If you want to avoid the appearance of expediency, you should avoid volunteering with cliched programs like Habitat for Humanity. Get involved in things that actually matter to you and that you feel passionate about.

Leadership can be big and small and it is distinct from management. You should have examples from your everyday career displaying leadership. Prior to my application I had no true "leadership" background on my resume - I was a developer for the past 4/5 years - but what I highlighted were the things that I did on my software teams in addition to my normal roles. Things like mentoring other engineers, creating tutorial documents for others to read and learn, guiding/leading the design of critical software components, etc. But in the end, no where on my resume were the words "team lead" or "manager" or "supervisor" apparent. Did it work? I'm starting at UCLA in the fall.

Think about what leadership is at it's core - you lead people and they follow.

Hope that helps.

mayonnai5e wrote:If you want to avoid the appearance of expediency, you should avoid volunteering with cliched programs like Habitat for Humanity. Get involved in things that actually matter to you and that you feel passionate about.

Leadership can be big and small and it is distinct from management. You should have examples from your everyday career displaying leadership. Prior to my application I had no true "leadership" background on my resume - I was a developer for the past 4/5 years - but what I highlighted were the things that I did on my software teams in addition to my normal roles. Things like mentoring other engineers, creating tutorial documents for others to read and learn, guiding/leading the design of critical software components, etc. But in the end, no where on my resume were the words "team lead" or "manager" or "supervisor" apparent. Did it work? I'm starting at UCLA in the fall.

Think about what leadership is at it's core - you lead people and they follow.

Hope that helps.

Great response!!!

Hi blindtea. Thank you for sharing a great question.

Yes, leadership activities outside of your career are essential to demonstrate your interests, talents and values. That is why you should consider our professional group, USA Leadership Corps (www usaLeadershipCorps org) .

USALC partners with pre-MBAs who are looking to enhance their leadership, consulting, entrepreneurship, and/or community-involvement backgrounds by facilitating part-time volunteer nonprofit strategy consulting projects.

Thank you & good luck building your extracurricular leadership portfolio.

Maxwell Roper
Outreach Director
USA Leadership Corps

Hi blindtea,

This is a question many applicants struggle with, because few of us feel we have real leadership experience, especially outside of the office. When you realize that this is a difficult question for many applicants to answer, and that business schools keep asking the question anyway, you may become less worried about answering it. Almost every applicant has to search around for a good response to this one, and they all need to get somewhat creative.

So think about your past and be inventive in the present. Have you ever participated in sports? Did you take responsibility? Are you involved in sports today, and could you become responsible for any aspect of your team or club?
Perhaps you're involved in some other club or organization. Perhaps you've mentored people or initiated some event or institute. Like mayonnai5e writes, it comes down to this: "you lead people and they follow."

If you haven't ever done anything that involved you initiating something or leading more than one person, then now is the time to start doing that. Join a club, church, or other organization. Think of something they are missing, such as sponsoring, a youth camp, after-school activities, collecting books / clothes / food for certain disadvantaged groups, etc. Initiate it, start a committee, delegate most of the tasks, and write an essay about it.

There's a recent post on my blog at www.superduperstudent.com dealing with this kind of issue. If you want to become a successful MBA student, start acting like one today!

Good luck!