Leadership is everyone's business

Growing up in a country where we do not get to vote for our political leaders, the recent presidential election makes me appreciate more that...

  Leadership is Everyone's Business.

In the United States, people are encouraged to think critically and express their own opinions freely.  We are all encouraged to participate in civic engagement, because we should all have our voice heard.  Although I am not eligible to vote, I am very impressed by the passion and energy stirred by the election and I just can't help but think, even though we do not expressively say it, we all understand in some way that leadership is everyone's business because we understand the importance of exercising our voting rights.  During President Obama's victory speech, he mentioned that "America is not about what can be done for us, it's about what can be done by us together".  He emphasized the importance of empowerment that people have the power to make it a better nation.  Empowerment is essential because leadership is everyone's business and we all need the power to get things done, to make the change.

Empowerment is also important in the business world.  Sharing power and allowing the employees who are closest to the nitty gritty of the business have their voice heard help the executive team make a better and more informative decision.  Take WorldCom for example.  They committed the biggest accounting fraud in history and the leaders in the company were sentenced to jail.  David Myers, the former corporate controller at WorldCom, now speak at various universities about his mistakes and share the circumstances under which he committed the fraud.  One thing that stand out to me is, he thinks the CFO at that time, Scott Sullivan, is the most intelligent person he had ever met in his life and he had great respect and  loyalty to him.  And that's how the rest of the Board thought of him as well.  So Sullivan had a lot of power in the company, not just because of his position, the title he held, which is referred to as legitimate power according to the reading, but more importantly, he had expert power and referent power because people all regarded him as the world class expert and believed he was more than competent in his job and he was the role model for many people.  When Myers showed Sullivan the financial results that did not meet the Wall Street analysts' expectation, Sullivan simply told Myers that the numbers were wrong.  Myers later admitted that when someone that is ten times smarter than you said you are wrong, you don't doubt it and you honestly think you've made a mistake even though you don't know what the mistake is.  So he perpetrated the fraud as instructed by his boss thinking  he was just doing what he was told by his leader.  That's why understanding leadership is everyone's business is so important because Myers could have reduced his dependency on his leader and took ownership of the financial responsibility and expressed his professional skepticism to his leader.  It is shocking to learn someone like Myers, who only had one traffic ticket on his record up to that point, would be convicted 5 felonies that could have resulted in 65 years in prison, because he relied too much on his leader due to his expert and referent power over him.

Leadership lies in when you take the initiative to make an impact on the community, when you take the small steps in the fight for a better world, when you exercise your voting right for the country, when you inspire someone to follow their passion, etc.  Every decision we make in our daily life, however small it is, may have a potential effect on the world around us.  When we talk about the major historical events and movements around the world, we often mention leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but the change would not have happened if it weren't for the millions of people, volunteers who believe that they have the power to change the world and they have the responsibility to do so for future generations.  Leadership is everyone's business.

A View from the Balcony

As I have pointed out in class last time, being conscious of the context and environmental awareness is something I need to work on and develop. (Anooj, I will notice my name on the board sooner next time..)  So acting as an observer and just watch what is going on is quite interesting for me and it's a great opportunity to analyze the student organization that I have been working with and reflect upon my own environmental awareness...

The student group I am working with is Hapa Student Association and I observed one of the executive board members meetings last Sunday.  For those of you wondering what hapa means, quoted from wikipedia "hapa is an Hawaiian language term used to describe a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander racial or ethnic heritage".  HSA is a multicultural group focusing on raising the awareness of mixed identity and promoting an open and comfortable environment for people that have unique and diverse cultural backgrounds.  There are many ethnicity based student organization on campus, since HSA is targeting mixed identities, they are a relatively small group compared to others such as Indian Student Association or Asian American Association.  They have roughly 50 members and 6 executive board members, of which 5 showed up at the meeting.  I use the questions in the EIL book as a guide and realize I can't answer some of them just by observing at this particular meeting.

·         Who is the leader of the meeting? 

       They don't call it president and vice president, instead, it's primary leader and secondary leader.  The primary leader, Isaac, is the leader of the meeting.  He has an agenda typed up in his laptop and and they mainly talk about the upcoming events.  They do not mention the previous leader at the meeting, but from the last meeting I had with Isaac, we talked about the previous leader and founder of the group, Yuri.  He founded HSA because he wants people to recognize the uniqueness of their mixed ethnic background.  He has been a passionate leader who has a vision for the group.  He bonds the group together.  Members respect him very much and hangs out with him a lot, but when he graduates, no one was willing to step up as the next leader, so he appoints the leadership positions from the active member pool.  HSA starts as a social group for people who has cross cultural backgrounds to get together and address issues such as identity confusion and branches out to include anyone that is interested in hapa culture.

·         Who are the followers in the meeting? 

