Leadership Philosophy

             To me, leadership is about working with a team of people to reach a common goal and along the way, grow and develop as a person. I add the last part about growing in developing because something that I have learned just in the 7 weeks that our class had known each other, we have all grown and developed more than I thought was possible. Because of that, I think we are all stronger leaders, therefore, leadership doesn’t start and end with reaching goals, it involves self-reflection and striving to be better.

My personal philosophy on leadership for my life is to be a positive influence on those around me by encouragement, an optimistic attitude, and staying grounded in my faith. Everyone has a different philosophy for how they perceive leadership in their life; this is what I love about leadership, everyone views it differently.

After taking the StregthsQuest assessment in the fall and even throughout my experiences in this class, it was no surprise to me that my number one strength is belief. Having strong beliefs has defined who I am my whole life and it is, essentially, the way I view and approach life every day. My belief system and faith is relevant to how I see my life’s role and purpose. I started to notice that there was something different about me in junior high and high school when the people I was surrounded by said I was extremely positive, happy, “smiley”, and had concrete values. I embraced these strengths at a young age and use them to make those around me feel good about themselves in hopes that my positivity will become contagious and a way of life for others. I even realized throughout this class that faith is something that is a huge part of my life. Throughout certain exercises, I often thought of how my faith experience has impacted me and how I view leadership.  

            My closely held values of staying concrete in my faith and what I believe in, trust, and attitude shape how I make everyday decisions in my life. My faith is a way of life for me and my decisions revolve around my views. I believe trust is the foundation and most important aspect of every relationship. I also believe attitude is everything; a positive attitude on life can make each day better just by noticing all the good in life.

            I believe that leadership is a continuous-learning process, as we have seen in this class, for example. For every organization that I will work with, I will consistently form individual relationships with my team before I try to lead them. I will strive to engage and inspire my team by modeling behaviors and actions that I believe are crucial to the success of the organization.

            My philosophy differs now then from the beginning of the class by realizing I need to thrive on my strengths and what I am passionate about to be the more effective leader I can. This directly relates to my leadership philosophy as it is composed of my strengths and what I find passion in. In the beginning of this class, I was too focused on my weaknesses and how that makes me a less effective leader. I am thankful that this class has taught me to leverage my weaknesses by continuously developing my strengths. The takeaways that I learned from this class were very impactful and will stick with me for the rest of my life!

Knowledge is Power

“Knowledge is Power”, I can’t remember what class session is what said in and I want to say that Ashely Gerlach is the one who shared this idea. I always use to think of this phrase as annoying, to be honest. I thought of it in a way that means, “being smarter is better”. I realize though that my interpretation has nothing to do with knowledge is power. I shared in my first blog that I have discovered that learning about leadership is a continuous and ongoing process. There is always something new to learn about leadership. I really appreciate how in this class we have been learning key leadership skills through class exercises instead of just listening to lecture. We learn more when we are actually practicing the skill, but I think we learn the most when we share our ideas with each other. There have been countless times in our class when someone will share their thoughts and I think to myself, “I never thought of it that way.” The more we are able to see leadership from a different side, the more power we have to influence others around us to be the best version of them.

I think power can be looked at in two different ways in leadership. Some look at power in a way that they want to have control over others while others see power as a way to have a positive influence on others. I don’t look at leadership as having power over followers and making them be “robots” and do what I tell them to do; I look at leadership as a way to impact the followers lives. I especially love how we have looked at leadership from a follower’s point of view. The knowledge that I have learned about followers will allow me to influence any followers that I come into contact with in a new way.

I like how the relational model plays off the “Knowledge is Power” idea by having “empowerment” as a key component of the Relational Leadership model. One of my favorite passages from this chapter is, “Power is not finite and indeed can be shared and amplified.” This passage can be viewed by two perspectives. Knowledge is never finite, especially when it comes to leadership, so the more we learn, the more power we have to share. At the same time, the more power is shared and amplified, the greater the outcome is. I believe that the best results are rooted from more than just one source. Collaboration is key and when we share power, others want to do better just because they feel that they now have ownership.

