New Orleans in Retrospect

What kind of influence will this trip have on you as a leader? (Reference the developmental opportunities that travel has on shaping leadership)

This trip was my first for a lot of things, almost everything I did there I had never done before, from flying in a plane to eating crazy foods. I'll always remember this trip and I credit a lot of my personal and leadership development to it. While there, I was able to immerse myself in a new culture. Despite New Orleans still being in America, I could confidently say I wasn't in Kansas anymore. This city couldn't be any more different than what I've seen of the country. Looking around, I could see people living wildly different lives than my own, and as a leader, I have to have experience meeting and working with people different than myself. The teams and people we worked with all had their own motivations for doing what they do, and understanding that about a person helped me as a leader understand more about the people I work with and how to inspire a shared vision with them. Everyone has their own story, and listening to someone else's and understanding it is something that leaders should do, and there seemed to be a new story to hear every minute in New Orleans, whether about a history lesson on Angola prison or the story of how a nonprofit organization came to be. At the end of the day, I think that of all places to enhance my leadership skills at, New Orleans was the perfect place to go, with the wide variety of cultures, ideas, unique problems, and most of all, people.Read more