Dinner With Our Alumni: TextingPals

Hello everyone! Here's hoping that everyone is doing well and staying safe For this week, we have a wonderful LDP graduate. For all those that are new, the dinner series is a series of small interviews that I do with the Leadership Development Program (LDP) alumni to spread more awareness about the program and to hopefully help out our current trainees.

Make some noise for @TextingPals! TextingPals usually goes by Pals or Tex. You must've seen them roaming here and there in our community! They are the pride "bunny" of 7 Cups. Pals has been a listener with us since February 2020 and holds various roles in the community. They love reading books, so much so that sometimes they infuse reality into fiction. They also like to read people and observe them. They claim they are disastrous at cooking but we can attest to that if they cook for us!

What was on the menu? Quite a feast: Ice creams, Pizzas, Pasta, Chicken, seafood, chocolates, coffee

Without further ado:

What made you join the LDP?

To be frank, initially, I was keen on developing my personal leadership skills. Hence the program. However, I am glad I took part in this for an entirely different reason now: I got to learn a lot of things and the courses changed how I looked at things. For eg. I found out that LDP was based on the principle "true leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders," which is not what I used to believe originally.

How was your experience doing the coursework?

It was phenomenal. Starting with the onboarding and the requirements, the documents were easy to understand with requirements clearly stated. No complexity, no extra words. Simple and crisp. Secondly, the coursework. At first, I felt they were a lot to work on, I was overwhelmed with the number of discussions a single course had. However, as I worked on it, I realized I was having fun. They were enlightening.

Did you find it easy to navigate through the forums for each course?

Yes, navigation was simple. All the links to the courses were mentioned in the coursework document. Moreover, the discussion-redirecting links were mentioned pretty neatly and clearly at the end of each forum as well, which helped a lot.

How did you dedicate your time to doing the coursework?

As I said, I was overwhelmed at the start so I took most of my time- almost two weeks for my first course. Then I completed course two in another week. Took a break for the next week. Course three and four were done in the next one. For course five, I took a week and a half. And ta-da, there you go, a shiny badge and certificate are all yours, waiting for you.

Which course did you like the most? And why?

I liked the first one and the fourth one. The first one was all about self-awareness: my personality, how I can assist this community better, understanding my strengths, and embracing my weaknesses.

What role did you get into after the program? How are you liking the role you got into for the LDP?

I was already a leader working for various teams so I didn't have to get into a leadership role to graduate.

If you had to give one tip to the current trainees, what would that be?

The moment you get your coursework, make a schedule on how you are going to divide your time and complete the course. You will feel much more organized and less burdened. Try to take a break here and there, don't exhaust yourself. A very important message that I have always wanted to send out to people: don't take part in the course or more importantly, don't apply for a role just for the sake of applying for it or to look like an “important” person, the role deserves more respect than that and you need to cultivate a passion for what you are working on. Lastly, please, don't stress out, you can do this. Believe in yourself, cause we all believe in you.

What can we do to make the program better?

Introducing practical experiences, as in, experiences other than the courses and discussions. Those, I believe, would be a great way to implement what we learned. I agree the new leaders enrolling themselves into this do have the opportunity. However, for people who already are working on some leadership roles, being provided an opportunity to implement the new knowledge and experiences would be very beneficial.

...And that's Pals for you! Thank you for reading till here everyone! And, thank you so much for doing this, @TextingPals, please give the, a big shoutout!

I would love to hear any suggestions/question ideas that I can add to this series. If you are an LDP graduate and would love to contribute, please PM me so we can set up our dinner!

If you want to apply for the LDP, please click here.