Erica, I love the leadership lesson that you articulated in your blog that love for one’s work, coupled with servant leadership principles can create emergent leaders and mentoring relationships. My experience as a leader has been similar to yours in that “I have been blessed to have found an occupation that not only occupies my time but gives me purpose and meaning, and I have a strong desire to share my knowledge and experience” (DIZZYBUTTERFLY, 2018). I have had many opportunities to mentor staff under me, and the authority for this has always come out of a place of emergent leadership rather than assigned leadership. This could be due to the fact that in my context mentorship is often more personal than it is technical in nature.

What you articulated at the end of your blog served as a good reminder for me that my motivation in mentoring relationships should be to model transformational servant leadership, rather than to demonstrate my skills. While I know this it can be easy to get caught up in the desire to prove why I am worth listening to. Thank you for the reminder that the heart of mentorship is to exhibit transformational servant leadership.

 References:

 DIZZYBUTTERFLY. (2018, October 7). Light from many lamps assignment #1 [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/walkinginmywhy/2018/10/07/light-from-many-lamps-assignment-1/