I can’t think of a better example to share than this month’s leadership profile Malala Yousafzai.

I first heard of Malala when it was reported the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Valley had attempted to assassinate the then 15 year-old girl on her way home from school, shooting her in the face at point blank range in October, 2012. Her only “crime” was standing up and speaking out for the education rights of girls in the region. After an amazing recovery in Birmingham, England, Malala slowly but surely redoubled her efforts to speak out on behalf of education equality. Her book I Am Malala was released one year after her assassination attempt and she was the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala’s media story has yet to peak, but I believe there are several takeaways from a leadership front as well, particularly for young leaders. Here they are:

Take Intiative

If there’s one thing young leaders (or any of us) need to hear, it’s this: you are never to unqualified to set a good example. Unfortunately, age can be one of the biggest excuses for not taking initiative when the opportunity arises. Encouraged by her father when she was 11 years old, Malala began writing a blog for the BBC under a pseudonym describing her experience under Taliban occupation. But it wasn’t because she was the most qualified. She was simply the only one willing to do it after the 15 year-old who had been selected backed out at the last minute.

Taking initiative isn’t about position or authority or attempting to make huge, sweeping changes. It’s about doing what we can in the circumstances we’re in.

Take Courage

If you’re advocating for any kind of change at all, you WILL face opposition at some point. This was certainly the case with Malala. Because she did so well with her BBC blog, additional media opportunities came her way. Eventually, the Taliban figured out who she was an issued threats against her and her family.

When opposition comes, it can often seem perfectly reasonable to quit. Many leaders do. Some are justified, but for the ones who stick with it, opposition is essentially a gut check. How much are they willing to put on the line? How important is the vision they are trying to accomplish? What is it worth?

For Malala, opposition simply added fuel to her efforts. The Taliban threats made it obvious she was making a difference. As Dale Carnegie says, criticism is often a disguised compliment. You don’t get it unless you are doing something noteworthy.

Serve Your Purpose

One of the questions author Mark Miller asks is this: are you a serving leader or a self-serving leader? In other words, are you in it for others or only yourself? I’ll admit this is always a tough question for me because I have so many personal and professional goals. Malala was the same way. Education was very personal for her and she worked extremely hard to win top honors as a child. But through her work as an education advocate, it became clear to her that education shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a universal right. Her efforts (and circumstances) led to the passage of Pakistan’s first Right to Education Bill.

There comes a time when serving our purpose dwarfs the importance of self-promotion. To press that point, I’d like to share Malala’s own thoughts in this brief clip from her recent interview with Jon Stewart. When it became apparent Malala was literally fighting for everyone – even the very people who had tried to kill her – it left me just as speechless as it did Stewart.

You don’t need to be old enough or important enough to make a difference. Malala didn’t set out to become a revolutionary. She simply did the next right thing and didn’t give up, despite the pressure. You and I can do this too, right where we stand. Let’s join in.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

As enthralled as I was with the presentations, one poignant leadership lesson stood out which I knew I’d have to eventually share.  It came from a story Richard Melhart relayed to us.  Melhart was an American survivor of the Pan Am Flight 73 hijacking in 1986 in Karachi, Pakistan which resulted in 22 fatalities and over 150 casualties.  It was a horrific ordeal and ended with the passengers fleeing the plane through emergency exits as the four hijackers began an all-out assault following failed negotiations to acquire a new pilot for the grounded aircraft.

According to Melhart, the survivors stayed in the airport until the next morning when they were boarded onto a new flight since the one that had been hijacked was a connection for most of the passengers.  Imagine getting back on a plane that soon after such an experience!  After the passengers were reboarded, a group of mental health professionals entered the aircraft to deliver a message, and that is what I want to share with you because it has such a huge implication for resilience in the face of tragedy.  Here are the four things they shared, with my commentary:

The responsibility for recovery is your own. You have the power to overcome.

When adversity strikes (as it does for all of us), many times we have a tendency to focus on what happened to us instead of what we can do about what happened to us.  The ability to overcome isn’t out there.  It’s in here, where we control our response.  This is where I’m reminded of Viktor Frankl’s immortal words: “between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”

Get back to normal quickly.

Taking time off can allow emotional trauma to fester.  This is one of the unfortunate realities we see with soldiers returning from tough overseas employments who are expected to immediately use all the leave time they’ve accrued and can’t find a productive way to employ their abundance of free time.  Activity aids the healing process.

Tell your story often and as soon as possible. Then write it down. In this way you will treat yourself.

When we recount and record our experience, we are forced to interpret it in our own words.  We openly acknowledge the damage that was done – perhaps to others, but more importantly, to ourselves.  We cannot change or heal what we do not acknowledge.

Realize there will be a way to use this situation positively at some point in the future.

Once again, this is speaks to the heart of Viktor Frankl’s message in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, which he wrote upon surviving the atrocities of the holocaust in Auschwitz.  Frankl believed that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or power, but a quest for meaning.  Meaning can be found in many places, including (and sometimes especially) tragedy.  What a waste of an experience that was acquired at a high price if it cannot be employed to benefit others!

In no way do I want to hold myself up as an expert in overcoming tragedy.  My experience is nothing like the experience of anyone involved in the Pan Am flight 73 hijacking (or any other hijacking).  But it is a fact of life that everyone will experience adversity at some level.  As a leader, your ability endure to the end depends on your ability to overcome.  There are many examples of “one and done” leaders who eventually broke under the pressure of adversity.  The resilient ones are the ones who carry on despite the scars.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.