Now that we have the "swag" part of the lens covered, lets talk about the leadership part of the lens. I personally struggle to define leadership in a single sentence but find that there are many factors that contribute to its meaning. The relationships, experiences, groups, travels, and opportunities one faces in life all build upon each other to define one's leadership. What I find truly interesting is that our visions of leadership are always evolving...or at least for me. With each new relationship or experience in our lives comes challenges to our current outlook on leadership. As we face these challenges, our original perception of leadership has been altered and hopefully for the best. If you asked me 4 years ago what leadership is, I would have given you a completely different answer than I am right now. Growing more as an individual over the last 3 years at Ohio State have been life changing but for the better! I have come to the conclusion that I still cannot come up with a single sentence to define leadership, but I can at least now come up with a one word phrase for it; REFLECTIVE.
All of the factors I described earlier that I believe contribute to one's leadership help build how we are with people and challenges in the real world. Like a pair of aviators, all of those factors are apart of the inside of the lens. No one else knows about all of the relationships, experiences, groups, travels or opportunities faced in life better than one's self. However, the metal frames on the aviators help "hold" those moments in our lives together to help form our abilities of leadership which are reflected through the polarized lens for the world to see. Hopefully those skills are "shiny" to those that come in contact with us and allow us to make a difference wherever we are at. It doesn't take much but to simply put on the leadership lens and start living life.
Here is a quick brainstorming of critical moments in my life that have helped me define what leadership is to myself. Though its just a sample of what's on the inside of my lens, my hope is that they have helped contribute to my reflective part of my lens:
So the real question here is what's on the inside of your lens and are those moments reflective of what your definition of leadership is?
