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Individuals will Fail

Being a leader takes many things, communication skills, organization, people skills, patience, and well planning, and typically leadership is shown as a sideways pyramid. Keeping everyone as equal, with one person overseeing the entire whole. This very traditional way of viewing leadership is almost outdated. In a recent TEDTalk given by Lorna Davis on leadership, she discusses this and how it can be almost detrimental. Davis’s idea is that independent leadership is not the solution, she states “the idea that one person has the answer is ludicrous. It's not only ineffective, it's dangerous,” she goes on to talk about how we need one another, and because of the interconnectedness of our world and society, that a single person holding all the answers is nearly impossible. It’s a typical superhero approach, and can lack so many aspects of being a good leader. Collaborative leadership allows for a network of individuals to have a say together, finding solutions that solve the issue, and being in a diverse number of angles and viewpoints. She continues discussing goal setting as a way of leadership, traditional “hero” leaders make big announcements and bring a call to action waiting for big results, whereas, interdependent leaders in collaborative settings create goals that allow for group effort, and are more similar to asking for help than making a declaration. 

I think that this can be a valuable lesson on the side of failure too. Sometimes, the reasons we fail, whether in leadership roles, or not, is because we try to play “hero” and be independent. The fear of asking for help, or the stigma surrounding it makes it such a deterrent. However, asking for help can lead to even greater successes. Playing “hero” and having the great ideas independently make a person feel good, but collaborative leadership can yield so many greater things than struggling independently. Failure does not go away just because more people are added to the project, but it becomes less likely due to numerous collaborators. Obviously, one important thing is the mindset of teamwork, if each person tries to act independently in a collaborative setting, nothing will be accomplished, it needs to be collaborative. I have experienced this in my own life. My senior year, I was elected one of the speech captains, along with 3 others. We all had our own ideas and sharing the titles was a disaster to say the least, but with time, we learned that working together and collaborating made things go a lot better for us, and the rest of our team. When we started working together so much more got accomplished and we all saw better results. There was no more fighting and everyone was okay with sharing the title. Our team had a successful season, and it became so much fun working together. That collaborative effort taught me that it is okay to ask for help, and then it can be so fruitful when others help. New ideas and different outlooks can really be helpful when it comes to success. 
Pictures show myself, with the other captains on our speech team.


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