Do It Anyway

Years ago I developed a leadership seminar on the Harvard Business School professor Bill George’s concept of authentic leadership. Simply put, authentic leadership is being committed to the truth and acting on that truth. It requires clarity about what one values and believes. Authentic leaders consistently communicate that truth in all of their leadership and life roles. The past few weeks have provided opportunities to demonstrate my authentic leadership.

You may have seen the April 10, 2012 Wake County Public School System Board of Education information session where my colleagues and I shared statistics on the progress of the Wake Leadership Academies. We knew Board members would ask questions and offer challenges to our work. Leadership requires answering tough questions and critics’ challenges.

When Superintendent Tata asked me to speak about early college leadership experience, my authentic leadership was on full display. From Wake Early College of Health and Science’s incredible academic results to the immeasurable personal gains that I saw in each of the students, I informed the Board about what can happen on an early college campus.  Realizing I had been center stage for a while, I closed with the understatement, “I am just a little bit passionate about this subject!” 

This passion, this truth, has been the driving force of my efforts to lead Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Parents, students, and potential faculty members have responded in a similar fashion– a statement of their values and beliefs that a single gender learning environment focused on developing each student’s authentic leadership is a great choice for our community.

I dashed from the Board meeting to speak to a group of National Honor Society inductees. You guessed it – the topic was leadership. The National Honor Society, an organization that we will establish for deserving Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy students, upholds the values of scholarship, service, integrity and leadership.

My remarks addressed my belief that leadership is the point at which the other tenets intersect. Leaders must dedicate themselves to study, to intellectual engagement and to self-improvement. I emphasized the important responsibility that leaders have to serve others. I believe that leaders are gifted – gifted by their families with love and support, gifted by their teachers with challenges that develop critical thinking and sound reasoning, and gifted by their communities through formal and informal mentoring and investments that come from unique experiences. As such, they must serve others. Finally, leaders are ultimately judged by their character, their integrity. A leader may be forgiven a mistake in a statistic or a fact, but they may never recover from a mistake in judgment that violates our common core values and beliefs about what is right and wrong in life and leadership. I closed with a poem attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Do It Anyway.

…and then we received the news that our vision for a partnership with William Peace University would not be realized. With the Superintendent leading us all, we acted and continue to move forward with contingency plans to assure that the Wake Leadership Academies will open in August as planned.

The real challenge to what I believe about leading an innovative school quickly became the primary issue for me to address. Family and friends questioned me as to whether I had any regrets about my decision to lead the school. Individuals who made commitments to participate in this unique learning community sought reassurance that they, too, had made the right decision.

My response: given the opportunity to lead the Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy again, I would Do It Anyway because I believe in our mission to develop each young woman as a leader capable of realizing her authentic leadership.

Do It Anyway

The Paradoxical Commandments

By Dr. Kent Keith

Modified by Mother Teresa with application to a spiritual context

People are often unreasonable,
illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,
you will win some false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.