Weakness and Community

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about weakness and leadership.  We all have weaknesses as individuals, even the best leaders -- though some of the less self-aware of us won't admit it and may not know what those weaknesses are.

It seems to me that the remedy for lack of self-awareness is community.  I suppose I can sit and reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses and figure some of it out, but to really see myself truly I need the reflection I can only get from the mirror of community.

As a simple example, think about a performance review for a job.  I've received and given many, and I am always struck by the interaction of reviewer and reviewee.  In good reviews, there is trust on both sides and willingness to listen and to speak by both parties. This is community: the ability on the one side to speak into someone else's life a truth that may be unrecognized or unwelcome, and the willingness on the other side to hear what is being said and to ingest it, to see whether it rings as true, why or why not, and what if anything I need to do about it.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when King David has been beaten in a battle and, as his army is walking past a hill, a man named Shimei calls out curses on him.  (Not the best method or timing for a performance review, you might say.)  David's men want to go kill Shimei, but David says, "No, let him speak.  It may be that he is speaking God's will to me."  Wow.  In the depth of despair, David has the willingness not just to listen to someone he respects, who he knows loves him, but even to listen to one who hates him and calls out curses upon him.

It is only when we have this attitude, when we are willing to listen to others in community, that we really come to know our weaknesses and how we should compensate for them.  And then we must take those steps, the first of which is generally to have someone near us who is strong where we are weak, and we must let them operate in that strength.

Leadership and Weeds

For the past week I was on a business trip.  Before I left, I'd noticed that spring had started to arrive.  The main indicator of this was that the weeds in our yard were starting to sprout.  So for the week prior to leaving, I weeded one section of yard -- and when I say yard, I'm not talking about flower beds, I'm talking about "lawn" -- each day.  Got through four of the six sections, and mowed three of them also.  Those three were looking all right.

The day we left, three hours before leaving for the airport, I put in one last-gasp effort to weed the two worst sections.  I filled our yard debris bin (very large) 2/3 full before I had to quit.  And those two sections of yard didn't look much different.

We arrived home late Sunday night (actually Monday morning at 1 a.m.), then I got up yesterday and got my third-grader off to school.  During both pre- and post-nap 3-year-old nap sessions, I got back to weeding those two sections again.  And a couple of critical leadership thoughts came to me that I thought I'd share in this brief post:

• Most tasks look fairly manageable from far away.  I learned this doing project management in the corporate world, and again while weeding.  The further away someone is from the work that needs to be done, the more reasonable it seems.  The deeper into the weeds you get, the more extensive the work gets.  This is important for leadership: never assume that someone else's job is manageable just because it looks that way from where you sit
• A lot of work takes place unseen.  People walking or driving by my house this morning undoubtedly still thinks my yard looks terrible.  The "grass" is still too high, there are still way too many weeds, and things are not neatly trimmed and edged.  If you asked one of my neighbors how much work I had put in on my yard in the past two weeks, they'd at least be tempted to say "none."  Truth be told, I've probably put in 25-30 hours in that time frame.  Again, leadership must acknowledge the amount of work that goes into every task.  Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, loves to skewer project leaders for padding their project estimates.  But there's a valid side to those estimates: a lot of extra work will be done that no one will notice
• The best work is preventive and proactive.  This occurred to me as I plucked the 1000th wispy-white dandelion head to prevent it from seeding.  If I did a better job "taking care of" those weeds between November and February, maybe March and April wouldn't be so nasty.  This may be the great flaw in our current economic and social systems: we are so busy that we can't work ahead much of the time but instead just do what's next on the list.  Leadership must find a way to recognize -- and do -- the future tasks even if no one else sees them.  We have a million things to do for SEED, but the most important ones are the tasks that will prevent our having to do ten times as many later.  And that means more visible tasks may not get done when, or as fast as, others expect them to be done

Sometimes leadership is unpleasant, or unpopular, or even invisible, isn't it?

Politics, the Other Kind

It seems everywhere I go lately I've ended up in conversations with people about "politics."  Not the elected, government kind but the office and organizational kind.  Numerous people have commented that they hate politics -- a common lament.  Sadly, however, they have been following that with another comment: that they are withdrawing from full, active participation in the organization and some of its crucial conversations.

I don't remember who it was (apologies, especially if you're reading this) but a friend recently had an insight on this topic.  She (he?) said it's absurd to rail against "politics" because politics is really just about people.  She was right: what we refer to as politics is really just individuals and groups of people working hard for what they believe is best.

Now, I'm certainly not naive enough to think that everyone is always working for what really is best. And I'm not foolish enough to think that everyone is working for what is best for the organization, or for all involved.  Sometimes people work hard for what will be best for them, even though that might not be best for the organization, other employees, customers, etc. (Exhibit A: Congress).

Regardless, it is hard for me to be a part of something and not be willing to work to make it better.  It's part of what makes me: improvement, development, is my heartbeat.  Almost every group I join I end up either leading or trying to coach others.  This, as you can imagine, sometimes makes me unwelcome.  Some groups don't want to rethink the way they do things, don't want to look for ways to make it better.  Maybe they just went through a change, maybe the rest of their lives are full of hard work and they don't want to add another place of hard work.  I get that.  No need for me to be offended by it.  I am a change agent, and in a system that isn't ready for change, get ejected.  No problem.

But I don't think "politics" is a sufficient reason to stop trying.  Politics, in its real sense, is how groups of people make decisions.  I want to understand where people are coming from, why they think the way they do and want what they want.  Then I want to work with them to craft a solution that meets what they -- and others! -- want without all the hard feelings.

