The word “leader” shows up in the English language around the year 1300 with the systematic study of leadership emerging in the early 1930’s. Since then, people from all fields (business, academics, the arts, church, politics, etc.) have tried to define leadership. What is IT? How do you develop IT? How do you measure IT? Who has IT? Leadership is one of the most written about topics yet maybe the least understood.

To prove a point, Amazon offers 57,136 books with the word “leadership” in their title. The books vary in focus from developing courage and building teamwork to group dynamics and how to inspire people. But the fundamental question remains: What is leadership? Is it a person? Position? Style? Act? A behavior? Or is it maybe all of these things?

As a Jesuit school, Prep has notable paragons of leadership—from our founder, St. Ignatius, to our current pope, St. Francis. We have values that inform leadership such as cura personalis, the Magis and A.M.D.G. And, we have the Grad at Grad framework that challenges students to hone the art of self-reflection, practice love, develop courage and choose purpose and action—in both small and large decisions.

Whether the path is straight or meanders, Jesuit education teaches that leadership is about the way you proceed in the world. Leadership is seen as an “inside job” because it is about self-leadership. It’s about doing the personal work of being a good human. This means every student, teacher, alum and parent is a leader, with the opportunity to lead all the time— sometimes in immediate, dramatic and obvious ways, more often in subtle, hard-to-measure ways, but leading, nonetheless.

In this issue of Panther Tracks we highlight those in the Seattle Prep community who are demonstrating IT—proof that leadership is always within our reach.