Going through Booth’s LEAD program once can bring people together. Going through it twice, builds even deeper relationships. And traveling to the other side of the world together for one of the biggest events of a lifetime ensures lifelong friendships.
As a second year LEAD facilitator, you dedicate two quarters of your Booth experience to creating and learning content, which you then deliver to the incoming Class during Orientation. Between your cohort squad and your work-group squads, you spend an incredible amount of time with the same sets of people.
Do you sometimes feel like less of a Gene Fama and more like a Gene Hackman? Want to practice your story-writing to prepare for internship recruiting? Want to show that you’re the funniest person at Booth? Want to prove you have the most entertaining cohort? I have some good news for you.
One of the major draws to Booth for me was its structured program that would allow me to work on my “soft” skills (or as Booth’s Leadership Development office calls them, “action” skills), like teamwork, public speaking, and leadership. The Leadership, Effectiveness And Development (LEAD) program at the beginning of my first year allowed me to do just that: I had a chance to study how my personality affects my leadership style, understand the default role I tend to play within a team, and practice giving a persuasive speech to my classmates.
These skills and insights were immensely valuable and came into play for me numerous times throughout my first year and my summer internship. So I decided that being a leadership facilitator in my second year would be a perfect way for me to “pay it forward,” while continuing to work on my own leadership skills.
Coming from a non-traditional background of majoring in biomedical engineering and working as a software developer, I have to admit that I was nervous about coming to business school. Not only did I have a lot to learn in the classroom (since I had only taken one business course during my entire undergraduate experience), but I also had a lot to learn outside the classroom when it came to management and leadership styles. The flexible curriculum at Booth really helped me brush up on my business skills for the former, but Leadership Exploration and Development (LEAD) was what really helped me excel at the latter.
We’re down to our final week of life at Booth, which means days are spent hastily trying to sell old furniture, cobble together final papers, and say yes to every event invitation that comes our way. While two years is really the perfect amount of time to be in business school, it doesn’t take away from the sadness we collectively feel about having to leave this community and most importantly this lifestyle.
I probably speak for most of my class in saying that it’s been a transformational period of time. We learned a great deal, engaged in new experiences, and made memories that’ll last a lifetime. But aside from all the facets of school you’ve read about all year, let’s talk about the social aspect at Booth, and what makes it so much fun to be a part of when classes and recruiting take a back seat on occasion (or potentially more often than that).
