The Risky Business of Leadership

Leadership is everyone's business.

Yeah, yeah, everyone can be a leader, but not everyone knows how to use their power to be a great leader. Power is, well, powerful, and can be misused quite easily. A wise man once said, "With great power, comes great responsibility" (AKA Peter Parker/Spiderman's uncle, Ben).

For starters, leadership is everyone's business because leadership affects everyone. Whether you are the leader, the follower, or anything in between, leadership is at play. Taking leadership literally, the decisions that President Obama make as a leader affect pretty much everyone in the world and their relationship with the U.S. On a more personal meaning, leadership is everyone's business at Ohio State because everyone has the opportunity to become a better leader or hone their leadership skills with the help of SLA ;)

Power has everything to do with leadership. You don't have to have power to be great leader as Luma taught us in Outcasts United. How much power does a woman from Jordan who has just been cut off financially from her family have? Not very much. And yet Luma did things that nobody thought was possible. To this day, Luma still doesn't have the power that she deserves. Like she said last night, the story of the Fugees has not changed very much since the publishing of Outcasts United. They don't receive any royalties from the book, and they still aren't financially stable. Luma's strong abilities as a leader have helped her succeed in Clarkston with the Fugees.

On the other hand, having power doesn't make you a great leader. Recently, it seems as though many leaders that we as society have looked up to have abused their power (i.e. Tressel, JoePa...). For the most part, both of these coaches used their power to be great leaders on and off of the football field. Unfortunately though, their power got the best of them and ultimately led to their "downfall" if you will. Power must be used responsibly. Let's stick with Tressel's downfall, maybe because it's still an open wound, and JoePa's is just too big to handle in one blog post. Coach Tressel (according to President Gee) assumed the most power at Ohio State. Football here seems to drive everything, or at least it did. Buckeye fans everywhere put Tressel on this big pedestal and worshipped everything he stood for. He had a great deal of power in his position as coach, and as community member. Unfortunately, he made a couple mistakes that cost him his job as coach of one of the greatest football programs in the nation. His power got the best of him as his balance of power and leadership toppled.

"With great power comes great responsibility."

With a strong balance of power and leadership, anything is possible. But if one thing is to be overbalanced, it should be leadership and not power. Power can be a dangerous thing, and all too familiarly it can be abused.