Entries Tagged 'leadership' ↓

I agreed to guest-blog for Mark Maynard about the Michigan Policy Summit last weekend. And I figured, hey, if it’s worth posting once, it’s worth posting twice. So here are my thoughts on the Summit.

Number one thing that rocked: The best part of the summit was the way it brought the Michigan progressive community together.

When 800 people from all over Michigan and all areas of the progressive movement come together, you know that’s a good thing.

I had the chance to hear what ACCESS is doing about immigrant rights and what Transit Rider United is doing to promote rail transit Michigan. I also had the chance to tell the Unitarian Universalist Social Action Network about the Torture is Wrong banner campaign.

It was a great chance to build a stronger, more cohesive Progressive movement in Michigan.

Number one thing that sucked: For all this great group of people, they didn’t find a good way to get people connecting with each other. Most of the summit was based around the people listening: listening Amy Goodman, listening to the workshop leaders, listening to Jim Hightower.

There’s not a lot of chance to make connections there.

Next year when I go (and I am definitely going), I may just skip the workshops and use that time to talk to people.

Other things that rocked:

• Amy Goodman was incredible! She was magnetic in the way she presented the need for progressive change.
• Jim Hightower was also incredible. He was also funny, and we could use more funny in progressive politics.
• The afterglow at the end of the conference was a highpoint for me. I really enjoyed the chance to re-connect with friends from across the state.
• Some of the workshops were excellent. I attended the “Putting it all together” workshop on options for healthcare reform, which was an excellent primer on the different models of health care reform in the U.S. I learned a lot there. I also heard very good things about the communications workshop by Dan Farough of Progress Michigan.
• I enjoyed visiting the information tables by various groups across the state. Since the agenda didn’t promote much conversation, this was my best chance to connect with partners and potential partners across the state.

Other things that sucked.

• I’m glad that the regional breakouts tried to create a space for discussion, but the groups were so large and the structure so weak that we never got to real dialogue, only serial monologues.
• Some of the issue workshops were painful. I don’t need you to read me PowerPoint slides that I could read myself telling me statistics I won’t remember trying to convince me of something I already agree with.
• The organizers try hard to promote racial diversity, but as with the progressive movement as a whole, they still have some work to do.

The Policy Summit has a bold goal: to unite the progressive movement in Michigan across issue silos. That’s a tall order, especially for just an eight-hour summit.

So while I have my complaints, I think they are doing an excellent job, and I’ll definitely be back next year.

Just a quick follow up to my post on who to invite: it’s downright dangerous to have decisions made by people who all think the same.

First, their decisions won’t have the strength of multiple viewpoints.

Second, the decisions will face more opposition when they come to the larger group.

I saw this recently when the City of Ann Arbor was considering creating a greenway through the city. In good municipal fashion, they convened a greenway committee.

Who signed up to be on the greenway committee? The people who are passionate about a greenway!

Now I’m not a greenway advocate, so when I look at their decision, it doesn’t have legitimacy to me, because I don’t think it really looked at the issue in a comprehensive way.

Another example: a local Catholic parish used to have a Life Committee (or some such group). In Catholic social teaching, the sanctity of life leads the Catholic Church to oppose many things, not just abortion and euthanasia but also war, poverty, and the death penalty.

But the Life Committee just cared about abortion.

They were a faction.

And they lost legitimacy for it.

So, if you want to create a faction that will promote a narrow perspective (and there is value in this, to be sure), by all means, only seek out the hard-core fringe of people who would volunteer themselves to be on that committee.

But if you want sound and balanced decisions that will have more legitimacy in the wider community, then you have a harder task ahead. Then you need to recruit not just people who already agree with you and think like you, you have to recruit people with different perspecitves.

And then the hard work begins…

you have to respect those different perspectives.

One of the things that I like about You Don’t Have to Do it Alone is that it invites us to be thoughtful about the things we often decide on auto-pilot.

For example, who we invite to participate in a project?

Often the answer is “whoever we can get.”

