My Experience as the SAF President

Can you imagine being elected to lead a team of ten and actually enjoying it?

I worked in many diverse teams during my three years at HIM and saw examples of high, but also low performing teams. After having such great role models in leadership during my internships and my time at school, I thought I would be ready to lead a Student Ambassador Forum team, formed of 10 people. In addition, I had also chosen the Human Capital and Development (Human Resources) specialization and the SAF was an appropriate environment for practicing what I was learning in the classroom at the time.

It was a fruitful experience where I could test my leadership skills, but it came along with many unexpected challenges. I wanted to build a team that enjoyed what they were doing, whilst still being effective. This is why we started off with team building activities, events, and dinners to get to know each other better.

I believe that people reach their best potential when they are left to take responsibility for their assigned tasks and initiatives and by taking control of the process.

I believe that people reach their best potential when they are left to take responsibility for their assigned tasks and initiatives and by taking control of the process. This is why I decided to use a ‘laissez-faire’ leadership method and it worked well with most of my teammates. I saw their confidence improve and how they adapted well to how things were done at HIM, in collaboration with the operations and academic staff.

I always encouraged my team to reach out for help if needed and to be there for one another. However, the most important and difficult thing to manage was the need to be consistent and to communicate well.

Did everything go as planned? Definitely not!

I am really glad that I faced conflicts that taught me how to improve in the future. I realized that you definitely have to change your strategy when you have strong differences in opinion and that you must understand where others' motivation lies, if you want to get results and find common ground. Obviously, we had moments where it was not easy to get what we wanted and we would stumble upon obstacles. I had days where I would be demotivated, experience high levels of stress or when I was sick and my teammates had to take over. For all these things I am deeply grateful and this is what I learned: although we will go through hard situations in life, we still need to be there for each other and be able to deliver what we promised ourselves.

Although we will go through hard situations in life, we still need to be there for each other and be able to deliver what we promised ourselves.