Transcript Governing for Healthy Leadership

Governing for Healthy
Leadership
Rev. Dr. Richard Speck
Joseph Priestley District
Introductions
Introduction – What I bring
Who’s in the room
• Name
• Congregation
• Role
• One hoped for outcome
“We live in anxious times.”
“Leadership is the art of hiding our
panic from others.”
Dr. Rabbi Edwin H. Friedman
Leadership
• Definition of a leader: A person who seeks to
create a new world.
– Awareness of imperfection.
– Unsatisfied with the status quo.
– Eager for something better.
– George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see
things as they are and say why - I dream
things that never were and say why not."
Leadership Primary Strategies
Keeping the congregation directly aligned with
its vision and mission is the primary task of
the board. Accountability for the welfare of
the congregation includes the following
strategies:
1.Setting the tone of cooperation
2.Inviting collaboration between people
3.Making major decisions
4.Mapping the direction on an annual basis
Leadership Primary Strategies
5.Establishing healthy boundaries
6.Encouraging self-expression from within
7.Staying in touch with the pulse and desires of
the congregation
8.Monitoring and restraining any behavior that
could potentially threaten the integrity of the
board and its accountability to the
congregation.
Leadership in Emotional Systems
• Critical to healthy emotional systems is
the ability of leaders to selfdifferentiate, i.e., defining self to others
while staying in touch with members of
the group, even if they remain reactive.
Healthy Leadership
• To become a well-differentiated, mature
person, one has to think from an “I
position” and focus on one’s own
functioning while still staying connected
to others. Self-differentiation is indeed
good stewardship of the self.
Healthy Leadership
• The differentiated, non-anxious leader works
on SELF, one’s own functioning. His or her
influence does not rely on personality, gaining
consensus, techniques or skills, piles of
information, or expertise. The field’s force is
influenced by the leader’s BEING (presence)
and DOING (functioning).
Healthy Leadership
• Leaders take responsibility for their own
actions. They are not responsible for
how others function.
• The leader is the person who most
influences an emotional field.
Leadership and the System
• Leadership is the ability to be in but not of a
system.
– Influencing and influenced by, but not
determined by.
– To be calm amidst the storm;
– To keep your head while
those about you are losing
theirs;
– To hide your panic.
Mature Leaders
Leadership is the spiritual process of
discerning what one believes (clarity), acting
on that belief in the public arena
(decisiveness), and standing behind that
action despite the varied responses of people
(courage).
Rev. Frank Thomas
Leadership Functioning
• Unhealthy relationships develop when the
leadership adapts to its weakest members
• Our adapting to them is our codependency
and enabling them
• We must focus on our strength and
principles
Courage of Leading
• Any time a leader or leadership group makes a
clear decision, some members will be unable
to resist the temptation to define themselves
as victims of the decision (“It was win/lose,
and we lost.”)
• We must set clear boundaries and need to
stand upon our principles as mature leaders.
Courage of Leading
• Any leadership body that adapts to those
members who cannot resist defining
themselves as victims puts itself at a
disadvantage in confronting challenges that
are inevitably part of achieving its mission.
• We need to stay true to our vision and
mission.
Courage of Leading
• The leader is not responsible for the entire
institution but only for the position of
leadership.
Healthy Response to Anxiety
•
•
•
•
Focus on your responsibility, not on others
Focus on your integrity, not unity
Focus on your strengths, not weaknesses
Focus on healthy process, not content
Healthy Response to Anxiety
• Focus on the challenge, not comfort
• Focus on the system, not on the symptoms
• Focus on the mission, not the conditions
Immunity
• A healthy community needs immunity. The
leadership must function as the community’s
system of immunity.
• The health or illness of a system depends
upon its leadership’s capacity to function as an
immune system to prevent dis-ease.
Building Immunity
• Many parallels exist between cellular
processes and emotional processes.
• Relationship systems need both stability and
change.
• People naturally react to change.
• The challenge of change provokes anxiety in a
system.
Twenty years from now you will
be more disappointed by the
things you didn't do than by
the ones you did do. So throw
off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch
the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Best Practices
Planning
• Timed agenda sent out in advance
• Post agenda before meeting for others to see
• Assigned roles and tasks
• Realistic agenda
Best Practices
Planning
• People come prepared
• Agreed to agenda
• Adequate time
• Vision and goals for organization
• Invite the right people
Best Practices
Process
• Check-in
• Create a covenant for behavior
• Use of religious symbols
• Mindfulness of UU principles
• Leader attentive to group process
• All feel heard
• Deep listening to each other
Best Practices
Process
• Sense of humor
• Optimism
• Inclusivity
• Enthusiasm
• Mutual trust of each other
• Equal participation
Best Practices
Process
• Civil treatment of all
• Environment comfortable
• Participate
• Be on the same page
• Consistent attendance
Best Practices
Technique
• Leader who leads
• Agenda driven and followed
• Meeting kept on track
• Strong chair or facilitator
• Have action items and responsibilities
• Use variety of activities for discussion
• Don’t get bogged down
Best Practices
Technique
• Delegation of tasks
• Time limited remarks
• Prepared to decide
• Parking lot for later discussion
• Know why they are present
• Use handouts and visuals for understanding
• Use electronic visuals to keep confusion down
Best Practices
Technique
• Provide a narrative with financial reports
• Table disagreements
• Small group discussions of contentious issues
• Building strong relations
• Welcoming disagreements
• End on time
Best Practices
Afterward
• Create summarized reports
• Have sense of accomplishment
• Good minutes
• Minutes issued timely
• Structured feedback
• Prepare stakeholders for decisions
• Have clear outcomes
Things that Improve Boards
• Members are approachable
• Nominating Committee knows what to look
for in board members
• Separating issues from emotions
• Finding 10 times and 10 ways to communicate
with the congregation
• Having board and committee manuals
• Having written job descriptions
Things that Improve Boards
•
•
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•
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Using early detection of problems
Having an organized structure for meetings
Keeping the meeting focused on policy level
Having a behavioral code
Each person knowing ten major things about
the church
Resources
UUA and JPD Resources
http://www.uua.org/leaders/104129.shtml
Selected Resources for Congregational Elected
Leaders
www.uua.org/publications/interconnections/
InterConnections - Resources for Lay Leaders
www.jpduua.org
Monthly packet, calendar of events
Resources
Additional Resources
Alban Institute
www.congregationalresources.org
Full of many helpful articles and book synopses
about church life
Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
www.greenleaf.org
Material on leadership in organizations
Healthy Congregations Workshop