What’s in a Name? Going Beyond the Manager or Administrator Role to become a True Leader

By Jennifer Tran
As a college senior, I have been involved in my fair share of clubs and organizations. At the first activities fair, I remember being completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of groups catered to any possible interest one could have: the arts, politics, club sports, culture, careers, hobbies, and much more. As the default freshman move, I signed up for anything that seemed remotely interesting. Over the years, though, I have found my niche in certain clubs and organizations at my university and I have become involved by working toward issues that truly interested me.

Fighting against the stigma of hunger and homelessness has been one of my passions because it is the greatest inequality that can suddenly appear in the most unfortunate circumstances. I am drawn to hunger and homelessness since in a way, they are social problems to which any person can succumb. Through my role as a program director of the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen, I facilitate the volunteer experience of 5-10 students each semester. I am able to train my volunteers from the beginning, getting them ready for the work they will be doing at the soup kitchen. Although some of what I do involves coordinating shift schedules and carpools, my work as a program director focuses on interacting with my volunteers and the staff at the Salvation Army. I enjoy engaging them in discussions about hunger and how the soup kitchen is reaching out to a vulnerable part of the community.

To me, a true leader does more than just delegating tasks to a group of people and expecting them to follow orders. I believe that true leadership inspires and motivates individuals to follow their passion and commit to the activity or event at hand. Leadership is not just a title on a resume or a position that one assumes when one feels like it. I am by no means a paragon of leadership. I have faced many challenges in motivating my volunteers that they are truly making a difference and I have had to modify the ways I communicate information and respond to feedback. Nevertheless, I think that by having an ideal standard of leadership that can be used as a set of guidelines, I do not fall into the stereotypical hole of acting like a manager or an administrator and calling that leadership. Leadership is something that improves over time and I hope that one day, I can reach that sort of level.