Final Reflections on Leadership

            Before trying to formulate all of my experiences from this class into an official philosophy of leadership, I thought it best that I look back to my first blog post of the term, in which I explained what I thought were the most important elements of effective leadership.  In that first blog, I stated that the most important elements of leadership were adaptation, as in a leader's ability to adapt their leadership styles to varying situations and learn from their mistakes, and communication, as in being able to effectively communicate with followers.  Looking back at this now I understand that while these are important leadership elements, understanding leadership goes a lot deeper. 

            After our class discussions and activities, I now have a broader understanding of all the main elements of leadership.  The first two, as I said before, are adaptation and communication; however, there is more to them than I originally explained.  Adaptation means learning from your mistakes, understanding different situational circumstances and adjusting your leadership style accordingly, and lastly, understanding differences in the people you are working with and reacting appropriately.  Communication involves practicing active listening when dealing with followers, providing constant constructive feedback, and making sure that you communicate clear objectives so your group understands your purpose.  The next leadership elements are being inclusive, empowering, and ethical, which I believe are all interconnected.  I believe this because in order to empower your followers, you have to be both inclusive and ethical, as in treating followers with respect, dignity, fairness, and involving them in decision-making processes.  The last element is being mindful of your purpose.  To do this, you have to focus on being process oriented when it comes to short term goals, while avoiding subjecting yourself to tunnel vision, and remembering the big picture and keeping long term goals in mind.  With all these elements in mind, I'd say my philosophy statement describing leadership is this:  Leadership is a multi-dimensional process by which an individual works with others to accomplish a common goal through the use of effective communication, adaptation, empowerment, and the creation of a common purpose.    

            These elements that comprise my leadership philosophy have all been displayed at different times during our activities in this course.  In every activity, we were able to see how important communication is to succeeding as a group, whether that was in a large group setting like during the golf ball pipe activity, or in a one on one setting like during the, well, I can't remember the name of it, but the one with that weird product that we had to assemble over the phone.  We saw how adaptation, empowerment, and having a common purpose were important during the pipe activity as well.  Because there were so many of us trying to work together at the same time, we all had to make adjustments to one another and our different leadership styles.  We saw how when working in a large group it can be easy for some people's opinions can get put aside, which quickly has the opposite effect of empowerment.  Finally, we saw that when we all united behind the common purpose of just trying to get the golf ball through the pipe, we were able to put personal differences aside and came very close to achieving our goal. 

The Value of Active Listening

            So far out of all our experiences in this class, I think the one that was the most eye opening for me was observing everyone's, including my own, reactions to the activity we did to demonstrate active listening.  In that activity, we had one person designated as the talker, one as the listener, and one as the observer, so everyone got an opportunity to see the activity from every perspective.  As you can imagine, the results were very interesting. 

            My first position in the activity was being the active listener, which proved to be much more difficult that I could have ever thought.  I sat there and listened to my partner talk about an experience she had at work for about seven minutes, which felt like an eternity because of my inability to provide any verbal feedback during that time.  While I tried my best to listen and use non-verbal cues to still engage in the conversation, it was extremely hard to stay completely focused on her and avoid getting distracted by my own thoughts that I wanted to contribute to the conversation.  This was very uncomfortable for me because I usually consider myself to be a good listener, and not being able to speak in the conversation made me realize my flaws as a listener that I hadn't realized before.  I was then interested to observe my two partners interact in the same role. 

            After observing my two partners interact in the active listener role, I could tell how they were equally as uncomfortable with it as I was.  All three of us were visibly uncomfortable with not being able to speak for so long, and this made me realize that to a degree it is human nature to be bad listeners.  I don't know whether it's our egos or just our natural desire for people to think we are intelligent, but most people have a tendency to concentrate much more on what they are going to say next than on actually listening to what is being said. 

            For me, I think this activity helped me see how important it is to practice active listening skills, for both leadership and relational purposes.  A big thing that we've talked about in this class is being open to other people's different perspectives, understanding the people you are working with, and being able to learn from those you are working with through constant feedback.  It's now clear to me that being able to practice active listening is crucial to making these goals a reality, and our activity in class is what helped me to realize this. 

