Leading the Change: How the Fellowship develops future leaders
We sat down with Pete Schastny, Board Fellowship Chair, to discuss how the FAO Schwarz Fellowship experience develops future leaders. This is part one in a two-part series.
We build in many leadership development experiences throughout the Fellowship program, many of which the Fellows themselves have written about on the Fellows’ blog. So I want to underscore something more basic that goes to the very core of the Fellowship itself.
Leadership is complicated—a skill or something you can develop, but also something like an attitude. The Fellows are amazing young people determined to have an impact on people’s lives, especially people living in challenging circumstances. To me, that’s how leadership starts. From there, people may take different paths. Often our Fellows don’t come in knowing what kind of leaders they want to be.
I’ve come to think leadership is also a kind of drive.
Our Fellows have been excellent students with campus leadership experience. They’re good at building a team, abstract thinking, analysis, research, planning, collaborating, etc. But with the Fellowship, we’re also trying to develop other strengths: resilience, focus, compassion, empathy, tenacity, listening, flexibility, self-awareness—and all at high levels. Leaders need these strengths, too and know how to combine them with other skills. The Fellowship gives them a chance to put their skills and strengths to the test in a work environment with real goals.
As I’ve gotten to know the Fellows, I’ve come to think leadership is also a kind of drive. The Fellows want to be leaders. At the beginning, they’re leading in small ways when they see an opportunity or realize they can improve something in the moment. But very quickly they start actively seeking out challenges, rethinking the work, setting new goals, and taking more responsibility. They get a lot more comfortable and confident taking action. Their capacity to lead builds quickly.Â
Leadership also takes practice, and they begin to realize practice means working hard at something. That’s when drive comes in, and takes them further, maybe even further than they thought possible at the outset of their time as Fellows.
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