Reflection On Personal Mission/Leadership Philosophy

I’m going to be honest. I’m not one hundred percent sure what my personal mission/leadership philosophy is. I know by this point it life college students should know what our personal mission is but I haven’t ever thought about it nor have I ever been prompted to speak or reflect on it. I know that being morally correct and ethically true is a big deal to me. I value loyalty, honesty, and trust. I’m a big believer in servant leadership and in authentic leadership, because not every leader should be the same because everyone grew up differently. I believe in servant leadership because that’s what Jesus did and that is how I can show my faith to others around me, other than through the other ways I choose to live my life. Due to all of these things, my dream to become a doctor is only strengthened.

Medicine is not only my passion, but it is completely about servant leadership, because medical professionals serve their patients in any way they can. It will also help me with my personal aspirations, as I want to have a family in the future, and all of my beliefs above will help me to lead my family towards God and doing what’s right. Northouse says that there are four main components that make up the core of authentic leadership, “self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, and relational transparency”. When Northouse stated this, I thought about how that basically described who I want to be, especially when I am a doctor and building a family. However, I also wondered if there might be more components to authentic leadership?

Then I began to think that maybe there are more components, however they are less important that the four that were listed, so the Northouse made the decision not to talk about them. In the chapter covering servant leadership, Northouse states that “Putting others first is the sine qua non of servant leadership- the defining characteristic”. Now reflecting back on this I wondered if maybe servant leadership was the leadership approach that is mainly used within the healthcare field? I pondered on that for a few minutes, ultimately coming to the conclusion that it was, due to the fact that anyone in the healthcare field, always put their patient first before thinking about themselves, because if they didn’t have a passion for serving others, they probably wouldn’t be in that field of work.

All in all, I still don’t know what my personal mission is. I guess it would be to treat everyone the way that I want to be treated. I know that that is a cliché but it perfectly describes how I’m trying to live my life. I also don’t know what exactly my leadership philosophy is just yet, as it is not fully formed yet, but right now I’d say that leadership is about being able to inspire a group of people to be successful.