            

Values in Leadership

            In chapter 4 of the Exploring Leadership book, it discusses how it is often difficult to articulate our own values that guide our actions, but how the ability to do so will help you to be more conscious and understanding of your own actions.  It also talks about how each of us has different preferences on how we construct our own value system, and the ability to understand how we construct our value system will help us better understand ourselves and others.  I think this is a very important concept in leadership for a few reasons.  First off, in order to be an effective leader, you have to understand your own values and tendencies.  Understanding yourself and what is important to you allows you to better communicate your expectations to those you are trying to lead.  Secondly, you must be able to understand your follower's values in order to effectively work together with them.  As was mentioned before, everyone constructs their value system differently and hence responds differently to leadership; therefore it is up to the leader to understand these differences, and figure out how to effectively align their values with those of their followers.  Communication between the leader and followers is crucial to this, and an effective leader must be able to communicate their values, while also making their followers feel that their values are understood and are important to the group.

            Chapter 4 of the Exploring Leadership book also mentions a study that was done which settled on eight commonly shared values around the world. They are love, truthfulness, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, and respect for life.  As far as my own personal values go, it is difficult for me to narrow this list down to a few specific values, because I honestly feel that they are all equally important.  I think that love is a necessity to achieve happiness in life, whether it comes from family, friends, or a significant other.  Truthfulness is very important, especially when it comes to leadership, because to be an effective leader you have to establish trust with your followers, and vice versa.  Fairness is also important to leadership and trust because disagreements often arise when working with others, but as long as a leader treats their followers fairly and objectively, there will not be a loss of respect.  Freedom of coarse is what drives the success of humanity.  Freedom of speech, expression, thinking, and happiness are what have driven the advancement of human society.  Unity is crucial to leadership and group success because unity involves working together toward common goals.  Tolerance is important to understanding our peers' value systems, and understanding that everyone's beliefs count for something.  Responsibility is also tied to trust.  Being responsible for your actions and keeping your promises establishes trust with your peers and commands respect from them.  Lastly, I truly believe that we must all have respect for all forms of life.  Understanding that the world doesn't completely revolve around us is humbling, and allows us to see the bigger picture in life. 

            

What Leadership Means to Me

         My decision to enroll in this course is part of a recent change in direction that I have experienced in my goals for college and my career path.   When I first decided to become part of the business school here at OSU, I really wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go in my career, in fact my main motivation was simply that OSU has a highly regarded business school and I wanted to get a good degree when I graduated.  Then came this semester and my Introduction to Operations Management course, and with that came my newfound passion.  Generally speaking, Operations Management deals with working with teams to constantly innovate and improve company processes to achieve greater success.  That being said, leadership and teamwork abilities are essential to the job.  So when session two came along, I saw this course as an opportunity to further develop my leadership skills and have insightful discussions about the true meaning of leadership.

            I believe that leadership can take many different forms depending on the situation.  As we discussed in class, leadership ranges from the highest-ranking government officials in the world all the way down to leadership within small teams of people.  While leadership does take many different forms, I believe there are a few important necessary traits that every leader must posses.  I think that above all else, it is essential for leaders to have the ability to adapt to different situations.  Adaptation requires leaders to have an open mind at all times, and be able to learn from others as well as their own mistakes.  As we discussed in class, the concept of Moral Conversation is key here.  Leaders must be able to recognize their own faults, be open to other's suggestions, and be able to realize that not every situation has a black and white answer.  The second essential trait is the ability to communicate well with peers.  Communication drives success, and without it, it is impossible for a team to work together and accomplish goals, as was displayed in our hula-hoop activity in class.  Leaders must not only be able to communicate, but be able to recognize the best ways to communicate with peers on a case-by-case basis.

            Coming into this class I feel that I already possess some leadership ability, but not on the level where I'd like it to be.  As of now I feel that my best leadership qualities are my strong work ethic, organization, and communication skills; however, I feel that I can improve on my ability to practice the principles of Moral Conversation.  In no way do I consider myself to be a know-it-all or a perfectionist, but I am aware that I often times dismiss people's opinions that differ from mine.  That being said, I am hopeful that the discussions we have in this class will allow me to practice listening to and accepting other people's opinions, not necessarily as fact, but as valuable contributions that may or may not differ from my own.