Stand Alone
Iceland | 2015 © Alicia Kae Miller
My heart aches as we watch yet another humanitarian crisis unfold. As I struggle to find words to articulate what I am feeling, the concept of leadership plays like a violin in the dark.
The shrill sound compels me to ask, how do you lead?
We generally disassociate ourselves by viewing leadership as someone else (e.g., legislators, business executives, and church elders). However, I urge us to view leadership from a self-centric perspective.
In the same vein, as we judge the behaviors of leaders mentioned above, we should also take a hard look at how WE lead in our lives, workplace, and community. In other words, how does your experience of you resonate?
Since we are the leaders of our own life, our leadership burden is ours and ours alone.
As I continue to illuminate my leadership style through multiple platforms, including public speaking, a cornerstone of each speaking engagement includes a profound yet very personal moment that altered my way of being, thus, the way that I show up in life.
One truth-tell is from my seven-year-old self who, without prompting, cracked open my piggy bank so that a fellow schoolmate, who lost his family home to a fire, could have a winter coat. My thinking back then is much as it is today, I have a coat, and X should too.
This is what leadership looks like to me—individuals standing in their power recognizing that just as much as I want empathy, so do you.
Until we meet again, hold humanity in loving hands. ❤️
Yours in Solidarity, -akm
March 2022