Selfless Service and Servant Leadership

Selfless Service and Servant Leadership

The experiences that have helped shape my life and my philosophy of life took place during the years I spent working on a large ranch. The ranch is a place where work needs to be done every day of the year, including weekends. I realize that a lot of college students have never seen a ranch let alone work on one. I'm not saying that makes me any better than others. I am saying that the experiences that I have been involved with have taught me the value of hard work, and also the importance of leadership.

Disciple and structure are important parts of living on a ranch, because no matter whether there is snow or rain, wind or heat, the animals need to be cared for, and at the end of the day the hard work pays off because the crops, the livestock, and the ranch has been well tended. I remember cutting school to watch our veterinarian artificially inseminate our cattle, and in the process I was learning about the world of reproduction. In Future Farmers of American (FFA) and 4H I learned a lot about how to speak in public, how to interact and team up with others to complete important tasks. The friends I met in FFA and 4H have become friends for life.

QUESTION TWO: When you help someone, you are serving that person of course, but you are also serving society. When you offer time and energy as a volunteer to an organization, like an animal rescue center or an ASPCA location, you are a servant, in the best tradition of Servant Leadership. Robert Greenleaf explained that Servant Leadership begins first with the "natural feeling that one wants to serve" and I have always had that desire to serve. In my case I have provided years of service for the benefit of animals; many of them were abandoned, or abused, or just didn't fit with the particular family and were brought to a shelter where I volunteer. At the beginning I was far more interested in serving than leading, but I do know that I am showing leadership by becoming a servant first. I know too that I am selflessly serving when I help a dog get a bath, clean his teeth and put on a new color so a kindly family will like him and adopt him. I get no reward financially for making this happen, but by selflessly serving I am rewarded in my spirit and my heart knowing that dog won't have to be locked up in a kennel anymore. My eyes light up when the family with one little boy and a little girl now have a friendly, healthy and fun dog in their home!

QUESTION THREE: I want to continue on the path of selfless serving throughout my life, so ASSIST is an opportunity to become a more well rounded person. Helping others as a servant of society, willingly pitching in, rolling up my sleeves -- employing the work ethic I learned while growing up on a big ranch -- to be part of a highway cleanup project, is my idea of how I will become an even greater asset to the community. Perhaps the volunteer work will be in cutting brush around a public park, or helping with a food drive around Thanksgiving (so homeless shelters will have enough food to serve all the needy that day), but whatever it happens to be, I will be a stronger and more resourceful person for having had that opportunity to serve.