Leadership is serving others, honoring others, growing others, thanking others, and learning with others.

Yesterday

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Mahatma Gandhi

When I applied to the Organizational Leadership program at Gonzaga University, I shared this quote by Mahatma Gandhi that had summed up my philosophy of leadership since graduating college four years prior. In my undergraduate senior capstone essay, I described how leadership was all about serving others, saying, “It is truly a gift to lead people, just as it is a gift to serve people.” I ended the paper with this sentence: “Only through serving others can I come to know my true self and all that is involved in it.  Only through serving others can I be the leader and, ultimately, the person I wish to be.” I don’t disagree with anything I wrote in that paper, but I am proud that my leadership philosophy today is more robust, with concrete definitions of myself as a leader and why leadership matters on a greater scale.

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While these all hold true four year later, what strikes is me how small scale and abstract my philosophy was at the time.  There was no explanation for why serving others helps me to know my true self, no reasoning for why serving others helps me be a better leader.  Similarly, any explanation I wrote for why service helped me discover myself was rooted almost completely in my actions, as opposed to my interactions with others.  

Today

"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  This is the interrelated structure of reality."

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Martin Luther King Jr.

In ORGL 518, Transforming Leadership, I identified a new quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that gracefully sums up my leadership philosophy. Whereas the Gandhi quote is focused on self-discovery, this quote is focused on the impact relationships have on both my own personhood and the world at large. As opposed to simply discovering myself through serving others, King’s quote says that I can better the world by helping others be the best version of themselves, and I then become the best version of myself in the process.

Inherent in Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote is the idea that “you” being the best version of yourself is related to me being the best version of myself, a view of leadership that has grown for me through this program. If others aren’t grown through my service, then I am not fulfilling the “best test” of servant-leadership. If I don’t grow through my service, then have I really served and led to the best of my ability? In true service and good leadership, I’m not teaching others, nor am I learning from others; rather, we are learning together as we journey on our individual paths towards a better and more connected world.

Tomorrow

"It takes courage to grow up

and become who you really are."

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e.e. cummings

I clearly have work to do still, something that I find humbling and energizing.  To stay humble is one of the goals I have for myself as a leader, for staying humble will allow me to continue on a path of learning for the rest of my life.  Another goal is something I took away from ORGL 605: to sit with the discomfort.  Discomfort is a characteristic of transformation, and transformation is important for self-growth.  Third, also from ORGL 605, is that I want to go failing a lot more than I do currently. I have discussed the idea of being okay with failure in nearly every class, and yet I do not think I have fully embodied it yet.  In this manner, I am not yet walking the walk.

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I do have hope for the future, for there are some big changes on my horizon.  I am in the process of moving to another country.  I am scared – I don’t speak the language and I’m leaving behind everything and everyone I know.  None of those fears, though, are related to a fear of failing.  Rather, I see it as an amazing opportunity. Who knows what I can accomplish in this foreign country?  I bring an outside perspective on life, leadership, and community.  Regardless of how and on what scale, I am confident that I can affect change in this new environment, because all it takes is one interaction to have a ripple effect on the entire world.