You don’t have to however challenges us to:

• include more people
• consider what types of people you need to include
• consider when in the project you need what types of collaboration.

In terms of the considering the types of people to involve, the authors identify six categories of people to include:

• people who care;
• people with authority and responsibility;
• people with information and expertise;
• people who will be personally affected;
• people with diverse points of view;
• people who are considered troublemakers

I have a board member who is an expert at this. She has an excellent grasp on the fact that difficult decisions need to include a variety of people: people with different perspectives, people who know the topic, people who can get it done.

She also knows that you can sometimes prevent a lot of opposition from troublemakes by getting their involvement as the start. That way they aren’t opposing you at the finish.

And as a bonus, you often get a better, more informed decision by including them.

Community builders Valdes Krebs and June Holley write, ‘Without active leaders who take responsibility for building a network, spontaneous connections between groups emerge very slowly, or not at all. We call this active leader a network weaver.’

In Alison Fine’s Social Citizens Discussion Paper, she describes how millenials (the under-30 crowd) see leadership as less top-down and more side-by-side.

How can this be?

Because the emerging model of leadership isn’t based on the power of a hierarchical command-and-control mechanism but more on a dynamic network of connected individuals.

Will it work? I don’t know. It’s a good fit for ICPJ, because we are so volunteer-based that command-and-control doesn’t work anyway.

But here’s the thing. Even without control, there is a place for leaders.

Leaders build connections.

Leaders inspire followers–willing, volunteer followers, that is.

Leaders weave the network of community.

Yes, if we’re all together in a web, we still need spinners (or spiders) to help create it.

The Center for Progressive Leadership Action Network has launched a great tool listing progressive training opportunities.

You can view a map with 2008 training opportunities, or view a calendar of all the opportunities nation-wide.

There are a few bugs to work out, a lot of the opportunities are already out-of-date, for example,  but it’s a great resource nonetheless.

“Overall we’re very satisfied with your work…”

Even when this statement is true, it sounds hollow and vague.

But the critiques that follow it are always specific, and often painful to hear.

I know, I often use variations of this line myself.

But when it’s used on me, I realize how it comes off as an empty platitude.

How should you respond?

One way is to avoid giving criticism or corrective feedback. There are some who advocate this path. They say you’ll get farther with only praise than you ever would with only criticism.

If you look through my blog posts, you’ll see I’m far too opinionated for that approach to work for me.

There is another alternative, though. You can make your praise just as specific as your criticism.

Instead of saying “you did a good job chairing that meeting (followed by the inevitable “but…”),” you can say, “I thought you did an excellent job giving the group time for informal discussion and then gently bringing us back on topic.”

Yes, it takes more thought to pick out specific examples of what to praise, but it’s much more meaningful for the person who hears it.

And if we want their continued support, we owe them this extra work.

And we especially owe it to them if we’re going to offer corrective feedback.

Last year ICPJ organized a bus trip to the SOA Watch vigil at Ft. Benning, GA.

After loading up, we got on the bus and on the highway. Our driver handled the bus well and drove safely, both of which are key marks for someone you want behind the wheel.

There was just one problem.

He went the wrong way. He drove west on I-94 instead of east.

I’ve been thinking about this as we prepare for staff evaluations. In all humility, I think I’m pretty good at what I do. And my past evaluations have supported that: I’ve gotten good ratings from our members and volunteers.

But just because I run a good meeting or produce a good newsletter doesn’t mean that we as an organization is moving in the right direction.

Yes, we need to make sure that I’m a good driver, but we also need to make sure that we as a community are going the right way.

Last post (I think) on Allison Fine’s book Momentum: Ignititing Social Change in the Connected Age. She writes:

To reach the broadest possible audience, organizations should present a continuum of opportunities and ways for people to participate from lot to high intensity.

True.

Except when it isn’t.

Too many opportunities can overwhelm rather than empower.

Consider the Paradox of Choice.

Consider the Big Red Fez.

Consider Discovering the Activation Point.

Consider Don’t Make Me Think.

