It was a simple task. Stand up. Say your name and where you are from. Tell the group what leadership means to you and what you hope to get out of the program.

It was the first task of the inaugural class of the NCAA Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Females. It should have taken less than an hour. The task ended three hours later.

What was supposed to be a simple introductory exercise was actually a cleansing. For the first time, we could express what we’ve experienced — uncut, unabridged and without a disclaimer. It was a room full of women with multiple responsibilities either separated by slashes or too many to fit on one line of a business card.

Many of the participants for the first time had a captivated audience with a sympathetic ear. I can’t say with certainty that if we did the same exercise today it would be any different. Although we all had different circumstances, backgrounds and positions, our experience as women administrators had a strong commonality.

We learned many lessons of leadership. The most crucial was self-examination.

To be a good leader, you have to identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Most importantly, you have to be cognizant of how others view you, even when you disagree. Leadership is about receiving negative feedback — no matter who is providing it — and being able to adjust. You may not necessarily have to adjust your style of doing things; the solution may be as simple as adjusting how you deal with that person. If you are serious about self-examination, no matter what the criticism is, no one should ever be able to say anything worse about you that you haven’t already said about yourself.

The leadership institute created a safe environment for us to strip away the "know-it-all" necessary to survive in collegiate athletics. As women, it is difficult for us to admit we have shortcomings, fearing that it can and will be used against us. In an environment where you are still fighting to justify your rightful place, any appearance of inadequacy will be magnified. The institute required us to admit to ourselves and the other

participants that we didn’t know all the answers. The very same fears and frustrations we uttered on that first day were met with encouragement from the many presenters and facilitators who participated in our experience. Most importantly, we learned that to be a good leader, you don’t have to know it all right now. Lifelong learning is a crucial piece of leadership. Uninformed? Maybe. Unprepared? Never.

I’m sure there are other professional-development opportunities that I could have participated in other than the Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Females. For the participants, however, it was more than workshops on professional development.

The real work started outside of sessions. Charles Whitcomb, the dean of the institute, gave us one charge and one charge only: Don’t dare return the same way you came. Sure, you get pretty good workshops, dynamic speakers and free food. But the institute is only the laboratory. The real test is when you are faced with a situation in your work environment that mirrors something in the role play or case studies you discussed. Everyone knows what to do when you are in a small group of four, but when you are on your own, away from your classmates faced with a real situation, you have a choice to make: Resort back to your pre-institute training or decide to move forward with your new self. The only one who knows what choice you make is you.

I’m proud to be a member of the first class. I’m looking forward to the day when I will need at least my toes to count the number of ethnic minority women in visible leadership positions in intercollegiate athletics. The institute did not create new leaders. We’ve been here all the time — only we’ve been really good at leading from the sideline and from the background. The Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Females is about teaching women of color how to lead at center stage.

When it is my turn to sit in the big chair, not only will I have skills learned from the institute, but a new network of sisters who are also cheering for me. The most important thing we will do as a class is serve as an example for other women with the same dream: respect for what we’ve been doing all along.