1) One of the most important leadership points I took away from the movie was that sometimes you got take the higher road in life. Mandala's people were still bitter and scorned at the way the white south Africans had treated them and saw Mandalas rise to power as the perfect opportunity to take back their revenge. They wanted to make white South Africans second class citizens to give them a taste of what they went through, but Mandela resisted his people's pleas for revenge despite the fact the majority supported it. Mandela was wise and did what he thought was best for his country and stuck to his moral values even if it went against his people's wishes. Instead forcing his beliefs down his people's throats, he try to make them see the brighter picture. Mandela's speech to the people at the church really struck me, he insisted on defending the white south Africans even though it wasn't popular. Mandela had every right to be bitter at the white South Africans. They treated his people like second class citizens and on top of that threw him in jail for thirty years in a tiny cell. Yet he wasn't bitter, he chose to forgive and effective convinced his people to forgive too. If he have taken a different direction and actually listened to his people to carry out their revenge against the white south Africans, I have no doubt he wouldn't be remembered as the remarkable leader as he is today.
(2) a. A great leader I knew who embodied the traits I talked about above was my older brother. My older brother coached my younger brothers basketball team a couple years ago. One game I remembered vividly is when my brother's team was beating the other team badly. It was obvious throughout the game that the other team was frustrated by that. They would purposely call tea mates on my brother's team names. They purposely fouled the players and shot them nasty looks every time they scored. My brother's teammates were agitated by the other teams behavior and desperately wanted to call them names back. My older brother told them not and to be the bigger man in this situation. If a teammate didn't follow his instruction on not to respond to the taunts, he immediately took them out. Even my little brother was taken out for following the petty behavior of the other team. In end they still won and the other team made themselves look like big losers by way they acted to defeat.
b. A group and I were working on a science project for school and one of the people I worked with one day told me that she just copied the work of another individual onto our project. I was greatly upset by this and was debating on whether are not to tell my teacher. I asked my mom and she insisted that I tell my teacher because I might get in trouble too if it is found out project we did was copied from another person. I consulted my other team members in private and we all agreed to tell our teacher and let her handle the situation. None of us got in trouble for treating and my teacher commended me on my honesty.
c. A group of girls didn't get along with my friend and I in elementary school. I wanted to mend peace between the two groups because I was tired of all the drama. I decided for my birthday party coming up I would invite all of them and try to help bring peace with cake and laughter. I tried to get everyone to participate in the activities I had to offer and within hours we all forgot about the drama and enjoyed just being having fun together.
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