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
Personal/Self Level
Self-managemen I am a highly neurotic individual -
t easy to be emotionally unstable. My
objective is to try and confront my
fears. Furthermore, I want to practice
having positive attitudes to become
more self-confident. Therefore
become more equipped with dealing
with difficult circumstances, so to be
more self-assured in leading others.
Empathy Understanding others perspectives is
crucial as it’s hard sometimes to
place yourself in others’ shoes when
you don’t necessarily agree with
them. My objective is to overcome
this barrier so to empathise with
others. I believe I can do this by
respecting and acknowledging
people and their opinions.
Interpersonal/Team Level
Group Dynamics With group dynamics, my objective is
to learn as much as I can about it as I
am curious about how people interact
with one another in a group. Also, I
wish to know the ways to strengthen
the dynamics in a group in a way that
fits my personal leadership style the
most. This is so that I can implement
change and be more flexible when it
comes to different group settings.
Evidence
I will try and make a list of things
that make me afraid and try to
overcome them one by one.
Learning about them through the
ILC’s library books or workshops
is useful as well.
I will also meet up with my coach
so he can hand me some advice
or assignments that can help me
make some progress for myself.
Through doing some readings
myself, I found that there are
various ways to handle this
matter. For instance, when
dealing with a confrontation, one
can ask the person to explain
their positions and listen to what
they have to say, either verbally
or nonverbally. On that account, I
shall try and practice these
strategies so to enhance my
empathy competency.
In order to improve my
understanding of group
dynamics, I will go to the
Leadership Center library to find
books written about it.
I am also enrolling in the AGED
260 class in the Spring 2019
semester, so in class, I will try to
ask my TA or professor extensive
questions about the topic.
In addition, I think that when
interacting with a group, it’s
important to try to listen and ask

Cultural As a student at UIUC, it’s important
competency for me to have a good
comprehension of the diverse culture
on campus. This is because I get to
interact with people with different
cultures than my own everyday,
whom I need to work effectively with.
Therefore, I aim to learn how to
foster good relationships with them
and build a sense of community
through the Leadership program.
Organisation Level
Innovation There are two main aspects that I
mainly focus on when it comes to
innovation. One is: how can I bring
new approaches/innovations to my
leadership execution? And two: how
can I create an environment where
innovation can be inspired? This is
because I recognise that people can
bring really exciting ideas to the table
if the environment is right. Therefore,
it’s my objective to focus on
developing and carrying out ways to
make these two things happen.
lots of questions so to understand
the dynamics of that group.
On campus, I have been involved
in various registered
organisations. For instance, I am
doing the GLOBE program, which
aims to connect international
students from around the world
together and develop friendships
with one another. As a result from
this, I learned about the ‘do’s’ and
‘don’ts’’’ of Indian, Chinese,
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.
I had just completed the
Innovation I-Program just a
couple of days ago. Going to the
event really helped me to
understand how to inspire
innovation in others. One thing
that I learned was to empathise
with others as it allows me to
understand the core needs and
values that people have. This in
turn promotes better problem
solving and idea solution as they
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

Community/Society Level
Human Dignity Human dignity is the last leadership
competency that I want to pay
attention to. I acknowledge that each
and every one member of a group is
important. However, sometimes I do
not recognise that they are there and
undermine their positions. Therefore,
I wish to recognise the worth of all
people and create an attitude of
respect when interacting with them.
a better, more complete whole.
To better cultivate my human
dignity skills, I plan to read some
books on human dignity that are
available in the Leadership
Center library. Furthermore, I
seek to develop my sense of
empathy so that I can understand
where people are coming from.
This is so that I can ensure that
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.