Yale-NUS’ inaugural Leadership Week nurtures students’ leadership skills

As the spring semester bloomed to life on the Yale-NUS College campus, Kingfishers welcomed the start of Leadership Week, which took place from 16 to 21 January 2023, with a host of exciting activities intended to nurture the leadership skills of Yale-NUS students.

Each day of the week represented a new stage of growth in the students’ leadership journey. The theme that kicked-off the first day was “Sowing Seeds”, complete with a Strengthsfinder workshop to help students carve a narrative that combined their innate strengths, past experience at Yale-NUS, and future career visions.  On day two, the activities were aimed at “Rooting Your Network”, which included a Network Mapping workshop to guide students in determining potential career pathways and taking tangible steps towards connecting with those companies.

Other events included “Standing Firm” – a Self-Motivation and Emotional Intelligence workshop – and a “Leafing Your Mark” workshop which helped students create a resume for industries. The week’s events culminated in a Leadership Team Challenge on Saturday, to mark their “Blossoming” into better leaders.

Associate Dean of Students Cory Owen giving tips at the “Leafing your Mark” workshop. Image taken by Hei Kiu Au for Yale-NUS College.

Leadership Week was planned with great attention to detail to optimise the key takeaways for students. Yale-NUS Assistant Manager of Campus Life, Student Affairs Office, Tinesh Indrarajah shared about the intentions behind the week and its themes. “The focus in choosing each event was to provide depth and diversity for each theme we selected. Each session was tailored to deepen a student’s engagement with the theme of the day and ensure that they were able to draw out new learning points, as well as to create a comfortable space and time for them to work on these topics. Overall, the inspiration was to add value to students seeking to improve their preparation for transitioning into the professional world.”

A key event of the week was the Self-Motivation and Emotional Intelligence workshop, which was part of the theme “Standing Firm”. Tinesh explained that the objective was to encourage students to reflect on their most innate leadership style, understand the pros and cons of such a style, and develop skills to incorporate self-leadership and emotional intelligence as they work within teams and continue growing into future leaders.

Mr Mark Stuart, speaker for the Self-Motivation and Emotional Intelligence Workshop, delivering his talk. Image taken by Hei Kiu Au for Yale-NUS College.

Tinesh described how the Coffee Chat Simulation for the theme of “Branching Out” was designed for members of the Yale-NUS community to enjoy an ice cream while practising their coffee chat skills. “The prompts that I chose aimed to allow anyone, regardless of background, to share and mimic a coffee chat, providing an accessible opportunity for students to practice asking good questions and be active listeners,” he said.

Indeed, Engie Wong (Class of 2023) shared that the Coffee Chat Simulation was helpful for her professional goals. “As a senior searching for post-graduation employment, the Coffee Chat Simulation was one of many workshops I found directly helpful to transitioning my leadership skills beyond student organisations and into the workplace,” she explained.

Leadership Week wrapped up with a grand finale—the Leadership Challenge, part of the last theme, “Blooming”. Tinesh explained that the challenge was twofold: “Firstly, the keynote speech intended to equip students with a recap of the entire week’s learning, provide them with structure in communicating with trust and confidence, and with strategies to overcome imposter syndrome. Secondly, the actual Challenge sought to draw out a team’s ability to communicate effectively, display intelligence through the scavenger hunt, and showcase creativity and learning by producing a visual-formatted answer to three potentially real-life scenarios.”

Natasha Tan (Class of 2025), who participated in the Leadership Challenge, shared a key takeaway about how communication is not about what one says, but about what the other person hears. “From this, I learned that clarity of thought is equally or even more important than communicating effectively. I must be clear of what my goals are before I can convey it properly to my listener,” she explained.

Engie was also part of the organising team for Leadership Week. She reflected on her unique position as both participant and leader: “I had the opportunity to put my own skills to the test throughout the week. In the future, I hope that our work laying the foundation for this inaugural Leadership Week can be further innovated upon to create the kind of leadership programming that Yale-NUS students would benefit from the most,” she said.