Wisdom from Within About Leadership

A series appreciative interviews to share wisdom and perspectives
within the region seemed to be a good place to start. As luck would have
it, the topic for the first interview presented itself when Mary Page
Sims of the URI of Henderson County CC sent out an email inquiry about
how to sustain and develop leadership in the CC's. Maybe some of
you saw the flurry of e-mails that resulted. I took this as a cue to
interview Mary Page about her own view on the subject, since she has been
involved with URI from the time of the Third Global Summit.

About a week before our telephone appointment, I sent her a list of
appreciative questions to frame our conversation. We touched on most of
these questions, and we also followed the conversation where it led. Here
are the questions. They may also be useful to others:

• What wisdom does your faith tradition hold about leadership?
• How do you see leadership in the context of URI?
• How is the wisdom about leadership emerging in URI — the same
  or different than that in your tradition?
• What role does power play in the context of URI?
• Are there stages in the URI leadership process?
• What is the relationship between leadership and participation?
• There are different models of leadership. What models have been
  helpful to you and how do they express themselves in the context of
  URI?
• How can URI sustain leadership? How can URI support participant
  empowerment? Support emerging leaders? Support current leaders?

Interview with Mary Page Sims

(The following is a Paraphrase of Mary Page's responses to
the questions. As much as possible I have tried to include her wording,
but this is rewritten from hand notes. I sent her a copy of my notes and
she has graciously added revisions.)

Mary Page has been involved in URI since the Third Global Summit,
which was held at Stanford University. Being inspired by the Summit and
drawing on her dream of interfaith cooperation she began a Cooperation
Circle (CC).

We discussed some of the email exchanges that have recently taken
place about the issue of leadership. She noted that it has been useful to
her to talk with Sally Mahe at the San Francisco office about her
experience with her own CC. She also noted that the process of thinking
about the leadership questions that I prepared for our conversation was
extremely helpful.

We then started talking about the importance of the topic.

A lot of CC's are experiencing the process of struggling with
renewal. The fire was burning brightly, but now it has burned down to the
coals. They are good coals but now the question is how to revitalize or
discern the future. She mentioned that this is a natural phenomenon in
organizations — particularly all-volunteer organizations. We're
at a point where some CC's are in a down swing and want to know
what to do.

In response to the question of wisdom about leadership in her own
faith tradition, Mary Page said she, as a Christian, believes leadership
is not about dominating but empowering, based on Jesus' saying
that those who would be great among us must be servants. In addition she
said she greatly appreciated this being the first question. She believes
it would be enlightening for CCs to look at leadership by looking at its
understanding in each person's faith tradition. Mary Page comes
from an Episcopal background. The Episcopal Church is governed by a body
called the General Convention, consisting of two houses: the House of
Bishops and the House of Deputies. The deputies consist of an equal
number of clergy and laity elected by their respective dioceses. It is a
democratic body and this body speaks for the church in America. The
Episcopal Church is also a hierarchical system. Authority for truth and
standards for discernment of Spirit comes from scripture, tradition and
reason (which includes experience). Voting occurs at General Convention
and the majority rules. The other Christian tradition Mary Page is
familiar with is the Friends (or the Quaker tradition). The Quakers
practice a circular model of leadership and the authority for discernment
of Spirit rests in the personal conscience of the Quaker. Decisions are
made by consensus.

She is beginning to see URI as struggling between these two models of
Christian organization, and she thinks there are advantages to each one
— there is clarity and decisiveness and effectiveness in majority rules
and there is inclusion and community building in the Quakers.

(In the next segment of the interview at my request, Mary Page
talked about inspiring vision and then empowerment and clarity as skills
of leadership.)

In terms of characteristics of a leader, Mary Page said first and
foremost the leader must have a passion for the vision. Then the person
needs skills for organization and empowering people — or the know-how to
find people who do. She places passion for the vision first because of
Jesus as well — his vision of the Kingdom ruled his life and caught
people on fire. She said Sally Mahe helped her in thinking about the fact
that when an organization starts losing energy the vision needs to be
revisited and either confirmed, revised or expanded. Can we expand our
vision to be more of service or do we need to let go of dead wood?

When several people begin saying the same thing, she says she pays
attention. Right now several of the Trustees are saying it is time for
them to do something else. It's not that they are not interested
it's just time to do something else. Most of the Trustees are
feeling this way. A problem in attracting people for roles of
responsibility is the fact that many gifted people are so busy they
cannot take on one more job. "We have some people on the Circle
who do excellent work in volunteer organizations and simply do not have
enough time to take on a role in the URI." Many times people with
skills don't have the time and people with time may not have the
skills. Her CC is re-evaluating how to go forward.

Mary Page believes it would be helpful and inspiring to her to hear
more from the Global Council. What is going on? They can't speak
for the CC's but they could speak to the CC's about the
Global Council's struggles and ideas. At the present time she
feels a total disconnect with this elected body.

