Legacy Leadership

Purpose Statement

A leadership journey offers various paths to explore, allowing one to discover a purpose that reflects personal values, vision and practices. As someone who has always had a need to connect with others, following a leadership model reflective of making a conscious decision to serve others first before oneself represents the purpose I wish to follow (Northouse, 2018). The servant leadership model reflects this approach as it encourages leaders to demonstrate the ability to be adaptable, collaborative, and trustworthy (Ragni, 2010). Over the years, strong working relationships with team members across different organizations has provided me the opportunity to help people grow into their full capacities. It takes work, self-reflection, and the willingness to embrace learning opportunities to ensure one’s purpose aligns with being a servant leader. Knowing my purpose, vision, and practice provides guidance in developing a deeper connection to serving others.

My Purpose

Leadership comes with its successes and challenges, however aligning my purpose with personal styles, approaches and behaviors ensures they are well-served. The StrengthsFinder Assessment 2.0 provided insight into areas of strength, and how to best utilize these features with teams (Battaglia, 2024; Rath, 2007). Personal leadership strengths include communication, empathy, discipline, learner, and strategy. Much like a team, each of these characteristics intertwine, finding ways to complement one another. While team building has its challenges, leaders must remain focused on working collaboratively with others to meet goals. By participating in the StrengthsFinder Assessment 2.0, leaders gain a better understanding of one’s purpose as a leader, and how it relates to identifying, defining, and transforming values into actions.

Identifying My Core

As an organizational leader, it is important to identify one’s core and how it impacts experiences and relationships. Centered around my faith, my core encourages me to lead with respect, empathy, resilience, and a commitment to serving others. When faced with challenging experiences, it is one’s core that works as a driving force to act. Part of leading is having the courage to confront immoral acts and stand up for what deems morally fit by our peers and culture. To ensure I remain grounded in my faith, practicing self-reflection models accountability, and service to oneself and others. This approach provides the opportunity to acknowledge humble moments of missteps and confirmation in morally sound acts. If the intention is to serve others, it is critical I continue practicing self-reflection and finding ways to improve my leadership approach.

Defining My Values and Principles

To build one’s capacity as a servant leader, having a solid foundation made of values and principles aligning with a people-first philosophy that prioritizes the growth and well-being of others matters. My values and principles reflect servant leadership qualities including trust and accountability, empathy and respect, resilience and passion, self-awareness, innovation and creativity, and effective communication. With these qualities, a leader can create and sustain strong working relationships across any organization. If the goal is to serve others, actions must model ethically sound behavior. This includes working through processes that align with personal and organizational purposes. When others see continuous actions reflective of a servant leader, these behaviors will become transformative across the organization.

Transforming My Values into Action

There are multiple approaches towards transforming personal values into action. Holding oneself accountable to being ethically conscious while making decisions models the ability to put others’ well-being at the forefront of one’s leadership approach (Battaglia, 2025d; Bott, 2015). Decisions made must reflect respect and integrity with the purpose of providing service and excellence to employees, stakeholders, and the organization. To do so, leaders must apply accountability to themselves and those around them while working ethically towards meeting organizational goals. This happens through effective communication that models active listening and having the ability to pause and reflect. Part of leading others is valuing input that differs from one’s own perspective. Having an open mind ensures a leader is respectful of other people’s values, experiences, and ideas. By aligning my personal values with active listening and decision-making skills, I have created a more organic approach to sustaining strong working relationships as the organization faces challenges and growth.

My Vision

Developing a clear strategic vision representing shared values and behaviors supports a leader’s purpose. Modeling desired behaviors through active listening and collaboration will help to develop a shared strategic vision that leads to strengthened skills, adaptability, and commitment to support organizational values (Battaglia, 2025a; Cummings & Worley, 2016). Understanding my vision includes recognizing what I envision for myself and others by asking purposeful questions aimed at encouraging and supporting others in a collaborative environment.

Asking Purposeful Questions

To develop and implement a vision that serves stakeholders and the organization, I ask purposeful questions that support integrity, innovation, and accountability. Using various methods to collect information helps fill in gaps and see the bigger picture while working collaboratively with others to reach organizational goals. Recognizing that people provide feedback in diverse ways, servant leaders ask questions through surveys, interviews, group discussions and observations. Implementing these types of approaches creates another layer of trust, strengthening relationships with others. While asking questions provides leaders with further insight, connecting with people to review findings holds the entire team accountable in working towards a purposeful solution. The goal is to help people realize they share a common challenge, and everyone will benefit by working together in addressing it.

