Your Thoughts
Here is a selection of your questions, comments, and insights from Challenge 3: Leadership.
As there were similar themes in the comments, this page does not include everyone's comments on each question, but there is at least one comment from each person here.
As there were similar themes in the comments, this page does not include everyone's comments on each question, but there is at least one comment from each person here.
What was the most interesting thing you learned about leadership?
Unlike what people in general may think, leadership is not something you were born with. You can acquire it by learning the skills.
I like the quotes by other famous leaders, especially the quote by Mr Williams Arthur Ward, "Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me - and I may not forget you." I believe encouraging others is the key to successful leadership.
There are very similar patterns shown across the globe and different cultures in terms of people's personal-best leadership experiences.
The ' Encourage the Heart ' part left me with a great impact. Sometimes on the way to where you going you might think this is the worst time in my life. How to go through all the adversity is worth thinking.
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For me, leadership is an invisible force to attract people to following you willingly, giving clear instructions will be enough. However, what I learned from this book was a bit different. A Leader should be looking forward to any opportunities and challenges ahead. What I did was to wait until problems appeared - this made me suffer so many times.
I like one of the expressions in the book: "Some people make things happen, some watch things happen, while others wonder what has happened." This statment is interesting since it include all the people in the world. All these three types of people can survive in the world. But the first type can experience more than other two as they can become the change that they want to see. Therefore, they try to make something different that others to achieve their goals.
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What is one question you still have about leadership?
For now it is only reading evidence that learning leadership can make you a leader, but I want to see if it does really work and how I will change through this program.
Can leadership be developed for someone very skeptical?
I am wondering how they think about the difference between adults and students. Is there any way to check if a leader has figured out a good way to lead and make a good team, or the good team might just come about by coincidence?
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Is there any example of unique leaders who are kind of eccentric but really successful? I am curious about that.
Like culture changes as you go different place, shouldn't the way leadership is performed also change depending on the region? If so, I want to know how to be true leader internationally. It must be more complicated than just becoming a leader only in a specific nation.
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What is the most important thing you learned about leadership through self-reflection?
I usually think about what I have done and what impact I want to get from the past. But this activity, writing a letter to my future, is a great experience.
In the XSEL program, we always write something about ourselves. To be honest, I never try to write anything to myself. Through these activities, I can get a better understanding to myself. Before doing any project or persentation, I usually try to understanding more about my teammate but I never try to understand myself. After the reflection activities, I am looking forward to see how I change after the one month program.
I found that my friends are great leaders because they always encourage me to "give it a try", and I would like to be like them to encourage and inspire others.
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If you are going to be good at your word, if you are going to live up to your dreams and education, it will cost you. To move forward you have to give back but it always pays off. Just face every day with passion and enthusiasm, and when challenges arrive, simply don’t give up.
This is my first time to write a letter to myself. I think that the thing I wrote for this letter is really important because this is a desire what I want to be. So I will remember what I wrote during this program and make every effort to be like that. And I hope that I could be a person like that after this program.
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What is one question you still have about the self-reflection activity?
What percentage of my expectations I can achieve after I finish the program?
I wonder if the culture and custom of writing a letter still exist in each country. Recently, we usually use e-mail, Facebook and LINE for communication. In Japan, we used to send a New Year’s card to their relatives, teacher and friend. But now we use SNS for greeting. I think the letter written by hand is really good to tell the feeling but it isn’t popular these days. So I’m curious how popular to write a letter in each country.
On your way to the top, you will do anything. But how do you get your life back when you get there?
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What is the effect of writing such a letter to succeed a project or improve my ability?
What values and beliefs shall I adopt to become a leader? What if the value and beliefs I chose at first doesn’t seem to help along the way?
Is it normal for people feeling lost? How do people encourage themselves or persevere during depression?
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