This past Wednesday afternoon, yet another 18:83 Speaker Series session was held at the Memorial Union. This week’s speakers were the Student Body President, Ella Nelson, and Vice President, Connor Ferguson. Each week this series aims to highlight the leadership experiences of campus and community leaders to help students gain new skills and learn from others. Each speaker is given a time slot of eighteen minutes and eighty-three seconds, an ode to the year that our university was founded, to give a “TED Talk” style presentation of leadership.  

Nelson and Ferguson’s speech was titled “Compassionate Leadership” and centered around the idea of leading with compassion and empathy in order to reach an end goal. They started the speech off by discussing their personal experiences with getting involved in leadership positions. Nelson was and is heavily involved with Greek life and with community events put on by her sorority. Ferguson was involved in various leadership programs in high school and college, which eventually led him to take up student government. They made it clear that it does not matter where you come from or how much experience you have, anyone can become a great leader.   

During Nelson’s portion of the presentation, she explained that “no one is ready for leadership; it is about taking the first steps.” What she means by this is that trying something new is always going to be frightening because of the unexpected, and it will almost always make you uncomfortable. But if you want to take that path, you need to take the first step. That is what she did when she decided to give Student Government a try. Someone might be able to convince you to take that step, and you can eventually do the same for someone else. Ultimately, it is up to you.  

She also emphasized that being shy does not make you a bad leader and that you can use that as a skill to become a better and more respected leader. She took her shyness and found that she has a skill that allows her to lead empathetically. Meaning that she is good at really listening to the ideas of others and relating to them on a deeper and emotional level, which allows her to reach common goals.  

Ferguson expanded on this idea by starting his portion of the presentation with emphasis on overcoming doubt. He said that when he decided to run for the Vice President position, he said to himself, “do I know what I am doing? Well, no, but I’m going to figure it out.” He believes that believing in and trusting yourself even when others doubt you is a very important part of leading compassionately.   

He proceeded to focus on four main points. The first was to let empathy be your guide. Much like Nelson explained, understanding the emotions of those around you can help you reach your common goal. Next, he advised that you build bridges. You cannot effectively build a bridge on your own, so you need to form deep and meaningful connections with others to build the team you want to be working with. Then he explained the concept of the power of few, which says that starting small can result in the greatest outcomes. Along with this, he said that you need to be process orientated. Meaning that you must focus on how the process can positively affect those involved rather than the outcome. The outcome is hopefully going to be great, but in most cases, the process is far more valuable. He closed out the speech by talking about the PPK Method that was inspired by his father. This stands for leading with Patience, being Persistent, while also leading with Kindness. It is these skills that he believes will work in almost all leadership scenarios.  

As students, there is a lot that we can learn from what these student leaders had to share during their presentation. They are just like us in the fact that they must attend classes each day and are still figuring everything out as they go along. They seem to have some great knowledge to share with us as we learn about leadership being used in a real world setting in our future careers. They are clearly willing to improve, and that is something everyone can learn from them too. 

Nora Lee is a Dakota Student General Reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].