The scenery takes me off guard and puts a huge smile on my face every time I walk outside. This unbelievable place partnered with getting to do wonderful things all day is quite a recipe for happiness for me. The amazing people, fantastic food, and tea breaks have certainly added to the wonder and joy I have felt since arriving.

I anticipate communication and feedback styles to be a bit of a challenge in relation to learning about leadership. As we have discussed Indian culture often relies on much more subtle and unspoken cues. Shantinu discussed how he does not often greet people or say please and thank you. These gestures are communicated through body language, and other actions. This communication style stands in contrast to what I have been accustomed to my entire life. During most education experiences I have had the feedback to me has been quite clear and easy to read. I anticipate some struggle with interpreting how my performance has been and hence what I can improve upon. I hope to mitigate this my being cognizant of these social cues that I normally do not pay very much attention to. I think that with conscious effort, and overt communication on my part such as asking for more direct feedback I can get an enormous amount out of this experience. 

The age old nature vs. nurture question will never be answered by a clear cut one or another. Every instance is going to be a grey area, that is just how life works. There are examples that do lean heavily in one direction or another, and I think leadership is one of them to some extent. Leaders are mostly made, they are made by the situations they have faced in the past, and how they have learned from them. People react to and treat different issues differently based largely upon their experience on earth. This being said I do not thing that every leader has come to be that way entirely based upon what they have gone through and learned, I believe that at least some styles and attributes of leadership are with a person from their start. For example most people’s “Strengths Based Leadership Test” will probably at least slightly resemble that of their parents. So I think that many traits and styles of leaders are made. This is clearly not the case across the board, and these things can often strongly effect the “how” of leadership, but far less the quality of that leadership. 

The quality of a leader is often defined by their response to challenges. As it is often said everybody is a good leader when things are easy, but the true leaders emerge when the going gets tough. This cheesy saying is absolutely true, and in other words I think that it means that leaders are defined based upon their response to adversity and challenges. These response should look different based upon an extremely wide array of variables, but I think the most important one being their demographic. Leaders need to constantly be thinking about the people around them and how decisions they make will effect everyone rather than just themselves. I do not know if this is the most difficult part about leadership for everyone, but is certainly is a challange for me.