00:00:00Katie Davis Majors Interview Transcript, October 10, 2017
Olivia Whatley: So, my first question was, "How has being a mom made you a
better leader for your organization?"
Katie Davis Majors: Huh, that's a great question that I don't get asked very
much. I mean, I feel parenting kind of sets the stage for all the things you
need to be a good leader for as far as humility and saying like, "yeah, I messed
this one up and I'm sorry." I think it takes huge humility to be a parent and to
be a leader. I also think, um, just the day to day management of a large family,
and um, different conflicts that have come have helped me to better mediate
different things as i've been a manager as well.
Olivia Whatley: You said in your book that you feel more at home in Uganda, so
what cultural identities or experience are most prominent for you?
Katie Davis Majors: Uganda is just a really warm, hospitable culture. They're
very relational so it's pretty common that if you have, if someone stops by, you
would stop everything you're doing to just sit and talk with that person even if
it's for hours and I think that's so counter cultural for us, we're in a hurry
and we're very task oriented and we need to get things done, so people become
almost an inconvenience sometimes. So I think that's something really really
beautiful about Ugandan culture is just that their hospitality and their
graciousness and the way they invite people in.
Olivia Whatley: So, I want to be a missionary and I want to do women's work and
so do you have any advice for that? I've never done long term missions work
before, so any advise?
Katie Davis Majors: Yeah, I think um, One of the initiatives that Amazima is
doing is really close to my heart, it's kind of like my project, is our women's
empowerment program. We teach women to make beaded jewelry that we sell here. I
think, for me, empowerment is just really huge. I think a lot of times as
missionaries we get that wrong. I certainly got that wrong in my early days. You
know we see poverty and our gut instinct is to give stuff or to give money or to
help in that way but I, personally as a mother, what a joy it is to provide for
my own children and to be the person that my children look to for that
provision. So, um, to help with job creation and things that are sustainable to
really empower the local people to support their own families has been like
really huge for us in our ministry. It's just, it's really beautiful to build
into the culture in that way so that children are growing up looking to thank
their parents, and women or men are having that pride like, "I did provide for
my own family."
Olivia Whatley: What does leadership mean to you?
Katie Davis Majors: It's service. I mean I think we talk about servant leaders
which I mean, that's how Christ led. He was so interruptible, he was so service
oriented. He was so relational, He stopped for people. I think as leaders, we
can be so focused on the task at hand and the thing that needs to get done. Kind
of the big mess of organization that we can forget to be relational, and forget
to be interruptible, and forget to be humble, but I think people are looking to
our example and humility is just a great way to lead.
Olivia Whatley: So would you say that is your leadership style?
Katie Davis Majors: I hope so! I would say that I strive for that to be my
leadership style, of course I'm far from perfect at that, but I hope so.
Olivia Whatley: What are your professional strengths and weaknesses?
Katie Davis Majors: Probably my weakness is that I'm not very professional. I
think my weaknesses would certainly be organization and management. I happen to
not be very task oriented and I think my strengths are definitely in relating to
people. What's been neat over the years realizing those strengths and
weaknesses, God has brought people into my staff that have opposite strengths
and opposite weaknesses and so as a leader it is very important to identify your
strengths and weaknesses and to look for people to fill in those gaps where you
know that you're weak.
Olivia Whatley: That relates to another question I was going to ask, do you feel
it is important to delegate, and if so, why and how do you delegate?
Katie Davis Majors: Yeah, I mean I think it's important for all leaders to
realize that, "I'm not good at everything and I'm not supposed to be good at
everything." We need The Body, we need other people and so I think it's very
important to kind of, you know, annually or even more than that, to kind of
evaluate, "okay, what am I good at? What is fueling me in ministry? What am I
dropping the ball on and is that laziness on my part? Is that something I need
to be challenged by and work on or is that something that I need to go ahead and
say 'I'm not very good at this, I need to hand this over to someone else?'" And
that comes with a lot of humility. You have to recognize, "okay, if I hand this
over to somebody else, I'm no longer in charge" and I can't say "oh, no you
didn't do it the right way!" You know, I need to be able to freely say, "okay, I
trust that God has given you wisdom and you are following the spirit and if I'm
going to delegate it to you, I need to let you follow God as well and do it your way."
Olivia Whatley: So how did you know your calling?
Katie Davis Majors: You know, I think a lot of people are kind of waiting for
that "aha" moment of like, "and then God called me to Africa. God called me to
the mission field" and I think it's a lot simpler than that. Like Jesus has been
pretty clear that He called each of us to love people, to love Him, and to make
disciples and I think we can do that here and I think we can do that in Uganda
and I think we can do that anywhere. And that's, you know, that's our calling,
all of us, is to love the person in front of us and in my life, that takes place
overseas. God has been really faithful to use that mentality to grow it into
this bigger thing, but we all have a part to play in that.
Olivia Whatley: So relating to that, do you remember a specific instance in your
childhood or your background that like kind of put that in your heart?
Katie Davis Majors: Yeah, my parents are very service oriented people. I grew up
in a pretty affluent lifestyle but they were always pretty quick to teach us
that this is not how everybody lived. There were people less fortunate than us.
They are very generous in their giving and in their own personal lives and
ministries. So I think they really instilled generosity and service in me from a
young age so I was always really drawn to opportunities like that.
Olivia Whatley: Leaders help to turn ideas into actions and empower others, how
do you accomplish this
Katie Davis Majors: I think encouragement is a huge part of it. I think
something God's really put on my heart in the past couple of years, I've stepped
out of the day to day operations of Amazima and they call me the Visionary, but
I joke that I'm the Trouble Shooter, because really when things are going well
nobody needs me. It's only when things are like exploding that they are like,
"Hey! What do we do?" But I think God has shown me that a big part of my role as
leader is just to encourage others. Like look at them and notice their strengths
and notice the things that they are doing well and really call those out because
sometimes that's all we really need to step into something more we need someone
to say, "You know, you're actually really good at that." That can give us the
courage to keep doing it or to explore a passion further and so, I really love
the ministry of encouragement and just like, calling out the good we see in people.
Olivia Whatley: In such an important field, how do you learn from failure?
Katie Davis Majors: I mean yeah, you definitely learn from failure and honestly,
I'm thankful for failure, that even we have made a ministry because failure has
caused me to stop and reevaluate what we're doing and try to decide like, "Okay,
how can we do this better?" And I think that's the thing about failure, is that
it is never ultimate failure, you know? It's always something we can learn from
and learn how to do it better. So in that way, failure is a gift because it
gives you what you need to do it better the next time.
Olivia Whatley: What are two or three action steps you believe are essential to
enable others to be successful?
Katie Davis: I think definitely prayer. I think our success and our success and
our failure really depends on where we are with the Lord and are we willing to
surrender our plans and dreams and what we want for our organization or you
know, whatever we are leading. Are we willing to surrender those to Him? And I
think the encouragement piece of it is huge too. To be able to see gifts in
others and point those out.
Olivia Whatley: My last question is, what do you want your legacy to be?
Katie Davis Major: The Gospel. Yeah, I mean, I just, if a few more people knew
about Jesus because of my life, that would be good with me.
Olivia Whatley: That's awesome, thank you so much!