In a world where people are overwhelmed by choices, sometimes the best way to help a potential supporter take action is to give them a single simple path to action.

Sign this petition.

Donate $25 dollars.

Click to send a letter.

When I volunteer at a food bank, I don’t want to be asked to plan nutrition plans or to analyze the opportunities and dangers of the corporate food system to both cause and alleviate hunger. I want to be told, “put those cans from that pallet onto this shelf.”

Allison Fine is right, you need to have the door open to higher levels of involvement. It also helps to spell out what these higher levels could be.

But it’s also important to save your supporters from the load of always playing “choose your own adventure” when it comes to getting involved.

——————–

Since this is my last post on Momentum, let me also share a few final words of overview. It’s an excellent book that will make you think about how the hyper-connectivity of today’s world affects the social sector.

Allison Fine is a true believer here, and as such she sometimes goes overboard. In particular, she tends to overplay the power of connection technology and underplay the continued relevance of existing tools. For example, when she says “throw out your direct mail handbook,” well, that’s just plain foolishness. For most organizations online giving is a small fraction of direct mail giving, and that will be the case for some time to come.

This over-zealousness may be vital for her to make her point. A less enthusiastic book would be less thought-provoking, not to mention less interesting.

Soon a good friend of mine, Joel Devonshire, is leaving Ann Arbor, and leaving his place as chair of ICPJ’s Latin America Task Force.

For a going away gift, I’m giving him Leonard Doohan’s Spiritual Leadership: The Quest for Integrity. And, because I am cheap want to conserve paper, I’m reading it before I give it to him (and I’m hoping he doesn’t read this blog so the secret doesn’t get out).

Doohan quotes Keith Grint to say:

it seems taht the errors of leaders are commonplace, but what distinguishes a successful from a failed leaders is whether the subordinates can and will save the organization from the mistakes of it’s leaders.

I’ve seen many organizations flounder under poor leadership. What breaks my heart is that too often others in the organization are unwilling to intervene. The board, the volunteers, the other staff are afraid to speak the truth to the Executive Director, or to hold the Director accountable to respond to these concerns.

(Oh, how I wish I could give examples here to clarify this point.)

This raises three leadership questions:

1. How can organizations build the internal strength to confront leadership mistakes? One of my fears is that I will overstay my usefulness at ICPJ and that nobody will do anything about it. If I go off the deep end or get out of touch with our members and our mission, I want our Board and Program Committees to be strong enough to deal with that reality.
2. How can leaders maintain the humility to accept that they make mistakes and to learn from them? I know I make mistakes. I also know that sometimes I bristle when they are pointed out to me.

Sorry, I can’t offer any simple answers here. Others have written at length about the value of good evaluation, strong boards, and personal development. All of these are hard work; not easy fixes. But given that we all make mistakes, this hard work is necessary

Among the questions that face ICPJ is how we should deal with generation changes. In particular, ICPJ faces three questions about recruiting the next generation of activists:

1. Should we intentionally focus on trying to recruit, train, and engage a younger crop of activists? (For those of you who don’t know, ICPJ’s membership tends toward the older edge of the age spectrum.)
2. If so how do we go about that recruitment?
3. Finally, are we willing to make the changes necessary to recruit younger activists?

I often hear people assert the need to get more young people involved. What I don’t hear is a willingness to move the table so we can be welcoming to them.  Are we willing to:

• give up meeting in church basements;
• spend the extra time to recruit childcare volunteers for every meeting and event;
• have more fun;
• spend less time in meetings in  chatter;
• spend more time in meetings in  chatter;
• put more energy into online outreach;
• make it easier for time and attention-starved people to get involved;
• do more outlandish,  civil-disobedience type events; or
• give up lecturing and telling people how to organize?

These are just some examples. I don’t know what would have to change to be a more welcoming environment for younger activists. I do know that we will need to change.

Jesus taught that you don’t pour new wine into old wineskins (Mat 9:17). If ICPJ is going to welcome the next generation of peace and justice activists into our midsts, we will need to renew ourselves. We will need to change.

Are we willing?