While participating in a national conduct administrator conference, I attended a panel discussion to learn more about paths taken by four student conduct department heads from four different college campuses.  After the detailed introductions, the panel moderator who was also a panelist announced that the panel members would each respond to a list of scripted questions before answering impromptu questions from the audience. 

The first question asked by the moderator read something like this: “When did you decide that you wanted to lead a student conduct office?”  Immediately, after asking the question, he answered the question.  He explained that becoming a student conduct office administrator in higher education had been his goal for many years.  He further explained that he planned his course of study and selected professional opportunities keeping in mind the end of being the leader of a student conduct office.    Before I applauded his goal setting and persistent pursuit of the target, my mind wandered.  I am certain that I missed something between his discussion about the rigor of his EdD degree (as compared to a PhD program) and his introduction of the next speaker.  I am certain because my thought bubble read something like this: “This question could relate to any leadership role.”  Once the thought bubble filled with my thoughts, the panel was silent to me.  The panel was silent in the way that the ball game goes silent when the television has the game on the screen, but the volume is turned off.  I took a mental detour from their well-planned journey of shared experiences so that I could explore my own thoughts. 

I reflected on my paths to leadership and observed that I had many accounts of me ending up in leadership roles that were unintended when I was introduced to an organization, task, or cause.  While I appreciated the process that placed the moderator in a leadership role, I knew that life for most folks, namely me, seldom presented in such an organized process that ended in a person being elevated to the role of leader.  However, the mental exercise that followed his question kept me on an organized, scripted path.  This type of organized process fed my natural bent toward developing a plan and then working said plan.  His comments aligned perfectly with the belief system and the practices of Type A, overachiever like me.  I thought, “It’s pretty exciting when the goal(s) and the outlined plan resulted in the likely outcome.”  Then, I realized there seemed to be a stark contrast in the process of the thoughtful planner who chose a path that earned her a leadership position and the person I described as seldom having a specific plan of action specifically designed to earn her the role of leader of a group, task, or cause.  This acknowledgment that leadership roles have found me more often than I have sought out leadership made me wrestle with my belief that stability and routine were foundational keys to my success as a leader.

 My parents were career educators who taught primarily in rural Alabama.  Most of my childhood I lived in the same house so I grew up believing that I would have one job in the same southern city close to all things familiar to me.  I married a man who was the son of a soldier and his family moved frequently.  They lived in many cities in the United States and abroad.  Because of this transient lifestyle, he has welcomed change for as long as I can recall.  He has regularly talked about the benefits of becoming comfortable with change and the practice of inviting new beginnings and adventure.  Most of my adult life I have resisted change and failed to see the hopeful adventure of relocation or starting on a new course.  How did my initial thoughts about there being many routes to the same end take me to this train of thought?  How was it possible for me to be engaged in an this tangential dialogue in my head if there were many very different routes available to produce good paths and leadership roles for the person traveling those respective paths.  How did I end up in a mental exercise sorting through what I believed were life challenges caused by my personality traits?    

My lengthy aside from the panel discussion proved a fruitful blessing.  I learned that I placed myself in a box sealed with fear of change, dread of the unknown, and insecurity about possibilities in the name of monotony, external expectations of others, and limited opportunities.  The truth of me, and a lot of us, is that we instinctively live life way outside of those boxes every day.  For me, and for many, we thrive in environments that breath the oxygen of color, vibrancy, and fluid change even if we often forget or fail to realize that is what we are doing.  We live our lives being contributors to our spaces in ways that we hope will liven those in our spaces and that will energize us to give more.  The truth is that we are not machines built by the folks who work to build those boxes around us. 

My takeaways from the panel discussion were likely not the intended learning outcomes of the presenters.  Nonetheless, I believed that I received the teachable moment I needed from the session.  I realized that I subconsciously allowed myself to let one of those boxes be erected around me.  I had become comfortable living out the anxious patterns of one who believed that the normal created by others defined my normal and my best circumstance.  I sat in that room proud that my hypothesis that my end as a leader in higher education was still a good thing even though my script was different than that the moderator.  I also learned that I was not as limited and controlled by fear of change, unexplainable circumstances, and an unknown ending as I thought.  I learned that as a leader, I innately possessed the ability to manage change, unexpected events, and unpredictable occurrences.  How did I ever let myself get caught up in the narrow-minded thinking that limited my growth potential? 

Although I encourage students daily to use the lyrics of Jon Foreman and “make their wrong note a melody,” I realized after that panel discussion that I missed countless opportunities to apply that lesson to my own life.  Through this positive affirmation exercise, I found strength and empowerment in the realization that I have successfully spent most of my life confronting the fear of change and the discomfort of uncertainty.  The self-exploration gave me the ability to see that I had the ability to blend my Type A personality and my unscripted journeys.  What I previously explained as conflicting principles, I began to define as a cool life balance.  Suddenly, I saw that the strength and the perceived weakness served me well in leadership.   I hope that my audience of leaders, the youthful and the more seasoned, will first identify the challenges that they believe limit their progress.  Then, with lenses of positivity and life experiences, discover that they have already been doing the things they believed they might not be able to overcome.  My hope is that the blessing of enlightenment and empowerment of the leader will strengthen the village.