What has inspired her is the recent letter from Charles Gibbs about
CCs working on their affiliation with the UN. There is a UNA-USA
organization in nearby Asheville. She wants to investigate linkages. Of
course September 21 is the International Day of Peace set by the UN that
we are encouraged to support — as well as June 5 being
Environmental Day.

"The URI Charter sets up the dynamic of individual CC autonomy
and global community. How to do both? I believe the Global Council could
point out issues that are in the Charter that we can all rally around —
creation, poverty, etc. I believe we need a global voice of some
kind."

(Next I asked Mary Page to talk a bit about the role power plays in
URI.)

She said she has a terrible time with the word "power"
(perhaps stemming from her being a woman — she thinks power is more of a
male word). In any event, she understands the word to mean
"ability to influence". Power can be used to dominate or to
empower. The Quakers say that there is that of God in every person.
Leadership thus empowers a person to fulfill their dreams — to do
what they are inspired to do. If someone says they want to collect teddy
bears and distribute them we can say: "Great idea. Do it!"
We also want to expand the number of people energized. One way to do this
is to send different people to the regional and global gatherings. She
also thinks it important that CCs take the responsibility for sending
someone. The URI has needed to pay for many people to come from time to
time, but she thinks more and more we need to take responsibility for our
own and share with other CCs.

Her CC has agreed to a circular model of governance (like the one
described in Christina Baldwin's book, Calling the Circle).
"Wisdom comes from the center. We are all in the circle —
even the leader of the circle — and whoever is inspired speaks. We light
a candle in the center to represent that reality."

Next we talked about the URI's organizational process, spending a
few moments to recall the appreciative stages — Discovery, Dreaming,
Design and Destiny. Mary Page noted that, in her opinion, URI has been
excellent at discovering and dreaming but not as skilled in design and
destiny (or implementation).

Mary Page has an organizational model that has been meaningful to her.
It consists of four elements as well: vision; enrollment of people into
the vision; the offering of individual gifts to implement the vision and
finally structure. She thinks she/we need help in developing creative
structures.

At this point we talked about trends in volunteer involvement and the
rise of the one day commitment… in which many people want to
commit to a one time experience and not an ongoing one. There may be a
place for both these types of involvement in URI as well as other
arrangements.

Mary Page then talked about Clarity. When there is a clear vision,
then there will be a clear structure to implement it. For example, every
year the CC has a New Year's Eve Interfaith service. It's
the highlight of the year and has a wonderful program committee of four
people who do it every year. CC members are clear about the value of it,
so it's easy to get it organized. Her CC is clear that their niche
in the community is as a peace organization, promoting peace by promoting
understanding among the religions present in the community and by
encouraging peace: inwardly, locally and globally. They spent several
years discerning their unique gift. There are excellent ecological and
social justice organizations and they did not want to compete with them
— but support them — and offer another needed service.

The challenge now, according to Mary Page, is for her CC to revisit
vision, and to seek out people who have the passion and the skills to
help promote this global vision of peace. One thing is clear in her mind.
The vision of the URI will grow and deepen.

Afterword

After the interview Mary page sent me an email about the action taken
by her CC. She noted that it is an attempt of the CC to renew itself:

"Our meeting yesterday of the Circle of Trustees went very well
— we dissolved our current Circle and agreed to create another Circle in
August consisting of trustees who can devote time and energy to our
vision and projects. It was important for us to evolve to this point, I
think, with people on the Circle who could only act in an advisory role
— but that time is gone. One reason, I believe, is because of what you
said about volunteers wanting "one" event — not ongoing. Most
of our trustees simply do not want social meetings — only task oriented
meetings that are very efficient in terms of time. Our new structure will
concentrate on the creation of our programs and the interfaith service
within a four month timeframe (we will begin meeting in August and our
work, including fundraising, creation of programs and planning for our
interfaith service will occur by the end of November). We'll see how
this goes — five of the 12 trustees are committing to the new structure.
Now we will "scout" for people with passion and time and
skills.

Resources Related to the Interview

Here are some introductory websites and books about some of the topics
mentioned in the interview; appreciative inquiry, metanoic organization,
circular leadership, and servant leadership.

• Appreciative
  Inquiry: A quick overview
• Appreciative Inquiry
  Commons
• 
  Metanoic organizations an article by Keifer and Senge
• An
  overview with references:
• An
  interview with Christina Baldwin author of Calling the Circle:
• Christina
  Baldwin's website
• 
  Another interesting circle site
• The Institute for Servant
  Leadership:
• 
  Also about the servant leadership model

Many Blessings,
Patricia Morningstar Member,
URI North American Regional Support Team Member,
URI Northern Virginia Interfaith Explorers

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