Today’s Tuesday Reading is from Ashish Desai, Director of Learning Space and Multimedia Services at Villanova University and a MOR program participant. Ashish may be reached at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
During one of our MOR sessions, we were asked to name a leadership shift we were working through. I shared that I would be “moving from hero to citizen.” As I thought about the past, the present, and, most importantly, the future, the underlying question was simple. Do I keep carrying the weight, or is the moment asking me to become something different?
Honoring the Hero
I do not use hero as criticism. Hero work is not a weakness. There are seasons when it is exactly what a situation needs. The hero steps in when things are uncertain, absorbs complexity so others have stable ground, and carries the work across the line when failure would cost something real. In higher education technology, that work keeps classes running, supports faculty, and protects the team when the systems around us are under strain.
I learned that instinct early, before I had any title. My father died when I was young. With a younger brother and a single immigrant mother, I learned quickly to step in, to carry, to become what the moment required.
That same instinct carried into the work. During and after COVID, when faculty experience and continuity of instruction held extra special weight, stepping in fast was often right. I made that quiet decision more than once. If a project or a team needed time, energy, and sacrifice that others could not give, I gave it quietly. I would rather the team succeed and think less of me than protect how I am perceived and watch it fall short. I do not look back with regret. I am grateful I could, and that it led me here.
However, that kind of work carries a cost. It can leave so little in reserve that the relationships around you suffer, and a win that depends on one person absorbing the strain does not make the system any stronger.
The Real Tension Is Fear
The real tension is not choosing between hero and citizen. Becoming something different is a risk, whichever direction it takes. It means stepping out of a role you are good at and trusted in, and trying on one you have not yet grown into.
I know that fear from both sides. Stepping into the hero role as a young person felt the way stepping out of it feels now. The same uncertainty about whether I was up to it, the same sense of leaving an easier version of myself behind. Becoming a hero then and a citizen now are the same act in different directions, and both asked me to let go of who I had been.
For a long time, I carried a quiet fear, maybe a little shame, and questioned whether I measured up. I do not carry that anymore, and I will not pick it back up. What answered it for me was the work itself, what I survived and what I delivered. I am, like you, capable of astounding feats of both heroism and citizenship. Everything you need to grow, you already have. The real tension is letting go of the fear of becoming what you are not yet.
You Are Being Called, If You Listen
The phrase I keep returning to, becoming what you are not yet, is not mine. It belongs to Augustine, whose order founded my university. He urged his listeners never to settle into what they already were, to keep walking and keep advancing toward what they had not yet become. He meant it as a movement toward God. I borrow only its restlessness; the conviction that a leader is never finished, and that the next becoming, in whatever direction it runs, is always asking for our courage.
What the moment asks of each person is not the same. For me, right now, it asks for the citizen. For someone else, it may ask the opposite, to stop hanging back and step into the weight they have been avoiding. Becoming a hero can be as hard and as necessary as stepping out of that role. Neither is the bigger leap. They are the same leap.
A citizen is not passive. If anything, the role asks more, running on patience, trust, restraint, and a willingness to build something larger than my own contribution. The citizen asks a different set of questions. Where is the handoff unclear? Who else needs to understand this decision? Who has not yet had a chance to lead? And what part of the ambiguity can the team work through together? In an environment of overwhelming uncertainty and the strain that comes with it, building shared ownership is as hard as carrying the load alone.
MOR introduced me to thinking of leadership as a set of roles we bring on stage. The hero stays in the repertoire, and there are still moments when it belongs at center stage when someone must act and carry the weight right now. But other moments call for the citizen. It is knowing which role the moment calls for and trusting yourself enough to let that version of you step forward.
Becoming what the moment requires was never about rejecting who you have been. It is about expanding who you can become. Hold pride in the work that brought you here while trusting that the next season can ask something new of you. What is different now is that I choose it on purpose, from confidence rather than fear. The moment before me is asking for an engaged and active citizen, and I intend to grow into and answer this calling.
What leadership identity shift is the moment in front of you making room for?
Last week, we asked which capability you see the most opportunity for your organization.
- 28% said execute more effectively
- 26% said steward resources more wisely
- 17% said deliver greater value
- 15% said increase resilience
- 14% said provide stronger support for the mission
You see the opportunity. You see the chance. You see the benefit. What is one next step you can take this week to work toward that opportunity?