Assignment 9

OSU's leadership class has offered me a lot of tools that could be applied in reality to make me a better leader. One of the first things we did as a class that gave me a sense of where I was at from a leadership perspective was the StrengthsQuest assessment. We performed a lot of helpful assessments as a class which all helped to understand where you are at, but understanding one's strengths and weaknesses is particularly useful in developing a personal leadership philosophy that is tailored to your own specific strengths. I didn't think the actually quiz was super accurate, but it gives you a good baseline and sets the stage for you to question yourself and self meditate about what you really think you are a good at vs. what needs improvement. I can see myself at future situations in jobs sports thinking back to this when determining a good method to best reach my peers. This assessment really set the stage for a lot of the following lectures and assignments.

Directly following this assessment as something I thought was beneficial would be the leadership philosophy assignment. It was useful taking all the tools, (leadership strategies from class, the aforementioned assessment) and combining them with my own personal experiences to form a leadership philosophy to carry forward. It was the one assignment that I felt really bolied down all that we learned into a way that could directly funnel into my own world view for the future.

Assignment 8 - Peck's Theory in OSU Crew

Having just joined Ohio State's rowing team this winter, I have seen the stages of Peck's theory unfold before my eyes. Since the team was disbanded for the 2013-14 season due to a hazing violation, The entire team and administration were essentially reset creating a culture vacuum. This is the first year we can field a full Men's Novice 8 boat since the ban, and as such the idea is that the 8 of us are to set the culture for years to come. There's a lot of pressure with this since we are years in development behind our B1G rivals, and if anyone quits or gets injured we can't race as an 8.

When I was recruited in January, I felt to be in a pseudo-community. I was one of the few people who had rowed before in high school, the rest have never touched an oar, and yet we were all training and conditioning on rowing machines for months together through the winter. I could see the potential with the squad, but I knew a machine isn't the same as a boat, and was worried we weren't focusing on the right goals. Rowing is an incredibly team oriented sport, but so far we were all just a group of individuals seeking to improve our rowing machine times.

After months of sweating together we finally started developing socially into a team, especially after sweeping Miami at our indoor regatta. Results help improve morale for sure, but everything entered into Peck's chaos stage when we went to Spring Training camp down in Lake Lure. It was trial by fire, 3 practices a day a day in a boat where half the team never rowed before. There was lot's of yelling and frustration, and to make it worse we shared the lake with a top Ivy League program. Having rowed for a national caliber club team in high school, I was frustrated too, but when we could finally keep the boat set and translate some of that power we worked for in the winter down to the water, I was excited. We finally felt like a cohesive unit, and while we got demolished by Columbia's NCAA full-scholarshipped 8 in practice dual, We were proud of what we had done after only single week, and were ready to take our speed back to Columbus.

These past few weeks of practice, I've felt real organization as described by Peck start to develop. Despite the freezing cold and rain on Columbus's reservoirs this March and April, our coach has been able to ramp up the intensity of our practices, and the boat's been responding well. The newest rowers are learning good blade and slide control. We raced UC and Miami down in Cincinatti, and got second, but with close margins. We seemed to have reached a consensus where we are goofy and fun off the water, but once we're strapped in it's completely serious. There's is an open conversation with coach after each workout where we all can voice our opinions. I can't wait to see where this season continues to go, and foresee this boat turning into a real community by the end of the year and serving as a real cultural foundation for Ohio State's crew for years to come.

Assignment 6 - Leadership Style

My strongest principle was inspiring a shared vision. I can kind of see where the survey go that from, I do believe in having a a core goal for all my actions in life, and a logical way for me to make others understand my actions would be to help them understand my goal.

My lowest principle in contrast was encouraging the heart. I understand this, I sometimes don't always make an effort to vocally appreciate those who do things for me. If I were to make a concious effort to do just that, I would become a much better leader

Assignment 5 - Act of Kindness

For most of the past week, I've been struggling to think of an act of kindness to perform, but when I got the news that my roommate Eric hadn't gotten the summer internship he had been hoping for, I thought I should do something to brighten his day. As small and strange as it was, I decided to make him a cup of hot chocolate. It was certainly unexpected, and he thought it a little strange, but I could tell it brightened his day! Despite living in a house with a lot of friends, I don't feel like we all make much of an effort to outwardly show that we care. If one of us makes a conscious effort to make everyone else's day just a little bit better, that culture could spread and really have a larger impact than you'd initially expect.

Assignment 4 - Moral Muteness

I feel we all experience some degree of moral muteness in our lives, as the pressure to help others and do what's right is often overshadowed by the social pressure to conform, to not make a fool of oneself and to not anger others. I am certainly no different. I remember a few weekends back, I was hanging out with my friend group, when a few of my buddies were really tearing into another one of my friends who was there. Now like many groups of guys, we often give each other hard times and roast sessions, but this friend gets more than his fair share, and seemed visibly upset during this instance. Instead of standing up for him, I just let it happen. I know there's no real harm done, we're all just as much friends as before, but sometimes it's good to put yourself out at risk to make an improvement, however small, in someone else's life.

Assignment 3 - Biases

After taking three of Project Implict's bias tests, I was lead to some interesting discoveries. The first test I took was the Weight IAT, which compared fat and skinny people. I'd like to think that I don't hold people's size against them regarding how I see them as people, despite this I scored a strong negative association with fat people. I found these results to be challenging, but understandable. I can still hold larger people with esteem, but view the intrinsic adverse heath risks in a negative light. Regardless, it's interesting to see that your opinion of individuals can be swayed subconsciously without really getting to know.

Because of this previous score, I was worried about the next one, the Weapons IAT, which checked for mental correlations between black people and weapons. To my relief, I received a slight association of white Americans with weapons as compared with black Americans. Having grown up in a predominantly white neighborhood and attending private Catholic school, I was worried I could have developed subconscious biases simply from not getting to know many people from other races on any level. However, I consider myself to be fairly open minded, which showed in the results.

The third test I choose was the Age IAT, which indicated no preference for young or old. I felt this was accurate, I don't feel like I feel any inherit value to age or lack thereof. I was surprised that the data skewed so heavy towards young people though, I understand that people are more likely to have positive opinions towards attractie people, and young people are more attractive, but there is something inherently nice about the elderly, perhaps a mental association with grandparents that makes it hard not to associate the good words with them.

In conclusion, I thought the activity with pretty interesting but to me it seemed there could be a lot of error, in particular which association pair comes first which effects speed simply because your mind associating the different sides to different things. Secondly, I felt like it was easy to make small mistakes that could have a large effect on the results.

Assignment 2 - Independence Day

In one of my favorite classic movie speeches, which can be seen here in this Independence Day clip,
The president of the United States is forced to rally a group of people to prevent the human race from being annihilated by an alien threat.

The speaker employs some of the concepts of the relational leadership theory to inspire a group of people who are all probably in pretty low spirits. One tenet of this relationship theory that can be seen is Inclusiveness. The president takes the takes the ideal of the 4th of July holiday, the day that originally celebrated American independence, and deconstructed it. Instead of using the holiday as a symbol of national pride, he states that in the future it would be remembered as the day petty nationalism and politics were thrown out in favor of everyone banding together to defeat a common threat. this scene always hung with me for the way it encourages the listeners to look at the big picture, and convinces everyone to stand together as equals.