Defining leadership has always been challenging. How does one go about actually defining it? People have notions of what leadership means. Does leadership involve a guy in suit, standing in front, having some sort of lecture and talking?
“Absolutely not,” said Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Patrick Day, during an SAEC sponsored leadership forum on Thursday, January 29th.
“There’s not one single model of leadership. It’s not going to be about the person who gets in front of people and does the talking. It’s not going to be about simply the person who tells people what to do,” said Day. “At the core of the concept of leadership, however may it manifest, is a service relationship. That is, leadership is not about you. In fact, it has nothing to do about you. Leadership is about your service to other people.”
Patrick continued, stating that leadership wasn’t about aspiring to a position or prestige, but rather to shape such ability to one’s own journey, as means of service to others.
“What’s my life about? What’s my purpose? We all sort of wrestle questions like that. When people speak of such solutions, they claim that one day it all snapped and came together. Let me just keep it real with you. It’s a much more gradual process. It’s not a moment. You begin to have various realizations over time. It began to dawn to me that leadership was about service. I realize [that leadership] was not about yourself… I was provided with the opportunity to serve, rather than to merely influence.”
Day earned his M. Ed. in higher education administration from Texas Tech and his B.S. in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
Prior to joining UMass Boston, Vice Chancellor Day, served as the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs from Temple University in Philadelphia. Day also served as the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs/Dean of Students at Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina, and as the Assistant Dean of Students at Texas Tech University in Texas.
While Day’s journey will turn out much different than your own story, as he explained, leadership will always take the same shape and form, regardless of one’s journey.
“Leadership will push you to do something else if you are really leading people – if you are really struggling to serve people. Leadership is going to challenge you in new ways to do different kinds of things. But if you understand and come back to the notion [of leadership] as a service learning relationship, however you walk that journey, wherever you walk that journey, you will have a level of peace when you realize what you are supposed to do.”