Encouraging Collaboration

Leadership and learning go hand in hand. By modeling effective strategies such as active listening and effective communication, collaborative approaches develop. This approach further supports my desire to serve others. While each role has individual tasks, there are opportunities for people to come together and share in the process of the work. Intentionally avoiding silos and creating an organizational structure that embraces team building, reflects a shared purpose and supports organizational goals algins with my leadership approach. Through experiences, I have learned that teams are stronger when people work together. It is healthy to ask questions, provide different viewpoints, and challenge our peers in a respectful manner. When modeled effectively, collaboration is an effective tool used to serve others and maintain healthy working relationships. 

My Practice

Inspirational work starts from the inside and works its way out (Battaglia, 2025c). Having the ability to identify the why behind the work drives the how and what of the work (Sinek, 2009). When modeling this type of approach, leaders must communicate at a level that promotes trust and relationship development with others. Rather than focusing on the result, it is up to leaders to draw others in by aligning their why with their work. As a leader, conducting my purpose through practice includes knowing how to conduct impactful engagement, working through change, and encouraging innovation, as well as celebrating successes and growing through failures. It is through these practices that my approach helps others grow and develop a shared purpose.

Impactful Engagement

Leadership forms around the relationship between power and love (Kahane, 2010). Finding a balance between power and love helps leaders create relationships with others and promote organizational growth. Throughout my leadership experiences, I have worked to model desired behaviors, such as active listening and collaboration. By demonstrating these skills, the impact included teams working together to develop a shared strategic vision that helped strengthen skillsets, adaptability, and a commitment to organizational values (Cummings & Worley, 2016). The use of impactful engagement has provided me with more opportunities to serve others, making our work more effective.

Incorporating Change and Innovative Improvements

An organization’s culture is reflective of the way people work to create, think and solve problems (Mckeown, 2014). When exploring organizational culture and change management, leaders must differentiate how both concepts work together to develop a strategic approach towards encouraging innovation, collaboration, and risk. Rather than avoiding change, I work to provide people with the tools needed to embrace change. As a leader, stepping outside one’s comfort zone is a strong approach when working to serve others as it provides leaders with the opportunity to genuinely appreciate the growth that comes with creativity and innovation. Encouraging flexibility, creativity, and vulnerability by sharing diverse experiences promotes collaboration and models effective communication. By highlighting areas of weakness, focusing on opportunities for growth, and welcoming feedback, a drive for innovation is born. I have found when applying these approaches towards change, people find more confidence in offering creative and innovative ideas that help our organization grow.

Celebrating Successes and Exploring Areas of Growth

Innovative cultures do not wait for change, they initiate it (Battaglia, 2025b; Pacheco, 2025). When paired successfully with innovative approaches, change becomes a driver and supporter of organizational learning and growth. Creating an environment that welcomes change starts from the top and spreads to others. Regardless of current successes or issues, it is a leader’s responsibility to effectively manage organizational change when the time comes (Battaglia, 2025a; Chung et al., 2012). Leaders must encourage people to embrace curiosity by identifying innovative ideas that align with unmet needs. This creates a type of psychological safety around taking risks, and participating in feedback geared towards enhancing learning proactively. By sharing individual experiences reflective of my successes and failures, I have developed trusting relationships with others throughout various organizations that embrace change and growth.

Conclusion

The purpose of my work is to hold myself accountable to being ethically conscious while making decisions that model putting others’ well-being before my own. By using the servant leadership approach as a guide, my ability to create relationships reflective of shared values and goals fulfills my why. Demonstrating skills such as accountability, integrity, adaptability, and sustainability will integrate into organizational norms and values, leading to effective growth and future work. Modeling self-awareness encourages individuals to grow out of their own confining thoughts and habits, and into improved intentions and choices (Jamieson et al., 2011). Combining these approaches supports my ability to better understand my core, vision, and practice, leading to a more supportive community of leaders, employees, and other organizational stakeholders.