General What constitutes strong leadership experience?

[Mr.Smile12]

I was wondering if my leadership experience is significant enough, or should I pursue other opportunities. I am looking to apply to actually be an organic or biology mentor next semester, but I am terrified if it doesn't work out.

As of now, I am a teaching assistant in a biology lab, however, I work with a graduate teaching assistant as well. My responsibilities are to arrive prepared for each lab and help students during lab. I am not responsible for grading assignments or lecturing at the start of each lab, unfortunately. I do help troubleshoot and thoroughly explain lab procedures and the relevance of the experiment individually. Sometimes I explain lecture material that is relevant to the lab exercise.

Is this a strong leadership experience? What defines a strong leadership experience? What should I take out of being a leader, besides the development of strong and clear communicative skills?

As an activity, premeds/prehealth students always seem to gravitate towards tutoring, TA's, or teaching that it's very common and doesn't really offer much impact on standing out. You may develop some communication, listening, and time management skills which are important for leadership skills, but you are not really a leader with full responsibilities therein.

Leaders usually have responsibility to encourage a team working under him/her to excel and achieve a particular objective. Being a leader of a club/organization usually includes wanting to keep people engaged and involved so that when you have important challenges to face, they are all faced together. Learning how to deal with conflict, financial scarcity, and inspiring others is all part of leadership training, and those are elements I look for when I measure a leadership experience.

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[MusicDOc124]

I dont see what you listed as being in any sort of leadership role. Leadership's root word is leader, leading people and projects - being the PI on a project, president/VP/founder of an organization or even club while in college, being in charge of a fire team, squad, platoon, company, or battalion in the military, being a section chief or supervisor within a company, being a charge nurse, being section leader/principal player for your instrument in a musical ensemble, etc. These are situation where one would be in charge of teaching, guiding, making decisions on how things need to get done or portrayed, who delegates a variety of things to other people within a group.

Good communication is one thing, but being in a position where others look up to you, often due to experience being personable, that allow you to make decisions and demonstrate outcomes as a result of your abilities... that is what demonstrates leadership. The teacher/professor - the one who well.. teaches, and guides an entire class and develops strategies to ensure learning is occurring and keeping every accountable. That is leadership. Being a tutor and working one on one to make sure someone understands what someone else taught is not quite up to par, at least for what I consider to be a leader.

I hope this helps with just a few (of many more) examples with how the work one would do translates to demonstrate leadership.