Starting A New School Year 911: Developing Your Leadership Skills in High School

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." -- Sun Tzu

When you are faced with a large, daunting project, what do you do? Whether you are faced with your senior project or beginning a new school year, there can be so many things to do that it is too overwhelming to start. However, the most challenging tasks and undertaking in your life are also the most rewarding.

Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step," and that is the best way to approach a large project.

Instead of focusing on how hard it may be and giving up before you begin, or imagining what roadblocks you will encounter and becoming frustrated before you hit them, it is most helpful to simply begin tackling your initial steps and running headlong toward your goals.

Think about getting into a cold pool in early summer - it can be frustrating and unpleasant to inch in step-by-step, while diving in skips the initial steps of fear and apprehension and gets right to the swimming.

Although it is important to dive in and begin your project as soon as possible, it is equally important to do so in an organized, logical, and practical manner. Below, we'll discuss the three major components of tackling a large project: visualization, strategy, and tactics.

Develop your vision. The first step to any project is to visualize what you would like your finished product or outcome to look like.

If you are starting a new school year, think about the specific challenges you might face, and how you would like to overcome them. If you are beginning your senior project, think about what your final creation will look like, why it will be meaningful to others, and how it will help develop your skills.

If you are starting the basketball season, set personal goals for improvement as well as team goals to work toward. If you are starting the semester in a leadership role, such as editor of the yearbook, think about what is important to your group and organization as well what fresh changes you could bring.

Visualization does not mean passively sitting in your room with your eyes closed and listening to music - it means actively sketching, outlining, and talking with others about your ideas and goals.

It will be much harder to complete a project or reach a goal if you never sat down and figured out what the final product or goal looks like. Make sure that your goals are challenging, but also realistic - don't set a goal of getting a perfect 100% average in geometry if you've struggled in math in the past or a goal of getting to the national championship in track if you've just joined the team.

Don't pick a senior project that doesn't deeply interest and motivate you.

Develop your strategy. When the vision of your project or goal is clear in your mind (and on paper), it is time to develop your initial strategy. Very simply, a strategy is a plan of action - a specific outline of the steps you need to take in order to succeed.

Unlike your vision, a strategy is much more detailed and organized. Unlike a tactic, it is not a small piece of the puzzle based in specific actions, it is the overarching view of what you need to do to accomplish your goals.

For example, if you are editing the yearbook this year, you might have the vision of making a higher-quality, longer yearbook than previous years. Your strategy for accomplishing this goal may be to raise more money for the book through fund-raisers, to find more photographers to capture school events, and to get better computer and camera equipment to lay out the book.

On the other hand, if you have the mission of doing well in geometry this year, your strategy might be to study every night, spend one-on-one tutoring time with your teacher, and to form a study group that meets before tests and quizzes.

Develop your tactics. While a vision is a mission or goal, and while a strategy is a plan to get to that goal, tactics are the small, active steps you take that compliment your strategy. You will probably have a number of tactics to implement on your way to accomplishing your project, goal or mission.

If you want to be the best sprinter on the track team, you would not simply practice sprinting (one tactic) - you would also eat healthy meals, listen to your coaches' advice, weight train in the gym, and make sure you got a good night's rest. A combination of different tactics is the best way to tackle your vision.

Let's return to our yearbook example: if your strategy is to raise more money for the group, your tactics may include holding a bake sale, running a silent auction, slimming down the budget, and petitioning the school board for extra funds.

If your strategy includes finding more photographers to work for the group, your tactics may include hanging up flyers in the hallways, making an announcement over the PA system, and holding informational meetings.

In the geometry class example, your tactics may include studying every night right after dinner, scheduling meetings after school to talk to ask your teacher questions, and ask the students sitting around you in class if they'd like to join your study group.

Tactics are not as set in stone as strategies and goals are - tactics can be dropped, altered, or added as their helpfulness is discovered. If your geometry study group spends its time gossiping, you would drop that tactic since it does not assist you on your path toward getting a good grade.

If your tactic of studying after dinner is seeing great results, you might alter it so that you study after dinner for a longer period of time.

Developing missions, strategies, and plans isn't just helpful for you when faced with high school projects and challenges. Learning how to form strong strategies and tactics for success will help you throughout your life, in all aspects of your life.

You might find in your future that launching a new product at your business has similar steps to producing a really great yearbook. You might find that the photo journal you created for your senior project helped you understand how to be a flourishing newspaper photographer.

No matter what your goal, the foundation of developing strategy and tactics can help you tackle any task, no matter how daunting.

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