Leadership: Pre-Assignment

September 2014 - Paula Vsquez Henrquez

My definition of leadership is the ability to inspire and to lead others towards a common goal
or desire with the ability to empower people and help them seek for their own ways of achieving
this goals, encouraging creativity and diversity and being able to make these diversities work. A
leader should also serve as role model for the followers, and have a correct behavior and be
consistent with his speech, in a way that represents the ideals professed in every aspect of their
lives. It should be shown in their talk, reactions and how they interact with others. Leaders should
have a really big sense of respect with their surroundings, and be very careful with how they
express themselves. It means to be able to see beyond the actual situation and being able to see
opportunities where not many other people sees them. To me, great leaders make other people
feel safe and comfortable, but in a way that they encourage other people to grow as well and
reach their full potential. They make people work together and are constantly paying attention to
details as well as listening to opinions and suggestions made by others. They are willing to take
advice for people with more experience and perhaps more talent than them and want them to be
part of their projects. They want other people to be successful and don't keep all the credit, they
make other people feel appreciated and acknowledged for their work.
This definition of leadership has been influenced by three people in my life: first is my English
professor, Miss Patricia Quintana, who I think it has been the most influential person in my life.
She was always supporting us in a way we would believe in our capacities but at the same time
trying to challenge us to stretch our boundaries so we would never settle. She always wanted us to
take that extra mile and be more than whatever we thought we could be. She believed in our
dreams but also was very demanding with our behavior, we had to be consistent with our speech
and our acts and be very responsible with them. This last trait was, in my teen years, a little hard
to cope with sometimes, because she expected us to have an answer for every question about our
decisions which is hard sometimes when you tend to make big decisions out of impulsiveness. My
second most influential person is my friend Beatriz Pakzamir, whom I share a very special bond
with thanks to our religion's activities. She is one of the most warm and friendly people I've ever
met and she is known to be the bridge that connects a lot of people thanks to her social and
interpersonal skills. She always manages to make everybody feel appreciated and comfortable in
her presence, and when it comes to team work she is also very straight-forward into getting things
done and responsible in every task assigned. She has the ability to read people and she's always
looking for ways o make them feel like their abilities are acknowledged and valued. The third
person is my friend Maximiliano Quiroz, who managed to inspire me as well as surprise me with
his leadership skills. For anyone who meets him for the first time is hard to believe that he could
be in a context of serious talk and decision making, but when I saw his commitment with the role
of Regional Director at the charity foundation he invited me to take part of, I could not help but
admire his sense of peacefulness through every obstacle presented. Also he always made us aware
of what was expected of us as part of the team, making all the deadlines and goals clear in every
meeting but always in a way that was motivational rather than threatening. These abilities I am
aware of have shaped an idea of how to be as a leader and have given me some very important
clues about how to relate with others.
I think I could describe myself as very good at interacting with others, but this is depending on
the context I am in. For some reason I'm better at interacting with people when we meet on a very
casual, almost random context, without any external pressure. With this, I mean when I meet
people for example, while waiting in a line at the bank. I've had the pleasure to meet amazing
people in the most random places and learned to value the conversations I have with people in
the street, trains or even the airport on the way here. I think I could do better in interacting with
people in more social contexts like parties or crowded places where people expect you to interact.
I am usually the type to stay comfortable with known people and only approach a group if there's
enough people I know in it. It's hard for me to go out of my comfort zone when there are too
much people I'm familiar with around me. I tend to take chances or take the lead if I am alone or
with not much known people, otherwise I tend to take a step beside and watch other people shine
rather than to try to do it myself. Depending on the situation I would tend to follow rather than
leading.