Gaga for Ga-Ga: My Success Story

As a freshman, I thought leadership experiences would be few and far between for me, and that joining organizations would allow for me to work my way up to those leadership experiences during my Junior or Senior Year, and boy was I wrong.

I suppose I've learned that having expectations is one of those things that is necessary, yet mine always seem to get blown out of the water. During my first quarter at Ohio State, I joined the Campus EMS Auxillary, Block "O", and The Ohio State Dodgeball Syndacite. I joined the Ohio State Relay for Life Committee, giving me one of my first leadership roles here. I also got a job at the Schottenstein Center, allowing for more leadership experiences, however none of these have helped me grow as a person as much as Gaga for Ga-Ga has.

Now before everyone starts assuming that I'm a part of a Lady Gaga club, let me explain. Gaga for Ga-Ga is NOT a Lady Gaga organization. We are a sports-based organization that teaches and plays the game for ga-ga twice a week in the Racquetball Courts in the RPAC. Basically, the game goes like this: Everyone must remain on a wall until the ball (we just use a volleyball) is thrown in the air and hits the ground three times. After that, its a crazy free-for-all, with players smacking the ball with an open hand in an attempt to hit other players below the knee to get them out. The last person standing, wins.

The game is awesome, and being one of the co-founders of the club, I'm obviously passionate about it. However, Gaga for Ga-Ga has more benefits for me than just the fun of the club, although thats a big part of it. This organization has taught me more about being a leader than almost any of the other experiences I've had in my life. And most importantly, this has been the role that has most helped me develop my Authentic Leadership.

However, since our class is on the topic of Relational Leadership, I'll concentrate on that. First, let me say that I hate the term relational leadership. As many who come before me, and many who come after me will say, relational leadership is completely redundent. You cannot have leadership without fostering relationships. Period.

The Relational Leadership Model outlines five key components: Purpose, Inclusion, Empowerment, Ethics, and Process Orientation. Over the course of the year, I have been working at developing each and every one of these skills, however I'll just outline how I was at the start of the year, and how I am now, as obviously the goal is to perfect my skills in each of these areas.

At the start of this year, I came in with an immense amount of leadership experience for an 18-year-old (hey, I'm aloud to toot my own horn everyone once and a while, right?). Because of this, I immedietly accepted the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of the organization. Little did I know the commitment and change that I would go through when I accepted the role, but alas, I have no regrets. I was very strong in Inclusion (making sure everyone gets involved) and Ethics (making sure things abide by my established morals and values.) I had been steadily working on Purpose (doing things of the future and setting goals and all that) and Empowerment (motivating and sharing information), however I was not so good at Process Orientation (collaberation and feedback from others).

Reflecting back, I can proudly say that I've grown in each and every one of these areas, however, there's always room for improvement. Seemingly, my Inclusion methods and Ethics haven't really changed, which makes sense to me. Camp Christopher (see my previous post for more information on that) promotes great amounts of inclusion, and I naturally carried that over to Ohio State, and Ethics are something that shouldn't be influenced by others, and are grown from your family life and your spiritual life, both things that haven't really changed. Empowerment is that component that I've worked the most on, and while I have improved, I know there's still a lot of room to improve.

My motivation for working the most on Empowerment has been sorta selfish, however its for the good of the organization. I wanted to get the organization to the point that it can survive without me, and that means empowering my four other officer to take initive on their own accord, and not just beacuse I'm pushing them to do something. I've also greatly improved on Process Orientation. I've found that looking for the feedback and collaberation of others, instead of just doing everything myself, has allowed for me to build on Empowerment, as well as has made the other officers more effictive team members, and they know that they have a say in what goes on. It's using this that allows me to build a democratic leadership style, instead of the autocratic style that I've used for most of the first quarter. Finally, Purpose is something that I've neglected in the past, but slowly but surly I'm realizing that it plays an extremely important part of running an organization. Depending on how you use it, it's the reason that we're there, the reason that we commit all this time to a specific purpose (get it?), and its the one thing that puts everything back in perspective. Even though we're not looking months or years ahead, we're still planning out a few weeks, which is definetly progress.

Overall, I know that Relational Leadership, while redundent, is one of the most important, if not the most important leadership concepts out there. It puts the humbling perspective into people, that they can't do it alone. That we're only effective leaders because we surround ourselves with some of the best people around. That a leader is only as good as their support system. Think about it.