Ethan Persaud - The Leader's Companion

One of the leadership readings that I have completed this semester for my Leadership 240 class, from The Leader’s Companion by Thomas Wren, I found displayed many of the themes that we have discussed in this class. Something that stood out to me was the idea that leadership is not simply about holding authority, but rather about personal growth and service to others. You could view this similar to how Campbell views the hero’s journey. The leader, much like the hero, often has to respond to a call that they may not initially feel prepared for. In many ways, stepping into a leadership role, whether you have an assigned position or not, requires leaving behind comfort and certainty of what you knew before. This also connects to our discussions about the first call to action and the hero leaving a place of identity. I found this relatable to myself because in leadership roles in my own life, most specifically my role as Senior Patrol Leader in Boy Scouts, forced me to grow in ways that I did not expect. As Senior Patrol Leader, I was put into an extremely unfamiliar and uncomfortable environment that I did not think I was going to thrive in. I had an immense responsibility and pressure that I did not know how to process. I was no longer just another scout, but the head of the troop. It was difficult to accept the first call, but eventually I got fully integrated into the position. In the end, I grew a ton and became the person I am today because of that leadership experience. Similar to the hero, a leader undergoes trials and returns with something valuable to offer to others. This also reminded me of our class discussions on sacrament, taking the ordinary and making it sacred. Leadership itself transforms ordinary responsibilities into meaningful acts of service and growth. These are all key concepts taken from the leadership reading in Leadership 240, but from a different perspective which I found to be insightful for both classes.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Example of a blog post 1

  I just had a few thoughts on what "wilderness of the soul" meant. In class we discussed that it meant uncharted territory within yourself and I thought of Freud's Iceberg analogy where most of the hidden unconscious is the part of the iceberg that remains underwater. There had always been a debate between psychology and religion in regards to what exactly a soul is. Some would say that the soul is the consciousness of the human brain, while others argue it is something spiritual linking us to God. But in response to the wilderness aspect, I do wonder how much of ourselves do we not actually know? I have always thought of myself as someone who knows exactly who I am, but since this class discussion I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong- I am not upset about this, but I am certainly more curious. It's almost exciting to think about what else I could learn about myself, but also slightly nerve-wracking. What if I learn something new that I don't ...
Read more

Kip Redick Introduction

 Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2026. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The studen...
Read more

Kip Redick Example of a blog post 2

  Page 4 Michael Taussig would suggest Juan's understanding of the meaning of a place emerges out of the process of an imitation of all the “differences” that we discern there. We mimic (in language and action) the full range of sounds, movements, and other sensory perceptions that come to us from the more than human world.” It’s hard to put a place that strikes us as sublime into mere words; we can try to describe it as a feeling and try to put language to that feeling, but sometimes the feeling of the beauty of nature or the power of a sacred space is too big to try to translate or make sense of. Would every place and experience be subjective, and would the discourse be the same? Would the mountain top make me feel the same as another? Or does my personal experience with the natural world and divine keep it intimate/ unique, or would my experience be relatable enough? The author uses the messiness, ambiguity, and mystery of people's deeply personal experience o...
Read more