St. La Salle is indeed one of the best saints that we can consider a good role model for leaders. Four main characteristics of St. La Salle as a leader would be (1) risk taker, (2) innovator, (3) servant leader, and (4) mentor.

Risk Taker

St. La Salle showed the ability of being a risk taker when he decided to pursue his goal of building a group of teachers despite the fact that his family does not support him, and it is uncertain whether he will succeed or not. He took a courageous step in initiating change. He even abandoned his family, renounced his position as Canon, and sold his ancestral house in order to fund his group. He left his doubts and fears behind because he is doing it for a purpose and he knows that God is with him.

In life, staying under our comfort zone is always the easiest thing to do. But if we come to rationalize it, staying under our comfort zones will not change or improve anything in our life. That’s why we need to take the risk.

As a young professional, I am very ambitious. At my young age, I already proposed a lot of process improvements on my job. I am not afraid to suggest ideas and change the current process even though I am one of the youngest members of the workforce. But St. La Salle inspired me to take it on a different level. It’s cool that I was able to take the risk in changing the process in the team that I am working with, but how about the society? What risk should I take in order to help and contribute to the society outside work? Those are the things that run into my mind right after knowing the life of St. La Salle.

Innovator

The most notable contribution of St. La Salle to our society would be the classroom way of teaching. Instead of the teaching the children one by one, he introduced the teaching in groups. He noticed that while one children is being taught by the teacher, the others are not engaged and so wasting their time in doing other things while waiting for their turn.

Aside from that, he also changed the language of teaching, from traditional Latin to French since it is more commonly used in the region, and only the clergy and wealthy knows Latin. With his ministry, education becomes more accessible to poor families. 

Until now, his idea of classroom set-up or simultaneous learning is being used widely. This is his legacy, which is very inspiring. For me, this type of innovation is something that good leaders should achieve. As I mentioned earlier, in my career, I was able to propose process improvements on my job. However, after knowing the change that St. La Salle has made, I am now inspired to take it on a different level, and innovate for the society.

Servant Leader

By forming the group of educators, St. La Salle served the needs of the poor people to be educated. At that time, education is only granted to those who can afford it. He works for a purpose. By the time he has formed his group; he didn’t just stop and let the brothers do the job. Instead, he continued working as a teacher and at the same time mentoring also the brothers.

For me, this is really inspiring. Only few of us, young professionals, work on a sole purpose to serve. Honestly speaking, most of us are only concern with the benefits and prestige that our company can offer. St. La Salle did not take any profit out of his group. He even gives up his wealth to achieve his goal.

As of this writing, I am thinking that in the future, I should take a job that could address the needs of our society. I am an Economics graduate from UP, and one of the things that we discussed a lot is about poverty. Right after knowing St. La Salle, I felt a small guilt within myself that even though I studied about poverty, I am not doing anything about it.

Mentor

In the beginning, the group of educators that St. La Salle has formed are not perfect teachers. But instead of rejecting those educators who seemed to be not fitted, St. La Salle mentored them. He even accepted a thief to be part of his group. Instead of punishing the thief, he corrected him. He influenced him to do the good thing.

On our current corporate world, most of the bosses are labelled as “evil” simply because they reprimand or blame their employees for committing mistakes. This actually reminds me of the movie, The Devil Wears Prada and this should not be the case. As a good leader or boss, we should be a good mentor and correct the employees in a good way. A great way of mentoring is also by being a good example just like St. La Salle.

Overall, right after knowing St. La Salle, my goal is to be like him as a leader - someone who leads for a purpose of serving others and who is brave enough to implement change in the society.