       All the other executive board members are followers in the meeting.  Most of the time, they wait for Isaac to bring up a topic and they will either agree or offer a different perspective.  They all commute from home, have part-time jobs and are involved with other student organizations on campus.  So even though it is supposed to be a social group, they have low attendance problems after Yuri graduated.  While observing how they interact with each other at the meeting, I realize started from the executive board team, they need to be reminded why they want to join HSA at the first place and the values they believe in.  I am sure they enjoy the benefits from being a member of HSA by getting to know more hapa people and be able to articulate and sort out the problems they have in life related to mixed identity.  But as time goes on, they tend to treat the leadership position as a task needed to be done rather than aspiring to lead and influence others.  There is a little apathy among followers since some are texting and not actively participating in the conversation.  But that is probably also due to the fact that it's late afternoon on Sunday and people just come straight from church or work.  The executive board members did not point out problems as they are mainly discussing about the logistics of the upcoming events.

·         How would you describe the context or environment? 

      The primary leader, Isaac, is always the one who initiates the discussion and the members will respond to him directly, there is not much interaction/debates/connection between members.  They all seem to be looking at Isaac and waiting for the next item on the agenda and do not have much input to drive the conversation.  So I think they need to be assigned more responsibility rather than having Isaac do the work most of the time.  The members and leaders are happy, but they need to show more enthusiasm and pride towards the organization.  The campus community is very supportive of the organization.  They just received the Diversity Enhancement Award from the College of Arts and Science.

Being up from the balcony does not mean relaxing and disengaging from the activity going on.  Rather, it allows us to step back and watch the dynamics in the group, so we can identify the hidden problems and patterns and address them in time.

Life Elsewhere

When I am reading through the prompt and trying to think of one particular experience, the best one, and I realize it all leads back to my study abroad experience, my life at Ohio State as an international student.

There is an old Chinese saying that traveling for a thousand miles is better than reading a thousand books, which I often use to justify for my education here when my mom complains about me being too far away from home.  I would tell her OSU is at least eight thousand miles away from home, so I'm learning a lot here...

Anyway, I am a firm believer in travelling makes the best learning experience.  I still remember how I filled out my very first immigration form on the plane to the United States and how the guy sat next to me said "Welcome to America" with a smile.  During the first week before school started, I stayed in Bradley for temporary housing with another international student who I just met and we survived on ham, bread and juice for the entire week.  Everything looked different.  The dorms were surprisingly colorful with playful decorations.  The next morning, I woke up around 5am because of the jet lag.  I opened the window to feel the cool morning breeze, the sky was crispy clear blue before sunrise,  and I asked myself, what am I doing here?

Everything was brand new to me at that time and I felt like I was learning like a baby because I obtained new information from everyday life!  I immersed myself in a completely new environment and I learned from what I observed, what I heard and how I felt in a different language!  Pretty cool experience if you haven't traveled outside of the country and I highly recommend you do it to feel for yourself!

Didn't know what turkey looks like before...

I touched snow for the first time...

We learn the best by experience.  The people I met here change my life.  I am always interested in learning about different cultures.  I love talking to new people and I am amazed by their personal stories.  And listening to different perspectives on various issues allows me to think analytically and question my old beliefs.

Now as a peer advisor, when new international students ask for my advice on how to become successful at Ohio State, I can't help but think isn't it fun to explore and learn how to do things by yourself?  There isn't a formula to succeed and no right or wrong way to get involved.  It is the experience that we are getting in college shapes who we are and introduces to a whole new world if you are willing to open your eyes.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
                                                                                                           – Henry Miller

Love to use Disney songs to demonstrate my point :)

Many domestic students have told me that they think I am so brave to come all the way here on my own and they admire what I do.  They often ask me, don't you miss home?  Of course I do.  When I was at the very west tip of Costa Rica right on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, I would imagine if I just keep going straight from here, I will eventually reach home.  It seems not that far away, only the other side of the ocean.  But it's exactly this distance that teaches me about independence and learn and grow to become who I am now.

I will end with one of my favorite quotes from Forrest Gump:

''Life is a like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're gonna get."

Travel is an adventure.  We don't know what it holds for us.  That's what makes it beautiful.  It's not the destination that matters, it's the learning experience that we'are after.

Travel.  Learn.  Life elsewhere.

We Want to Make a Difference

So why we do what we do in SLA? Because it's cool!

Just kidding...To be honest, I have never thought about it seriously until now.  I realize a lot of the times we just do things that seem interesting to us, hoping we can gain something from it.  But we have no clue what we are getting until we reflect upon it.  And learning about relevant theories definitely makes one think deeper and see things from a different perspective.

For me,  the leadership identity development model is more difficult to understand than the student development theory because the model is more abstract whereas the student development theory is drawn from empirical experience, but it perfectly explains why we do what we do in SLA.

Most if not all of SLAers have gone through stage 1 to 4 as we are all aware of the leadership concept, highly involved on campus to explore personal interest and develop personal skills, have taken on leadership roles and managed others, and probably facilitates a good group process instead of holding a positional role.  We have accomplished all the above from experience, from observing or reading about what other great leaders do.  If  our own experience or other people's experience has proven it right, we continue to do what we are doing, otherwise we modify the way we do things.  It's like when I learn how to cook, my mom would tell me you should do it this way.  When I ask why, she would say because that's what I have doing for the past twenty years.  But little does she know there is a scientific story behind it and chemical theories can be used to explain why things would taste good if prepared in a certain way.  Therefore, the leadership theories provide a logical explanation to what we see in student leadership development.

