Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
For so many people, the definition of a leader is “one who is in charge or in command of others”, as my American Heritage College Dictionary implies. I saw it on my first day of Leadership Practices and Principles class when the professor asked us to separate ourselves into a group that believed that they were leaders and a group that believed they weren’t. It was amazing to me to watch half of a group of people taking a leadership class publicly declare that they weren’t leaders. I think that’s why the Tedx Talk “Everyday Leadership” with Drew Dudley resonated with me so much, as that’s the first concept he talks about.
I grew up in a Catholic church that wasn’t like any of the others. Some viewed it positively as ‘one of the most vibrant parishes in the United States’ while others used phrasing like ‘the lesbian aunt of the Catholic family’. I had a priest who believed that women should be able to become priests, that priests should be allowed to marry and have children, and so many other ideas that were considered heretical by some. Above all, he espoused and taught us the concept of servant leadership.
It’s an idea that first sprung up in the 1970s. One description is as follows, “the servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”
It was woven into our faith practice. On Holy Thursday, when we read about Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet and drying them with her hair, we followed that up with the entire parish taking part in a foot washing. We lined up as if for communion but instead, when you got to the front of the line, you sat in a chair, removed your shoes, and had your feet washed by the person behind you in line. Then that person took your place and the person behind them washed their feet. Though I’m now a lapsed Catholic, it’s a memory that sticks with me.
To me, a leader is someone who uses small acts in everyday life to make better the world of people around them. When it becomes a practice that informs every decision you make, you don’t always remember the act that affected someone else’s life, like the lollipop example that Drew shared. I have had moments like that when someone has thanked me for something I don’t even remember doing.
For years, when I worked in the film industry, I put together a newsletter of opportunities I knew about and shared it with my actor friends. It eventually grew to the size that I had to start using Mailchimp instead of my personal account and people subscribed in the thousands. Many asked why I didn’t charge for access to it but that was never the point. I knew the frustration of being a casting director trying to get the word out about a production. I knew about the frustration of being an actor discovering an exciting production after they concluded casting. To me, I was trying to close the gap to help everyone. I didn’t realize the impact of it until I was at a fundraiser for the Chicago Acting in Film Meetup and was cornered by two ladies who I had never met before. They told me that they had qualified for their union cards because of work that I told them about. It was an amazing and humbling moment. Something I did because it made me feel good had substantially changed the lives of women I had never known existed.
I still wouldn’t have thought about that as leadership at the time. I often think of myself as the connector. I see a need and a solution, and I insert myself to introduce them to each other. I too struggle with the idea Drew talks about as leadership as something we will one day achieve and deserve. To me, a leader is someone charismatic. Someone who has a lot of Influence on the DISC scale. Not someone like me with a 6 in Influence and at 28 in Compliance and a 33 in Steadiness. That sounds like a great secretary, not the visionary who changes the world as we know it.
I even denied it to myself when others would point it out to me. I had worked at The Actors Gymnasium for 3 years when my boss left. I assumed that a replacement would be found for her and fretted about having the leeway I enjoyed getting things done. I was quite surprised when our Executive Director informed me that I would be the replacement. She told me that they would never be able to hire someone from outside to do as good and as passionate a job as I was already doing. I still doubted myself. I thought it was a promotion out of convenience as much as anything. I was even more surprised two years later. After letting us know that she would be leaving as she and her wife were moving to Atlanta, my Executive Director took me aside and told me that it was time to leave. I thought she was firing me when she was trying to tell me that I had outgrown the organization and was becoming much too big a fish in way too little of a pond. The day I left, she gave me a framed copy of the Marianne Williamson quote that Drew shared.
I remember the first time I felt leadership. Without this moment, I would have never considered myself for this program when I heard about it. Like hundreds of thousands of women in Chicago, I showed up to the Women’s March in January of 2017. Since it was my first protest, I had done a lot of research to make sure I was prepared and even learned a few of the chants. It took a long time for that march to start moving. That will happen with a crowd of 250,000 people. We eventually started moving and I was swept up by the excitement of the crowd and the chants. The moment that I will never forget is when I started a chant and thousands of people picked it up. There truly isn’t anything like it. I understood for the first time the power of my voice and my passion. It’s the first time I gave myself credit for leading. It was exhilarating and made me want to use my voice every opportunity that I get.
I’m learning how to weave together my voice and my servant leadership. It’s taking part in further protests. It’s making sure that the faces on a marketing brochure are predominantly people of color. It’s adding pronouns to my email signature even though I’m not transgender so that I can start the conversation. It’s making sure that everyone in my group in Business Writing has a chance to be heard. It’s about me sharing my struggles during lunches so that people know that they aren’t alone. Its writing people on Facebook about the lollipop moment that they did for me. It’s about using humor to break down walls. It’s about listening so that others can feel seen and heard and backing marginalized voices. Sometimes the best way to lead, is to support. I’ve learned a lot about how to communicate ideas in my Northwestern Business Writing class, and I’ve learned so much about how I and others tick from Leadership Principles and Practice. But I’ve also been confirmed so many times in the idea that a leader is someone who listens. Who shares kindness. Who is empathetic. Who recognizes the best idea in the room especially when it wasn’t their own. This may be a different definition of leadership than what most believe, but it is a definition I not only believe but am learning to become.
MarketingMichelle 