Leadership

There are a variety of definition for leadership, there are three definitions as my favorite and the leaders we have had in our Dallas trip are all prefect demonstration for leadership. Firstly, leadership is defined as open, authentic and positive influence. The first day we were at Dallas, we met Jessie, who owns the urban garden with his wife. Both he and his wife were extremely patient about the career of urban gardening and providing food for people who can't afford for food. It was a huge garden and they were the only people who took care of it. At first, I did not believe that they could actually do it by themselves and being consistent with it. However, after interacting with them for the whole day, I felt their passion and positive attitude. It was definitely a lot of work and making people feel exhausted. However, the work felt nothing but fun with them and other friends in the group around us. Also, I felt what I did was worth it because Jessie kept encourage us by telling us the fact that the Hawkeye service team produced 300 pounds of food.

The first picture is Jessie's wife and she was telling us that she prepared chicken for us. Second picture is Jessie showing work for our group members.

The other two definitions are helping others to achieve the impossible. I felt our student leader Christian is a prefect fit for this definition. She was the person who keeps helping us, giving us encouragement and actually show us how to turn the impossible to possible. For instance, when we first arrived at the urban garden and saw what we would be doing for the day, which are hills of logs and mulch. I felt this is mission impossible! But we still ended up completing the task well, and we wouldn't be able to do it without Christina's exemplary work.

The last definition for leadership is building the next generation of leaders and I think both Ryan and Christian were educating us to be a better leader during the trip. First of all, they demonstrated us how to successfully plan and execute an trip. Christian had this talk with some of us at the last day and told us how difficult it was to plan this trip and how many work needs to be done and how much effort she contributed to it. All of us felt so lucky that we could be in this trip. Secondly, they showed us how to be a leader and a friend at the same time. Both Ryan and Christian are extroverted and easy-going personality. They kept the relationship with us easy and relaxing. We mess with them all the time but still consider them to be the leader and follow what they assigned to us. Thirdly, Ryan taught us another feature of a successful leader, which is apologize for the mistake. Leaders should not always be on top of people and it is necessary for leaders to say sorry when they make a mistake. For instance, there was couple hours in the afternoon of the culture day, where we were just hanging out in downtown Dallas. I personally did not feel anything bad and actually really enjoyed the time at downtown Dallas. However, Ryan shared that he felt sorry about not having things to do in the afternoon when we were doing the reflection for that day. Also, Ryan sent out cards to all of us after the trip to apologize for things he did not do prefect during the trip. From my perspective, he is an excellent leader and I felt it is a really valuable characteristics of a leader who has the courage to admit the mistake he made and apologize to his folks.

Picture at the far left is Christina and one of our member Mugdha. The middle picture is Ryan leading the group activity at downtown Dallas. The third one is Ryan at the Dallas Cowboy Stadium giving funny face.