Personal Mission Statement

For as long as I remember, the yearning to lead has been in the for-front of my life. Being the eldest child, I was awarded the opportunity to start leading from an early age. As a result, I have strove to take leadership opportunities in all that I do. The reason that I yearn to lead is simple: I want to have an impact. However, as I have matured I have come to realize all the skills that I need to build and strengthen in order to become a great leader in the future. Truly speaking I always thought that a leader was someone who takes charge and achieves success. However, in recent years by working in different teams not just in sports but also community services, I have come to see that I leader is one who helps others and work closely with them to have a common objective accomplished.

In our world today, everyone is connected to each other, even if it is across the globe. This in turn means great leadership opportunity because a good leader would be able to communicate across all different boundaries and by interacting and leading many different people, great ideas are born. Growing up in this modern world, I see the importance of building leadership skills to enact positive change. However, I also see that a good leader is one who can teach and mentor others by interacting and sharing different and even at times opposing ideas. After completing the Leadership Certificate Program, my view of leadership has slightly change to incorporate the importance of personal interactions with various different people. I learned that one’s growth cannot be accomplished on their own. We need to ask for help, advice, and critical criticism from friends, family, co-workers, and mentors in order to improve our skills. Furthermore, I learned the importance of giving back and teaching others what I know about succeeding. Finally, the most important concept to realize about leadership is that growing never stops, we always have some skills we can improve or refine. We all have our weaknesses, but as I learned in different Leadership workshops, it’s our strengths that define us.

The program has also taught me that core values have a major part in guiding how we act as leaders. Core values are principles that a person chooses to believe in freely and that guide their actions. These values are those that a person lives with in every moment of their lives and thus match their action not just privately but also publicly as well. The core value that has guided my actions throughout my life has been loyalty. This core value describes my devotion to my family, friends, school and work. Growing up with a tight family bond made me loyal to my family, which translated to close friendships. Other values that strengthen my “core” are values of integrity; responsibility and compassion. Being loyal means having integrity towards people or a goal. In order to be loyal one has to be honest with the people around them and themselves. Furthermore, responsibility is one of the main supporting values because to be a loyal person one has to fulfill their duties in order to gain trust. Lastly, with being a loyal person one is also compassionate. This value is a strong emotion that puts a hold on loyalty. Compassion means love and in the end nothing is stronger than that. Throughout my life I have demonstrated that loyalty is my core value by fulfilling my responsibilities as a daughter, friend, and student with integrity and compassion. I take it upon myself to make sure to keep in close contact and be available to my family and friends. Loyalty helps me make decisions in the relationships I have with new people, my schoolwork and even my career. At times my loyalty causes internal struggles that I have to deal with. A perfect example is when my loyalty to my family led me to a major that I did not enjoy. However, since my family was also loyal towards me, they had compassion to understand my point of view and in the end supported me switching my major. As seen, everyone has core values that dictate how they behave. It is crucial that a leader has clear and defined core values and use them to lead in order to make ethical decisions they will not regret.