An initiator and a leader

Before entering the business school, I had the experience of leading a team. As a leader, I had all kinds of responsibilities in the team, such as assigning tasks to team members, supervising the team’s work and correcting errors whenever they happen, giving out suggestion to members for better performance, and so on. However, in this summer project, I realized what an initiator is. We have an independent task several members and I were responsible for. We did not elect a leader in this task and were quite self-ruled. However, it often happened that we still needed someone to stand out and “lead” a part of work. We are a newly-formed team, and did not know what everyone was good at, but different part of the task required different skills. Understanding the situation, I stood up and asked for responsibility for several parts of the task. This is the time when I felt very different for being an initiator and a leader. When you are a leader, you are assigned all the responsibility and roles in the team. You are required to do all the work. But as an initiator, nobody asks you to do anything. You do all the work just because you want the team to work well, finish the job excellently and help members as much as you can. If you do not keep the team in mind, you won’t take initiatives to take responsibility. In my understanding, a true leader will be someone who wants his/her team to work great, rather than someone else ask them to do so. They will not care about rewards from their hard work, and will take care of their team members for the purpose of the team, not personal benefits. A leader needs to be an initiator in the first place.