I’m excited to introduce another servant leadership guest post. This is from TJ Poon, an Epic Movement staff member based in Austin, Texas. TJ has guest blogged here before (here) and is graciously giving me permission to post her thoughts here. She also is a current participant in the Systems & Power Leadership Community! She explores servanthood and our own giftedness here so read on!
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In years past when I’ve heard people talking about their jobs and what they were gifted in how they want to make sure they were able to do mostly those things, I could get pretty annoyed actually. It seemed unrealistic to me and just an excuse to not do the things they didn’t like to do. On the field, there are certain things you do, whether you’re “gifted” in them or not. Or that was my thinking. (Gosh, I was such a sweet little thing. Ha.)
I feel like it’s incoherent to say that we can serve in a way that’s not out of “who we are”. That was a lot of weird language but what I’m saying is: anytime we’re serving, we’re serving out of who we are as people. It seems logically impossible that this isn’t the case.
But what most people usually mean when they say they want to work and lead out of “who we are” is their giftedness, passions, or strength. And honestly, I think that’s an incomplete picture.
“Who we are” can be a lot of different things and it is not just giftedness or strength or what is life-giving to us. For xample – since my parents’ deaths, I have been handling every single bit of estate stuff and legal hoopla, even though I’m the youngest sibling, because part of “who I am” is being who I need to be in order to survive and do the things that need to be done.
Two things on the topic I’m thinking right now: (subject to change at any moment)
- We are responsible for bringing who we are into whatever tasks we’re doing, even if they aren’t our favorite, in whatever ways possible and appropriate, and even if we can’t do that in a way that gives us life…
- A part of who we are includes hopefully having some motivation (compelled toward the vision, love for teammates…) that makes us willing to work in areas that aren’t our strengths when the situation requires it.
I think this is where people can easily be taken advantage of. When there is a group of people who are only willing to serve out of “who they are” and take that to mean what they are naturally good at or gifted in, I think there are usually certain others who end up filling the gaps over and over again. It adds another dimension to maybe what servant leadership should look like in community.
We can be very self-serving when it comes to empowering ourselves sometimes. And completely unaware about the degree of impact those actions can have on those who are willing to serve -whether they are natural servants or the compulsively responsible.
Perhaps it would be fitting to say that “who we are” can be reflected just as much in what we are refusing to do for the sake of the community as well as in what we get to do in our own strengths and passions. Such a reminder about “who we are” may be quite humbling to us in those moments where we can only see ourselves through the lens of our own greatness or satisfaction.
I also believe this can be a huge issue in multi-ethnic contexts because I think individualistic cultures are more likely to expect or demand that they only work out of giftedness whereas members of more communal cultures would end up filling in the gaps time and time again. Now that I think about it, I think I’ve seen this.
How are you living out of who you are in a way that is stewarding yourself and also serving your community and the bigger picture when needed?
