Vulnerability

To me, vulnerability on a personal level is the ability of an individual to show signs of weakness and embrace them. It takes a person with integrity to know where their faults are and be willing to accept them. It plays out in my life in several ways. Most importantly, I like to consider myself vulnerable in many facets of my life. I can come off somewhat abrasive to some, but more times than not, I get comfortable very quickly with those whom I trust and that transitions into me feeling willing to share personal experiences. These sometimes include my vulnerabilities and weaknesses which I am not shy about talking about. I think an inability to be vulnerable stems from trust. I believe that if you are unable to trust someone, it's going to be increasingly difficult to open up to them unless you have faith that they will listen to you and not be judgmental. I think it is also hard for people to be vulnerable because of the risk it runs with their feelings and emotions. It's very easy for someone's emotions to be played with and it only takes one inconsiderate person to ruin it for someone's lifetime. I believe that the advantages severely outweigh the disadvantages. First off, being vulnerable makes you human and people are more willing to listen to you if they can relate to your imperfections. Also, being vulnerable opens you up to the feelings of people that you may have never given a chance. Finally, I believe keeping your feelings and thoughts pent up inside of someone is unhealthy. By being vulnerable, it allows you to feels as if a burden has been lifted. There are also a few disadvantages. Being vulnerable can allow people to take advantage of you, both mentally and socially. Also, Some people are only partially open to being vulnerable, which may make things worse. All in all, I thinks its paramount to leading a healthy lifestyle that an individual shows signs of vulnerability. 

Values

To me, values and morals are the single most important thing when determining your feelings towards someone else.  John Wooden, the legendary head coach of the UCLA bruins said it best. He said “the true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching." Its not necessarily about how you act when you are trying to impress or prove someone wrong. It about whether or not you do the right thing even when you know you could take a shortcut and no one would ever find out. Being the leader of an organization on campus, I find myself in this situation very frequently and a lot of times, its much easier to do the wrong thing than you may believe. I consider myself to be very honest and ethical, no matter the situation. Whether I am collecting dues and giving them to our treasurer or I am filing a report with our national office, I always tend to do the right thing, even if it isn't always the easiest. I look at facing moral dilemmas as a extremely slippery slope; it may seem like a good idea at first but disregarding your ethics is bound to catch up with you at some point. One example of a time where my actions didn't align with my values happened just a few days ago. Our national office has a series of accreditation submissions that must be made on a biannual basis. Our chairman in charge of the submissions set strict deadlines for when we needed to have things into him. Rather than planning ahead and getting my requirements done personally, I decided to enlist the help of a few of our newer members and basically told them I needed them to get my requirement taken care. Me being a senior member of my organization, they obliged and got it all done. I then proceeded to send my requirements to our chairman, taking full credit. Looking back on it, I felt terrible making them do my work and then taking full credit. Since then, I have even given them credit and taken each of them out to lunch as a thank you. It was definitely not how I tend to operate and have since remedied the situation. All in all, I tend to hold my values near and dear to my heart. No one is perfect and you are bound to have slip-ups in your values from time to time. The true test of morality is how to respond to those slip-ups. 

The Power of Introverts

After watching Susan Cain's TED talk, I actually had to take a few minutes to decide exactly where I thought I fell on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. I've always considered myself an extrovert but after hearing what Susan had to say about individuals and their identities on the spectrum, I found myself doubting if I truly was. Being a student in the business school, we tend to be tested quite often on our abilities to collaborate on projects. If I have learned anything from my experiences working in groups, it's that whether you believe it or not, no group of people are ever going to be successful if they all fall on the same side of the spectrum. A group of introverts may have great ideas and brilliant direction, but if no one steps up and takes a leadership role, they may all be satisfied with keeping to themselves. On the other side of the spectrum, a group of purely extroverts may never get anything done because they all want to take the leadership role. I think due to this, there are situations where an introvert has no choice but to express the behaviors of an extrovert. I think having that balance in a group is of the utmost importance.

When looking at Tuckman's Developmental Stages Model, not having an equal balance would also be problematic. If a group of people is every going to hope to see all facets of development (forming, storming, norming, performing), its important they don't get hung up on any single stage, which is where being encouraging and not suppressing anyone in a group is key. Each member in a group brings something different and useful to the table. Unless they are given the opportunity for self-expression, these attributes may get lost before they are ever discovered. If you look at any of the great introverts of our history, you could probably point to a specific moment where their lack of conformity was tested and they had to make a decision: either stick to their guns or sacrifice on integrity and personal belief. Whether someone is an introvert or extrovert doesn't necessarily matter. It comes down to their ability to find the weakness in their group (whether big or small) and fill that void.

