Every day, people has something they would like to
accomplish. Whether it’s something small like cleaning the house before your
family visits to something big like pursuing a college degree, there are always
a set of obstacles to go through. Maybe your time at work takes away most of
the time to clean the house. Maybe the courses you take over the years become
much more difficult to handle. No matter how complicated things become, we always
try to wriggle our way through by focusing on nothing but our objectives. This
is an example of intellectual perseverance.
By definition, intellectual perseverance is a trait where
one has a consciousness to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of
difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations (2013). This trait is critical in
today’s leadership role. Personally I find a good leader to not only have a way
with people, but they are motivated, passionate, informative, courageous, and
most importantly have the incentives to take on challenges. Without challenges,
we cannot apply or enhance our knowledge. Say for example you are pursuing to
become a doctor. Initially, you will need to gain the basic knowledge. You read
about the human anatomy, how our bodies work in different conditions, so on so
forth. The challenge to become a doctor is to apply that knowledge with
hands-on experience. Over time, you come across more challenges such as treating
a patient with a very rare medical condition. Assuming that there is a lack of
information on this condition, you still take on the challenge in hopes to find
a successful treatment or cure for this patient. Whether the patient is cured
or not, you gained knowledge as you continued to help the patient. This is
vital for the knowledge gained through the challenge can later be implemented
and enhanced for other cases in the future, making you a much more favorable
doctor.
Though doctors and leaders seem like two completely separate
entities, there is a common ground. We purposely take on challenges to build
onto our current knowledge. As previously mentioned, one trait I find in a good
leader is to have a lot of background knowledge in something you wish to lead.
To my understanding, people look up to those who go far and beyond the basics. This
is what I wish to pursue as I continue my studies in the leadership program.
Though I have gained some leadership skills while working as an academic
advisor, my skills are only the basics. Since I have a huge passion of my
university, my goal is to move up the ladder in hopes to make the university
better. To do so however, I need a good crowd to look up to me. Keeping in mind
about how potential followers favor those with extraordinary knowledge and
experience, I will need to forcefully take on challenges and learn something
new. This will be a repetitive process throughout the leadership program, and
eventually I can then apply what I’ve learned in school to the new challenges
that I’ll face while pursuing my goal.
References:
The Critical Thinking Community (2013). Valuable Intellectual
Traits. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528
