The word leadership sounds like a big deal, but for most young people, leadership actually begins the first time someone says in class, “Who should be the class president?” For some reason, everyone looks at each other. I used to do the same. Because while being a leader looks cool from the outside, once you step into it, it means responsibility — and plenty of mistakes.

For example, there was a group assignment not long ago. I wasn’t very eager to be the group leader, but they said, “You can handle it.” On the first day, I jumped in with too much confidence… I thought I could manage everything on my own. Then at some point, I realized this: everyone was looking at me, and I didn’t really know what to do either. Simply because I forgot to divide the tasks, half the work scattered like leaves in the wind. That’s when I learned something important: leadership is sometimes not about moving ahead, but about taking a step back and asking, “Who can do what?”

A friend of mine was also a club president. At the first meeting, everyone talked at the same time, and the discussion quickly got out of control. Later, he told me, “I think I’ve started to dislike leadership.” But at the second meeting, he did something different: he wrote the names of those who wanted to speak on the board and gave them turns. Everyone thought he was well organized, but he told me later — he had come up with it out of panic in that moment. In other words, many leadership moves may look carefully planned from the outside, but inside there is often the feeling of “Wait, what am I even doing right now?”

I think one of the main reasons young people struggle with leadership is this: a lot is expected from us, but we are not always given space. Leadership is talked about in schools, yet most decisions are still made by adults. A student may come up with an idea for an activity, but sometimes long approval processes exhaust that idea before it is even born. This leads young people to think, “My idea won’t be implemented anyway.” Perhaps leadership begins with breaking this sense of hopelessness.

Still, there is one simple truth: leadership is not something only perfect people do. On the contrary, it belongs to those who make mistakes but choose to stay. If you mess up a meeting and still show up the following week, that alone is already a step toward leadership. I realized this a bit late, but once I did, many things changed.

Writing a neat concluding sentence is difficult — after all, leadership is not something you can simply put a full stop to. But I can say this: leaders are not born; we all learn by trying, failing, and sometimes feeling embarrassed. Maybe that’s the beauty of it — no one is perfect, yet someone still chooses to take a step forward.