Picture this:
… a small town anywhere in the world. You are a member of this community. The people of this town have decided to appoint you as their leader. Ask yourself:

• Why me?
• What leadership qualities would they see in me?
• Who would follow me?
• What would happen if others lived by my example?
• What kind of difference would I make in this community?

Almost eight years ago, I began asking these questions within a leadership development program I called, The Search for Excellence. Somewhere in the middle of that first summer of the leadership program, my students renamed the course, The Journey to Excellence. Yeah, sure you search for better ways to live life they told me; but the bigger picture is that it should be a journey in which we do the searching, a journey to become excellent human beings. It’s not just a blind search for something either—it’s a journey of learning to see beyond the surface layers. Little did they or I know at the time that the word leader actually comes from an Old English word “laedare” which means “to take with one”; implicit therein is the journey: change, movement, shared leadership, direction, community. This interaction with them has stayed with me all this time and it continues to be one of my favorite leadership lessons.

The concept of leadership has been defined in myriad ways throughout human history and the leadership canon is deep with metaphors, formulas, stories, equations, and countless “ten laws of leadership to live and work by”. For me, leadership has become, not just a job, a task, or a set of skills to be mastered, although there are those, but a way of life. Leadership is both personal and communal, local and global; it can be learned no matter who you were at birth. We all lead and allow others to lead us, in the classroom, at the lunch table, in our place of worship, on the flag football field, going about our everyday lives. We all are, on some level, leaders if leadership is to be understood as the process of becoming an excellent community participant.

I think of the leadership life in two realms, personal and interpersonal—what I call Intramural and Liturgy.

The term intramural is most often equated with sports activities like football or soccer. In fact, the word, in translation, means “within the walls.” Good leaders live the examined life with the knowledge that leadership is more than image. One of my favorite poets, Eudora Welty, and as one who lived well, says, “All serious daring starts from within.” Often omitted, but just as important, is the preceding line, “Even those who have lived a sheltered life can be daring; because all serious daring starts from within.” Similarly, I hear myself repeating the tenet that you can’t lead others unless you can lead yourself, meaning, people must reckon with themselves (their own history, patterns, choices) before, alongside, and after their endeavor to mobilize and inspire others. Looking inward is where the daring begins. The Journey to Excellence, more than just the name of a program, has been my personal and continuing journey towards being a leader who is able to respond to the principle that my organization is a product of how I think and interact. The process of personal innovation for me IS struggling, listening, debating, supporting, leading, being led by, watching, and learning from my students and colleagues toward shared aspirations with change being implicit. I have learned, first with myself, that most people don’t resist change; they resist being changed. And we often times overlook the value of small but deep change we are able to affect and waste our time looking for earthquakes. The leadership development process can be transformational if self-understanding is the prelude. But, that’s not all. Leadership is more than character. All the integrity, energy and good intentions in the world will not hide poor performance. Without clear and visible results imbedded deep within the system of a community, leadership can’t endure. Ask yourself every day, what is the evidence of my life lived well? What is the measure of my leadership success?

Leadership is also liturgy. This term has become absorbed over time into church language but its roots bring us to the leadership partner of intramural. The world liturgy was born from the Greek, leitourgia, meaning public service. Besides its intramural aspect, leadership lived well is also liturgical, or, the work of the people. Any leadership program worth its salt can’t be a panacea, a formula, or a blueprint. It can and should be a foundation for a way of life and is often times just plain hard work—work that belongs to all of us and is for the good of the other. Sometimes this calls us to find ways to facilitate someone else’s leadership journey instead of always competing to keep our individual objectives out in front. Doing this kind of work well means turning what we know into what we do—in our labor position, with our classmates, on the basketball court, as a son, sister, as a teacher and a learner. It means learning how to balance personal integrity with the common good—searching out and acting on what is necessary for the growth and vitality of a community. I am constantly amazed at the level of willingness and commitment I see in this campus community for liturgy. I have observed a gradual change in the nature of relationships between professional staff and students—less hierarchical bureaucracy and more collegial thinking, less leadership by title and more delegation according to knowledge and skill. I see a campus culture slowly progressing from one of distinct divides between teachers and learners to one of shared teaching and learning roles. I see students who are more confident in their ability to make connections between learning and doing, create relationships that are transformational rather than transactional, make connections between their in-classroom and out-of-classroom learning, and see the broader meaning of leadership to include being an excellent community participant. Naïve you say? Idealistic? Perhaps. However, my picture of the future is one in which all of us have the opportunity to re-invent ourselves, to become the people of excellence we all are capable of becoming. The work of closing the gap between our actual and our potential is one that we all have a stake in and a journey that resonates with all of us. Are you dreaming, you say? I hope so. When was the last time you were inspired to your core by “I have a business proposal” instead of “I have a dream?”

So, the leadership life is both intramural and liturgy, a journey to excellence that will last, presumably, for a lifetime. I’ll leave you with this challenge: If you build yourself, you will build your community and your community will build the world.

Jessica A. Gerassimides
Labor Program Associate/
Journey to Excellence Leadership Development
(859) 985-3734 or (859) 985-3611 CPO 2180