What was my leadership philosophy/perspective at the beginning of the program?

 

Rather than to gather my thoughts from my first paper, I will have to take you back, to the best of my recollection, where I was at the time.

 

Since I began work at United States Citizenship & Immigration Services in 2006 as an Immigration Officer, I had many collegial discussions concerning whom it was that Immigration Officers served.  A commonsensical individual would say that USCIS is a “service” by title.  However, the name Citizenship & Immigration Services actually causes more confusion than it resolves.  Do we serve immigrants: Do we serve our organization: Do we serve citizens of the U.S.: Do we serve the law?  I attended meetings resplendent with USCIS attorneys who strenuously objected to any service other than to that of immigration laws found in the U.S. Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations. 

 

Prior to my entering Gonzaga’s Leadership program, I argued that Officers served the immigrants who filed their petitions and applications.  I thought as a federal agency not funded by Congressional dollars, receipt of these submissions paid our salaries: ergo, we served those paying the bills.  My thought was that the law was merely a tool we utilized in service to immigrants.  This ideal was not in total disregard to the fact that service to our organization materialized in the proficiency of our law-based decisions.  It just meant that we used this tool to make lawful decisions based on the merit of each case.  For most people who are unaware of the issues surrounding immigration in this country, they would ask why who we served mattered in the first place.  Yet, who we served was of utmost importance and integral to my understanding of servant leadership.

 

Servant-leadership in an organization is systemic.  I realized that service was inexorably bound to priorities on a much larger scale than what my early arguments had broached.  I still contend that we could not serve the law.  Because, while "law" (a thing) carries with it power and authority, it is only a tool of the enactor - the enactor being the servant to the people who wield the tool.  My previous disregard of servanthood, as a holistic philosophy of individual priorities as they relate to the community to which they belong, had narrowed my vision and impeded my service.

 

I had to convince my organization that I had to touch both ends of the stakeholder pool - those ends being Officers at one end and immigrants at the other.  Why?  Officers were angry because no one listened to their concerns, but Officers had no idea what concerns the real (not those machined creations that showed up for interviews) immigrants owned.  Immigrants were angry because no one understood what really drove their activities, which far too often derived from carefully seeded and guided misinformation.  They were also very afraid of our Officers, some due to historical encounters, but most because of rumors purposely perpetuated by unscrupulous individuals within their own communities.  For the unscrupulous, fear is a powerful commodity. 

 

It was a long hard road convincing a federal entity that in order to serve they needed to be part of that all-inclusive community.  As if that was not hard enough, try convincing executives that a Community Relations Officer's duties should extend duties beyond corporate responsibilities - that we have a responsibility to all those people we serve, both internally and externally.  However, my allowed quasi-autonomy aided in this a great deal.  My aspiring servant-leader understanding of transformation and in the meaning of service would go largely unchallenged as I moved forward.  That is until overarching political challenges darkened the light.

 

How has my leadership philosophy shifted, changed, adapted to represent where I am now?

 

My last day in Boston as a Community Relations Officer was a good one.  My District Director addressed my departure to a large number of our staff.  He told them that I had successfully rewritten how we interact with the community. He pointed out a time when I had asked him for Officers to accompany me into the field and how his response had been harshly spoken at an executive meeting: "That's your job! That is what I hired you for! Can't you do your job by yourself?"  The purpose that he had not allowed me to convey was simple: I wanted Officers to meet the people whom they served.  I wanted the people that they served to know the Officers who served them.  He went on to say to those staff that I had proved him wrong in my service to both the agency and the community - that "we are a community and we are all in this together."  Not everyone listening knew what he meant, but I did.  By then, we had shared many conversations concerning servanthood and servant leadership. There was no longer a question of "who we served."  For us, we served everyone, including one another, and served no thing.  This entire process was transformational for both me and operationally for the Boston District Office.

 

When I had accepted the position of Community Relations Officer, I had no idea that the real answer to the question of who we served would so greatly impact both my personal and professional views.  My worldview had changed.  Thank goodness that Gonzaga University was there to guide me through it.  Palmer pens: "The only guidance we can get on the inner journey comes through relationships in which others can help us discern our leadings" (Palmer, 2004, p.26).  Sometime that also means getting out of the way.  I had stumbled into a situation at a perfect time in my education where I worked for a District Director who expected results but did not want to have to ever tell me how to do my job.  This professional autonomy allowed for my personal transformation to greatly impact my professional life.

 

Honest introspection is difficult when the answer to your transformational process requires you to first admit who you once were.  Even harder to admit is that who you once were will always be some integral part of who you are.  While “authentic leaders know the external world has no influence over their being” (Adams, 2011, para. 8), personal history creates a knowledgeable and Machiavellian character that requires in the transformed an awareness of its constant attempt to deceive and alter one’s path.  In myself, I understand that it is this awareness that differentiates change from my authentic transformation.  It is not a bargain I strike with this character where they have their space and I have mine.  In fact, we occupy the same space.  Devoid of intellectuality, I bear it without possession: I rise above it without arrogance (Lin, 2006).

 

In grading and editing a second attempt at a paper I was writing in a Transformation Leadership class, my professor, Mike Poutiatine, Ph.D., stressed that I identify:

 

The catalyst, then major shifts in your own thinking, the times when you were uncertain about our own path here, the places where you saw a new identity emerging, the places where that new identity was manifest in your work and behavior (personal communication, November 26, 2014).

 

In deeply considering his guidance and my own introspection, I realized that my transformation was not complete.  Perhaps this negated the essence and requirements of my assignment, but the realization was an honest one.

 

How will your leadership philosophy continue to develop and refine in the future i.e. what personal goals do you have for yourself as a leader?

 

Still, I have grown.  I have become a better person.  When my professional interactions with people having ideals beyond my current worldview occurred at the same time in my life as when the Gonzaga Organizational Leadership program was enlightening my world, I began seeing my new identity emerging.  All people around me started becoming more than mere faces and names that I could not remember.  Work was no longer satisfying unless I could figure out how to go beyond just interviewing immigrants.  I had to know who they were, what they experienced.  Every person became a true epic and their stories a part of my own history.  “Here, I believe is the heart of our spiritual yearning: to be connected to something larger and truer than our own egos and their designs” (Palmer, 2004, p. 108).  Here, I believe, is the inception of my transformation.

 

Nevertheless, a total transformation cannot be my claim when the times of uncertainty are now.  I now exist in a worldview that I have never before experienced.  The opportunity to experience something larger than yourself is also the chance you take in finding that the Machiavellian character has not left your side and that a perilous corridor exists beyond your known worldview - a worldview begging for small successes.  To be true to myself, I have to understand that success begins not in how others see me as much as in an honest evaluation of how I view myself.  Who am I?  When living and working in Boston, I thought I knew the answer.  Living and working in D.C. has made me doubt, but I am slowly coming around.  I think my greatest asset has been my girlfriend who quite frequently reminds me.