Personal development and an intentional focus on growth is what drives one’s capacity to be a leader, and learning is a life-long journey. My leadership journey began when I attended the National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT). At this training, I learned about the core leadership competencies of conflict resolution, the stages of team development, problem-solving, communication, vision and goal setting, and assessing team progress. After completing this training, I attended the National Advanced Youth Leadership Experience, where I was given the opportunity to apply my skills through a variety of activities. Additionally, this course showed me new ways to think about leadership and challenge myself. It was at this course where I developed my commitment to leadership, promising to take my skills home and to apply them in ways to benefit others.
Rather than being the end of my leadership development, these courses laid the foundation from which I have developed into the leader that I am today. Each of these experiences led to additional opportunities to learn, contribute to society, and to become a better leader. One such example is the NYLT Leadership Academy. Because of my involvement in prior courses, I was selected to lead my own course. I knew that to be successful in this role, I needed to grow in other areas of my leadership abilities. To do this, I attended the NYLT Leadership Academy, where I developed my ability to lead a staff and my public speaking skills. As with my previous experiences, what I learned in this course, has led to other opportunities. If I had to summarize what I have learned from all these experiences it is that personal development is a never-ending journey. In all that we do, we should look to learn to better ourselves from the experience. Personal development should be more than concentrating on a list of boxes to check to minimize weaknesses. By looking at personal development as strengthening different areas of ourselves, I believe that we should focus on being aware of our personal capabilities. With this awareness, we can focus and hone in on what we are good at while developing a broad enough set of skills to overcome the dynamic challenges of today.