Tips to Enhance the Leader Within: Everyone Is a Leader

By Heather White

This leadership discusses leadership with the focus of everyone having the potential and being a leader, whether it is a leader of themselves, one other person, or even several other individuals; everyone has the ability and opportunity to be a leader in their lives and within their various environments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365832321

Heather White

Heather White, the woman Erin Brockovich calls the "Brene Brown of the environmental movement," brings two decades of environmental advocacy work and national nonprofit leadership to life with her joyful and practical book, One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet. The CEO & Founder of the nonprofit OneGreenThing.org, Heather was named "One of the Top 15 Women Leaders in Sustainability" by Green Building & Design Magazine and "100 Women to Watch in Wellness" by mindbodygreen. Her trademark intelligence and accessibility on climate and environmental issues has been featured on CBS, PBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, Dr. Oz, and cited in The Washington Post, New York Times, and The Guardian. In her book, Heather weaves together research-backed strategies for personal climate action with stories from her childhood in East Tennessee, career in Washington, DC and Yellowstone, and life with her family - including two GenZ daughters - in Bozeman, Montana. Her goal each day - through seminars, leadership training, consulting, social media, and now her book - is to create culture change that will lead to climate policy solutions. She helps individuals tackle the overwhelm of the climate crisis through identity & action. Her Service Superpower is Philanthropist-Wonk. To learn how you can get involved in the climate movement and find your Service Superpower, visit www.OneGreenThing.org. VISIT www.heatherwhite.com INSTA: @heatherwhiteofficial TWITTER: @heatherwhiteofficial FB:@heatherwhiteofficial Take action via @onegreenthing

Book preview

Tips to Enhance the Leader Within: Everyone Is a Leader

Tips to Enhance the Leader Within:

Everyone is a Leader

By Heather White

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

-Rosalynn Carter

The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(Frost, 2015)

Chapter One

Why Leadership?

Coming home from serving as a missionary for my church was so exciting and scary at the same time.  I had been away from home for eighteen months.  I had definitely changed.  I was certain that everyone at home had also changed.  The situation was interesting because I was, in a way, ready to return home.  The scary part was the fact that I was unsure how people would react.  To add to that was the fact that I had a difficult time completely expressing myself in English.

I came home, and I survived.  I returned to Brigham Young University and decided the film industry was no longer for me.  In fact, after years of my dad talking about it, I finally took him at his word and tried something which terrified me.  I took a Reserve Officer Training Course (ROTC) class.  I may have grown up with a father in the military, but I was not military… and I had no intention of ever joining the military.  In fact, in my mind, it’s a wonderful thing for guys and for girls who enjoy those kinds of things.  It wasn’t for me though.  It just wasn’t the place for me, or so I thought. 

Well, I changed my major to Recreational Management/ Youth Leadership and took my dad’s advice and took a ROTC class, just to learn leadership.  I repeat, it was solely to learn leadership.  You see, growing up I always heard my dad say that the best two places to learn leadership was the military and the Boy Scouts of America.  I wanted to learn leadership.  The problem was that I was not a boy, which meant the Boy Scouts was out and I didn’t want to join the military, but if I could take a class from them, so much the better.  I mentioned I took the class, the ROTC class to learn leadership, right?  That was the only reason as to why I was taking that course.

Well, let’s be honest, the night before my classes were to begin I went around the campus to ensure I knew where my classes were located so I would be on time.  I didn’t want to give a bad impression to my professors on my first day.  Well, I left the ROTC class until last to find out where it was located.  I found the building, but I could not convince myself to walk any closer.  In fact, the closer I walked to the building, the harder my heart would beat.  If that was bad enough, my first day of class for ROTC, as I walked to the building my heart was pounding so hard I thought it was trying to beat a hole through my chest, so as to escape.  I convinced myself it would be okay.  In fact, I would keep an open mind about it all.  I would give it a week.  If it didn’t work for me by then, I would drop out of the class.

Let’s just say anything that tested me didn’t happen until later in the semester.  It was eye opening to have to stand up at attention in parade rest when the instructor entered the room.  It was almost like something I would imagine a private school to be like.  However, it was an interesting experience.  I was determined; however odd it would be, to learn something of leadership from these people who insisted on everyone wearing uniforms all the time.

It was shocking to hear that I had to take a physical fitness test which consisted of a run, sit ups, and pushups.  I thought I was healthy then, but I could do very few sit ups and few pushups.  As for the run, just running two miles wasn’t good enough; I had to do it under a certain amount of time.  Didn’t they realize I was not a member of the military?!? (At least that was what I was thinking while going through the workouts.)  Well, the first test woke me up to how not in shape I was and from that time forward I was open to learning more about health and fitness as well as nutrition.  It helped that one of