leadership – PurpleSage41

Advent begins with hope, which continues as we move into a new year. We can choose our attitude. We can be optimistic, expecting that everything will turn out all right in the end. Yes, there is war in Gaza and Ukraine, and drought and famine and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and species extinction and rising sea levels and a crisis of democracy here and around the world. Optimists just shrug and are confident that all will be well in the end. No need to do anything different.

Pessimists reach the same conclusion from the opposite perspective. Nothing I do will make any difference. We are headed into a not so brave new world, one where we can’t believe what we hear and see, because of the failings of our institutions and the advent of artificial intelligence. So, let’s eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

In between the extremes of unjustified optimism and defeatist pessimism lies the middle path of hope. But not just passive hope. Theologian Joanna Macy insists hope is worth no more than either pessimism or optimism unless it is active hope. What are you going to do to bring about a different, better outcome in 2024?

Some of our aspirations (also sometimes known as New Year’s resolutions) tend to be personal—like the perennial goals of eating better, watching less TV, getting more exercise, spending more time with friends and family, reading one hundred books. Those are fine goals, but notice that they are input goals, not output goals or results. If your aspiration is weight loss, for example, the experts tell us to focus on controlling your intake of food and your hours of exercise, not losing twenty pounds. You can only control inputs, not outcomes.

Your personal hope is a healthy body, mind and spirit. Active hope means identifying actions that we can take that will make those outcomes more likely.

The same advice applies to our hopes for our world, our nation, our communities. Yet, we need for our society—our communities, our nation, our world—the same identification of desired outcomes and actions we can undertake that make those outcomes more likely. My aspirations for the world are peace, justice, democracy, and sustainability. Those may not be your goals, but whatever hopes you have for the world, nation or community, the same advice applies.

Some of my inputs are personal choices that promote those goals—the way I deal with energy use, eating habits and gardening (organically), work for peaceful solutions to conflict in the family and the neighborhood, respect differences of opinion and seek common ground, and the way I stay informed about how my choices impact those aspirational goals so that I can choose more wisely. But they are not enough. I cannot save the world by recycling or other individual acts. They are necessary but not sufficient, as the mathematicians like to say.

Perhaps you are familiar with Marge Piercy’s poem:

“Alone, you can fight,

You can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, snake-dancing file

Can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization….

Google the rest of it! Her point is that we are stronger and more effective in groups than as isolated individuals. Shared aspirations for a better future for ourselves and our children require a community. I would add a second point — Don’t go looking for the World Improvement Society. There are many changes that our world needs, and we can’t tackle them all at once. Find an organization that matches one or two of those aspirational goals, one which also matches your skills, experience, and knowledge (or a willingness to acquire them).

For me, the organizational choices were easy, made long ago. One group is focused, the other more general. My faith community shares all those aspirations and encourages us to work toward one or several of them in partnership with our brothers and sisters in faith. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club or a political party may be a better fit for some readers.

While I contribute financially to a wide range of “do-good” organizations at the local, state and national levels, the organization on which I have focused much of my “save the world” time and effort for the past 55 years is the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voter matches my skills and experience and is primarily focused on democracy. You may be drawn to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, or some other organization that engages in direct action or lobbies for policy decisions that improve the world we live in.

When it comes to saving the world, what part of that agenda speaks to you, where does your particular passion meet your skills? What organized group of people can best help you channel your effort to making the world a better place both for us and future generations? How can you participate in that work?

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making. Check back with me in 12 months and we will see how much progress we have made on our little piece of the action for a better future.

Leadership in volunteer organizations has high turnover and frequent burnout. If you are paid staff or a volunteer in a church, civic organization, or other kind of non-business organization, you need to brace yourself for that possibility, whether it is burning out yourself or failing to find, train and support new leaders.

In describing the work of corporations, economists invented a fictional character called the residual claimant. That’s the person, or persons, who get what’s left over after the revenues roll in and the company’s suppliers and workers and banks have been paid. That leftover is called profit—or loss. In a for-profit company, profit or loss belongs to the residual claimant—the owners in a privately owned company, the stockholders in a publicly traded company.

