As part of the Villanova Women in Business Society, we volunteer each year with an organization called Girls Take Charge, where we facilitate leadership activities, listen to speeches, and get to know high-school-aged girls in the area while they come for a workshop at our school. It’s a great way to get involved in the community, and it helps me refocus on what’s important to me as I continue to grow.
Although a lot of the day is just chit-chatting with the girls, the activities are centered around becoming female leaders.
In one segment of the presentation, Beth Mooney, Executive Director of Girls Take Charge, and also one of the nicest women I’ve ever met, shows a picture of the following woman and has the girls say words that come to mind when they see the picture.
Words included: over-confident, sassy, intense.
Would you approach her? The majority said no.
Then, she showed the beginning of the following video:
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After watching this, our impression of Aimee entirely changed. Now words to describe her were caring, compassionate, and relatable. As a woman wearing prosthetic legs to accomplish her dreams, we had a new-found respect for how hard she had to work to overcome what people thought of her.
The exercise here was to show how little you know of a person when you first meet, and how you need to be open and less judgmental. Beth then proceeded to ask for suggestions on how best to be open, doing her part to guide the conversation, but mostly using the feedback she was getting from the girls in the room.
I have to say, I loved this exercise and most others in the day long seminar. Because I’m taking an Organizational Behavior class, and the section we’re studying is leadership, I’ve been focusing on the academic way of describing leadership, and the diagrams that show how great leaders are motivated. I enjoyed going back to the basics, and talking about the simple things that a great leader meant to me.
What do you think describes a great leader (in a basic high school sort of way)?