Being a Dynamic, Not a Static, Leader by Hamza

Being a Dynamic, Not a Static, Leader by Hamza - September 2021 Scholarship Essay

One of the most challenging experiences that I faced at Elkins came in my freshman year as part of my Intro to Engineering Design class. I was the leader of a group project that was tasked with creating a golf course in the Inventor CAD software, as well as physically. Our group consisted of 6 people, including myself. I was selected as team leader, and I immediately recognized that this project was going to require a lot of collaboration because of how all the pieces of our project had to fit together. The biggest challenge in this project, however, wasn’t actually constructing the golf course but learning how to work together, because we had a variety of different personalities on the team.

Most of us were excellent communicators and problem solvers, but one of our team members was quite different. She was brilliant, no doubt, but she was very quiet and preferred to work by herself. In the beginning, I tried to motivate and communicate with her like all the others, but after one incident where she failed to communicate to us when or how we could access her part of the project, we had an intense argument. I tried to defend her by saying that it was just an honest mistake, but some team members really didn’t like the way she worked in a group, and for the most part, I couldn't blame them since I wasn’t overly fond of her teamwork skills either. I didn’t want to take this to my teacher immediately since I believed we could resolve this in-house, but Mrs. Newsome, my Engineering Instructor, eventually called me aside and taught me something just as important as any of her engineering lessons. The most important thing I learned from this encounter, and the idea that Mrs. Newsome was trying to get across to me, is that everyone is different, and as a team leader, I have to take that into account when I try to work with people.

People are complex and respond to external motivation, communication, or criticism differently, and contrary to my previous beliefs, there is no one size fits all approach to leadership or teamwork. The way I communicate to an introverted teammate has to be different than the way I would communicate to someone like myself if I wanted to get the best out of each teammate. After my talk with Mrs. Newsome, I went back and had a one on one chat with the aforementioned group member and explained to her why her communication and work style was problematic in a group setting. I also acknowledged my own need for improvement in the area of group leadership. I could have allowed her some more space to do her work, as well as explained to the rest of my group that she was still contributing, but just did it in a quieter manner. She apologized as well and promised to try to become a better team player in the future. After that project, I have been more conscious of not only what skill sets I have in my group, but also what personalities are present and how best I should individualize my approach to leadership. This lesson can not only help me in group work but also in larger social contexts, where empathetic communication skills can be extremely useful, and I look forward to bringing my new understanding of leadership to the college level.