leadership and power

I just had to write a reflective paper on a student leadership conference I attended last weekend. The conference was powerful in many different ways, I think the main two being the presence of all those other young leaders and some of the things mentioned by the speakers. I've already written my paper so I won't rehash it all here but the bottom line is that what I heard challenged my old definitions of leadership and led to the creation of new definitions.

My previous experience (and many current ones) had led me to closely associate leadership with the abuse of power. Although I still recognize that *many* leaders DO abuse power, that doesn't mean that I have to. I'm not one of those people and I know that I won't abuse either my own personal power or any power that's entrusted to me. It's pretty liberating to feel that as truth, as more than just spouting the words. I realized that hiding myself, trying to pretend that people don't look to me for leadership (sometimes) is useless. It doesn't serve me and it doesn't serve anyone else. For whatever reason, I was given the ability to lead people (or facilitate their growth) in certain ways. If I don't allow that to happen, I disrespect myself and them.

This is a bit rambly and unclear, I apologize, but I'm still kind of working this out. It's still pretty awkward and a bit uncomfortable to think about myself as a leader - I don't want people to think that I'm being egotistical and arrogant.