Hevani @ Tamaki Primary School: 🎉👥NYLD - National Young Leaders Day👥🎉

Wednesday 8 May 2019

🎉👥NYLD - National Young Leaders Day👥🎉

IALH: To become a better leader through conversations

Kia Ora and welcome back to my blog!

For today’s blog I will be reflecting about my day and what happened. NYLD - National Young Leaders Day is all about young leaders from many different schools in Auckland coming together and having guest speakers come to talk to us about becoming a better leader and making a difference through conversations. Today our school students leaders along with Ms. Aireen and Kelly made our way into the Vodafone Event Center located in Manukau, this years guest speakers were Dr Lehan Stemmet, Hana Tapiata, Ronnie Taulafo, Christian Gallen, NZ musician, Kings, and of course our two hosts Liz Alexander and Phil Baker.

This years whakatauki (which is a Maori proverb) is:

He aha te kai a te rangatira?

He korero, he korero, he korero.

What is the food of a leader?

It is conversations.

Guest Speakers:

1. Hana Tapiata:

What i've learnt from Hana is that in times of trouble there is always two voices going through your head, a negative voice and yet a positive voice. "Always listen to your positive voice." Was one of her advice to us. I also learnt that when having conversations your talking but also listening where as some of us do ALL the talking while the other is just listening and this is not what she meant by "Talking and listening." You both have to take turns talking and listening in order to create a conversation which will help make you become a better leader.

Quote:

- "Always listen to your positive voice."

2. Christian Gallen:

Christian told us a story about his friend James, back in school one day his teacher left the class and so the class decided to do their own thing, when the "popular" girl stood in front of the class and suddenly the class became quiet, the girl then asked everyone who hated another girl in the class to stand up, everyone stood up EXCEPT James (Christian's friend), James had a voice in his head saying "Wait, this isn't right" and so he stayed seated and one by one everyone sat back down while James confronted the "popular" girl and from this I learnt that you should treat others the way you want to be treated.

- "Treat others the way YOU want to be treated."

3. Ronnie Taulafo:

Ronnie Taulafo's talk was one of my favourites, he told us that as a kid he couldn't talk or understand his language which I can relate to, im Samoan AND Tongan but I can't talk or understand (well some) any language, not even ONE and yet im still learning. Ronnie's advice/quotes to us was to:

- "Never stop learning."

- "Learning takes time."

- "Conversations will build you as a leader."

4. Dr Lehan Stemmet:

Dr Lehan was ANOTHER favourite of mine reason why is because his experience in becoming a leader and quotes/advice inspired me.

Quotes/Advice:

- "Communicate to lead,

Communicate to connect."

To me this means for you to be able to become a better leader you need to communicate with others in order for you to help them and yourself lead to where you want to be.

- "We" is more important than "Me"

Sometimes becoming a leader can get in the way and effect your relationships with others, you can get caught up in things and can also be busy which will make others think that you don't have time for them which will cause you both to drag apart from each other, one thing that I mentioned before is that to become a better leader you need to COMMUNICATE, it's not about you but it's not about them either, its about you both making a difference and working together to fulfill your responsibility as a leader and to lead yourself and others to where you want to be.

- "Respect people not for what they do but for who they are."

- "The right thing to do is never the easy thing to do, but the easy thing to do is never the right thing to do."

5. Kings:

NZ musician, Kings another favourite was talking about his experience in becoming a leader/singer and how that came to be. He was very creative back then when making music, he told us that back then he didn't have drums so he would use pots, pans .etc as his drums which is very creative. What i've learnt from his talk is that knowing who you are can inspire you to do great things.

Quote:

- "Follow your dream!"

Listening to the guest speakers talk about their experiences in becoming a leader was my highlight of the day (besides Kings performances). Before ending this blog I would just like to give a HUGE thank you to Ms. Aireen, Kelly, Mr. Reddy and those who made this trip happen, im really glad that it did happen and also a BIG thank you to the guest speakers. Here are a few photos: