The Magnificent Leadership Academy

For people to build up their ethos it is essential to show practical wisdom. Jay Heinrichs explains the importance of leadership and revealing it when being persuasive. One may use other tools like pathos or logos, but without leadership, rhetorics don’ work. Just as the world is once again giving importance to rhetorics or persuasion, leadership education is now part of the world’s most recognized institutions. I can best relate this to my school’s leadership program, designed to make the leaders of Colombia’s future. 

Colombia is one of those places, mostly around the equator, in need of true, tough and efficient leaders. Our geographical disadvantages are a fact, on we must deal with. Colegio Nueva Granada is well aware of this. For this third world garbage to get better, we need leaders, and a leadership programs is just the solution. As shown in Thank You for Arguing, leadership is made up of three elements: showing off your experiences, bending the rules and appearing to take the middle course. The leadership program at the school took it seriously and so the Colombian society awaits the leaders. 

Ubaté: The valley of ethos

Living right between the uncivilized Central American countries and the vast Amazon jungle, Colombians are prone to receive wilderness survival books from people like my aunt. These guides, written by adventurous American expats, intend to be the solution for getting along in lousy South America, yet the words are not merely enough. CNG’s leadership program believes you must learn by doing. The leaders of our school are sent once a year to Ubaté, Cundinamarca camping as they experience the type of things crucial to Colombian lifestyle. As Heinrichs says, showing off experiences is one of the keys to leadership. Young CNGers get to go drive three hours from Bogota to camp in a complex that, guess what, only has four showers per sex. Once the students are accustomed to such harsh living, as they should to prepare for the future, they get to deepen their leadership abilities through life-challenging activities. Beginners face a blinded obstacle course while expert leaders are dared to drink fresh cow milk. The Ubaté retreat exemplifies the exceptional formation leadership students get. Thirty years from now, as I’ll hear my classmates on political debates on TV or follow their instructions as their employee, I’ll think, “Having climbed a mountain, walked on mud and milking a cow made these street-smarts the people to follow.”

Monday

Experience in a bottle

Having gone through such difficult tasks of simulated Colombian life, leadership students are sassy enough to make their own decisions. The movers and shakers of CNG student life know what to do, and they even bend the rules if necessary. When instructed to help in activities such as the seventy fifth anniversary of the school, the leaders have a savvy nature that allows them to do what’s right. That day they were great at painting little kids’ faces. As true leaders, they were able to bend the rules for better. Some even dared to draw things other than an elephant on the children’s cheeks. Leadership skills extend past school boundaries. Some of these students are even part of unsupported student organizations, like the Fashion Show Committee. The activity, shunned by the school authorities, shows the ability leaders have to make decisions. Many of them, as Heinrichs says, demonstrate their leadership skills by going beyond the rules (they make the parties bigger, come up with super crazy themes that no one expected and make it clear that the school will not limit them, you name it).  Perhaps the best example of leadership students’ ability to bend rules is the first aid training. Another activity planned for them to have experience in what you need to survive Colombia, the training forces the leaders to take quick decisions. When simulating the exam that checks whether someone is seriously injured, some students went beyond the instructions and used their Grey’s Anatomy skills to diagnose the fake patients. “This is an easy one, he’s suffering form an idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis. It’s no accident, just like O’Malley and Karev’s case,” some would dare to say.

The final element of leadership, according to Jay Heinrichs, is appearing to take the middle course. Often seen as the good student-bad student strategy, this leadership characteristic is certainly present in leadership students. When asking teachers to sign their prearranged forms of absence, in order to go to their rural getaway, the leaders have it sort out. You can observe as the first student asking permission claims they shouldn’t have to study for the test on Tuesdays while camping. The second student to ask for the signature comes with a balanced, middle-course solution, “We’ll do the test on after school.” Gosh, they’re creative. 

After carefully analyzing CNG’s leadership program and how it fulfills the basics of leadership in rhetoric, it is no mystery why Colombia is moving forward. This program captivates the really need in Colombian society. The nuns and monks were wrong to teach us philosophy, we must experience what Colombian life is. Surely mountain life survival skills are part of the leadership package, but what makes a leader a true one is his or her certificate. Experience is useful for yourself, but for it to be persuasive and build up one’s ethos, one needs a badge. So far i’ve explained how CNG’s leadership program builds character and therefore leadership, but what really makes the difference is the industrial system in which students get certificated as the leaders. They will get into good colleges, get recruited by great companies and, someday, use their lactose tolerance to lead the world of tomorrow.