When I decided to embark on a different project than I originally planned (leadership succession for student organizations at Harvard in general, as opposed to just looking at service and pre-professional clubs together or what I learned from CHAP and Datamatch together), I realized that the “us” was different - instead of looking at just my team members, I was looking at student leaders as a whole, and perhaps even leaders as a whole.

In my interviews with 10 leaders, I found myself deeply resonating with all of their stories. Regardless of how or why we originally got a position, many of us grow into our roles during the job. Nearly everyone I spoke to wanted to change their organization for the better or regretted not being able to do so. Nearly everyone I spoke to wanted to create a better community in a larger landscape. And every single person was clearly very passionate about their members -- even the leaders who had retired and were no longer in a certain position could still speak fondly of their successes and failures.

So what is our public narrative, and how can this project speak for “us”? I believe many of us don’t talk enough about the struggles we face as leaders. This iceberg metaphor is one that’s commonly used to describe this kind of experience - one in which everything above the surface is crafted to look cohesive and presentable, but there’s actually so much underneath that a regular observer would never know. 

From the “smaller” issues (scheduling rooms) to the big questions (how to create a true sense of community?), each one can feel like the end of the world when you’ve given so much of your time, effort, energy, and emotions to a team of other individuals. As leaders, we make our groups part of our identities—by definition, we are who we are because others recognize us to be leaders. 

In this project, while I do explore and give tangible suggestions for leadership success and succession, ultimately I am also asking and probing us to tell a shared narrative of why we do what we do. Why is it important for us to create systems that will last beyond our time here? 

I hope that as you go through the professional and personal suggestions from these 10 amazing leaders and myself, you find yourself wanting to uncover more of what’s underneath the surface of the iceberg. It is underneath the surface that a truly significant narrative starts to emerge, one that I believe sustains so much of student life here at Harvard.