Every year, all of our Tall Poppies are fortunate to head out of the classroom to learn about leadership at the annual National Young Leaders Day.

On Tuesday the 14th of May all the Tall Poppies took an hour and a half ride to Hamilton, to Claudelands Arena. We were joined by at least another 10 schools.

This year's theme for NYLD was ´He aha te kai a te rangatira? He korero, he korero, he korero´ . This translates to ´What is the food of a leader? It is conversations´. The hosts at NYLD entertained us with hilarious stories and took charge of a few games.

We also listened to some inspirational speakers, some of whom were Hana Tapiata, Ronnie Taulafo, Dr.Lehan Stemmet and KINGS.

They all told the Tall Poppies about their life story and how they got to the position they are in today. During their speeches they told us some quotes.

Hana talked about a voice in your head that will sometimes tell you that you are not good enough. It might affect other things you do. She explained that you need to try and ignore that voice deep in your head. A lot of the time you are imagining everything you have done wrong or you are picking out tiny details that don't matter to anyone. She said you had to always focus on the good.

KINGS told us about how he started his career using pots and pans. He said that his Mum gave him a lot of support when his Dad went out of the picture for a while. His Mum gave him a camera so he could record his music that he made. His quote to us was

´A King without his people is just a man in a chair´.

Ronnie talked to us about his life story and how it was all an adventure to him and his brother-seeing new things, places and people. He said that discovering all of the things he had never seen or heard of before was a great journey. When he came to New Zealand he had the opportunity to work on the show ´WHAT NOW?´.

Dr. Lehan told us about the research that he had done on leaders. He said that to be a good leader you had to talk to others, you had to learn about them, you had to know their interests, and then collectively think about them and then do what you thought would benefit them. If you were going to be a good leader then you had to be about the WE, not the ME.