My time at the LeaderShape Institute
During my first week of winter break, I applied for and was selected to go the LeaderShape retreat at the Higher Grounds Retreat and Conference Center in Indiana. Initially, going in to this experience I was a bit cynical. I had been to my fair share of retreats and team building outings and all that raced through my mind was the lingering doubt of whether this experience would be the same recycled activities common to all those retreats. After coming out of it I can say with all honesty that this experience changed the way I looked at life. Each day and each night provided me with invaluable knowledge, great values and a lot of very strong relationships among the peers who accompanied me. I finally learned how to truly "lead with integrity".
It is widely considered that leadership is merely considered the action of "leading"' and coordinating a group of people. Leadershape however taught me what it really meant to "lead". To lead with integrity is to have a clear vision that brings about positive change through confidence, inclusion, relationships and a specific plan of action in your mind. Once all these factors begin coexisting, no goal is without reach as goals function as the beacon of hope in life. Leadershape also helped all of us realize what goals we really had and helped mold our brains to think strategically and rationally as to how we would achieve these goals. Each of us were able to come up with a vision of how we want the ideal future looked like. It was here that I discovered my vision which was to tackle one of the greatest problems this world is facing; the water deficit. I knew that there were countless countries out there suffering from a lack of clean, potable water and my vision, as fanciful and incredible as it may sound, was to provide each of these countries with access to this water. We were asked to create a "Tomorrow's Headline" where we created a newspaper headline of our vision coming to life in the foreseeable future. Personally, seeing my vision come to life on this paper inspired me to actually feverishly pursue it instead of letting it decay in the back of my mind as a dying memory. Reading everyone's headlines gave me hope for a brighter future, full of innovation and equality.
If I had one unforgettable experience it would be the one night we were split into two groups and played the simulation "StarPower". This simulation seemed like a simple enough game at first where the basic idea was to trade and exchange tokens in certain combinations to earn points. However, the "game" got incredibly real very quickly. It started off with people being put in classes based on how many points they accumulated in the first round and progressed to the people in the class with the most points possessing the ability to alter the very rules of the game. Eventually, somewhere in the heat of the simulation, all of us began to slowly realize that this was much more than a game and that this was real life playing itself in the form of a simulation. Personally, I greatly enjoyed the discussion that followed with the large group and even the smaller groups of enthused and moved people as much as the simulation did for me.
Overall, the week I devoted to the LeaderShape Institute was one of the most memorable and most rewarding times of my life. It opened up my eyes to the world of possibilities around me, the power of inclusion, my latent potential, my visions and, most importantly, the true definition of leadership. Below I have attached pictures of my time at the Institute, including pictures of my "Tomorrow's Headlines", my Breakthrough Blueprint (a set of goals for my future and how I plan to achieve them through smaller attainable goals) and several other memorable moments.
During my first week of winter break, I applied for and was selected to go the LeaderShape retreat at the Higher Grounds Retreat and Conference Center in Indiana. Initially, going in to this experience I was a bit cynical. I had been to my fair share of retreats and team building outings and all that raced through my mind was the lingering doubt of whether this experience would be the same recycled activities common to all those retreats. After coming out of it I can say with all honesty that this experience changed the way I looked at life. Each day and each night provided me with invaluable knowledge, great values and a lot of very strong relationships among the peers who accompanied me. I finally learned how to truly "lead with integrity".
It is widely considered that leadership is merely considered the action of "leading"' and coordinating a group of people. Leadershape however taught me what it really meant to "lead". To lead with integrity is to have a clear vision that brings about positive change through confidence, inclusion, relationships and a specific plan of action in your mind. Once all these factors begin coexisting, no goal is without reach as goals function as the beacon of hope in life. Leadershape also helped all of us realize what goals we really had and helped mold our brains to think strategically and rationally as to how we would achieve these goals. Each of us were able to come up with a vision of how we want the ideal future looked like. It was here that I discovered my vision which was to tackle one of the greatest problems this world is facing; the water deficit. I knew that there were countless countries out there suffering from a lack of clean, potable water and my vision, as fanciful and incredible as it may sound, was to provide each of these countries with access to this water. We were asked to create a "Tomorrow's Headline" where we created a newspaper headline of our vision coming to life in the foreseeable future. Personally, seeing my vision come to life on this paper inspired me to actually feverishly pursue it instead of letting it decay in the back of my mind as a dying memory. Reading everyone's headlines gave me hope for a brighter future, full of innovation and equality.
If I had one unforgettable experience it would be the one night we were split into two groups and played the simulation "StarPower". This simulation seemed like a simple enough game at first where the basic idea was to trade and exchange tokens in certain combinations to earn points. However, the "game" got incredibly real very quickly. It started off with people being put in classes based on how many points they accumulated in the first round and progressed to the people in the class with the most points possessing the ability to alter the very rules of the game. Eventually, somewhere in the heat of the simulation, all of us began to slowly realize that this was much more than a game and that this was real life playing itself in the form of a simulation. Personally, I greatly enjoyed the discussion that followed with the large group and even the smaller groups of enthused and moved people as much as the simulation did for me.
Overall, the week I devoted to the LeaderShape Institute was one of the most memorable and most rewarding times of my life. It opened up my eyes to the world of possibilities around me, the power of inclusion, my latent potential, my visions and, most importantly, the true definition of leadership. Below I have attached pictures of my time at the Institute, including pictures of my "Tomorrow's Headlines", my Breakthrough Blueprint (a set of goals for my future and how I plan to achieve them through smaller attainable goals) and several other memorable moments.