Reflection #1 Theories in Action. Servant Leadership at the American Cancer Society

I am interning with the American Cancer Society (ACS), this summer. Within the ACS, I am working with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). This subset of the American Cancer Society works on government relations and lobbying, communications and advocacy, and volunteer recruitment and engagement. I have witnessed that the unique national volunteer structure that has been created by ACS CAN is very important to the organization and demonstrates servant leadership. I believe that this volunteer structure and this form of servant leadership that is demonstrated is one of the reasons  that ACS is so successful with harnessing the power of volunteers.

Volunteers are a huge part of ACS. This is greatly understood by the leadership of ACS and I believe that they practice servant leadership with volunteers because they understand the importance of volunteers for their organization. There are two things that has been stressed to me by supervisors when I am working on assignments such as drafting website articles, social media posts, and emails aimed to volunteers. These two things are – the importance of volunteers to ACS, and secondly, the fact that people do not get involved with ACS because they are interested in scientific research or health care policy or bills in Congress that ACS CAN is lobbying. They get involved because they have been effected by cancer in a very real and personal way. Understanding this, is key to understanding how to engage with and motive volunteers. I have been taught to lead with emotion and compassion in all engagements with volunteers even on the large scale engagements that I am working on.

I believe this culture of addressing and interacting with volunteers in this way represents servant leadership. Further, as I previously noted, the specifc volunteer structure, also represents servant leadership. When looking at the structure of volunteers starting at the top it is the Grassroots Advocacy and Digital Communications team on top that are in charge of the volunteers nationally. This is the team that I am interning on. Underneath this team, there are GO Leaders, (Grassroots Organizing Leaders), whom represent specific regions on the country. Underneath these leaders there are SLA leaders (State Lead Ambassadors), whom are in charge of the volunteers in each state and report to GO’s. Then there are leaders within each Congressional district in the country that report to the SLAs and within this there are smaller regions and offices around the country. The reason that I go into such detail about the structure of volunteers in ACS is because this structure allows for servant leadership to exist because it creates many leaders giving followers the power to be liberated and more autonomous, finding more meaning and power in their own work. Additionally, it allows for more personalized and individualized action. This allows builds leaders and communities around the country. Each state, each region, each district has the power to work on the issues important to that cancer community. Messages are specified and directed to certain groups in ways that are meaningful to them. This creates a sense of personalized commitment and putting the people first. They are not all following the same federal messaging but instead working on what is important to them and committed to the overall shared fight of beating cancer.

The third and last example of servant leadership among the volunteer structure of ACS CAN is the combination of work between volunteers and employees. Most of the ACS CAN national and grassroots employees start as volunteers. They start as people who care about the cancer community and want to fight for change, not because it is their job but because it is something they want to volunteer their time and efforts to do. Many of these volunteers become paid employees. I believe that because they start as volunteers and become leaders in their communities, they have a special commitment to the other volunteers and to the community and this creates a culture of empathy, awareness, and stewardship that radiates from local levels of leadership all the way up to the highest leadership of ACS and ACS CAN. This overall makes the organization so effective because they genuinely engage people and harness the power of the people to make change with real commitment and action.