MLDP Recap: What Makes a Good Leader? | Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy at Dartmouth

Read a student's account of our most recent session in our Management Leadership and Development program below. For more information about MLDP, click here.

During MLDP’s second session this spring, Professor Elizabeth Winslow, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Director of the MBA Program at the Tuck School of Business, spoke about leadership theory. This lecture “What Makes a Good Leader? Vision, Confidence, Training and Commitment” focused on four components of leadership: personal excellence; situational mastery; motivating and developing people; and achieving outcomes. By integrating leadership theory lecture and group discussion time, this MLDP session became a great opportunity for each of us to reflect on a single personal leadership experience and to use various theoretical frameworks to gauge our performance and become critical about self-improvement.

It was wonderful to hear peers share their effective leadership experiences, from spearheading a campaign to raise funds for breast cancer research to leading temperamental middle schoolers at a summer camp. By continuously returning to a single personal leadership experience during the group break out sessions, each of us had numerous opportunities to self-assess and to increase self-awareness
about our own leadership skills. The message really hit home to me that leadership development is accessible to everyone and can be taught. No one is innately born with a knack for leadership. By learning how to read both oneself and the situations one confronts, one develops both a deeper self-awareness and the critical skills vital for success.

-Maria Fernandez '14