Leader Interview

For my interview I chose to interview my friend Hyrum Salmond, I should have probably gotten his permission to post his name on my blog, but I will worry about that later. Who is Hyrum and how do I know him. Hyrum is the emeritus President of the BYU college Democrats, he is also a student here at BYU and my former study buddy for the LSAT and current study buddy for the hardest class in my major. I being the emeritus president of the college republicans worked a lot with Hyrum then and was able to see his leadership skills as well as follies at times, he on the other hand also saw many of my follies and the few skills i might have. so in my discussion with him i asked the following questions and got the following answers.
Q: As leader of the Dems what were some things that you learned?
A: I learned better communications skills as at first i thought people would understand my vision or instructions and later i found that I might have been vague, so i learned to communicate better. i also learned how to be organized, and i also learned to have empathy towards different views as i saw there were many views from my own club members as well as your (Skylar, the college republicans) club members and your own views.
Q: What kinds of things did you change about yourself as you gained more experience as the leader of the dems?
A: more patience for the slow system that BYU has, I learned that it is a bureaucracy and there is good reason for it, BYU represents the Church and they have good reason to take their time, yet it was still frustrating for me as I tried to get things done, such as invite speakers on campus, we never did get them approved. I also felt the mantel of my responsibility which lead me to be more informed about the issues, i felt I needed to know everything so that i could better represent the organization of Dems.

One last thing he added was that experience matters, you can't just train someone the true knowledge to get the job done, it just comes over time.

The characteristics that I think make Hyrum a great leader is his knowledge on certain subjects, it gives him an edge. The second thing is his confidence in himself, he has the knowledge and he is not afraid to share it or just counter your ideas and point out the weaknesses. I value his influence in my life because he tells things as they are and can talk openly, often sharing his viewpoints and the knowledge he has. Often time when I did not even ask.