Kathleen Lantto

EXPL 390

2/21/17

Leadership reflection

Leadership is a concept that has always caught me up, since it is not

grounded in any particular action or quality, but rather in a continuous way

of being in a social or professional setting. To me, everyone can be a leader

even if not in a position of leadership, and conversely people in leadership

positions may not necessarily be the best leaders (example A: our

government). Still, leadership is a factor that one can grow in, and there are

ways of acting and being that allow this trait to come to the forefront and to

develop into a habit. In this paper, I will structure my discussion around the

Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership characteristics, and will tie in

themes from the Caldwell and Dixon piece on love, trust, and forgiveness as

ethical leadership values. I will touch on the two practices that I see as most

applicable to my experience. Through these pieces, I will examine some

practices at my internship site, by my supervisor, my coworkers, and myself

and will assess to some extent the ethics of our leadership style.

The first ethical practice of leadership is model the way, which in

summary includes avoiding exploitative practices and ensuring that people

are acting according to a common vision and mission. This I can see best

done through clear channels of communication, especially surrounding client

and coworker interactions, such as zero tolerance harassment policies.

Caldwell and Dixon refer to this in their section under love, calling on leaders

in business to humanize coworkers by seeing them as yous not its or

thems, so as to respect their inherent dignity. This can be applied by

including people at multiple levels in decision-making and in trainings that

emphasize respect and personal space and dignity. Caldwell and Dixon also

reiterate the importance of inclusion of people at multiple pay grades, and in

doing so there is a sense of empowerment and importance, and trust is built

between employees and directors. For me in my internship, I directly assist

my supervisor, so I do see her modeling the way for me and including me in

decision making and in longer-term projects. We also take this to a different

realm during Job Club, where we act and dress professionally to model for

clients how professionals carry themselves. We directly train and inform our

clients on how to be good employees, and of course we hope that there are

good and ethical power dynamics in their new work placements. But, as is

often the case, they can only be placed in corporate positions that are

minimally mobile and highly dispensable. This type of job seems unpleasant,

and we advocate for our clients on multiple fronts, we still are not able to say

that we are leaders to them in the sense that we would not ask them to do

something that we would not be willing to do first.

 The other practice of exemplary leadership I want to touch on is that of

encouraging the heart, which I take to mean to appreciate and encourage

everyone you work with, not only to encourage them to continue working

hard, but to make the right decisions for themselves. This correlates very

well with the loving, or caring, section in Caldwell, where a coworker or

employees whole being and complete welfare need to be looked after. I

would assume that everyone should be doing this type of work, but the

readings only mention classic leaders such as workplace directors or

supervisors. Koestenbaum, in the Caldwell and Dixon piece, defines this type

of love as surrendering ones own freedom to another, and it is also defined

later in the piece as the unconditional commitment to their welfare. In our

Jesuit institution, we learn this under the name of cura personalis, meaning

the care of the person as a whole. I think the authors emphasize this

because businesses often only care about the productivity of workers, and

their health minimally when benefits like insurance are included. But a

person, in order to truly thrive in their place of work, needs to have all their

needs taken care of, and many of these needs are fulfilled not just by the

essentials, but by work environment and by workplace socializing and

relationships.

For me, I work in an office of young professionals who do exhaustive

work with at-risk populations. It is an office policy that everyone must take a

full hour lunch break, and working through lunch is not acceptable except in

rare cases. This not only cares for the employee by allowing them to
recharge by get food and energy, but it also puts in an hour of socializing

that creates better workplace relationships between coworkers. As an intern

who is only in the office once a week, this hour lunch break is really great for

me to be able to make real relationships with coworkers I might not

necessarily work with directly. We also try not to talk about work or clients

during this hour so that this time can really be taken as a break.

In my position, as an intern who is not necessarily in a business

leadership position, I wonder about how this fits with my relationship with

clients, and in a broader sense all service workers and clients. As

caseworkers, the clients entire welfare is of utmost concern, but the

question lies in the point that you stop accommodating clients and hold them

to a standard? More clearly, I wonder about how one can surrender their

freedom to that of the clients, and how unconditional your unconditional

commitment to their welfare can be while still maintaining self care practices

and meeting quotas and deadlines. We have at some points had to stop

services with certain clients because of bad relations between clients and

caseworkers, or because they were unwilling to accommodate our agenda

and our needs. Leadership in my mind is a two way street, lined with respect

and care for each other as humans, but the is an inherent imbalance in who

does the accommodating and to what degree. Caldwell and Dixon bring up

forgiveness, using the illusion of a servant as a leader [who] always accepts

the person, but [who] sometimes refuses to accept some of the persons

effort or performance as good enough. Of course working with a client and

forgiving tardiness, mismanagement of money, and sometimes abusive

familial relationships is part of the work a caseworker does. But again, what

is the breaking point between forgiveness and moving on? I think it is of

utmost importance to treat every person as a dignified, respectable human

and to do my best at my job to fulfill as many needs as possible of the

people I am serving. These readings connected well to the employee culture

in my office, but I wonder how I can apply these better to my job and my life

in order to develop better leadership qualities. I know that I am indeed

learning more about leadership from my supervisor, Kayla, who I feature in

the leadership profile this week, and of course I learn from my cohort of

fellow social justice leaders at Loyola. Being humble enough to learn from

others is a quality that I think applies to every person, especially blooming

leaders.