{"id":796,"date":"2013-04-04T21:50:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T21:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/twainstein.com\/?p=796"},"modified":"2020-02-01T19:44:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T03:44:51","slug":"question-bag-what-constitutes-a-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/question-bag-what-constitutes-a-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Question Bag: What Constitutes A Leader?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Q:<\/strong>\u00a0My quant factors (GRE &#038; GPA) are all really strong&#8230;what I am worried about is my &#8220;other&#8221; stuff&#8211;especially leadership positions. How do I answer the leadership essay that all B-schools require if I don&#039;t have any leadership experience?<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong>\u00a0Really? None. Like&#8230;ever? Not once has your footprint been stamped on a project you&#039;ve been part of, no matter how small? Think about it. Seriously&#8211;stop and think about it. Stop reading right now and come up with three situations&#8211;no matter how seemingly insignificant&#8211;whose final outcome contained traces of your contribution. The next paragraph is waaay down the page so stop reading and start thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Aha, gotcha! No more reeeadiiing. Shouldn&#039;t be that hard, right? Here, we&#039;ll help you start: Complete the following sentence in three different ways:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The outcome of ________________would have been drastically different were it not for my my_________________.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The outcome of ________________would have been drastically different were it not for my my_________________.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The outcome of ________________would have been drastically different were it not for my my_________________.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We&#039;ve got news for you, folks: that&#039;s leadership! (At least in the eyes of grad school adcoms it is).<\/p>\n<p>Listen, the leadership essay, in whatever iteration it&#039;s asked, is not about grand titles or your superhuman feats of restoring justice where the bad guys wrought evil. You don&#039;t need to have led a crusade&#8230;or even a team.<\/p>\n<p>The goal is to demonstrate where you&#039;ve left your mark on whatever episode you choose to talk about. Word to the wise: Don&#039;t go with the first thing that comes to mind&#8211;dig a little&#8230;.then some more.<\/p>\n<p>The crucial thing is not to make the common mistake of thinking leadership means you accomplished something extraordinary in the face of harrowing obstacles; it doesn&#039;t. It means you inspired others to do that. The hero of a leadership essay shouldn&#039;t be you but rather those whom you made shine.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#039;s face it, not everyone has run a municipal fundraiser or been elected president of their graduating class. If this is you, listen up: leadership positions come in more shades and varieties than you&#039;re considering.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;for those of you whose resume lacks superlatives such as\u00a0<em>Recipient of\u00a0Congressional Medal of Honor. Twice.<\/em>, here are five oft-overlooked situations that demonstrate leadership qualities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ever stuck up for someone (or a group of people) who couldn&#039;t (or wouldn&#039;t) stick up for themselves?<\/li>\n<li>Have policies in any setting ever changed because you voiced your opinion about their inefficacy?<\/li>\n<li>Do you play a linchpin role in your family&#8211;mediator, activity organizer&#8211;that demonstrates your ability to marshall forces together and unite people?<\/li>\n<li>Have you ever witnessed a car accident and pulled over to begin delegating tasks in a chaotic situation where people aren&#039;t thinking very clearly.<\/li>\n<li>Are you generally the person in class to raise your hand and ask questions, making it a safe place for other to do the same?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now you might be thinking to yourself: A few of these are a tad &#8220;light&#8221;, or are a bit of a stretch to submit as examples of leadership to a vaunted school like Harvard or Haas. You&#039;re wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Adcoms don&#039;t care if you were director of brand management, manager of your softball team or social chair of a sorority (all good stuff)&#8211;those are titles. The leadersip essay should focus instead on examples of galvanizing <em>others<\/em> to act.<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of any significant leadership positions at work or in an extracurricular capacity, adcoms prefer to see evidence of it in your &#8220;real life&#8221; to reading yet another boring essay about how you took the initiative to fix the copy machine without your bosses&#039; urging.<\/p>\n<p>So, in sum:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Dig deep. Then take out a take out the cartoon jackhammer and start drilling even deeper. Everyone has leadership experience&#8211;successful applicants just work harder to uncover it.<\/li>\n<li>If your &#8220;resume&#8221; lacks traditional examples of leadership, instead of resorting to uninspired workplace examples,\u00a0explore less conventional examples that will make you stand out.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If you have any questions about this, or any of our previous articles, please contact us <a href=\"\/about\/contact\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q:\u00a0My quant factors (GRE &#038; GPA) are all really strong&#8230;what I am worried about is my &#8220;other&#8221; stuff&#8211;especially leadership positions. How do I answer the leadership essay that all B-schools require if I don&#039;t have any leadership experience? A:\u00a0Really? None. Like&#8230;ever? Not once has your footprint been stamped on a project you&#039;ve been part of, &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"button sm\" href=\"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/question-bag-what-constitutes-a-leader\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":936,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twainstein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}