Introduction to Leadership Workshop (Community Enlightenment)

Ms. Juanita Razo speaking about leadership

Today, I volunteered to help out a community leadership club by leading a workshop called "Introduction to Leadership" with speaker Juanita Razo. In this workshop, I learned many things that I never believed existed for the topic of leadership. At face value, the Introduction to Leadership Workshop may seem like a review class for many of us. Being exposed to knowing people like Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, and parents, we have general ideas of what leaders are about. However, this workshop sheds light to another definition of leadership: interdependence. Many of the participants believed that being a leader is about being the one to take the initiative and is the executive decision maker. This asset is true to an extent, but Razo said this is not the case. According to Razo, leadership’s true definition states that it is a process in which goal-driven individuals collaborate for the ultimate objective. Many of the participants were stunned by the unexpected, enlightening definition; they then understood and accept leadership at another angle. We then discovered that there was a fine line between the characteristics of a manager and those of a leader. As University of Southern California’s authors, Bennis and Nanus (1985), quoted: ‘Managers do things right and leaders do the right things.’ Many of the workshop students agreed that managers are the people who set the rules down, but the shocking thing is that they do not have to be leaders. Leaders, in contrast, are the ones who must have management skills and follow the rules in order for the group to be successful. One necessity that Razo wanted us to take from the workshop was gaining leadership is a lifelong process. She referred that 20% comes from you, 20% comes from SLI workshops 60% comes from trial and error scenarios. This process is the driving factor in discovering our own leadership potentials and philosophies.