Comment: Clothed in fabric of leadership, service and showing up

Published 1:30 am Saturday, December 27, 2025

By Kathy Solberg and Josh Estes / For The Herald

Leadership in Snohomish County does not live solely in boardrooms, council chambers or organizational charts. It lives in food banks and classrooms, at kitchen tables and community centers, in moments of service that rarely make headlines but quietly hold our community together.

On a recent Friday, we had the opportunity — alongside Leadership Snohomish County CEO Adrianne Wagner, emerging leaders and community volunteers — to volunteer a shift at Christmas House. Like many who have shown up there over the years, we arrived ready to help. We left with something far more lasting: a renewed understanding of how deeply interconnected our lives truly are, and how powerful it is to witness leadership expressed through simple, human acts of care. All of this was imbued with a perspective of gratitude, compassion and grace.

Christmas House, for those who may not know, is a place of dignity. Families shop — not receive — for gifts, choosing toys and essentials for their children in an environment designed to preserve pride, agency and joy. Volunteers stock shelves, guide shoppers and offer kindness without condition. On the surface, it is a well-run operation fueled by generosity. At its core, it is a living reflection of the fabric of Snohomish County.

What made the experience especially meaningful was not just the work itself, but the vantage point it provides. Watching families navigate the space; some quietly focused, others visibly overwhelmed with both options and opportunity. It was a reminder that every person we pass carries a story we may never fully know. Standing alongside volunteers, many of whom brought their own histories of service, hardship, leadership or growth, reinforced the same truth from the other side of the aisle: the desire to provide for those we love permeates all families, regardless of circumstances.

Leadership Snohomish County has long been rooted in this understanding. At its heart, leadership is not about titles or authority; it is about responsibility; to one another, to the future and to the values we claim as a community. Whether someone is a longtime civic leader or an emerging leader just beginning to see their role in the broader picture, the act of showing up matters. It always has.

One of the quiet gifts of volunteering in a space like Christmas House is the way it clarifies what matters. Job titles disappear. Organizational affiliations fade. What’s left are people. A community showing up for each other.

This is the fabric of Snohomish County, woven not from any single institution or individual, but from countless acts of generosity, courage and presence. It is strengthened every time someone raises a hand and says yes: yes to mentoring a student, yes to serving on a nonprofit board, yes to coaching a team, yes to a volunteer shift after a long workweek. It is strengthened when leaders — established and emerging alike — choose to be visible not only in moments of success, but in moments of service.

For emerging leaders, experiences like this are transformative. They provide context that no classroom or seminar can replicate. Service grounds leadership in empathy. It sharpens perspective. It reminds us that progress is measured not only by outcomes, but by how we treat people along the way. For established leaders, these moments offer something equally valuable: recalibration. A reminder of why leadership matters in the first place.

There is another truth worth naming: Those who show up to serve often receive more than they give. Service doesn’t just help others, it recalibrates us. It pulls our attention outward when we’re tempted to spiral inward. For anyone feeling too depleted to raise their hand, this might be the very reason to try.

What we witnessed at Christmas House was not charity in the abstract. It was community in motion. It was the understanding that giving and receiving are not fixed roles. At different points in our lives, many of us will stand on both sides of that exchange. And it was the unmistakable joy that comes from being part of something larger than ourselves.

Snohomish County is fortunate to be home to so many people who understand this instinctively. People who show up when it would be easier not to. People who believe that leadership is something you practice, not something you claim. In a time when it is easy to feel disconnected, experiences like this remind us that the threads holding our community together are strong; and that each of us has a hand in maintaining them.

If there is a lesson to carry forward, it is this: Leadership lives where service and humanity meet. When we choose to show up for one another, we strengthen something essential: a living reciprocity rooted in our shared humanity. That recognition is the fabric and each time we show up, we add another thread.

Kathy Solberg is chief strategic officer for Leadership Snohomish County, and Josh Estes is co-president for its board of directors.