On Thursday 9th March, 15 School Prefects attended the GRIP Leadership Conference at the Perth Convention Centre in the city. The conference aimed to develop new skills, ideas and perspectives within secondary school leaders and essentially to guide us in setting concrete goals for the year. Over 750 students from schools all over WA attended.
The day had three main sessions. The first session consisted of an overview of the day and an explanation of the ‘Comprehensive Compass of Leadership’. The compass provided a very simple and effective template to help set clear targets and work towards building a strong, successful leadership team.
Each session was broken up with a segment titled the ‘Loud Noise Boys’, in which two speakers from the GRIP team would take the stage and conduct various entertaining and amusing activities such as ‘Win or Fail’ and a dance competition. Although not necessarily leadership-related, these segments were as the name implies; very loud, very enjoyable and gave us an opportunity to interact with leaders from other schools in a more relaxed environment.
The second session focused on the expectations and responsibilities of school leaders. It emphasised the importance of role modelling, upholding the trust of others, responding to needs and developing own strengths. Following this, we chose between two elective sessions; ‘generating ideas that are out of the box’ or ‘overcoming the challenges of leadership’, both of which were very informative and helpful.
The last session was another elective session and we had the choice between ‘turning ideas into action’ and ‘gaining the support of your peers’. I attended the ‘turning ideas into action’ and this session provided a simple and efficient outline for creating and achieving our goals as a leadership team. It covered the challenged faced by many teams and gave advice on how to overcome them successfully.
Overall, the day was a wonderful and unique experience. It gave us all with the opportunity to grow as leaders both individually and also as a team, develop new ideas and think outside the box. We were also able to connect and socialise with student leaders from numerous schools, enhancing the experience. A big thank you to Mr Carr who came along with us for the day.
Written by Astha Sinha (Head Girl)