Attending the FIRST EVER virtual DECA ELS was nothing less than incredible!

Hundreds of association officers from around the world came together to learn several valuable lessons about leadership, listening to team tri and our other instructors share their incredible wealth of knowledge and learning how to apply that knowledge in making our associations stronger and better experience for our members through advocacy and other problem-solving skills!

Each day focused on a different topic, how to empower yourself, empower your team, and empower your members.

The most memorable part for me was the goose-chase challenge, being able to have these ‘mini “homework” assignments in a contest form really encouraged me to bring what I was learning outside of just the zoom call! My favorite assignment was to lip-sync to a song that related to my leadership style, and doing all of these fun things right after an energizing workshop earlier in the day definitely was the cherry on top of this summit and made it feel like I was physically AT the conference and not just in my room, 3 feet away from my bed.

And finally, my 3 key takeaways from this conference were…

1.NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK!

This conference made it so easy to connect with other officers around the world by utilizing slack, a messaging app with channels to share ideas, connect with our social media accounts, and get notified with resources and opportunities by the trainers. So go and make some friends!

2.Know yourself to lead yourself!

Being able to find out what our leadership styles are made it a lot easier to figure out how to maximize our potential output as leaders, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and how to utilize your unique skills is key to becoming a good leader.

3.Design for Delight

This was one of the more technical skills that we were able to learn at the conference, essentially how to solve problems better! By focusing on your customer’s problem, coming up with a bunch of ideas, and testing them thoroughly, you can create solutions go above and beyond the expectations of your members and the people that are utilizing it!

I can confidently say that DECAELS was an amazing experience that allowed me and so many other officers to connect with each other and grow as leaders in each of our respective associations. This once in a lifetime opportunity taught all of us some incredible life lessons that we’ll definitely use in DECA and beyond!

-Grace Qi

Oklahoma VP of Career Development