I never thought that a three-word phrase would have such an impact on how I view leadership. I am grateful that Ashley (or whoever shared this) shared this idea with the class because it made me think and reflect. I love that there is always something new to learn about leadership.

Little Johnny and the Candy Bar

Values define who we are. They guide how we live our lives every day and help define our personality. Because values are so “guiding”, it only makes sense that we incorporate them into how we lead others and ourselves.

As a leader, we are prompted to make numerous decisions, some easy and some hard. I think values are a huge part of leadership especially when we have to make tough decisions. We often look to our values as the guide to making the right decision. It is interesting, though, that every one of us has different values. What we think is “right” based on our values may be considered “wrong” to another person based on what he or she values.

Another way that I see values relating to leadership is that an authentic leader is one that lives out the same values he or she claims to have. It’s easy to say that I value relationships and friendship but if I am going behind my friends’ backs talking about them, do I really value relationships and friendship? Values are always a tricky subject because sometimes it is hard to stand for what you believe in.

I love the example of values and ethics in chapter three when the author provides an anecdote to illustrate the best way we understand values. It’s the story of little Johnny stealing the candy bar. We have all more than likely had an experience like that where there was a defining moment in our lives that taught us what we truly value. Values don’t just fall from the sky and we don’t just look at a page of adjectives and qualities and pick the ones that we want to value; values are meaningful and have a background story, just like the candy bar. 

I love how companies and organizations in today’s society are focused on value-based recruiting versus just recruiting on technical skills. This goes off of the idea presented in chapter three that we should align our own values with the worthy values of the organization. How can we work for a company when we don’t believe in the same values? It would be very difficult, to say the least.

My own personal values are faith, trust, and attitude. Faith is and will always be the foundation of my life. It is the way I stay true to myself and it guides all of my actions. It has made me who I am and I am truly thankful to have a strong faith-based heritage within my family. In relation to faith, I believe that trust is the foundation and most important aspect of every relationship. Whether it is marriage or friendship, a relationship can’t get too far without trust. I also believe that attitude is everything. A positive attitude throughout life can make each day better just by noticing all of the good in your life.

Why Leadership?

Ever since I was in second grade, I have been learning about leadership. At a young age, I attended leadership training camps in hopes of making close friends. I realized later in life that I gained much more from those experiences than I would have ever imagined. Leadership is one of my passions and I could talk about it for hours; I even get fired up when listening to a lecture or reading a book on leadership. When I heard that Ohio State offered a Leadership Studies minor, there was no doubt it my mind that I wouldn’t pursue it immediately. Within the minor, this specific course appealed to me because of the title, “Team and Organizational Leadership”.

Throughout our lives we are always involved in teams, even within organizations. It’s one thing to be a leader of my life, but it’s a whole other level to be an effective leader on a team. I think the whole class would agree that teams have been a part of our whole lives growing up, and that’s just the beginning. In college, we are involved in teams and our career will also provide us with teams. In this course, I am most interested in how I can leverage my strengths and opportunities in a team setting to maximize team performance.

I understand leadership as a drive to do something great with others who all have the same vision to accomplish a dream. It can be as simple as studying with a group of students to receive an A on a test or as big as starting a campus-wide philanthropy to raise money for a cause. Leadership is happening at every moment in our lives, sometimes we just don’t realize it or take the chance to reflect on it. What’s amazing about leadership to me is that there is always something more about it to learn. At the beginning of this year, I took my first leadership studies minor course on personal leadership. After having a leadership internship this past summer through Target, I thought I was an expert on leadership. I’ll never forget on the first day of class the professor said, “Raise your hand if you think you know a lot about leadership.” Of course I was one of the few students who thought we were all “know-it-alls”. After we raised our hands, he simply said you don’t know a lot about leadership. Ouch. I swallowed my pride and allowed myself to soak up any and all information I could learn about leadership from that point on in my life. I learned a wealth of knowledge about leadership just from that course, which tells me that this is only the beginning.

My expectations for myself in this class are to apply the knowledge I learn to my daily life, whether that be in my sorority or my next internship with Target. I also expect myself to participate in class discussions more than once a day to get the most of this amazing opportunity that Ohio State has to offer.