ECA Leadership Camp 2012

What is a leader?

In Latin, the word for lead is ducō, meaning to take somewhere. So what does a leader do?  In prehistoric times, leaders were selected based on their brute strength. Among animals, this practice carries forward in the practice of having the alpha male of the pack. However, in modern times , a paradigm shift has occurred, whereby leaders are now selected based on their personalities and their ability to organise a group.

Perhaps the most integral question of all, is what exactly makes a good leader? We sought out to find the answer to that when we arrived at Taylors College Sri Hartamas on the 17^th of February 2012. The theme this year was “where learners are leaders”. It was a day chock full of excitement, joy and anticipation .Those two days were days where we made plenty of new friends, tested our current friendships and learnt more about what it takes to be a successful and inspiring leader. We made our way to the Alpha theatre where the talks were to be held at around 9. The series of talks started off with Miss May, who had organised an interesting activity. She asked us to pick leaders amongst our assigned groups, and we had to state what qualities that we thought a leader should possess. Some of the ideas were surprising and original but all of them (well almost all of them, at least) were good answers and personally, this exercise made us reflect on what we thought a leader should be and how a different perspective can sometimes change your beliefs for the better. The next section was about the different types of leaders. There is the Steve Jobs style of leadership, the Mahatma Ghandi and even the Karl Marx style of leadership; but one thing was made clear— whatever style of leadership they took, they still succeeded in achieving their goals, and becoming world renowned in the process.

The next talk was by Ms Tarsni who talked about the skills a leader should have. The talk was informative and eye opening, especially when she brought up the point about becoming a global citizen. How does being a global citizen relate to being a leader? Surely they are different and mutually exclusive things. Through this eye-opening talk, we realized that a true leader is a leader who can communicate and get their point across, regardless of various cultural differences and language barriers.

The next talk was by Mr Jonathan and it involved looking at fictional leaders, such as Oz (from the Wizard of Oz), Peter Pan (from Peter Pan, of course) and Darth Vader (Who doesn’t know Darth Vader?). We had to decide based on the descriptions provided for each character who we thought was the best leader and along with that, provide justifications. Some of the answers were surprising whilst others were very impressive, but one thing was agreed upon by all the students present. Peter Pan is a terrible leader.

The final talk for the day was by Miss Dachaini regarding the BPEE process that would be an integral part of planning events in college, but also, more importantly in the “outside world”, where mistakes are dealt with more severely and success is a long and winding road. The B stands for brainstorming, the P stands for Planning, the E stands for execution and the final E stands for evaluation or the “post mortem” as she put it.

After all that, we (finally) departed for the camp at around 1.30 and arrived at 3.30 - an hour after our estimated time of arrival, thanks to a slight error by our bus driver which resulted in one of the buses almost reaching a French-Japanese village. The drive was filled with poetic scenes of the mountain-side, covered in foliage. The lovely sound of rain added to the atmosphere, creating a very scenic and calm drive.

Upon our arrival, we gathered near the dining area to collect our keys and raced off to our rooms to claim beds, use the toilet(s) and to change into our sports gear for the activities that were to follow. Our first activity at the camp was the treasure hunt, or rather the pre-treasure hunt. In this activity, we had to match the names of the places in the compound to the clues given. However, the catch was that we had to get 10 right (out of 20) to pass onto the next round. It was interesting to see how different groups employed different methods to complete this task, with some opting to stand around and solve it through discussion, while some groups ran and split up. This is a true testament to what Miss May had brought up - different people work differently and that the leaders’ job is to find out everyone’s “style” and combine everyone’s skills together to get the best results.

The next part of the treasure hunt involved a lot of running, jumping, screaming and shouting- BEFORE we had even started. This was to get everyone to keep quiet and settled so that they could give us a briefing on the treasure hunt. Then, the true mayhem began. Our first task was to go to the field and search for elusive golf balls, hidden away in obscure places. Finding a needle in a haystack is an apt comparison to what we had to go through - we had to resort to begging some of the instructors for help, as we had fallen too far behind. There was a great deal of other activities before we finally completed the treasure hunt.

After the treasure hunt, we went back to our rooms to clean up and rest before dinner. After we had filled our stomachs with food, a blindfolded walk was the last activity of the night.This was one of the most eventful activities, as a scary, tall, topless man came down and shouted at us to keep quiet. Nonetheless, a calm, serendipitous feeling was felt by all of us about an hour into the night walk. The both of us felt comfortable with our teams and trusted them to inform us about obstacles in front. That feeling of completely trusting the rest of your group is one that we hope the rest of the participants experienced.

That night, we all slept (eventually) and gathered at 7 the next morning for a hearty breakfast before the day of activities that was to follow. Among the activities that were planned were the army crawl; the “spider web” - whereby we had to get all our members across without touching the “web”; the pyramid climb, where we used a rope to climb up one side of a pyramid and down the other; and last but not least, the rope walking activity, whereby we had to cross a rope over water while our friends tried to stabilise the ropes, thereby making it easier for us to cross. This event held the most lessons in store as it was the perfect metaphor for the trials and tribulations we will be facing in the future. No matter how much your team tries to help you out, it all boils down to how much you want to get yourself across.

After all the events, we made our way back to our rooms, cleaned up and shipped out. We gathered for one last meal at the camp. As fate would have it, it rained - a very fitting ending to the bittersweet experience we had at the camp (Also, the irony! It rained when we arrived as well!).

Well, now that we’ve just “attended” the camp, perhaps we’re ready to tell you what a good leader is now. A good leader is essentially someone who inspires you to do things. In our opinion however, a good leader is a leader who can pull their team through a tough situation, a leader is someone who can be empathic when need be but also tough when essential. A leader makes sure that at the end of the day, the goal is met. A leader is not a thaumaturgist , a leader is merely a normal person but one who has risen up to the challenge of being great and leading others to greatness    

BY IAN QUAH