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by Dee Putri

I had never been a leader before. I don’t have that charisma--you know, like Ellen Page with her coolness, or Hillary Clinton with her powerful presence? I’m not one of them. I wasn’t born with it; I’m this shy girl. I do have opinions, but sometimes I just feel that it is easier for me to keep them to myself since I’m bad at arguing. I’m bad at confrontation, it makes me feel uneasy, uncomfortable. I’m bad with being in a crowd. I hate crowds sometimes. I’ve learned that it’s just easier to be in smaller group or by myself.

Then, I became a coordinator of a group at my school. I thought I would only manage the group schedules, but I was wrong: I also needed to lead lead the group to get things done. I had never really led people, especially more than 10 people. It scared me. This was my first time doing this kind of thing, so I sucked. But I knew it was a good experience for me, and I learned a lot. Like, for example…

1. Being a good leader means remembering that you’re working as a team. That means that you have to work with your team and try a few ways to cooperate. For example, when we had a group paper assignment, I divided the work for everyone and assigned everyone a chapter. If a way isn’t working out for the group, try other ways that might suit how the group works. For example, my group loved to procrastinate, so I set earlier deadlines than the actual final deadlines. It’s tough at first, but you’ll figure it out.

2. Good decisions come from clear goals. As a leader, it’s important you to help set the group’s goals. The goals are different for each group depending on what you want to do, but in my case, the goals were meeting with the lecturers, creating an exams schedule, and writing papers. (Yours might be having a rally, organizing a letter campaign, or doing something else altogether!) We divided the work into group work and individual work. This was tough for me, because sometimes people wanted individual work to become group work, because they want to be in this together, but I prefer to work alone on some things. I just think that group work requires a lot of time and well, I’m not a patient person (my bad). I don’t want to wait for all the members of the group to be present to do a simple task instead of just doing it. I had to adjust. It was also sometimes hard for me to push people who are procrastinating because I was afraid they’d hate me–but then, I realized that I’m their leader, so like it or not, I have to keep reminding them about our goals.

3. You have to think about what’s more suitable for the group, not just yourself. That needs to go two ways: everyone needs to consider that they, as individuals, are also part of a group, and work make the group a priority. If everyone is putting the group and its goals first, including you, the group can trust you with the decisions. And as you make the decisions, you should remember that you can’t make everyone happy! This was a big challenge for me: after asking for help from group members a few times, I decided to do things by myself, which is not a good thing since it meant the rest of the group wasn’t working on it together. After a while, though, I learned who I worked best with and who had the same work ethic as me.

4. Be flexible. I used to be a perfectionist, but now I’ve accepted that it is okay not to be perfect. Sometimes I still feel upset because I know that my work isn’t perfect and that I can do better, but it requires so much time that I don’t have, especially in a group setting. As an individual priority, perfect work would be OK, and I would make that decision because it benefits me. But as a good leader you can’t do that. There are a lot to compromise for when you’re in a group. I’m not saying that you should change everything about how you work, because I know that it is so hard. But it is just important to have a meeting to say how each person works best so the leader can find a way that’s best for everyone. It might still be hard, but once the decision was made, as members of the group we all decided to give it a try. Maybe you’ll find that your work ethic will get better and you can become more adaptive!

5. Motivate your team. I learned that it really helps to give your group motivations or rewards. Try building in socializing time—like going out together to dinner, or watching movies together, or just spending time together in a relaxed way.

It is great to experience this growth! I was a pessimist before this experience, thinking I couldn’t lead. But now, I know that I can always learn something more. I’m still young and there are so many things ahead of me. I’ll make so many mistakes before I know what’s perfect for me. Perfect for me doesn’t always mean the same perfect for anyone else.