Do you know WHO I AM?

Flying home from Ottawa on Friday evening gave me time to consider my experience while in our nation's capital. The visit was remarkable:

Do you know who I am?

• The RCMP launched a criminal investigation of 'ExpenseGate' (Mike Duffey and the PMO);
• Senator Pamela Wallin faced the media in a CBC interview with Peter Mansbridge;
• Thomas Mulcair, leader of the opposition (NDP), drove through all the stop signs and security gates on the way to his assigned parking stall on parliament hill; and,
• The new CSIS building boogled my fiscal imagination - an amazing show of 'intelligence'.

Being a farm boy, I couldn't help thinking about entitlement. Two questions need to be addressed:

1. Do you know who I am? (Thomas Mulcair to RCMP)
2. Who is entitled?

On the first, if you ask this question of someone, the answer is clear. 

"You my friend, are a self serving, equivocating and perhaps even arrogant person, who believes the rules don't apply because of your station or role."

One can imagine this kind of thinking, would take a person in short order from a place of humility, reason and example, to a place where:

• public funds can be misappropriated;
• covering up and spinning what really happened is okay;
• an expectation that the rules were not meant for you; and,
• fiscal responsibility is for those governed not those governing.

At this point the 'servant leader' dies and an entitled, arrogant, equivocator is born.

On the second question, only one answer makes sense 'those served' are the ones who are entitled. Full stop! 

Citizens, tax payers, clients, employees, members, shareholders and others served, are those who are entitled. They are entitled to truth, transparency, respect, fairness, loyalty and good service. But, we see this is not often the case in government, in business, in education, in security, in religion and in community. 

Why do these elements seem hard to grasp for those who serve? Maybe it's because at one time or another, we all imagined ourselves as a ruler (lessor god), able to command and place those around us under the 'thumb' of authority we envisioned. 

Do we all wish to be king? It seems so. And while some of us give up this fairy tale, others are driven by it. And that is why, in our day and age, we must teach people to be servant leaders.

On Father's day 2013, I pause to reflect on two important questions:

• WHO AM I? 
• WHO DO I WISH TO BE?

Dad - a servant leader