You never stop learning leadership — nor should you

They say that you learn everything you need to know in life in kindergarten. Treat others as you want to be treated, play fair, clean up your own mess, naps are good — the list goes on.

Beyond calculus and chemistry, however, one skill stands out to me as something I didn’t learn when I was five — something I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It’s a nebulous concept, one that is hard to pinpoint in writing but easy to identify by experience. That concept is leadership.

From a young age, we’re taught to “follow the leader.” But there’s no explicit lesson for how to become a leader, much less one that merits followers.

Within the athletic sphere, leadership takes many forms, whether it is bestowed upon us through years of experience and seniority, with titles of captainship, or by embodying grit and being resilient. I think any student-athlete at Penn would agree that without some semblance of leadership outside of the coaching staff, a season’s goals would be for naught and practice would be little more than going through the motions.

That is why it is crucial for student-athletes to learn how to lead — and how to follow. Luckily for us Quakers, we have an Athletic Department that is keenly aware of this need.

As announced on March 21, 2017, the University is launching a Penn Athletics Wharton Leadership Academy in partnership with the Anne and John McNulty Leadership Program at the Wharton School that will provide leadership training to all student-athletes at Penn.

Penn Athletics ran a pilot program for the Leadership Academy in May 2016 that was attended by all of Penn’s varsity sports captains and administered by Jeff Klein, the executive director of the McNulty Leadership Program, Anne Greenhalgh, a professor of management and Klein’s deputy director, and John Kanengieter, a Director for Leadership at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). After receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participating captains, Penn Athletics sought to expand the program.

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