This semester one of the electives that I decided to take was Innovation and Leadership. This elective is designed to help foster creativity, problem-solving and effective communication through the design processes and projects that are assisted by the teachers.
However, the main focus of the course was to foster leadership. We were asked to reflect on what we think of a leader to be and research influential leaders and their impact on people. As a class, we outlined what leadership meant for us. In the end, we said that the most important traits of a good leader are –
- Communication skills: Being able to communicate effectively with others is essential for a successful leader. This includes being able to articulate your vision, listen to the concerns of others, and facilitate productive conversations.
- Self-awareness: Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, and being able to work on them, is crucial for effective leadership. It also involves understanding your values and beliefs and how they impact your decision-making.
- Responsibility: Leaders take ownership of their actions and decisions and are accountable for the outcomes. They don’t shy away from challenges, and instead, look for ways to find solutions. Leaders need to be organised and help the organisation of their team.
- Empathy: A great leader is able to understand, connect with and show compassion for the perspectives of others. This enables them to build strong, fair relationships and to effectively collaborate with a diverse group of people.
- Confidence: Confidence is important for leaders because it helps them inspire others and make bold decisions. It’s important to note that confidence doesn’t mean being arrogant or ignoring the opinions of others.
- Creativity and adaptability: creativity is invited and encouraged by leaders along with the resilience and courage to adapt and pivot where necessary.
We then looked at UN Global Goals. Our task, after exploring the global goals and what they meant, was to create a program or product that would help achieve these global goals in our community, as well as help us to develop our leadership.
Leadership Project
After forming a group with three others, we decided that we wanted to focus on Goal 4 (quality education), Goal 1 (no poverty) and Goal 12 (responsible consumption and production). Our idea was to create a ‘Community Closet’ in one of the local primary schools. This was meant to act as a place where people could donate clothes and other items, where they could be taken by others no question asked.
However, after pitching this idea we discovered that there were many flaws with our design. For starters, a closet itself would be expensive and would be hard to facilitate. It is also something that needs to be monitored, even after the semester has ended. Finally, it is not something that we could guarantee would create an impact, as people may not use it the way we intend for it to be used.
Once talking to the teacher and contacting the Head of Catalyst Mrs Watt, we decided to instead focus specifically on providing stationery, and to do it through an already established organisation instead of starting our own program for a higher chance of success. Another member of the class already had similar ideas, so we decided to merge to form a group of 5.
From Mrs Watt, we learned about an appeal that Anglicare (one of All Saints service partners) had held, called the ‘Back to School Christmas Appeal’. The aim of this appeal is to receive donations of backpacks, each filled with every item on the list they provided, that would then be given directly to children in need.
We decided that we would hold a collection within the school, as well as contact local stationery businesses, in order to create backpacks that we would then give to Anglicare. Our main goal would be to collect at least 2 backpacks to give to Anglicare.
I think that this was the great first showing of our leadership as a group. With self-awareness, we were able to identify a major problem with the idea that we had pitched, that it would be too difficult to facilitate. From this, used resilience to continue to find a way to tackle a similar issue, in a more reasonable way. We also decided to collaborate with another peer, to discuss new ideas and eventually join together.
This plan mainly focuses on Global Goal 4, Quality Education, as we believe that all children should have access to the supplies, they need to have the best possible education.
We decided that in order to involve the school, we would be collecting donations from the different tutor groups in the senior school. This would be done by dropping off boxes in the morning at a specific house, informing them of what we are collecting, and picking up the box in a few weeks’ time. We also thought that we should contact local stationery businesses and ask for donations.
In order to do this, we all had to work on our collaboration skills to formulate many emails, going out to the Heads of House and to various Officeworks stores close to the school.
Two different Officeworks stores were able to donate stationery, O’Conner Officeworks and East Victoria Park Officeworks. Using this, along with the donations that we got from teachers and students from the Tutor group collection, we were able to fully complete 6 backpacks, almost complete 1 as well as donating many other items that could not make a backpack. These were given to an All Saints’ College Anglicare representative on the 22nd of June. The rest of the stationery donated, which was not suitable for Anglicare (due to the condition it was in), was given to Give Write, another Western Australian organisation that gives stationery to children in need that accepts slightly used stationary.
Leadership Qualities Used
This project required all members of the group to show different skills and values of leadership, which I think we managed.
As already discussed, we used resilience and self-awareness, we were able to first discover the weaknesses in our original idea and adapt to a similar project that would lead to more success.
Also, the entire point of this project was to show our empathy and understand the importance of what we are collecting for.
Confidence was shown when we had to explain what we were collecting for and ask for donations from the students at All Saints, as well as when going into Officeworks stores to pick up donations. This also ties into communication skills, which were necessary when asking for support, and reaching out for donations.
I do, however, think there are definitely some points of improvement to be made. For example, our group very much struggled with our organisation skills. This was evidenced by delaying sending out emails or collecting tubs. This meant that the schedule we had made for when each house was getting the tub, had to be continuously changed and altered. In the end, this meant that not all houses got the 2 weeks we had planned, some getting as little as 5 days instead. To improve this, we could have created a shared to-do list, which breaks down the requirements for each week.
I think, overall, this was a very interesting project to be a part of, and I am happy with what we were able to achieve in the class. It has helped to develop my own leadership skills, as well as supported our local community in some way.