Empowering others toward a common goal

At the annual Ethnic Student Leadership Recognition Dinner in November,
senior Juliana Martinez presented the following remarks about leadership.

My name is Juliana Maria Martinez and I am one of the officers of the Hispanic/Latino Student Association. I was asked to share my thoughts in regard to the meaning of the word leadership.

That should be easy to explain, I thought to myself, since, while growing up in Colombia, I participated in leadership seminars, Christian missions across my country, and many social organizations where I learned what being a leader was all about. I became a leader despite the fact that I grew up in a country where women traditionally don't take leadership roles, simply because they do not think they can, nor do they have the ambition to pursue them. But, explaining the meaning of leadership may not be as easy as it sounds when the world around us misleads us with notions of leaders as figures of untouchable power or individuals who happen to be on top as a result of networking with the "right people." What about those who perceive leaders as controversial characters, loud individuals, and other images introduced to us on a daily basis?

What it all comes down to, however, is that a leader is any person who is able to utilize his or her skills to empower others to work toward a common goal. It's not doing the entire project by yourself or trying to be a multi-tasking super-human who does not take into consideration other people's talents. Being a leader is being able to connect everybody's ideas and energies into accomplishing something. We all, as students, faculty, and staff members of Augsburg College, have plenty of opportunities to be leaders in our daily activities. It is our option to take advantage of those chances and influence someone else's life in a positive way. We all heard about the leaders who risked and lost their lives during the events of September 11. A true leader may be recognized in something as big as such disasters or in something as little as cheering up someone on our campus who is having a bad day.

Some people may think that they donít have what it takes to be a leader because they don't organize big events or reach higher positions. But to that line of thinking, I respond with a quote I read one day on my e-mail that stuck as one of the most important slogans in my life: To the world, you may just be somebody, but to somebody, you may just be the world! Utilizing what we are or what we know to change somebody's world in a good way makes us all leaders.

Finally, I share the idea that to be a leader, one needs to have been led. I would like to thank everyone who has been a leader in my life, starting from Jesus and Mary to my parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and many others ... because they are somebody in my world and because they have made me a leader.

—Juliana Martinez is a senior with a major in management information systems and a minor in business administration. She is a co-chair of the Hispanic/Latino Student Association.