My Philosophy Of Leadership

As the semester and course have progressed, I’ve grown tremendously in my views of leadership, education, and the importance of diversity in a community. That being said, my philosophy of leadership has also been altered to reflect the knowledge I’ve obtained. I defined leadership at the beginning of the semester as setting a positive example through my actions for those who I’m leading. I emphasized that leadership is an active, rather than passive role, and should involve daily engagements with residents and openness to constructive criticism. Although my current definition isn’t drastically different from my last, I failed to recognize the one thing central to Christian Leadership: Jesus.

My transformed philosophy of leadership involves

If one can’t form relationships, they won’t be able to lead anyone. Consequently, relational leadership is another significant aspect of the philosophy of leadership I’ve developed throughout this course. Relational leadership is complicated, and it must deal with both the negative and positive aspects of relationships. Although relationships often depend on all people involved both giving and taking, it’s important as a leader to avoid relationships involving dependence. Relationships such as these can be dangerous if a person attempts to use a relationship to fill a gap within themselves. Les Parrott discusses this balance in The Compulsion for Completion. It’s important as leaders we must recognize for ourselves and teach others that “self-worth does not come from the mere existence or presence of someone in your life” (Parrott 25). With Jesus at the center of my leadership philosophy, it’s important to understand that I can only find completeness in Him. Looking for completeness through relationships will only cause disputes and disappointment from both parties. Parrott agrees that God should be the center of all relationships and reminds us that “only God’s love can make us whole (Parrott 39). As a Christian leader, embracing this philosophy with residents will require great vulnerability. Humans tend to desire control, and relinquishing control of a relationship to God is difficult to do. However, leaders can avert this desire by spending adequate time in God’s word “filling themselves up” so that they may contribute to relationships without overly depending on another person to fulfill a lack of self-worth. All the self-worth and love we could ever need can be found through Jesus. The heart of relational leadership is creating meaningful relationships that lack a mutual dependency on the people involved in order to foster powerful vulnerability that will push everyone involved to grow together as