Impactful Leadership for Peers

I was standing in a hallway at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, on a 15-minute break from the leadership development cohort I had been accepted into several months earlier. 

 

It was March of 2018, and I had just celebrated five years in recovery from alcohol use disorder and compulsive gambling addiction. In taking responsibility for my actions during active addiction, I’d served a brief prison time for eight counts of felony theft related to the embezzlement of funds from my last employer in politics. After completing my sentence, I sought a way to rebuild my life and connected my experiences in the political world to my newfound recovery. 

 

Eventually, I found a home at a national organization in the addiction space, where I had worked for nearly three years by the time I joined the leadership cohort. I enjoyed my work nationally and was eternally grateful for this second chance at a career. Yet, I continued to feel dissatisfied, coupled with a pang of inner guilt that I was not thankful for what I’d been given. I wanted to expand my leadership capacity and create a far wider array of powerful results than what I was producing at that time and in that moment. 

 

The moment of transformation began for me right there in that cohort, as I was introduced to three fundamental practices - practices simple on the outside but often deeply complex in their implementation - that would shift everything in the results I was producing. 

 

It all started by centering my leadership in responsibility. Leading with responsibility means that we own the results that we are always producing, whether they are desired outcomes or not. Proper responsibility language must be used in all settings, with clients and supervisors alike. Leading with responsibility means that we never place blame or shame on others, or on ourselves as leaders. It means that leaders own their part of every conversation, and take responsibility for every outcome they produce. 

Second, in order to be truly responsible, my leadership had to contain a powerful practice of self-reflection.
Self-reflection is the practice of examining what the leader is contributing to the results they are producing, and doing so absent of judgment. Due to the limitations of our own self-reflection, and our inability to know as fact how we are landing with those with whom we work, leaders must engage in a feedback practice in order to better understand their own successes and failures.

And finally, if leadership was something possible for everyone, a cornerstone of this philosophy, then that was the part of every individual to which I had to speak - addressing everyone as a leader. Leaders are always focused on investing in everyone around them, and speaking to the leader that lives within them. This is a universal concept that a leader brings into every conversation. Leaders focus on empowerment rather than advice. They listen before speaking, and focus on what they are hearing from people rather than what their intent for that individual might be. Leaders are always creating opportunities for individuals based on their listening. 

In the years since first hearing these practices and learning how to implement them in real time, I’ve begun training other individuals in their practice and watching them create incredibly powerful results has been an honor without measurement. For peers to truly elevate this profession and thrive in providing support to those in need, it is imperative that we invest in them not just as peers, but rather, as the leaders they are. 

Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
View this email online.

5100 Rockhill Rd. | Kansas City, MO 64110 US

This email was sent to christyc@umkc.edu.
To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.