Graduate assistant, Gianna Miranda, hosts leadership seminar

On March 23, Gianna Miranda hosted a leadership seminar that focused on the importance of the middle performers in a professional, group setting. The seminar was conducted in MUC 211. 

Miranda said people in authority only ever focus on the highest and the lowest performers. She tried to get her audience to think of the middle performers more often. 

Miranda is a Fraternity Graduate Assistant (GA), and each assistant is assigned a project area. Her project area is leadership, so she used this as inspiration to create the seminar series, develop all of the topics and personally present her findings.

Since Miranda has taken various leadership classes at USD, she included ideas and concepts in the seminar that she wished she had known before being enrolled in those courses. 

Miranda said she put those aspects in because she “thought they were so vital to becoming a leader and starting from the bottom and working your way up to a leadership position.”

Understanding the phrase leadership skills and learning how to use it effectively can get you far in any professional setting, Miranda said.  

“It’s going to teach you things like strategic communication, decision making and really just being able to logically break down your steps to make a decision,” Miranda said.

In Miranda’s position as a Fraternity GA, she uses her leadership skills almost every day. However, in addition to being a leader, Miranda said being a mentor and leading by example are also important aspects in her current position.

Miranda said middle performers are just as important to the overall group, and they are labeled as such because they don’t do more than they are asked to or less than what they’re asked to. 

“The middle performers, I would argue, are the most vital aspect of any team because they’re going to be the ones that are micromanaging,” Miranda said. 

Miranda said it’s important to focus on being open-minded and non-judgmental.

“If you capitalize on that, as a leader, you’re going to be inclusive to anybody and everybody as you should,” Miranda said.