What It Means to Hold a Voluntary Office

In German, there is a word for this: Ehrenamt.

It means more than volunteering. It means accepting an office, usually without pay, and taking responsibility on behalf of a community or organization.

Such an office does not confer power. It entrusts responsibility.

Anyone who takes on such a role agrees to be accountable for a task – to the people who entrust them with that responsibility, to those they work with, and to the purpose the organization is meant to serve.

That is why, for me, the question of taking office does not begin with who should take it on.

It begins with how that responsibility should be exercised.

What attitude do we expect from one another? How do we want to treat one another? How do we make decisions? How do we deal with different perceptions, with criticism, and with mistakes? How do we make sure that those affected by decisions are heard? And how do we know whether we are living up to our responsibility?

We should be able to talk about these questions before we talk about people.

An Office Needs a Standard

Anyone who takes on responsibility should be able to say what their actions may be measured against.

That standard must not be created only by the person who holds the office. Otherwise, the office defines its own rules.

For me, this includes a few simple principles:

I want to understand before I judge.

I want to make different perceptions visible rather than prematurely establish a single authoritative version of reality.

I want to enable decisions to be made where the necessary experience and responsibility lie.

I do not want to withhold information because it is uncomfortable, nor do I want to spread it because it might harm others.

I do not want to treat criticism as an attack, but first as possible information that something is being perceived differently from the way I perceive it.

And when I make a decision, I want to be able to explain the basis on which I made it.

These are not rules I want to impose on others. They are, first and foremost, standards against which I want my own actions to be measured.

Elections Entrust Responsibility

For me, an election is therefore more than filling a vacant office.

It is the decision to entrust a person with responsibility for a certain period of time.

That does not necessarily require several candidates.

If there is sufficient shared understanding of the responsibility being entrusted, of the attitude expected in exercising it, and of the standards against which actions will later be measured, electing a single candidate can still be a meaningful decision.

What matters is not the number of names on a ballot.

What matters is that the community decides not only who carries responsibility, but also has an idea of how that responsibility should be exercised.

Without such an understanding, things become difficult.

An entrusted office then risks becoming a possession. Decisions increasingly derive their legitimacy from the simple fact that those making them happen to hold office. And the question of whether their actions still serve the shared purpose loses any independent standard against which it can be judged.

Responsibility Is Not a One-Way Street

Anyone who takes on an office carries responsibility.

But an organization also has a responsibility to ensure that this responsibility can actually be exercised.

It must provide room to act, make information accessible, and organize cooperation. It must be able to tolerate differing views. And it must create structures in which problems are allowed to become visible without their mere articulation already being treated as a disruption.

Entrusting responsibility without entrusting the necessary ability to act does not work.

Nor does it work to demand responsibility while leaving the standards by which it is judged unspoken.

Leadership Does Not Mean Following

People who take on responsibility will not always agree.

Nor should they have to.

For me, an organization does not become capable of acting because everyone develops the same view of things. It becomes capable of acting when different perceptions can coexist and decisions can still be made.

Leadership, therefore, does not mean convincing others to adopt my view.

It means creating conditions in which people can orient themselves, take responsibility, and act together.

Sometimes that also means questioning one’s own position.

And sometimes acting responsibly can mean giving up an office again – not as a defeat, but because someone else may be better able to take on the responsibility under changed circumstances.

Holding Office Is Not an End in Itself

In the end, every office is only a means.

It does not exist so that someone can be a chairperson, board member, or officeholder.

It exists because a task needs to be fulfilled.

That is why, whatever happens within an organization, I want to be able to return eventually to one very simple question:

Why are we doing this?

If we have a shared answer to that question, we can talk about the structures we need, the responsibilities that follow from them, and who is willing and able to take them on.

If we no longer have an answer, even the best rules of procedure will not help us.

That is how I understand Ehrenamt.

Not as a position.

But as responsibility that people entrust to one another for a limited period of time.