A friend who is a good leader

I'd like to talk about my friend Nabila, whom I met in the first year of university when we were put in the same group for a marketing project.

At first she didn't seem like an obvious leader, because she's quite quiet and doesn't dominate conversations. But during that first project, our group was falling apart. Two members weren't replying to messages, and the rest of us were arguing about the topic. Nabila calmly suggested we each write down one idea and vote anonymously. That simple step stopped the arguing. Then she split the work according to everyone's strengths, so the person who loved design did the slides and the one who liked numbers handled the survey data. We ended up getting the highest mark in the class.

Since then she's led a few bigger things, including a winter clothes drive that collected over four hundred blankets for people in the northern districts.

I think she's a good leader because she listens far more than she talks, and she makes people feel their opinion matters. She also takes responsibility when something goes wrong instead of blaming others, but gives the credit to the team when things go well. In my view that's what real leadership is: not being the loudest person in the room, but making everyone else work better.