in-business YBL Program
Issue No. 66 - August/September 2012
Leadership ‘a form of blindness’-Mercurio
Leadership is a form of blindness because the leader cannot ‘see’ the way forward but must imagine it, explains 2010 Young Business Leader, Symoane Mercurio.
Symoane, a senior associate at Cowell Clarke Commercial Lawyers, says the YBL experience not only gave her tools to use for life, but restored the courage she thought she had lost in the legal profession’s ‘school of hard knocks’.
At the recent YBL Awards presentation evening she gave a presentation to this year’s candidates explaining what they had gained.
“My YBL experience was by no means an easy feat and on several occasions when everything just all became a little too much, I thought it would have just been easier to walk away from the program,” she says.
“Instead I found myself regrouping and reflecting on the significance and core purpose of the YBL program. What the purpose wasn’t - was to turn us into leaders in 10 months. But it was designed for us, the participants, to create our own leadership experiences though our BIP and CIP and find out for ourselves what leadership mean for us as individuals.
“What wasn’t immediately clear to me was why the Royal Society for the Blind would run a leadership program.
“It took me some time, but in one of my many reflective moments through the 10 months I realized that leadership overcomes blindness.
“Being blind is really about not knowing. For a blind person, blindness is about not knowing wha...
