Hey everyone,
This is Danielle, your acting president of ladyDev. I wanted to change up the script a little bit for this post and hopefully set a precedent for what the blog can become from here.
As many of you that are in the Slack channel know, our fearless leader, Jesse, asked to begin voting on officers to help lead the group once she left the country for a really cool job opportunity. She initially had members nominating others to specific offices. However, when she considered that she didn’t want anyone to feel forced into a role that they didn’t want, she instead changed up the system so that people volunteered themselves for positions they would be willing to take.
When I volunteered myself as a candidate for the role of president, I was only half serious. The half that wasn’t serious, was hoping that others would see me volunteering and go “oh, I could do better than her” or just feel less weird about stepping up for the position, if they wanted to.
And of course, if you know all that, you probably know that I ended up being the only one that stepped up and self-nominated for president. Luckily, the half of me that was serious about volunteering, did so because I felt that I was fully willing to take on the responsibilities and work that comes with such a role.
What follows from here is more or less a manifest of my thoughts on what an ideal leader should be, and thus, the model that I will strive towards in all I do as President for ladyDev.
In high school band, my directors were adamant about always teaching us larger life lessons. One in particular that always stands out for me is the idea of leadership: “A good leader is a good servant” is something that echos in my mind when I see those who have been successful leaders.
Success, in this instance, is characterized by someone who has facilitated the growth and achievement not only for themselves and the organization they represent as a whole, but also on an individual level for everyone around them.
Truly successful leaders spend their time serving those around them and through that service, everyone they come in contact with becomes enriched. Great leaders share their authority in ways that empower others and help others see themselves as ever growing and dynamic beings, increasingly capable of bigger and better things.
A good leader does not silence the voices of those in need or in pain, but invites them to speak with authority on those things that matter most to them. They let the people they lead help steer the ship because they recognize that few places are worth going, where you are the only one who wants to be there. They recognize that the success of anyone or anything depends on the dedication and hard work of many many people and thus sets the stage for even the smallest contributors to be recognized and appreciated.
The businessman, Arnold H. Glasow, said, “A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” And Ralph Nader has said “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
Anyway, I hope that I can meet these ideals in everything I do for ladyDev from here on. I also believe that leaders are only human, so I want to encourage every person who cares about ladyDev and what it represents to also be open to criticize and question decisions I or any other leader within the group makes.
Please, sound off in the comments or on Slack to let me and the other officers know what you want from us as leaders. What do our fellow ladyDevs see in our organization and what do you expect of its leadership?