The seven of us were lucky enough to travel to Brisbane for 5 days in order to learn primarily about business leadership, but also about teamwork, team leadership, start-ups, and networking. Personally, I can definitely say that this trip by far exceeded my expectations and hopes, and allowed me to grow not only as a business leader, but also as a person. I expected to learn about leadership in different areas of business and how to network, but by the time that I returned to Christchurch I found that while I had developed my skills in these areas, I had also become far more confident and outgoing person.

One of my main takeaways from this experience was to trust; both yourself, and those around you. Specifically, I learned that you have to have complete faith in those around you, and just how important communication is between member of a group whether it be a business/enterprise or a sports team or anything else. Regardless of what your goal/vision is, you always have to be sure that everyone is on the same page, and that everyone feels that they can share or contribute their ideas.

One thing that I am going to start doing differently within my own YES group is make sure that each member of the group feels confident enough that they can complete different tasks instead of just trying to have everyone trying to do the same thing. Essentially, playing to different people’s strengths and trusting each other.

Throughout the trip one thing that really stood out to me was how almost every business leader who we met with said something along the lines of how they surround themselves with people who are experienced or passionate about different field, and then as the leader their main job is to organise and compromise different ideas and people in order to ensure that the groups’ vision is fulfilled in the best way possible. Personally I found this very interesting because all of the leaders brought everything back to the vision and the idea that being a leader is all about bringing out the best in others, not being the best at everything yourself or trying to do everything yourself.