In nonprofit organizations, there is no residual claimant, because presumably there is no profit. But there is something similar. In these organizations, people accept various responsibilities. They may sort groceries or do client intake in a food bank, coach a kids’ basketball team or take care of the grounds, edit the newsletter or make the coffee. But there are usually some leftover responsibilities that don’t belong to anyone in particular. It may be putting the chairs back after a meeting, or welcoming visitors, but whatever the leftover chores are, they belong to the person (or people) I call the residual obligants. In a church the residual obligant.is often the minister. In most volunteer organizations, it’s the president, or the secretary (paid or volunteer), or some of each. Think about the times when you were the residual obligant. How did it make you it feel? Virtuous? Resentful? You are not alone, even though you may feel that way.

The leftover tasks that don’t seem to belong to anyone are the ones that make leaders burn out. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a call that someone has droped an obligation or needed a meeting covered. I may need to find someone to drive a member somewhere or be there to sign for a package or fill in for a missing speaker/teacher/cake provider/greeter. I recall the time that a colleague was supposed to give a speech in a distant county, and he called in sick. The group asked if he would send the speech and they would read it. Turned out, not to my surprise, he hadn’t written it yet, and wasn’t planning to. It was five days before my daughter’s wedding, and her in-laws were arriving that day, holding the rehearsal dinner three days later at my house. I hadn’t cleaned the refrigerator. I wrote the speech, and three of my close friends cleaned the refrigerator.

One response to the challenge of unassigned duties is a common style of leadership in volunteer communities that I call the “Lone Ranger syndrome.” For women, it might be called the Supermom syndrome. It’s easier to do it myself than to hunt down a volunteer or pester a teenage daughter. But being unwilling or unable to delegate is a form of failure in another dimension of leadership, because part of your job is to teach people (or offspring) what it means to be part of a community or a family.

The Lone Ranger leadership styles takes various forms. The first is the delusion of superman. The thinking process goes like this: I know better than these fools and I can set everything straight single-handedly. Give me advice I can agree with if you want to belong to my team, which is not really a team because I get to make all the decisions and take all the credit.

The second style might be labeled helicopter mom, a term popular familiar to college faculty and staff working with young adults. It is based on fear and the need to control. Here the thought process is like this: If I really delegate, I lose control. The person to whom I delegated may screw up and I will have to clean up the mess. So even when I delegate, I am sorely tempted to continue to oversee, second guess, and often overrule. This style relies heavily on preventing people from making mistakes, but making mistakes is actually one of the primary ways in which we learn.

The third Lone Ranger leadership style is based on an aversion to asking for help. It’s easier to do it all myself. Watch this person burn out. Watch this person scare off anyone else from picking up her mantle because the job looks too overwhelming. I have operated in that style in the past, but I hope I have learned better.

If you think I have real people in mind, you are right. And at various times in my leadership roles, I have been guilty of at least the last two. What all three have in common is that they fail to create a sense of ownership among others and develop new leadership that can pick up the ball when it’s time to move on. All three styles are also an invitation to burnout.

A lone ranger or superman operating style fails to build and sustain the connected web of community that can prevent or mitigate future problems and crises. So lone rangers need to be appreciated for their good intentions but schooled in the ways of community, a hard task in a society that is very individualistic. Each of us needs to look at our own operating style in leadership roles or the qualities we look for in choosing leaders. We need to reflect on how our communities—families, neighborhoods, congregations, nations—can all work better if we adopt, model, teach and/or applaud a leadership style that is intentionally collaborative.

Delegation is an important form of collaboration. It’s also the best way to avoid becoming the residual obligant. Delegating doesn’t mean that you do nothing. You are a part of a team, and everyone on the team pitches in to make things happen. Just don’t take on more than your share of the responsibility. If the team is sponsoring an even that requires food, bring one item. When you are functioning in your president role to conduct a membership meeting or introduce a speaker, it’s someone else’s job to set up chairs, greet visitors, or make the coffee. Your job in that moment is to be the president. The next time you are tempted to say, I can take care of that—stifle yourself. Failure to delegate is a form of enabling others to shirk. Ask someone else. Wait for the silence to get someone to step forward. Or consider whether that particular event, or action, needs to happen at all if nobody cares enough to do it. It’s a teachable moment. Make the most of it.

Tag: leadership

The Season of Hope

Don’t be a Lone Ranger!