Hi everyone! I’m Gianna, and I am a Class Tracker Ambassador. I am currently juggling life as a full-time college student and as the founder of G Math Pages, a tutoring organization for high school students. My passions have led me to leadership positions in school-based organizations throughout my time in high school and college. It can seem daunting to be a student leader, so I wanted to share my three-step plan to become a student leader and how anyone can accomplish their leadership goals.
Create Your Mission Statement
The key to becoming a student leader is finding something that you are passionate about and using that passion to make meaningful change. My motivation to become a leader developed when I started to notice the disparities in math education within my community. I created a math tutoring organization called G Math Pages to help middle and high school students after realizing that there was a need for accessible peer tutoring.
The challenging part of becoming a leader is defining the change you want to make and your leadership goals. One of the best ways to tackle this challenge is by creating a personal mission statement – a concise statement of what you want to accomplish as a leader and how you intend to accomplish it. Creating a personal mission statement will help you define what is important to you so that you can find a way to be a leader that aligns with your passions. Oprah Winfrey’s mission statement is “To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.” Oprah’s mission statement is a great example of an effective mission statement that defines her reasons for leadership and what she hopes to accomplish.
Don’t be Afraid to Reach Out
One of the great things about being a student is that most professionals are willing to help you develop your passion. Although it might seem intimidating to speak to professionals as a student, reaching out will help you gain experience and knowledge to accomplish your leadership goals. For example, when I created my tutoring website, I reached out to entrepreneurs to learn how to develop and produce a functioning website and launch an idea.
Foster Key Skills
You might think that leadership isn’t for everyone. It seems that being a leader is reserved for the few among us who have an abundance of confidence and a set of skills that the rest of us don’t have. The key to becoming a leader is to turn the skills you have into skills you can use to help others.
If you are good at organization, for example, you can use that skill to become a project manager. I found myself in this situation this summer when I organized a team project with students from across the country to create a robot for the International Space Station. Our project's virtual modality necessitated that someone on our team could coordinate the project's direction and logistics. I was able to use my organization abilities to make sure our project stayed on track and that everyone was doing the work that made the best use of their strengths.
If you want to be a student leader or are already a student leader, you can use these three steps to achieve success. You can visit me on Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn to let me know if this plan worked for you!