Poem Inspired by Gord Downie

I am a leader because…

What is a leader? Are they the bosses, the superior, the commander? I believe that a leader should be able to guide others as a group or as an individual. To be a successful leader you need to be able to communicate and cooperate. Now why am I a leader?  There are strong outspoken leaders out there who can speak loudly and convince, but I believe I am a more quiet leader who leads by example and by cooperating well with others. Quiet leaders like me listen, figure out the situation, then act. You don’t always have to lead during a group project or while working in groups. One way I usually lead is actually not in school but in public. When you smile at someone you’re leading by example. Just doing something like can show you that you can lead but also helps others in the process. Who wouldn’t like just to be smiled at?

I recently learnt that leaders need to take risks. Every leader that has succeeded has taken a risk. For example Elon Musk, a renowned engineer/inventor, took a big risk and poured most of his paypal capital into Space X and now Space X has a revenue of over 100 million dollars. Now what have I done as a risk to be a leader? In elementary school we used to always have to do group projects and I remembered that we had to learn about the ocean. That’s when we formed a group to learn about sharks and our group was just given an outline to do a poster project but I decided to take a risk and do something different and extra which was to make a diorama with a poster to describe everything going along with it. With the consent of my group, we did it and it resulted in us exceeding expectations and getting a good mark.

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”-John C Maxwell. Now what does that mean? That quote represents exactly what I and all other quiet leaders do. I listen and figure out a solution or idea, then I “go the way” which also means I start to figure out the situation and act, then finally I show the way which also means to lead by example.

I believe that I am a leader as I am able to persevere, motivate, assist, and guide others. But having these skills not being able to use them is useless. Whenever there’s a need for someone to guide then that’s when a good leader should rise and help everyone. Everybody is a leader in one way or another but I believe that a successful leader must be able to inspire themselves and others before anything else.