Today’s blog comes from Colin Allison. Colin is the President of the Concordia University Careers Club.

Leadership often comes to me uninvited, maybe it is my personality or nature or ability to grow facial hair at a young age. I am the oldest in my family and my first leadership job was as role model to my younger siblings, a bigger job than many give it credit. I was a captain of my high school cross country and soccer teams, and I seemed to lead every school project assigned.

Whatever the reason, I find myself in countless leadership roles and have learned to accept leadership as a needed skill worthy of study and development, no different from grammar, mathematics or sport.

College has been an incredible experience in my study of leadership and being a leader. There are so many opportunities for leadership, plenty of resources, and almost no consequences should you fail.

I started an internship and mentor placement program for my university called the Career Development Program; we match up top students with incredible mentors and top internship positions throughout the community. I began by doing everything myself, contacting companies, finding mentors, legal paper work, all on top of attending classes, working part time and playing NCAA soccer. It was simply unsustainable, and at the end of the day I wasn’t really leading anyone.

As more people got involved and my workload got lighter, I realized I had more time to actually lead, to communicate my vision for the program and create goals for the team to work towards. By choosing a talented team and allowing them to make decisions, I became a more effective leader, simply by doing less.

Lessons can be found in everything, and leadership is worth learning.   

Today’s post is the sixth post in the Student’s Who Lead blog series.