Characteristic: Knowing and Understanding What it Means and What it Takes to be a Leader.

Knowing and understanding what it means and what it takes to be a leader is important
because if a leader doesnt understand this characteristic, the leader may take actions (or fail to
take actions) and employ strategies (or fail to employ strategies) that, rather than helping to
achieve the leaders or his/her organizations goals, could ultimately serve the purpose of demotivating his/her organization or alienating those people outside of his/her organization that
could help the leader, thereby causing the organization to flounder and struggle and ultimately
fail to achieve its goals.
Instances/Examples from my Internship Where I Applied this Characteristic
1. Creating An Extraclassroom Activity Fund Manual
Part of understanding what it takes to be a leader is knowing how to motivate your team
in order to successfully achieve your organizations goals. My internship project is to create a
manual for the Extraclassroom Activity Fund which can be used by those involved in handling
the money that is deposited into and spent from that fund. As part of that project, I determined
that in order to better ensure that the project would actually be used by those people, I wanted
them to have a sense of ownership in the manual. In order to do that, I decided that I would meet
with them personally in order to ask the questions that I felt were necessary in order to ensure
that the information I included in the manual was as accurate as possible. But I also wanted to
ask them what they would want to see in the manual and what parts of existing practices and
procedures they thought could be improved, so that they would feel a sense of ownership and be
motivated to employ the procedures in the manual.

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2. Budget Presentations
Another part of knowing what it means to be a leader is actually taking on leadership
roles when they present themselves, in order to help you or your organization achieve your
personal or your organizations overall goals. In Farmingdale the Assistant Superintendent for
Business does budget road show presentations to community groups and organizations like the
PTA as part of the budget process. While these presentations have not yet started, I recognized
that taking a leadership role in doing these presentations would help build my presentation skills
(which are incredibly important not only for leaders, but especially for an aspiring Assistant
Superintendent for Business who will have to present budgets to the community every year),
while also helping the district achieve its goal of passing a budget. I told the Assistant
Superintendent for Business that I wanted to take the lead and do one or more presentations on
behalf of the district. After a brief discussion during which I explained to him that I have done
budget presentations as a board of education member in my current school district and Tax Cap
presentations as a member of the Budget Advisory Committee, he agreed to allow me to take the
lead on at least one presentation.

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