Excellence in Leadership Award:

Mr. William Chang

For centuries, philosophers have debated the purpose and meaning of life. To me, life is about being a leader who can stand on top of a world and look beyond it. Our constant perseverance to thrive for excellence and knowledge is what elevates our species above its origin. However, leadership is not innate but rather an acquired skill. Growing up in a strict Asian household shaped me into a timid individual. Thus, due to my introverted personality, I never had much experience being that inspirational leader.

For every life changing experience, there is beginning. Mine began two years ago when I decided to pledge for Lambda Phi Epsilon. For years, Lambdas around the nation have thrived to educate new incoming members about the fraternity motto: “To be leaders among men”. However, what is this leadership that we speak of? Many people can recite the characteristics of a leader but can not provide personal experiences to support them. I found my answers through my experiences in the fraternity.

Despite being a pledge captain, I was still desperately searching for an opportunity to take leadership roles as an active member of Lambda Phi Epsilon. That opportunity came to me two years ago when the fraternity needed someone to coordinate a dance team to compete in the Asian Greek Council Talent Show. This was an extremely difficult task due to the lack of dancers within our fraternity. However, without hesitation, I stepped forward and took that responsibility because, after three years on several dance teams, I was the only choreographer in the fraternity.

Despite my enthusiasm, the first day of practice was extremely disorganized and unproductive. There was a lot of material to cover and I did not really plan out the practice ahead of time. In addition, being a younger active, older brothers did not listen to me nor obeyed my orders. Adding to the chaos, people continuously complained that the moves were too hard to perfect. That night after practice, I recollected myself and planned the next practice in a more organized fashion. At the beginning of next practice, I established control of the team. First, I firmly emphasize that the practice would only end when I said so. Likewise, I announced my goals for each practice, and by the end of the night, I would make sure that those goals were met. I then began to realize that once I had more organized practices and started projecting myself, people started to listen. People wanted to follow someone who could take control, show presence, and more importantly, someone who clearly knew what he was doing.

As the talent show approached, I demanded perfection and pushed everyone beyond their limits. As a result, there were many times when people wanted to quit because it was taking up too much of their time. This is when I discovered that the hardest part about being a leader is to inspire people through tough times. I realized the best way to inspire people is to lead by example. If the team notices that you are enduring the same, if not worse, adversity, they will naturally respect you more and work harder. It is not about commanding a crowd and ordering them to do better, but rather inspiring them to want to do better for themselves. In addition, although I pushed my team hard, I continuously gave them words of encouragement to acknowledge their improvements. When faced with hardship, people may start doubting themselves. As a leader, it is important to constantly keep up the team’s morale. With these methods, I was able to successfully push my team member beyond their limits. After two months of intense practicing, I was able to transform a group of individuals with no previous dancing experience into a team of great dancers.

Our diligence paid off when we shocked the audience by winning third place in the talent show. To me, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life because I had successfully pushed my fraternity brothers to achieve what they perceived as “the impossible”. However, as I said before, this was only the beginning. Since then, I gained the respect of my brothers and received the Active of the Year award. I was also elected to a prestigious pledge dad position in order to continue my leadership role in the fraternity. This experience has taught me many valuable lessons that have shaped me into the person I am today and the leader I will become tomorrow.

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