“[I]f we are constantly taught to search for leadership based on titles or only specific external and often vocally visible qualities, we fail to see the leaders in our midst. “
Grant Thomas Williamson, Associate
Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP
At my daughter’s preschool, one of the highest honors for a three-year-old is to be chosen as your class’s line leader. That child gets to walk at the front of the line with their teacher whenever the class leaves to go to have lunch or play outside. Typically, the line leader on any given day is the child who has been the best listener or who has done a particularly good job of playing with their classmates that day. Whenever my daughter is bestowed that title at school, it is the first thing she tells me when I get home from work. Even at three years old, kids feel proud of having a title that bestows them with the title of leader.
The child at the end of the line, typically placed there for no reason in particular reason, is called the caboose in my daughter’s class (or the “baboose” if my daughter is trying to lead us somewhere at home). The caboose has no specific leadership responsibilities passed down from their teacher. They simply follow their line leader at the back of their class. My daughter never tells me about the days when she was the caboose. Even at three, she recognizes that to be called a leader is a good thing and to not have a favorable title is something not worth mentioning.
That mindset does not change as we grow older. People in any number of industries – the legal profession is by no means on its own here – fail to take on the responsibility of being a leader unless someone bestows upon them the title of leader. Even worse, people fail to see others as leaders unless that person has a certain title or exhibits any number of qualities of a “leader” that are learned as early as preschool (but that fail to consider the actual qualities that make someone a leader). The caboose may be just as much of a leader, or more so, as the line leader, but we do not include leader in the caboose’s title, and therefore, it becomes difficult to associate them with leadership. In much the same way, if we are constantly taught to search for leadership based on titles or only specific external and often vocally visible qualities, we fail to see the leaders in our midst. I do not mean to say that the people holding those titles or exhibiting those qualities are not leaders; I only hope to illuminate the fact that a title or lack of title does not make anyone a leader and should not be our primary marker when searching for leaders in a group.
At the University of Tennessee College of Law’s Institute for Professional Leadership’s recent symposium, Professor Jewel posed a question that I have thought about constantly since. To paraphrase, she asked whether the concept of servant leadership as it applies to women in the legal profession could be preventing women from rising in leadership roles, the general concern being that in adopting this style of leadership in a historically male-dominated profession, women may be positioning themselves in a way that causes others to not see them as leaders (even if they are leading better than anyone else in their organization) because of how their style of leadership appears to others. As a cis, straight, white man, I am not the best person to take on the challenge of critically analyzing and answering Professor Jewel’s question, and I will not attempt to here, but I do think it is important to consider how we have gotten to a point where servant leadership, seen by many as a preferred style of leadership, may actually hinder a woman’s ability to be seen as an effective leader in the legal profession.
For servant leadership to be an effective leadership style for all people in the legal profession, the label of servant leader needs to be eliminated. Instead, the elements of what makes someone a servant leader need to be taught to people in the legal profession early on as the qualities of a leader. If we are accustomed to the person who is called the line leader being the leader, we cannot see or do not look for the leadership in the person who is the caboose. The caboose may ultimately be the person keeping each of their fellow students in line and safe on the way to their destination; they just do not have a title that reflects their reality. But how someone’s classmates, or how someone’s colleagues, view their title or how they have been conditioned to view leadership – in reality, minuscule factors in whether a person is a good leader or not – should not serve to suppress positive leadership styles in certain people for fear of being seen as a worse leader or not a leader at all.
