Our first leadership model
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. Mothers are often our first leadership role models. They teach us how to be with others by the way they treat us. We see what authority looks like.
My home was pretty strict and my Dad was the boss, but my mother knew how to get things done. She was a hard worker and worked well with others. In my teen years she was the supervisor of a hospital kitchen. She was respected and loved by all her employees. She supported them and worked with them. My Dad used to ask her if she was going to take her suitcase up to the hospital when she would get a call that someone was sick and she had no one else to work, so she would go in and help.
My mother was all about service. She was kind, friendly, and helpful to everyone. In her last job as the manager of a bakery in a local grocery chain, the customers loved her. She would come around the counter and help people pick out what they wanted. She remembered their names. She rarely had personnel problems like in some of the other departments. The president used to say he wished he could clone my mother as her bakery was the most profitable.
My mother was honest and dependable. You could count on her to do what she said she would do. She raised five children and worked full time most of her life. She knew what it would take to make things work and she would get it done.
My mother was humble. She never really understood the gifts she had. She didn’t think she was special or talented. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I realized what a role model she had been for me as a leader. I learned that you can get things done by being nice as well as ordering people around. You get things done by knowing your job and doing it. You get things done by standing with others. You get things done by being someone others can count on. Thanks, Mom, for being such a good teacher.
