Leadership Self Reflection

The leadership role I found the most challenging was being the chair of the silent auction for Relay for Life in my grade 11 year. The silent auction chair essentially leads the silent auction committee, which approaches businesses for donations that can be bid on and organizes the actual auction the day of. While I had been involved with the silent auction for two years, I had always worked under the leadership of Paige, a seven year veteran of the event who was always there to guide and assist me if there ever was a problem. Now on my own, I realized early that there were a lot of behind the scenes tasks that I never knew of. I had to be more organized with documenting the businesses we had talked to, the items we had received and the estimated

For three months I headed the committee, made presentations to promote the auction, and collected donations and while tasks were completed, the leadership role was not without difficulties, both emotionally and logistically. The group I lead was made up largely of my friends. It was enjoyable to spend time with the people I like, but it made it more difficult to express my frustration when I felt that they weren’t doing their share of the work. One struggle I had was pushing my friends to do the tasks that they had signed up for and, admittedly, I failed to lead in a constructive way in this domain. I lost my temper when I found out that certain things I was told were done were actually not and that I would have to rush to get them finished. I felt awful about the way I handled the situation, but it is from that mistake that I learned that a good leader needs to be understanding with their group and flexible with the tasks they must do. I also learned that you cannot control the actions of others, but getting angry with them will not push them to do what you want them