Wright State’s Omicron Delta Kappa held the 16th annual leader to leader conference for students, with a theme of “finding your wright purpose.”
WSU students from all different backgrounds gathered on Saturday morning to develop their leadership skills and find their purpose as a leader.
“At first it was just a class requirement but I thought that I could learn stuff from it and could help me to be an RA next year,” said Kristen Johnson, freshman at WSU and president of honors community council.
Speakers from WSU and the Dayton community spoke to students about what it means to be a leader and how to effectively and successfully lead in today’s ever-growing world.
PHOTOS: Speakers and sessions of ODK Leader2Leader
Finding a purpose and instilling values
Some of the biggest themes of the morning were values and communication.
“I think [the biggest take away] is just respecting your own values and keeping them, but also building other people up,” said Rebekah Wyse, WSU senior.
The keynote speaker, Dave Kelly, spoke about the importance of values and the responsibility of a leader to protect not only their own values, but others’.
“The world is going to try to take your values from you, and you won’t even realize it,” said Kelly. “The world wants to trash your values; you can’t let them. There are people on your campus who can’t defend themselves. You’ve got to defend other people’s values to be a leader.”
Talented speakers with a powerful message
Aside from the keynote speaker, students were able to choose between several other speakers including Jeremy Spencer, Lance Salyers, Lisa Eizenga, Vince Lewis, Dr. Kendall Goodrich, Brandy Foster, Nate Dillard, Trent Fuller and Damian Langstaff.
Lance Salyers gave a presentation on his favorite acronym, IDEAS, which stands for Integrity, Discipline, Excellence, Accountability and Simplicity.
Salyers used the relatively unknown story of the Apollo moon landing to give examples of the importance of IDEAS.
Salyers emphasized that excellence is not simply about winning.
“Excellence is like the candle in a dark room,” said Salyers. “It sticks out. It is not a function of being number one. If everybody else sucks, being number one is really not that great. It means you won. Being excellent is not about winning. It’s constantly getting better compared to who you are.”
Salyers also mentioned the meaning of accountability, something essential for leaders to understand.
“It means you’re reliable,” said Salyers. “People don’t have to check up on you. Just like the chairs you sit in. You didn’t check them first before you actually leave your weight on them. You know you can trust it. That’s what it means to be accountable to people in your organization.”
GALLERY: ODK Leader2Leader Conference 2020
Because I said I would
The conference ended on an inspiring note with a presentation from Gina Keucher, program director of student involvement and leadership, on “Because I said I would.”
She tied it into the whole theme of the conference by emphasizing the importance of holding others accountable for their promises.
“Our students can really make a difference,” said Keucher. “You guys are really the ones that can make a huge change and start to hold people accountable for what they say they are going to do and not put up with people failing to keep commitments.”
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