Leadership in Youth Today

Leadership in Youth Today

Ryan Qin March 13th, 2021

There's a lid to leadership?

I recently had a coaching call with Richelle, the Business Development Director at Illuminate Universe, a leadership program that I currently attend, and we discussed the concept of leadership lids. In essence, although one can be competent and effective in your work habits, there is a limit to how efficiently they can succeed without leadership skills. Their productivity and efficiency is limited by the lack of leadership qualities such as charisma, character, courage, focus, generosity, and much more. Only when we combine our leadership skills with our competence in work can we achieve a higher efficiency!

How can we raise this lid?

In planning the North York x Illuminate Regional Conference, I've managed to raise my lid as I was exposed to more challenges that required innovative and well thought out solutions. I was challenged to remain committed to the team, to maintain my focus on our assigned tasks, to take initiative in reaching out for guest speakers, and more. Through being exposed to these challenges, I became self aware of my strengths and my weaknesses, allowing me to identify areas I need to improve and grow as a leader.

Working on ourselves in the pandemic

In this pandemic and in online learning especially, our self awareness and opportunities for improvement may be limited. Yet through our conversations in the coaching call, I learned to take note of my tendencies when working with a team or even working on my own. From group projects to daily homework assignments, I started to notice my work habits and identified the areas I needed to improve on. However, it is crucial to not neglect your strengths because they are your strengths at the moment. After improving areas of weakness and turning them into strengths, it is possible that your old strengths become weaknesses. To end this cycle, it is essential to maintain a well rounded outlook on both strengths and weaknesses.

It’s your turn!

But what about you? Now that you’ve heard my experiences and my take on raising our leadership lid, it’s your turn to start noticing your strengths and weaknesses and start improving them. In writing this post, I hope that the knowledge of leadership that I learned can be passed on to you and others seeking to improve because, after all, anyone can become a leader!