• College is a place to try new things and to discover what you're good at. Don't miss the opportunity.
• Focus on the needs of others as a basis for your leadership.
• Make synergy your goal: helping and letting others do what they do best.
• Leadership demands courage - step up and focus on what needs to be done. You must have confidence.
• Accountability is important but hard to learn. You are accountable to people inside and outside of your group.
• The best leaders get things started, encourage people to do what they do best, and then affirm them for what they do.
• Interview people whose strengths are similar to yours - other students, instructors, staff members. Find out how they use their talents to be effective. Talk about their jobs and how their jobs relate to their talents.
• To increase motivation, create a vision and a purpose, and then develop an action plan.
• Create an atmosphere where people are free to be themselves.
• Learn how to work with people from very different backgrounds and personalities.
• Your most important responsibility as a leader is to discover and draw out the talents of others.
• When you are in a leadership position, make sure that each person knows that they are a vital piece of the puzzle. The responsibility of a leader is to utilize the strengths of followers and give them a place to excel. When people know that they count and that they make a difference, they are more willing to follow.
• Make community happen. Don't wait for it to come to you.
• Take risks, particularly with what you're passionate about.
• Surround yourself with people who believe in you and themselves. Great student leaders seem to cultivate and nourish relationships.
• Never overlook opportunities to talk to other leaders about how they lead.
• As you work to build leadership strengths, know that you are preparing yourself for a career, even though you might not be certain of what that career will be.

Clifton & Anderson, 2004. "Developing Leadership Strengths in College." The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.