The leader Within

Chapter 13: The Science Club

Rick Hansen focuses includes many clubs where students can demonstrate their academics excellence outside of class. These clubs include The French club, Math club and the Science club. Students are encouraged to join these clubs according to their interests and preferences. These clubs provide students with opportunities to study these subjects just for fun instead of worrying about marks and exams. Students can demonstrate their diverse personality and develop their leadership and communication skills in these clubs. Rick Hansen provides special awards to students who demonstrate excellent participation in these clubs.

Since I was interested in Science in grade 11, I decided to join Science club, so I could learn more about this field just for fun. Science club is an after-school program open to anyone who wants to explore or experiment new things. This club holds different activities such as scavenger hunts, experimenting with different chemicals under supervision, creating new reactions with specific given materials. The meetings are held every Friday after- school. Everyone was responsible for being in a group of four. I was responsible for collecting all the materials needed for our experiment and making sure that everyone had their safety gadgets on in my group.

During all my leadership experience, I was a very controlling leader who would set directions and goals for my team and expect them follow them exactly the way I want. However, this situation required creativity and had no set directions that I could give. The only main directions I had to give my group was to not break any of the club's rules or be unsafe. That was the first time I clearly felt that a leader needs to change their behaviour according to the needs of the task at hand. Instead of being rigid, I had to give my group a chance to explore new ideas and give them the trust and autonomy to be creative and do excellent work. I realized that being a leader is not always about ruling your team and passing on orders. Sometimes a leader just needs to provide feedback and support and allow their team to achieve higher goals defined in their own terms. Adjusting my leadership style according to the situation at hand showed better results. My group was able to think out of the box, come up with new ways that would make our product unique from others and help us be more efficient. I realized that a good leader is someone who doesn't think of their own self or how they want to lead. A good leader is someone who can realize that kind of situation they are handling and adjust their style according to that. When a leader puts his/her trust in their group, it gives their team a sense of self confidence and boosts their self esteem which motivates them to do better and trust their opinions. This allows the whole team to be more innovative and creative which always provides better results.