While gender and race play nominal roles in my leadership development and values, ethnicity plays a slightly greater role and the harder and longer I look, the more I realize its impact. In my previous blog, I stated that my foundational values were: faith, hard work, generosity, compassion, and humility; when I look at where I was raised and my ethnicity, I realize how much influence these have on my values. For starters, my mother is full-blooded Norwegian and my dad is full-blooded German. Both were born and raised in small towns of rural Minnesota- my dad in central Minnesota and my mom in western Minnesota. They raised me and my siblings in a small town in Northern Minnesota. Both my hometown and the communities where they were raised value hard work. It was expected in their rural sub-cultures and now my sub-culture that you work to earn what own.
As far as other values go, something that comes from living in small towns is the generosity and compassion. Since you know the situations of many individuals and families living around you, many lend helping hands when someone is in a rough time of life.
Faith plays a huge role in the ethnicities and traditions of my parents. My dad grew up in a primarily German community and was therefore, unsurprisingly, raised Catholic. It was part of every dynamic of life for him growing up. My mom, raised in a primarily Scandinavian community was raised Lutheran, which is also not surprising.
As far as leadership goes, I don’t think my ethnicity plays much of a role. While I may, unfortunately, have more opportunities for leadership because of being a middle-class Caucasian woman, I do think this influences the way I lead; I try to follow the examples of solid leaders who have gone before me.
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