Leadership Philosophy
My leadership philosophy is rooted in two principles: service and benevolence. The study of leadership is extensive and in no way can one philosophy account for all scenarios and instances where leadership is applied. This is to say that you’ve come to the wrong place if all you seek is the ultimate definition of leadership. What I believe stems from my own individual experiences and need not apply to anyone else. I believe that leadership is present in every action we make on a daily basis.
Whether it is in a public setting where we are leading others or a private setting where we lead ourselves, there is an opportunity to lead. The opportunity is always upon us to make a difference in someone’s life; even
if it is our own. Sounding a little too intense? It probably is. I am passionate about
this subject because I feel that leadership is often viewed by society as an exclusive
cognitive make-up set aside for a select few. On the contrary, some of the most
effective leaders are the people that we interact with daily and don’t associate with
leadership. A single parent who works multiple jobs to provide for a family, a General
Manager who is working to win a championship for a city, an engineering teacher
who wants to share a love for science, leadership comes in all forms. Stop and think
about what your interactions today. Does anyone stand out to you? Did anybody
make you smile? Did anyone make you frown? Now think about if you made
someone’s day better just by being alive and present. If not, stop reading this and go call someone and tell them how much they mean to you. All of this is to say that leadership is a big topic.
The way in which we teach leadership is confined to the social norms that are associated with academia. We quantify the behaviors we observe on a daily basis and try to inform the opinions of students to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, we throw a big blanket of leadership concepts out and hope that some of them can be utilized in a person’s future endeavors. It is important that we continue the conversation on leadership development because there are new frameworks that continue to arise. Gregory Hine (2014) identifies transactional leadership, transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, servant leadership, distributed leadership, Christian leadership, and student leadership as seven key models for student leadership development. Leadership is a personal capacity that takes a different form for every person.
In order to best serve the community, we must be able to emotionally and authentically connect with the people around us. I often think that leadership comes down to trust. A group of people will not follow you or support you if they do not trust you. People want to know that they are understood and that when their leader speaks, they speaking for them. The best way to understand our followers and build trust is to exercise our emotional intelligence. According to Parrish (2015), “Emotional intelligence is recognized as a highly relevant and important requirement for academic leadership in higher education. Additionally, emotional intelligence traits related to empathy, inspiring and guiding others and responsibly managing oneself are most applicable for academic leadership.” Our followers need to know that we understand them on an emotional
level and that we want to guide them towards success. Not every leader does this in
the same way though.
It is most effective if we lead from the heart and from our own individuality. This
is the beauty of authentic leadership. I touch on authentic leadership in the
“leadership” section of the website, but do not flesh out it’s importance as it relates
to a leader's capacity for virtue and ethics. Michael Wilson (2014) “emphasizes the
contribution of virtue ethics by identifying key moral and intellectual virtues
associated with authenticity and how they can provide an ethical framework for
action guidance.” This is to say that our ability to interact authentically with our followers enables them to observe our intellectual virtues and ethics through our actions. These observations are what informs the opinions of followers and asks them whether or not they can place their trust in someone as a leader. John Wooden is widely considered to be one of the
most prolific coaches of all time for his coaching philosophy and his success at UCLA. We can look at “both Wooden’s Pyramid of Success and Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits and understand them through the terms of virtue ethics" (Jenkins, 2014). These two icons promoted the notion of servant leadership and emphasized the importance of emotional intelligence and authenticity. Wooden could be considered to be a paternalistic leader or a servant leader. Regardless, his compassion for his players is what made the team great. Wooden simply had the capacity to bring about the best in his athletes and therefore had a responsibility to do so.
Regardless of what leadership philosophy we may have, it is important that we obtain a global mindset and find the most effective means to share our leadership skills. In order to obtain a global mindset we must step outside of our comfort zone and experience diversity. According to Elizabeth Tuleja (2014), “current research data shows that, overall, students increase their level of “mindfulness” and become more reflective in addition to increased cultural sensitivity as a result of cross-cultural immersion.” In essence, we don’t know what we don’t know. It is easy to draw an opinion or speculate on things we have little to no experience with. It is important that we take a step back in these instances and try to understand different viewpoints before drawing our opinions on the matter. It is only then that we can explain ourselves and answer they “why”.
What is written above describes my perspective on leadership today. Leadership is meant to serve the communities in which we live and work. To retain a global mindset allows us to identify our place in the world and encourage us to lead those around us towards a better tomorrow.
