Leadership is an art: Noah's journey from 'don't vote for me' to class president

As part of our Youth Convo Series: Leadership Glow Up, guest speakers from Generation Global’s Youth Advisory Group joined a live peer roundtable to share the leadership moments that shaped them. Noah, from De La Salle Lipa school, Philippines, spoke about the years he spent avoiding leadership out of fear - and what changed. Here’s his story:

Hello! I’m Noah, and I’m from The Philippines. Alongside speaking at events like this one, I’m part of my school’s math team, competing both locally and internationally. But the story I want to share isn’t about math - it’s about leadership, and the years it took me to believe I could be a leader at all.

I’m not an artist, but something art has taught me is that leading is a kind of art too: you try something, you fail, and you learn. Looking back at my own journey, I went through exactly that process.

During grades 7 and 8, I only had a vague idea of what being a leader meant. I was still adjusting to face-to-face classes after two years of lockdown and online learning, and watching my new classmates socialise and take initiative gave me an intimidating picture of what leadership looked like. I thought it was only for the most intelligent, the most excellent, the most social people - and I didn’t think I was any of those things.

But here’s the ironic part: my classmates and peers actually saw me as someone extroverted and social, someone who could lead. I never believed that about myself at the time. The clearest example was during our class officer elections. I was nominated for vice president, but I was so scared and intimidated by the idea that I wrote “don’t vote for me” on a sheet of paper and showed it to the whole class. They voted for someone else instead - someone who seemed more confident. Grades 7 and 8 came and went like that. Many opportunities came, but I never took them, because I believed leadership wasn’t for me.

Then, one day on the way home, it hit me: if I wanted to get ahead in life, start a career, or get into a good university, I needed to learn how to lead, be confident, and take initiative. From that day, I started taking leadership seriously. I pushed myself to be more social and more open to taking initiative, even when it didn’t feel comfortable.

That didn’t make the journey easy. It was rocky - like a boat sailing through stormy seas. I made a lot of mistakes as I was learning. One of the clearest was when I became group leader for a social studies play. I was so focused on making sure every single groupmate had a role in writing the script - even though it would’ve been faster for just a few of us to do it - that we finished the script too late for our actors to memorise it properly. On performance day, they mumbled and jumbled their lines, and our classmates couldn’t follow the play. Because of my hesitation, our group barely passed.

From that setback, I learned that as a leader, it’s okay to take initiative and do what needs to be done to get your team where it needs to go - instead of trying to make everyone equally involved at the cost of the outcome.

Nonetheless, I kept pushing through the setbacks. This year, I became class president, and I led a project at my school teaching students how to manage their money. None of that would have happened without the moment I decided I needed to learn how to lead, and without the perseverance that came after.

Looking back, I can’t change how long it took me to get there, but I’m carrying the lessons I learned throughout forward with optimism. If there’s one thing I’d want you to take from my story, it’s this: leadership is an art. You’ll try, you’ll fail, you’ll learn - but you’ll get through it, and, in the process, you’ll create a path that’s uniquely your own. So, if I could give you one piece of advice, it would be: be bold, make mistakes, and embrace the journey ahead.