It’s Time to Rethink Service

I believe the best way to serve ourselves is to serve others.

As a society, we have this all backwards. Individuals who are looking to grow both professionally and personally think, in order to do so, they must focus on their connections, skillsets and individual achievements. While looking at our own growth certainly shouldn’t be overlooked, I want to challenge others to think about investing their time and energy more heavily into service.

Serving others can mean a variety of things: donating our time and money, volunteering on-site, providing our talents pro bono, accepting a board member position or participating in our company’s service day. We can all agree that service to others in important for the communities we live in, and the world as a whole.

Where we likely differ is how much we should be investing in service, how high it should be on the priority list and whether it contributes to professional growth. For many, service becomes a shiny-object-in-the-distance goal, something to achieve only after other personal or professional goals are hit or when time frees up.

But, I see service differently. I see it as a rare opportunity to engage with others, learn new skills, step outside of our own comfort zone and bring everything we have to bear to improve a difficult situation. Arguably, for young professionals seeking to grow in their careers, this sums up the characteristics of an exceptional modern-day leader. When service is viewed this way, it’s difficult to understand why anyone with strong career aspirations wouldn’t add community service to their professional development plans.

For me, serving others has always been woven into the fabric of my professional identity. At a young age, when I was a volunteer candy striper at a nearby healthcare facility, I would push the cart, deliver juices to patients and make friendly conversation. During my chats with patients, I learned their stories, their experiences, what they thought of growing older and how they liked to have fun. I felt empowered to help them and was granted the chance to see life through their lives, even if just for a few moments.

When I started learning about social justice issues in my high school and college years, some of my early volunteering experiences enabled me to recognize and see how others didn’t have the same advantages as me. Service became more important to me when I went to grad school after a few years in the working world. This is when I discovered an amazing benefit of service: community building. I was fascinated with how individuals from all walks of life could come together, united by a common mission or cause.

As my career progressed, I made two choices when it came to service. The first was to ensure there was an element of service within the jobs I accepted. I always made sure that the roles I chose served others, or there was an opportunity to integrate service into the day-to-day work. The second was to continue supporting causes outside of my professional sphere that are also important to me. To this day, I am intentional with only serving on two nonprofit boards at any given time: one focused on my professional goals and the other for a cause that I personally support.

My leadership skills have unmistakably been strengthened by my decision to make service a core focus of my professional and personal growth. The connections I’ve made through service have helped me to achieve more of what I want. I have learned to collaborate and come together with a wide array of people who all have different ideas of how to achieve the same goal. I’ve met people I never would have met otherwise if we didn’t believe in championing the same cause. I’ve learned the value of making a commitment and going all in, even when I wasn’t getting paid. Most of all, I experienced the power of community, from inception to execution, and how to replicate that same collective energy in a business setting.

When you use service as a vehicle for leadership development, you get there much faster than you would without it.

I started this website to form a community. I hope you to come to this site and learn how to think about your own contributions in a fresh way, feel inspired and motivated to learn about the issues that are important to you and our community. I hope you will see how service can both open your mind and have a heart for others in a deeper way. I also want you to feel excited about making service just as important as attending a professional development conference or reading the latest business book.

Most of us serve to be a part of a bigger cause. What movement can you join today that will help you feel personally fulfilled but also build your skills as a person in the meantime? Find that cause, and throw yourself in. I promise you, the future leader in the mirror will thank you someday.