During one of my camps, I was lamenting about how some of my friends either have musical talents, are smart or look handsome/beautiful, and some people simply have awesome personalities, while I have none of those. My friend then said "but you have leadership qualities". Hmm, I raised an eyebrow. How can you tell that I have leadership qualities? To what extent? How do you quantify that?
I don't deny that out in the working world, leadership qualities will be important. Still, there are different types of those qualities. Being able to work well in one area doesn't mean you'll be able to lead well in another field, etc. Further, you can't classify things like "hey I have more leadership qualities than you". It's very vague and difficult to judge. Even if I am doing well currently in my job scope, that doesn't mean I will do well if I am put into another position. I do understand that such issues are a concern even for other talents, for music, good looks and so on, it might not be easy to quantify. But let's face it. Leadership is even harder. And there's still a fine line between a good do-er and a good leader.
I am a rather confident person. I won't say I am someone who can't lead. At least for this field, I know I am not hopeless. But I'll have to admit that you don't get people coming up to tell you that you are a good leader and many times, the outcome of a process or event does not show you whether you have succeeded as a leader or not or just isn't good enough to prove much. Simply because the event could have failed from other reasons. And there's no reason to deny leadership capabilities just because something went wrong. So how do we judge?
I could do with a more tangible talent. I may have one, it's just that I haven't discovered it. But no matter what, I'm glad that at least I already have something I can count on, even if only I believe in it. It's good enough.
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