by the YMCA as a mentor for the Brother/Sister program. These two opportunities presented me with large shoes to fill; I now held major leadership roles within these groups. I was planning events for Pre-med Club with my fellow board members and planning events for my mentee and I, seeing those through, and making sure the best possible version of me and my core values showed up to those groups every week. Both of these experiences taught me a plethora of lessons that I will take with me into the next chapter of my life. I learned how to articulate my own leadership philosophies and a philosophy for a group setting. I learned to deal with failures, and that no matter how hard you try, sometimes the situation can be out of your control and not go as planned and you must improvise. I learned that I have skills in areas that I probably wouldn’t have found had I not pursued these experiences, such as public speaking. I learned that I like forming new relationships. I was also able to confirm some of the core values that I had established when I took the Strengths Finder years ago; I really am a futuristic, planning type of person.

 

All of the experiences mentioned above have significantly shaped my core values as a leader today and how I can play an effective role as a leader in the future, as I endeavor in further schooling and a career in medicine.