Does student leadership matter?
Acheampong Atta-Boateng (DPhil Geography and the Environment, 2018) writes
I am indifferent to campus politics and never entirely understood why people during my undergraduate college days strived earnestly for political roles. For me, the reward did not measure up with the stress load. Coming from a developing country, I also associate politics with corrupt sycophants who amass wealth via public theft without the intelligence to offer a legacy to their societies. So, student politics couldn’t do the sell. How can I convince an Oxford grad whose most valued resource is time to engage in student leadership? By my account, one of the vibrant Oxbridge colleges with the highest student engagement and financial independence is our sister college, St Edmund of Cambridge. The reason is simple. Even with a large undergraduate population, the student community is not micromanaged but competitively and voluntarily led by highly enthusiastic and motivated students who pass on community traditions from cohort to cohort. The highlight of my tenure was exposing students to what I felt the collegiate community could look like by reviving the GTC-Eddies during early post-pandemic normalcy. The benefits of the Oxford collegiate education model could be far-reaching but have shifted dramatically through the times only to be experienced by perhaps a handful. Today, students are constantly shopping around for experiences or likely budding at a newfound community elsewhere. Nonetheless, every good thing begins somewhere, and I’m here to inspire you that student leadership, incentivised or not, is ideal for the other why you chose Oxford and Green Templeton College more than you think.
What if I tell you the essential skills that will probably determine how much more or quicker you climb the career ladder after postgraduate training may have none or least to do with your time investment in the classroom? Today, educational credentials barely make an entry pass into the socio-economic doorway. Your survival through the ranks may come through how you apply yourself to the situational and circumstantial politics of each passing moment and your respective organisation or industry. Call it a reasonable chance. Before we deliberate on why your obsession with old-fashioned classroom grades matters the least, I’d take a detour first on a perspective meaning of leadership. This is because, after graduate training, most of you will begin careers that will gravitate towards leadership roles.
Leadership at its unit core is about relationships with people. It is less of a social skill and more to do with simply caring about people. The opposite is when the supposed leader ignorantly ‘leads themselves’, becoming the centre of attention and not the people. This often signals a failure point leadership. Just glance through history’s sinusoid turns in power politics, from humility to arrogance, the loved advocator to the infamous tyrant, to mention but few. Indeed, it is simply about who or what you lead and putting people first.
What will distinguish a great leader often comes down to their ability to win people’s trust. When leadership is more entitled, it becomes about the individual who usually makes it about themselves from a power context, resulting in self-leading without the ‘people’ component. However, where people matter, that’s where out-of-classroom learning becomes vital. Here, persuasion, delegation, and compromise become the tools for your execution.
Now, let’s get real. We persuade people to exercise readily unwilling or unintended choices or actions. For instance, winning majority votes in an electoral context requires persuasion more than a long resumé. A persuasive negotiator can earn more than their peers, even for the same job title. Compelling startup founders have raised significant investment rounds on ideas without proof of business concept, revenues, or customer traction.
Meanwhile, as a rule of 90+%, most startups are bound to fail regardless of their groundbreaking innovation or initial market traction. It wasn’t your usual success checklist but the simple art of persuasion. In traditional politics, leaders surround themselves with those they trust to execute their vision. At the college, committee members are elected and independent. You need to figure out how to work with them even if they would not make your ideal ‘cabinet’. I find that an exciting challenge that requires unique skills to manage. You must quickly learn and leverage their unique strengths and put them to work through strategic delegations. Delegation is part of team play. No one has it all. This way, you also get stuff done without breaking a neck. My third highlight is compromise. Sadly, we are conditioned to view life’s experiences always in the context of win-lose situations. It takes confidence and strength of mind to let go. It is the high point of Nelson Mandela. When something is not worth pursuing, it saves you energy to redirect your focus on more important things and highlights the downside of the competing interest. It validates your unexercised perspective or offers without the execution effort.
Now, be honest: will you ever have the chance to hone any of the above-outlined leadership traits? Then, ask yourself, if this matters more to your bottom line, will you pay to sharpen them? How about we scale this? I can confidently say that with practice, you could be making a partner at McKinsey or running an Ivy Institution. For the hard nuts still unconvinced, what if I tell you I got a busy and talented Oxford MBA grad with lucrative options in his first-world home to help me run a full-time high-risk venture in a developing country? Anytime I made a case to support students in front of brilliant fellows and administrators in my ridiculous mixed accent, I was learning and practising. My mistakes in the learning did not decrease a stock value or get me fired from my job. I want to see more MBA friends look at college leadership as a test bed for a pseudo-organisation. For fun, I brag that I could sell out party tickets in less time than Beyonce, haha!
Finally, what would be the low point during my student leadership tenure? Near the end of my term, college student leaders through the SU coordinated and put forward a consolidated issue that was common across the colleges. By coincidence, I had to deal with increasing student engagement and interest in leadership. Most MCR/GCR Presidents met a key representation of college authorities to present a practical and rational case. After a nice treat, the individual looked us in the face and said, ‘Yeah, sorry, there’s nothing I can do’. I was shuttered in disappointment and refrained from launching counter-persuasion. This is because, for me, it was more like – yeah, ‘we’ are aware, but we will not do anything about it. The problem, my friends, at this point, is that we were no longer in the presence of a leader but power and entitlement.
To end, I will ask myself, will I do it again? It will be a big NO. Wouldn’t that be contradictory? Again, no, because it was never about the position but the reasons and the circumstances. Now, I am swamped somewhere working with smallholder farmers in my dirty boots and, hopefully, keeping food baskets less empty come rain or shine. I hope at least I have convinced you that the best way to advocate and guarantee your interest is always to have a seat on the table. But when you win people’s trust to represent them, remember it was never about you but those you lead.
Acheampong Atta-Boateng is a former Graduate Common Room President at Green Templeton.
