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.