From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer
“Leadership” is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders. But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vacation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not.When we live in the close-knit ecosystems called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.
Even I – a person who is unfit to be president of anything, who once galloped away from institutions on a high horse – have come to understand that for better or worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do. If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort.
But modesty is only one reason we resist the idea of leadership; cynicism about our most visible leaders is another. In America, at least, our declining public life has bred too many self-serving leaders who seem lacking in ethics, compassion, and vision. But if we look again at the headlines, we will find leaders worthy of respect in places we often ignore: in South Africa, Latin America, and eastern Europe, for example, places where people who have known great darkness have emerged to lead others toward the light.