{"id":15433,"date":"2017-11-16T19:46:03","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T03:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15433"},"modified":"2017-11-16T19:46:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T03:46:03","slug":"an-exercise-in-open-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/an-exercise-in-open-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"An Exercise in Open Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the past two days, I\u2019ve been wearing a different hat than normal. As I\u2019ve mentioned in previous conversations, I have the honor of serving as the chair of the board of a non-profit organization, Christian HolyLand Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0[1]<\/a> Yesterday and today, we held our annual face-to-face board meeting, followed this afternoon by an annual meeting with our donor-partners. And over the next few days, I\u2019ll be sporadically representing the organization at our exhibit booth at the International Conference on Missions<\/a>. But tonight, I am absolutely exhausted. There\u2019s something about meeting for 16.25 hours over two days that wears a person out.<\/p>\n

And yet, it\u2019s also quite invigorating. For the past eight months, our board has been working through a strategic mapping process, helping us re-shape our vision, our mission and core values, and how we can move the organization to a sustainable and growing ministry. Coupled with that though, our largest donor unexpectedly dropped 1\/3 of their support this year, and we\u2014in the midst of re-imagining the shape of the ministry\u2014are suddenly dealing with a major financial crisis.<\/p>\n

So much of what I\u2019ve been learning and experiencing in our doctoral program has been relevant and helpful for me in this chair role. For instance, I think back to that massive book Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em> that we read our first semester, and the only chapter I read<\/span> briefly skimmed on women in leadership. I find that the members of our board highly respect my leadership skills and, as the only woman on the board, I\u2019m fully affirmed by a group of (generally) conservative men that respond well as I guide us to move in a good direction.<\/p>\n

I also think back to both the ordinary leadership of the Jesuits in Heroic Leadership, <\/em>and the \u201chumble and fearless\u201d Level 5 leaders in Good to Great<\/em>, and Jason\u2019s challenge to jump in feet first. All of that harkens to our ability to be both \u201cgood enough\u201d (a la Emma Percy) and \u201cbrave enough\u201d to take risks and be confident. I\u2019ve said some hard things over the past few days (\u201cwe need to completely restructure our financial model\u201d). But I\u2019m confident in our board to work through hard things because I \u201chave faith that the people to whom [I] pass the power [the board] will act responsibly. This also requires a heavy dose of humility\u2026 that there are equally capable\u2026people who can do the things that you do.\u201d[2]<\/a> I can be confident because I trust my team.<\/p>\n

In the midst of preparing for and leading these meetings, I\u2019ve been reading through Charlene Li\u2019s Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead<\/em>. What I\u2019ve found is that many of the 10 elements of openness have proved valuable for us as we re-shape the organization. We realized that it was essential that our team members (church leaders) in Galilee\u2014while not on the board\u2014needed to \u201cwork toward the same goal\u201d; thus we encouraged a \u201csharingness\u201d[3]<\/a> mentality of being open and honest with the team about where we are financially, and some of the ways the board plans to build long-term sustainability.[4]<\/a>\u00a0It is essential that the Galilee church leaders trust our relationship with them. We had a team member sit in on our meeting and be both a sounding board for our ideas and help us make sure that what we were working through was appropriately and contextually understood.<\/p>\n

Likewise, at our annual meeting with donors, we were very honest about the financial situation and the opportunity we have to grow new partners. We showed our income\/expenses, and our tighter 2018 budget. One goal in conversing candidly with our partners is to \u201cproactively find and address\u2026 problems before they escalate.\u201d[5]<\/a> We soon hope to create a new contextually appropriate branded image\u2014logo and name\u2014of the organization to better reflect our vision, mission, and core values. While I\u2019m hoping to crowd-source feedback on our ideas, we introduced the expectation that this will happen at our annual meeting, in order for our partners to get used to the idea. We could easily have waited for a grand announcement rollout, but decided instead to keep people updated.<\/p>\n

Generally, this small board (8 members) operates via consensus. As Li writes, this results \u201cin tremendous buy-in.\u201d[6]<\/a> Yes, it can be cumbersome because everyone has ideas and we strongly encourage questioning or clarifying those ideas. (I see this model working for us primarily because we are so small.) What it also means, though, is that I, as the chair, don\u2019t drive the meeting with expected conclusions in place. In other words, I don\u2019t see myself as \u201cthe ultimate strategist and decider of what people should do\u201d\u2014quite the contrary!\u2014rather, I \u201c[act] as a platform maker. [My] job is to make sure that the right protocols, the right environment, and the right infrastructure are all in place for people to\u2026 make amazing things happen.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

We as an organization imagine \u201cA Holy Land vibrant with Christians living in \"\"<\/a>God\u2019s peace and abundant grace, who are united through Christ\u2019s love and are connected in authentic relationships with one another and with Christians in other parts of the world.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/em> We believe that we, as an organization, can join in with what God is doing in Israel by building \u201crelationships between Western Christians and local indigenous Arab Christians by providing evangelism, discipleship, and holistic support in pursuit of a stronger Body of Christ.\u201d[9]<\/a> I love seeing how God is at work among these churches and believers in Galilee, and pray that as we cultivate a culture of openness between the church leaders, board, and partners, the structures we set in place now will build more and stronger relationships[10]<\/a> and foster greater trust.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Part of our strategic planning includes revamping our website! But it\u2019s still a great place to learn about the work in Galilee\u2026 and how you can partner with us.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Charlene Li. Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead<\/em> (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 18.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Isn\u2019t that the most incredible word to read in a leadership book?<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 22-23.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 29.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 39.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 40.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> CHLF, vision.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> CHLF, mission.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Want to learn more?<\/a> Partner with us?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> cf. Li, 106.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past two days, I\u2019ve been wearing a different hat than normal. As I\u2019ve mentioned in previous conversations, I have the honor of serving as the chair of the board of a non-profit organization, Christian HolyLand Foundation.\u00a0[1] Yesterday and today, we held our annual face-to-face board meeting, followed this afternoon by an annual meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1084,220,1085],"class_list":["post-15433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chlf","tag-li","tag-partnership","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15435,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15433\/revisions\/15435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}