Personal Mission Statement

What is a leader? To me, a leader is someone who takes charge of a team, group,
organisation or company. They inspire their team members by showing them the ‘why’ -
the vision and goals to achieve. They put others’ needs before their own - caring and
listening about each individual in the group and empathising with their situations. In
addition, they maintain a positive attitude - effectively controlling their emotions to guide
others with a clear and collected mind. This way, team players feel more engaged in the
process. In turn, they get more energised and motivated to continuously improve and
not give in to challenges or difficult situations.

To become an effective leader, I first need to be true to and follow the values and
beliefs that I hold. Notwithstanding, this also means changing them should it mean
improvement. After doing a workshop with the Illinois Leadership Center, I discovered
10 of my core values and narrowed them down to the following 5. They are: growth,
determination, persistence, influence, and efficiency.

Growth is most essential to me as I am in the transition phase to adulthood, so I want to

sharpen my skills, develop my personality and take on responsibilities to grow as a
person. Obviously, this would take determination and persistence to overcome the
hurdles, not give up my goals, and compromise my progress and relationships. With
efficiency, I just find it difficult to resist as it means doing things better, so more can be
done and targets can be met much quicker. Moreover, I believe that, as a leader, I need
to inspire and bring influence to people. It also means cultivating others so that they can
influence others too.

My personal life goal is to keep improving myself to become better than who I am right
now. I believe the best investment one can have is in one’s self, so that he can
influence others in a positive and forward-moving way. This can apply to people on an
individual level or in teams and organisations. By joining the Leadership Certificate
Program, I hope to gain more confidence and a more thorough understanding of what
being a leader is like. Moreover, I wish to improve my skills, specifically the leadership
competencies I listed below, to not be scared of positioning myself as a leader and
guiding others to success.
Improving Leadership Competencies through Goals

In participating in the Leadership Certificate Program, I aspire to develop leadership

skills and build my character to reach my goal of continuously improving myself. One
way to know what needs to be improved upon is to take the Leadership Center’s EQ
test. When I took the General ILC Emotional Intelligence (EQ) test, I scored lowest on
the two EQ clusters: self-management and relationship management.

Firstly, about self-management, I agree that I am really not the best at looking after my
own self. Usually, I lack self-discipline to let me follow through the work that I need to
do. This often results in delaying work or not finishing things on time or doing the
activities that I want to do. Therefore, my first goal is to repair this issue.

One way that I can enhance my self-control is to keep a journal and write down the
feelings that I have. For instance, if I was frustrated after not doing work, I will write my
emotions down and look up the strategies to deal with them accordingly. Beforehand, I
could look up, using the internet, ways to get myself concentrated and go through each
strategy accordingly. Another feature that I thought about was a tally, in which I tally up
the number of times I lose self-control and count the times I effectively contained them.
If the former quantity is less than or equals to the latter, then I know I am on the right
track. In addition, I could ask for my coach for feedback every other week and check my
journal with me to devise new ways to improve.

Secondly, about relationship management, my worst grades were on developing others

and inspiring leadership. I figured out that my issue was because of my lack of
self-assuredness. I often wait for others to take initiative first, even though I desired to
lead my group/team. Henceforth, to overcome this, I aim to push myself through my
comfort zone, so that I will face my fears and pierce through. I enjoy writing things
down, so every time I expose myself to difficult situations, I will write a short reflection
paragraph down in a journal. My goal is to slowly increase my exposure each month.
For instance, face areas in which I doubt myself for 2 to 3 days for the first week, then
slowly increasing them after successive weeks. The target is to do one scary every day,
so when I reach that, I know my goal will be reached. Additionally, I can talk to my
coach or attend workshops at the Leadership Center to learn more about overcoming
my obstacles.
 Six Leadership Competencies

Competency Leadership Objective Evidence

Personal/Self Level

Self-managemen I am a highly neurotic individual - I will try and make a list of things
t easy to be emotionally unstable. My that make me afraid and try to
objective is to try and confront my overcome them one by one.
fears. Furthermore, I want to practice Learning about them through the
having positive attitudes to become ILC’s library books or workshops
more self-confident. Therefore is useful as well.
become more equipped with dealing I will also meet up with my coach
with difficult circumstances, so to be so he can hand me some advice
more self-assured in leading others. or assignments that can help me
make some progress for myself.

Empathy Understanding others perspectives is Through doing some readings

crucial as it’s hard sometimes to myself, I found that there are
place yourself in others’ shoes when various ways to handle this
you don’t necessarily agree with matter. For instance, when
them. My objective is to overcome dealing with a confrontation, one
this barrier so to empathise with can ask the person to explain
others. I believe I can do this by their positions and listen to what
respecting and acknowledging they have to say, either verbally
people and their opinions. or nonverbally. On that account, I
shall try and practice these
strategies so to enhance my
empathy competency.

Interpersonal/Team Level

Group Dynamics With group dynamics, my objective is In order to improve my

to learn as much as I can about it as I understanding of group
am curious about how people interact dynamics, I will go to the
with one another in a group. Also, I Leadership Center library to find
wish to know the ways to strengthen books written about it.
the dynamics in a group in a way that I am also enrolling in the AGED
fits my personal leadership style the 260 class in the Spring 2019
most. This is so that I can implement semester, so in class, I will try to
change and be more flexible when it ask my TA or professor extensive
comes to different group settings. questions about the topic.
In addition, I think that when
interacting with a group, it’s
important to try to listen and ask
 lots of questions so to understand
the dynamics of that group.

Cultural As a student at UIUC, it’s important On campus, I have been involved

competency for me to have a good in various registered
comprehension of the diverse culture organisations. For instance, I am
on campus. This is because I get to doing the GLOBE program, which
interact with people with different aims to connect international
cultures than my own everyday, students from around the world
whom I need to work effectively with. together and develop friendships
Therefore, I aim to learn how to with one another. As a result from
foster good relationships with them this, I learned about the ‘do’s’ and
and build a sense of community ‘don’ts’’’ of Indian, Chinese,
through the Leadership program. French, or American cultures,
along with others. I also
discovered the ways people in
these cultures interact and what
their values were, which were
crucial for me to develop my
cultural competency.

Organisation Level

Innovation There are two main aspects that I I had just completed the
mainly focus on when it comes to Innovation I-Program just a
innovation. One is: how can I bring couple of days ago. Going to the
new approaches/innovations to my event really helped me to
leadership execution? And two: how understand how to inspire
can I create an environment where innovation in others. One thing
innovation can be inspired? This is that I learned was to empathise
because I recognise that people can with others as it allows me to
bring really exciting ideas to the table understand the core needs and
if the environment is right. Therefore, values that people have. This in
it’s my objective to focus on turn promotes better problem
developing and carrying out ways to solving and idea solution as they
make these two things happen. follow the principle needs of
others.
Moreover, I learned that it’s
important to have diversity in a
group as people of different
backgrounds can bring new
perspectives and insights.
Therefore, people can build on
collaboration and mix and
integrate their ideas together into
 a better, more complete whole.

Community/Society Level

Human Dignity Human dignity is the last leadership To better cultivate my human
competency that I want to pay dignity skills, I plan to read some
attention to. I acknowledge that each books on human dignity that are
and every one member of a group is available in the Leadership
important. However, sometimes I do Center library. Furthermore, I
not recognise that they are there and seek to develop my sense of
undermine their positions. Therefore, empathy so that I can understand
I wish to recognise the worth of all where people are coming from.
people and create an attitude of This is so that I can ensure that
respect when interacting with them. there is mutual trust and
commitment between members in
a group or team so that they can
learn from one another and
overcome challenges ahead.