O Captain My Captain

Dead Poets Society is one of those movies that I will never get sick of watching. I think the first time I watched it was in high school as part of an assignment for an English class and I immediately fell in love with it. I know that inspiration comes from different mediums for everyone. Some people listen to music, some people read speeches, and others are born with the confidence to succeed. For me, I think of the scene where Mr. Keating approached his students with a question: "what will your verse be?" This resonates a lot with me because in the grand scheme of things, its easy to get caught up in just how small your footprint will be. It's easy to skate by and leave it up to others to truly change the world. Whether or not you want it to, life continues onward and its up to us as individuals to decide where we will leave our mark. I am a firm believer in the idea that if you are every put in a position of power, its imperative that you leave your role in a  better position than when you received it. The whole idea of "creating your own verse" strikes a personal cord with me based on my background and my decision to found a fraternity at Ohio State. Chi Phi to me is its own "book" and I have to decide what my "verse" will be. When it's all said and done, I want to look back on my 4 years at this university and my 3 years in Chi Phi and truly be proud of the "verses" I have left here in Columbus. It will always be something I think about and I'd much rather be satisfied with what I've done as compared to dwelling on the past and thinking of ways I could've changed it. Dead Poets Society opened my eyes up to just how short life is and the sad realization that your window of opportunity is very narrow. In the words of one Ferris Bueller:"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

You Know What Happens When You Assume..

After watching the TED Talk in class, my eyes were opened to the whole idea of a single story, which I had never heard before. I knew people made bold assumptions and made choices based on irrational preconceived notions. I had just never thought of how dangerous it can be to not take the time and look at more than one angle or aspect of someones life or experience. I see this idea of "The Danger of a Single Story" play out in my life all the time. Being a member of a fraternity, this hits really close to home with me. They say any press is good press, but that's not the case for fraternity men in the United States. It seems like every other day, you hear about a fraternity bing put in the spotlight for something, and most of the time it is negative. You never hear about a fraternity participating in community service or hosting a great philanthropy event. Its always "fraternity X got caught hazing" and "fraternity Y got caught with drugs and alcohol". There's a lot more to fraternity men than American society has allowed and it's unfortunate that we take the heat thanks to the poor decisions of very few. More specially on campus at Ohio State, hazing has been a huge issue lately and I only hope that changes are made for the better of our entire community.

One example of this idea of a single story being put into action in my life actually happened last year at Ohio State. I was out on an average weekend and met another member of the greek community at Ohio State who told me he was in a specific fraternity. Based on what I knew about this particular organizations, I swiftly made a generalization about this individual before I had even learned anything about him. It turns out that he was not only the nicest person i'd ever met in this organization, but he was one of the nicest people I had met ever. I felt terrible for having made such bold assumptions about him and I vowed to never do that again. Still today, he is one of my best friends at Ohio State and I'm just glad I gave him a chance based on how rude and judgmental I originally was. I've definitely gotten better about not making assumptions and I only hope to continue to improve in the future.

You See There's Leaders and There's Followers...

Kanye West said it best but i'll let you look up the rest of the lyric on your own. When I think of a leader, its hard to decide on the concrete characteristics that go into one. It seems like such a subjective decision and as we realized in class, what it takes to be a good leader is very much up for debate. Additionally, good leaders and bad leaders may possess many of the same characteristics but may exhibit different behavioral patterns. I guess my ideal leader is someone who isn't afraid to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work. I think of a retail CEO who goes into stores and works the cash register. It takes a special person to take a company from the ground level and make it a success. It takes a leader to be humble enough to look at the business from every angle. Someone who I have recently learned much more about that I would consider the ideal leader is Steve Ells, the founder and CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Steve thought of the idea for Chipotle while living in Denver Colorado and turned a vision for fresher "fast food" options into a company today that has over 1600 locations with revenue streams upwards of $3 Billion. You're probably thinking to yourself "yea the guy can make a lot of money. Big deal. What makes him a leader?". It's the attention to detail that makes Steve more than just a guy that had a revolutionary idea. He has taken the time to go into almost every single one of his stores in order to talk to him employees and ask for feedback on the way he runs his company. Rather than waiting for issues to arise with his business, he's been proactive with approaching potential problems and fixing them before they are insurmountable. This aspect of his business approach struck me as extremely innovative and fresh in terms of what companies are doing today. Between his ability to delegate, his honesty, and his never ending commitment to improving his product, Steve Ells is in my eyes, one of the biggest up-and-coming leaders that the world has ever seen. I only expect greater things out of him in the near future and hope to model my leadership strategy after the one he has adopted and used over the past several years.

My Life Be Like

I can't say I've ever had a blog before so this is a first for myself but I guess I should start with the basics. My name is Matthew York and I am currently a senior at the greatest university in the nation. I grew up in a very small town east of Cincinnati called Mariemont where everyone knows everyone, so Ohio State was definitely a change of scenery for me. I am studying accounting and hope to one day be the head accountant of a professional sports team. Between here and my end goal, I plan on getting my CPA as well as my MBA (hopefully not personally paying for either of them). My dream path would be to get a job in public accounting for a few years and hopefully pursue an MBA somewhere along the way. I am a sports fanatic so after deciding on accounting, I figured I would wrap my real passion into it and kinda shoot for the moon. I was born and raised in Cincinnati so I hope to stay close to home but I'm up for anything as long as it's something I really enjoy doing. I have a younger sister still in high school as well as an older brother living in Cincinnati so that would be a great place to start my career if possible. I've never really taken a formal leadership class, although I like to consider myself versed in leadership and equipped with the skills to do so. All in all, I hope to learn a little more about the ins-and-outs of what a leader truly is, while hopefully making a few friends along the way. I decided to take this class after hearing about it through greek life here at Ohio State and I am very excited to see what types of changes I will make throughout this experience. I look forward to meeting each and every one of you and as always, go bucks. Thanks for reading my inaugural blog post and as a reward, here's a picture of my golden retriever, Reece.