Creating a Leadership Legacy at Disneyland
As we begin counting down to our summits this summer, we’ll be highlighting the exciting activities students get to participate in during each summit. If you missed our first blog on the Summit at UCLA, you can read it here. Now, we’re venturing to Disneyland for a look at the Creating a Leadership Legacy workshop students will experience this summer.
At each one of our Leadership in Action Summits, students attend a leadership workshop to hone the skills they arrive with and to develop new ones too. Our alumni students consistently tell us that their workshop is one of the most powerful experiences of the Summit. The added bonus for students attending the Summit at UCLA is that their leadership workshop is facilitated at Disneyland!
Disney’s Creating a Leadership Legacy workshop allows students both to discover their unique leadership styles and cultivate tools for overcoming personal obstacles. Throughout the workshop, students identify the leaders who have left a legacy in their lives and are challenged to consider the legacies they wish to create.
Of course, Walt Disney provides one example of a leader with a lasting legacy. By examining his successes and failures, students begin to articulate their own core values and how those values inform the big choices they face, like where to attend college and what career to pursue. Then, students plot a path to follow their values toward these big life goals.
In addition, the Disney facilitators help students step outside their comfort zones to be confident in taking the risks necessary to achieve their goals. Students learn how to avoid the negative self-talk that inhibits the progress they’re destined to make.
Finally, students hear directly from a Disney executive about creating a personal leadership legacy. Last year, students heard from Director of Entertainment Services and UCLA alum David E. Miller, who shared with Ambassador Leaders his path to success.
The workshop culminates with students having distilled their personal values, having set big goals, and having built the confidence to share their visions of the future with peers. They learn to believe in the power of their dreams surrounded by the dream Disney and his team of Imagineers realized, the park itself an enduring example of the power of shared vision.
It is an inspiring and popular event during the Summit. We’re delighted that this experience will be one part in our students’ journey to leadership.
By Corie Bales
Corie is the Academic Affairs Manager of Ambassador Leaders. As a lifelong educator and avid traveler, she believes in empowering students and teachers to learn and lead through experiential education.