Mary Harmon: Learning to Lead Myself
“In order to lead others, you must first learn to lead yourself.”
This was the biggest lession that Bill Mains and Chip Adams wanted each student to walk away with after completing their “Concientious Capitalism” course. I was lucky enough to be one of those students, and can confidently say that this has been the most impactful course for me over my last four years at Santa Clara.
The structure of teh course is this: Tuesdays, you prepare for an in-class case study and a guest speaker, and Thursdays you meet with your small group (called LDT’s for Learning Development Teams) to work through self-reflection and leadership building exercises. At first, I was nervous about the amount of introspection that I was going to have to do for this class, but that aspect proved to be the most valuable for me. I was able to walk away from ConCap with these two main insights:
I was finally able to articulate my passions and my purpose. This is something that I learned was really hard to do! After experiencing so many new and different things in college, this class helped me to hone in on what my purpose was, and how to live that out moving forward into the working world, and how to continue building on and working towards my passions!
How to have a wholistic approach to Business. I really appreciated in this class being able to take a different look at business and businesses which was a really nice reset from the other business classes I’ve taken where it’s all about profit and the bottom line. In this class, we got to focus on these successful companies and learn more about the people behind them who attributed so much to their successes, their leadership styles, and how they reamined true to their values and purpose while building their empires.
Overall, this course was so impactful for my college career and I am forever grateful to Chip, Bill, and my LDT for making this class one of the best experiences I have ever had. Everyone should take this class!