There is nothing wrong with learning from experience, but then we can't predict what happens next because we don't have a strong theoretical basis.  With the leadership identity development model, we can see our leadership development journey in an analytical way and envision where we are going in the future.  I really like the last two stages of the model where we take responsibilities for the development of others and care about the community.  We have discussed it in class that leadership is about inspiring and empowering others to pursue their passion and make a difference in their life.  Right now we are on stage five, generativity.  We care for the welfare of the buckeye community, and we want to empower more students to become leaders so that they can empower more people.  This is how we change the world, same idea as Pay it Forward, the movie mentioned in Kelsey's blog.  We do what we do in SLA because we want to make a difference. Our motivation is how we can better serve others and we are concerned for the sustainability of the organizations.  We mentor younger peers to help them develop their leadership abilities.  After we graduate, we will be on stage six, integration and synthesis.  Our leader identities have matured and we will dedicate ourselves as life-long learners to adapt to organizations of different complexities.

Identity development model and the student development theory allow us to contemplate and reflect on our involvement experience, focusing on not just why we get involved, but also how we get to where we are now.  It ties directly to the workshops and facilitation we do in SLA.  We need to understand our own motivations and development process to be able to serve others and help student organizations to figure out their development progression.  We will become authentic and more effective leaders because we believe in what we do and we have a strong theory to back it up.

One thing I don't understand about the identity model is the helix model of development.  Do we have any real-life examples when people go back and forth between these stages?

Leadership Examples from Performing Art

Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:

Will Schuester, "Mr Shoe" from Glee, is an exemplary leader.  He cares about the needs of his students and he helps them to achieve their individual dreams while pursuing the shared goals of the entire glee club.  At one particular episode (ep22 season 2), what he does showcases the five practices of exemplary leadership.  He inspired a shared vision among the glee club that they are all going to win at the nationals, but the glee club members get carried away in the big city and are not being productive in writing songs.  Meanwhile, they learn that Mr Shoe may be leaving them for Broadway.  Mr Shoe voices his personal values by sticking with teaching instead of performing on Broadway to keep the team together.  He challenges the process by changing the way they prepare for nationals.  Most importantly, he fosters a collaborative environment to enable the glee club members to bring out the best in themselves.

 I can't find the video clip where Mr Shoe brings everyone together when they are fighting against each other right before going on stage, but here is the promo for that episode:

Authentic Leadership:

As my favorite Broadway show and Disney movie of all times, The Lion King comes to my mind immediately when I am thinking about Authentic Leadership.  I really like the show because we can see how Simba grows into a true leader.  Simba is always ambitious and eager to be king, we can tell from the song "I just can't wait to be king".  But he doesn't understand what it means to be a king at that time, thinking being brave and adventurous is enough.  Well, he is wrong and his father's death transforms him into an authentic leader.  Grownup and mature, he now understands his purpose and motivation better -- he wants to return home and restore the devastated Pride Lands.  Inspired by his father, he has strong personal values and he leads with his heart.  He does not lead for power or status like Scar, he leads for his faith.  The following clip shows one of my favorite moments from the show where Rafiki guides Simba to overcome his fear and have faith in himself as leader of the Pride Lands:

Reciprocal or Relational Leadership:

The Avengers is quite an interesting movie in terms of leadership and teamwork.  Each of them is a hero in their own right, but when they come together for a shared cause, they seem to act on their own and just focus on what they do the best as an individual, which leads to damage and death.  Captain America steps up at the right time to bring all these people who are good at acting on their own to form a strong team.  The process from individual to a team embodies the five key component of the relational leadership model: purposefulness, inclusiveness, empowerment, ethical practices and a process orientation.  They come together for a good cause, an ethical cause. This shared vision binds them as a team and empower each individual to do something they could not achieve on their own.  They all learn to put their personal conflicts behind and combat as an inclusive team.  They look out for each other and view the battle as a team effort instead of an individual war.

Below is a glimpse into this movie:

Hamster Love

If you are having a bad day, watch this:

SLA's Thank-you Card :D

Last Sunday, Ryan, Neil and I did a facilitation for Sigma Alpha Iota.  We did some team building activities and SWOT analysis to help the musical sorority figure out their mission and vision.  We split them into smaller groups to discuss about SWOT and it was cool to see different groups had common ideas about the strength and weakness for the organization as a whole.  I have a better understanding of the facilitator's role and it feels great to help the organization members work out the problems on their own.  Absolutely love their energy and enthusiasm with all the singing and dancing moves!!  As we wrapped up the facilitation, we got two handwritten thank-you cards from them!!! Definitely feels AWESOME to receive thank-you cards as SLAers for the first time!!!  We have put them up at SLA's office, come check it out!!