“During My six years of taekwondo, I’ve learned many valuable and important lessons. One of the most important lessons I learned was leadership. This lesson stood out to me most importantly because I knew it’s something I could use a lot in the future. Whether I’m at taekwondo, school, or in my future career.”
“Since becoming a first dan black belt, my perspective and understanding on how leadership works has changed and grown in a significant way. As a color belt I thought being a leader meant you get to boss people around and tell them what to do. But actually there is a lot more to it than that. Since becoming a black belt Master Jun would sometimes have me lead and help small groups during class. Leading classes gave me a little bit of experience of what leading is and how to be a good leader. But now when I think about what leading means to me, it means to help, serve, teach, and guide. The past year of 2020, was my first year of being a 1st dan black belt. As you might know, this was the year when COVID-19 hit and we had to go into quarantine. During quarantine, MTM held taekwondo zoom classes online on Monday, Wednesday, and sometimes Saturday. I found it very challenging and difficult to help and teach students online. Some of the reasons I found it hard was because sometimes if mine or a student’s internet connection was bad, it would be very hard to teach and communicate with them, this would also cause the video or audio to be choppy. Personally one of the most challenging things about online taekwondo for me was teaching the younger students. I found this very difficult to do because, do to the fact that the students were at home. They would easily get distracted by their surroundings, it would be very challenging to keep them engaged and interested in what we were doing.”
“Leading classes gave me a little bit of experience of what leading is and how to be a good leader. But now when I think about what leading means to me, it means to help, serve, teach, and guide. “
Nicole Yu Hian, Black Belt
“Since becoming a first dan black belt, my perspective and understanding on how leadership works has changed and grown in a significant way. As a color belt I thought being a leader meant you get to boss people around and tell them what to do. But actually there is a lot more to it than that. Since becoming a black belt Master Jun would sometimes have me lead and help small groups during class. Leading classes gave me a little bit of experience of what leading is and how to be a good leader. But now when I think about what leading means to me, it means to help, serve, teach, and guide. The past year of 2020, was my first year of being a 1st dan black belt. As you might know, this was the year when COVID-19 hit and we had to go into quarantine. During quarantine, MTM held taekwondo zoom classes online on Monday, Wednesday, and sometimes Saturday. I found it very challenging and difficult to help and teach students online. Some of the reasons I found it hard was because sometimes if mine or a student’s internet connection was bad, it would be very hard to teach and communicate with them, this would also cause the video or audio to be choppy. Personally one of the most challenging things about online taekwondo for me was teaching the younger students. I found this very difficult to do because, do to the fact that the students were at home. They would easily get distracted by their surroundings, it would be very challenging to keep them engaged and interested in what we were doing.”
“Even though teaching and leading taekwondo classes online was very difficult for me, it taught me a few important things about leadership and how to be a better leader. One of the things it taught me was that a good leader needs to have PATIENCE. Patience is very important when you’re leading and teaching. Especially with the younger kids you need to have extra patience with them because sometimes it could be a little frustrating when I’m trying to teach them their techniques and they don’t get it right away or when they’re not paying attention. But I also need to understand that they’re younger and that sometimes focusing could be very hard for them. In conclusion you need to have patience when leading and teaching, everyone learns things differently and has different abilities.
“Another thing that leadership taught me was confidence. As I lead more taekwondo classes, I noticed confidence is a very important trait to have when leading. It is very important to show confidence when leading because if you act shy and not confident, they won’t look up to you as a strong and reliable leader.”“In conclusion, my understanding of leadership has changed in a great way. It also taught me many great lessons that I can apply into my daily life, not just taekwondo and leading. The lessons that I learned was patience, confidence , self control, and that every individual is different from one another. Lastly when I think about what a leader does I think about this phrase, “Being a leader doesn’t mean you pull your team from the front but you help push/bring them up from the back.”