BUS 110: W09 Reflection Leadership

 

Leadership (lead·er·ship) is defined as the action of leading a group of people or an organization. In easy words, leadership is about taking risks and challenging the status quo. Leaders motivate others to achieve something new and better.

 

As I sat to write this post, I found it hard to get my thoughts into an order that made sense. For me, the act of being a leader has always come naturally and been easy for me to understand. The teachings this week showed me that I was naturally applying lessons that others had to be taught. I’ve sought to live my life with Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, and Self-Reliance. These were taught to me as a part of my spiritual path in life. Each of these concepts are part of a list of virtues that many Heathen (Norse) pagans found to be helpful as they go through life. Each of these concepts builds on the one before and after it. They flow from one to the next in an ever-turning, interwoven circle that can show anybody how to be a true and proper leader.

 

We are taught that we should live our lives with courage and always be willing to do what we need to do to find our true path in life. Things may be scary or worrisome at times, but we need to move forward in life and our courage will carry us through. Once we have begun to live our lives with courage, we have started down the path we were meant to follow. When applied to being a leader, it means that you must have the courage to step forward and take on the role of leadership.

 

Having courage leads us to our truth: the truth of ourselves and what we are meant to be and do in this world. We are taught that we need to act with truth central to our actions and motivations in life. Our actions need to be true to our thoughts. A good leader will use truth to motivate his people to follow him. People respect those who are truthful with them.

 

Next, we are taught that we should have honor in all our dealings. This one freely translates to being in a leadership position. We should always act with honor and show it to those that have chosen to follow us.

 

Our honor leads to our fidelity. We should strive to remain faithful to our employees, supporters, investors, and customers. When we act with fidelity, we show people that we can be trusted to lead with fairness and respect.

 

Once we have been faithful to those around us, we can act with discipline. This can be one of the hardest aspects of being a leader. We must have the ability to remain on the correct path—to always act with truth, courage, and fidelity in all our actions and decisions. If we as a leader bend to use the easy route, we run the risk of losing the faith of those that have been following us.

 

A good leader also needs to learn how and when to be hospitable to those around us. They are the ones that will help us to reach our goals and be successful in our lives. If we do not take care of the people that have been there for us and show them that they are important to us, we will not have them to lead any more. The people that have been there for us also need to see that we allow our new people to come in and work alongside them and us with the same energy that we did to them.

 

Next, we come to self-reliance. This teaches us that we need to be able to act on our own and show our followers that they can do so as well. They need to understand that if they see something that needs to be done or a step they need to take in their or our lives, they should be able to rely on themselves as well as us, as their leader. This does not mean that we are all that we have, it simply means that we are our final fall back.

 

The eighth concept is that of industriousness. This concept teaches that we should always work to improve and finish our tasks. As leaders, we should show people that they can and need to use this concept in their daily lives and actions.

 

The final concept that we are taught is that of perseverance. This one can be deceptively simple. In the easiest way, it means to continue going forward despite failures, hard times, and difficult situations. If we do not keep an eye on our ability to move forward in life, we run the risk of becoming lost and falling backward toward failure.  

 

Each of these nine virtues or concepts can help us to be a good leader and motivate those around us to the best of our and their abilities. Following these nine simple concepts will improve our ability to lead people and move through our lives and business ventures in it. These concepts feed into each other they can feed into us as a whole our lives will improve as we learn how to follow the web of  Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, and Self-Reliance.