The importance of letting others lead:

This week's session of LTI highlighted a not too known part of leadership. This week's session showed the importance of being a good follower.

One featured event of this session was an activity in trust. In this activity, the students were blindfolded and led across a maze by some of the mentors. After the activity, the students returned and had a brief discussion on why leadership was important. While people made it clear that leadership was important in order to make sure that things got done, the question was brought up whether bad leadership was better than no leadership. In my opinion, the group came to a good conclusion when they decided that bad leadership was better than no leadership, because bad leadership eventually leads to changes, which ultimately leads to good leadership.

In addition to discussing the importance of leadership, the students also listed qualities of leaders by examining the leaders that impact their lives on a daily basis (such as parents, teachers, and coaches). While I was impressed that the students stated that one characteristic of being a leader is to motivate people, I was blown away when the group made the discovery that good leaders also have to be good followers.

Finally, after the discussion, the students used the rest of the time to prepare for their final project presentations for the Closing Ceremony.