Andrea was a St. Joseph Worker in 2002-2003.  These are some of her reflections on the core value of leadership written just after the completion of her SJW year.

Leadership, spirituality, community, and social justice: these are, of course, the four key components of the St. Joseph Worker Program. It's hard to argue with any of them. Because there was no precedent to consult, these stated values were just about the only ground I had to work from before beginning my year on the inaugural St. Joseph Worker team. Although I was excited about integrating all of these values more fully into my life, the one I thought least about at the beginning was leadership.

Leadership, without a stated context, can be a terrifying word. Leadership may be something to aspire toward or something to run away from screaming. The word itself has had so many connotations assigned to it that it has become a placeholder-- a series of letters that stand in for an idea that could be just about anything. Is leadership the art of being the boss? Of being in front of a group of people? Of getting others to go along with your ideas? Of having responsibility? Of gaining prestige? Is leadership only about having followers? Like most people, I get most of my language cues on semantics and meaning from the society around me. Through vehicles of culture, biography, and history, I have heard leadership defined in all these ways.

I knew from the beginning that the SJW program would not subscribe to the domination model of leadership. But I was curious to find out how it would be defined here. I found the answer to this question in the SJW program's use of community organizing principles which teach a brand of leadership that has deepened my respect for the word. Critical thinking on concepts such as power and strategy have provided a context, and tools such as one to ones (intentional conversations with others to better understand their motivations) have given me a concrete way to explore this new understanding. I've come to the empowering insight that leadership, at its best, has little to do with creating followers. It's all about building other leaders. Rather than standing triumphantly at the front of the pack, true leaders find their place among the rest of us as we all stand solidly together. Our true power lies in our relationships. This is the kind of leadership that I've learned about this year and this is the kind of leader I aspire to be.