Leadership Philosophy
As I continue to grow and develop as a leader, a set of core values that I began living more than 30 years ago still resonate with me. They continue to inform my decisions and provide a foundation for my leadership philosophy: integrity, service, and excellence. As I’ve progressed through the organizational leadership program, these values have not only been validated, but they have grown stronger with the knowledge and insight gained from pursuing this degree.
My development began while serving in the Department of Defense (DoD), an organization that I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life associated with. Although the military is deeply embedded in the structural or rational frame, I believe it provides a rich environment in which to grow and develop as a leader. A common assumption is that the structural frame’s tendency to view people as pieces in a machine as well as its “dehumanizing effects upon employees” (Morgan, 2006, p. 28) would make it difficult to find transformational leaders within its ranks. Yet, over the course of my career, I have found that the core values that served as a common bond to unify us, provided me the opportunity and privilege of serving with some exemplar leaders. These leaders demonstrated on a daily basis the elements that I would later come to identify as servant-leadership.
Although these core values are closely intertwined, integrity provides the critical foundation. Professional military education teaches that a person of “integrity, courage, and conviction must be willing to control their impulses and exercise courage, honesty and accountability” (DoD, 2013, p. 217). Kouzes and Posner (2011) also found that integrity was the most sought after trait employees looked for in their leaders (p. 5). Integrity, trust, and credibility are interwoven concepts that Kouzes and Posner (2011) view as the foundation of leadership and that “trust is the base on which credibility is built” (p. 41). John Noble (2008), expands on this idea by asking the question of who would you willingly follow. He found that trust was the only logical answer, “it is at the very heart of servant-leadership and is its most fundamental principle” (p. 32). No other profession expects its members to lay down their lives in defense of this country, yet leaders in the profession of arms are often confronted with the reality of orders that may cost someone’s life. Yet, men and women stationed around the globe willingly follow those orders without hesitation. If not for integrity and trust, this would not be possible. The leaders I viewed as exemplar lived this trait on a daily basis.
The quality of service that I had been taught centered on possessing respect for the beliefs, authority, and worth of others. A common theme among the leaders that I served with was the “great thing” that Parker Palmer speaks of. According to Palmer, leaders have to understand that the greatest things in organizational life are the people who inhabit the organization. He describes work places in which people are not treated with reverence and respect, where the “workplace has become a battlefield…a place where they feel violence done to their identity and integrity as they become cogs in a machine…replaceable resources used simply on behalf of some organizational goal” (Ferch, Spears, McFarland, and Carey, 2015, p.255). If people are the one great thing, then a work place that is a battlefield serves no purpose. In order to serve its mission, the organization has to serve its people well (p. 256). The leaders I admired naturally saw this and viewed individuals under their charge as worthy of honor and treated them with dignity and respect. This stewardship, like servant-leadership, “assumes first a commitment to serving the needs of others” (Ferch et al., 2015, p. 11). I saw these actions as sincere and authentic and sought to incorporate them into my leadership practice.
The final core value of excellence is best described as individuals who strive “for continual improvement in self and service in order to propel the [organization] further and to achieve greater accomplishment and performance for themselves and their community” (DoD, 2013, p. 217). This value speaks not only about a leader’s desire to seek out self-improvement and growth, but it’s also about modeling the way, setting the example for others to follow. I learned early on the power of modeling, never asking subordinates to do something without first showing the way. As a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer, I would continue this practice and would focus on my subordinates, developing not only their knowledge and skill sets, but attending to both their professional and personal development. I took interest in making sure that issues in their lives were taken care of; never forgetting that the stresses they were experiencing were similar to those I experienced years before; and to never feel threatened by them taking my job, but seeing it as a duty to let them grow and develop into leaders of their own.
These core values contain many of the characteristics of servant-leadership. As Robert Greenleaf (1977) discovered, “it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead” (p. 27). This manifests itself “in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served…Do they grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants” (p. 27)? All of these men understood this, and for those fleeting moments in which I worked for each, I not only grew professionally and personally, but we were highly successful in accomplishing our organizational mission. Their modeling proved invaluable in my development as a Non-Commissioned Officer. Kouzes and Posner (2011) articulate these qualities:
Leaders focus their time and attention on others. They do not place themselves at the center; they place others there. They do not seek attention of others; they give their attention to others. They do not focus on satisfying their own aims and desires; they look for ways to respond to the needs and interests of their constituents. They are not self-centered; they are constituent-centered. (p. 28)
As I near the end of this program, I’ve come to truly appreciate Ignatian Pedagogy and the constant interplay of experience, reflection, and action. In looking back, I’ve discovered relationships and connections within the curriculum to lived experiences, and through thoughtful reflection, I’m confident in moving forward with intention and action. I am reminded of what John Dewey once said, “arriving at one goal is the starting point to another” (Dewey, 1997). As I look to the future, I am assured that my practice, firmly grounded in theory and research, will serve me well as I continue to evolve as a leader.
References:
Department of the Air Force. (2013). Professional development guide (AFPAM 36-2241).
Retrieved from http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/
Dewey, J. (1997). Democracy and education. Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/files
/852/852-h/852-h.htm
Ferch, S., Spears, L., McFarland, M., & Carey, M. (Ed.) (2015). Conversations on servant-
leadership: Insights on human courage in life and work. Albany: SUNY Press.
Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power &
greatness. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it. San Francisco:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Lewis, R., & Noble, J. (Ed.) (2008). Servant-leadership: Bringing the spirit of work to work.
Gloucestershire, UK: Management Books 2000 Ltd.
Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.