By God's good grace, he has gifted me in the very area of my passion.  I both thrill and excel at getting diverse groups of people to see each other's needs and collaborate to satisfy all.  You can see this in the work I did at Kaiser Permanente, my former employer; in my work with AllOne Community Services, striving against history to bring a group of churches and pastors into dialogue about collaboratively meeting community needs; and in my work with SEED Livelihood Network, encouraging pastors, lay people, resourced and un- or underresourced, first- and developing-world, to dream together about ways to promote economic justice and sustainable livelihoods for all people.

So to politics I say, "Bring it on!"  Let's enter into healthy, effective ways of making group decisions about our workgroups, our churches, our organizations, and let's keep the dialogue going.

Friends and Politics

I spent my five days in Colorado with my best college buddy Jim, and we also spent two days with another college friend Kellee.  Without knowing it, I've learned a lot about leadership from both of them.

In college I was two years ahead of both of them.  Based on personality and age, early on I was more often the leader in my friendship with Jim.  Over the years (exactly half my life I've known him now!) our relationship has morphed in many ways.  We lived thousands of miles away for two years when I moved back to Portland after college; then when he graduated we were apartment-mates for a year before Rose and I married; then we were an hour apart for the next three years when I still lived in Michigan; then three years I was in Philly; and now nine years I've been in Portland.

We've shown over time how a relationship can ebb and flow and change with distance, life stage, and technology.  (When I was in Portland he in Chicago or Rochester, MN, we used to write 8-page handwritten letters about once a week!)  We were each the best man in the other's wedding and have experienced the joy and pain, excitement and sometime frustration of being married to women who are so different from us.  Our firstborn kids were born about a week apart ... but his was very premature and ended up passing.  Zephaniah's birthday is always tinged with a bit of sadness for me for that reason.

Now we have this tradition of being together for the NCAA Tournament.  We've always talked about family, jobs, churches, what we're reading, new and old friends, and many other topics.  But this year, for the first time I can remember, we talked politics quite a bit, too.  And it was enlightening.

Through the Facebook posts and links we choose, we've learned that we are at very different places politically.  I tend to lean fairly heavily Democratic while he is holds pretty strong Republican views.  While I think he's made some mistakes, I still think the world of Obama; Jim is a strong supporter of Sarah Palin.

To be honest, I was a little concerned to broach the political topic during our time.  I know it can be a hot button for a lot of people.  And, probably, I've mentally bought into the press' opinion that Palin supporters won't listen to Obama supporters and vice versa.  I wasn't sure how well we'd do talking about these volatile topics.

You know what?  We did great.  We had a long conversation one evening and the next morning and explored each other's perspective and reason for that perspective.  Why did it work so well ... and why don't so many others have these kinds of conversations?  Let me list a few things I learned about this leadership through this dialogue:

1. At the end of the conversation, neither of us was convinced by the other ... and that wasn't the goal.  Leadership is not simply persuasion -- I'm tempted to say "anyone can persuade."  We didn't pick and choose the facts and opinions we shared, we just talked.  Leadership isn't afraid to put all the facts out there and let people decide for themselves.  Along a similar line, Jim and I are both staunch Christians, and one thing we both stand on in our faith is that Jesus will stand up to scrutiny.  You could put either of us in a room with people of other faiths for a free dialogue, and we would simply state who Jesus is.  We are not his primary defenders, He is, and He can handle it
2. Each of us entered the conversation knowing, in our hearts, that 'our side' had made some mistakes ... and we were willing to admit that to each other.  Too often, it seems, people don't want to admit that they, their opinions, their policies, are imperfect, incomplete, and open to changing.  The pressure to always have the full right answer, in the middle of a constantly changing world, is just foolish.  Leadership isn't afraid to admit that others have valuable insights, too, even - gasp! - those in the other political party
3. When the other opened that door of vulnerability, admitting uncertainty or possible failure, neither of us jumped on it.  If I recognize that I am imperfect, the admission of someone else's imperfection should be treated matter-of-factly, not jumped on or trumpeted.  Leadership gives grace to others to succeed or fail.  We started learning from each other what constitutes a success, and what each party contributes to the national conversation
4. We quickly recognized that part of the problem with the political conversation is that it is often portrayed as dichotomous, as though there were always and ever only two viewpoints on an issue, the Republican and the Democratic.  How foolish!  The first thing you learn in kindergarten is that everyone has their own opinions, their own ways of doing things, and that many of them are valid.  How is it that people in their 20s, 40s, or 70s have forgotten this?  How is it that we've allowed ourselves to be sold this?  Leadership doesn't allow those with a vested interest to limit the parameters of the discussion so that critical perspectives are shut out
5. Perhaps most importantly, we learned that if the discussion centers on an issue, it will divide, but if it starts from a perspective of relationship, it can strengthen us.  Too often conversations focus on our differences of opinion instead of on our mutual desired outcomes.  Jim and I both want the US to get better; we both want the ability to work and provide for our families and have our kids learn at school and to worship freely and ... you know, the basics.  All these political issues just represent different ways to try to accomplish these things.  Leadership focuses its energy on agreement about the ends first, then determining best means.  It's a waste of time, energy, and resources, and a danger to relationship, to focus on the how before we focus on the what and the why

This could keep going, but I'm hopeful this starts a dialogue about, well, how to dialogue.