Young alumna speaks on authentic leadership: awareness, accountability, action

Faith Wright Armstrong ’22 met with Erskine student leaders Sept. 19 in the Founders Room of Moffatt Dining Hall, offering a late-morning presentation called “Leading in Your Values: A Call to Authentic Influence.” She recalled her own experience as a student leader and encouraged students to examine and rank their values, stay true to those values, accept accountability, and take action to put their values into practice.

When Faith began serving as captain of the Erskine Women’s Tennis Team, “We were not being collaborative,” she recalled. As someone who values teamwork, she was unhappy with the situation.

Leaders can experience stress, anxiety, and a feeling of disconnectedness when they try to fulfill their responsibilities without aligning their leadership with their values. As team captain, Faith said, she found that “When I aligned my leadership with my values, things changed.”

Noting that she would have enjoyed being appreciated as a leader, she asked the students, who were seated in groups of six or eight to a table, to “pat yourselves on the back,” and “turn to each other and talk about why you took a leadership role.”

She asked students to consider “whose behavior or qualities you admire” as well as “what you want to be known for or remembered for.”

The leaders were asked to rank their top five values, narrow the list to three, and finally indicate their most important value. A student from each table revealed his or her top value. Values chosen as paramount included faith, integrity, and excellence.

Faith urged students to write down a statement of their top value and identify an action step they pledged to take “to begin leading in alignment with this value.”

“Authentic leadership involves awareness plus action, she said.

Stressing the importance of accountability, Faith told the student leaders, “If you tell someone else what action you will take, you’ll be more likely to do it.”

Finally, she urged students to “stretch yourself” and “take risks through faith.”

Evidencing camaraderie with each other, the student leaders showed appreciation—often by finger-snapping rather than traditional applause—to their peers who stood to speak during the session.

Faith continued her campus visit in the evening, speaking with students in Memorial Hall Auditorium.

For more about Faith, see an earlier story here.