Workforce Wednesday
Digging the Right Ditches
Image Description: Photographic evidence of two of the shared leadership structures that I am privileged to be a part of. From left, Joe Leaver of Old Colony YMCA, a key player in the Brockton Career and Community Initiative (BCCI). Elyse Forbush of Run the Gamut, Secretary of the MA-APSE Board and a key player in the BCCI. Me. And Terry Holmgren of the South Shore Collaborative on Employment, Institute for Community Inclusion, MA-APSE, and the BCCI. Grateful for their partnership and mindful that progress requires such weaving.
I am fully aware of the infinite capacity of the disability community and committed to replacing the systems of oppression that have burdened the community with pathways towards opportunity. I also have empathy for Walter Fernald, Kenneth Henry of Henry’s Turkey Service, and me.[1] The latter men started with good intentions – to educate, employ, and equip people with disabilities to transition into a more inclusive, integrated world. Like Fernald, we cut channels for progress and were overwhelmed when consequences intended and not overflowed our banks.
I am haunted by images of overflowing channels. What sluices can I create to redirect overflow or, at least, reduce the most damaging of my errors spilling onto unsuspecting constituents?
One sluice is connectivity to the disability community. The people utilizing our career development services are the most directly impacted by my actions or inaction. Years ago, I asked a highly respected disability advocate and friend to confirm whether I could take a job at a Disability run nonprofit that was advocating for the interests of the community on Beacon Hill. I need to re-establish that check on my actions. Maybe I’ll call it an anti-ableism Board of Directors. Perhaps by keeping a small council – I’m thinking of my friends like Adriana, Keith, and Alex here – with whom I share my plans, workforce development tactics, and outcomes intended and not, I can continue my work in a manner that is surely smarter and likely less damaging to the community I love. Leaning on my friends seems like an effective, and undoubtedly fun, way of harm reduction.
A second sluice is a continued commitment to shared leadership. Inherent suspicion of assigned authority, origins in an American Protestant tradition obsessed with individualism, democracy,[2] and local control, and a disdain for the inflexibility often inherent in hierarchy, has always driven me towards shared leadership models. All the way back to our home church in the early aughts, I have sought to set up shared leadership structures. I now deeply appreciate participating in an Episcopal faith community that triangulates authority by resting it in the tension between vestry[3], rector, and bishop. The flexibility inherent in the Episcopal structure allows me to respect the individual elements of leadership without requiring complete submission to any of them. My work team, MA-APSE membership nonprofit disability nerds group, and Kupenda board also operate as collaboratives that seek consensus without discarding the authority sometimes required for final decisions. Shared leadership that submits to a clear mission, relies upon mutual accountability among leaders, and collectively embraces their responsibility to the constituents served – whether those are people with disabilities or parishioners – usually provides the best way forward.
The third sluice is deep humility. Doing this work well requires abundant personal, interpersonal, and structural humility. Personal humility is available in abundance. Due to an ADHD addled mind, finite perspective, and an imperfect soul, error and failure are old friends. It is not hard to cry along with the prophet of old, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Were I ever to forget, the groove of the Jesus prayer - Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on a me a sinner – runs deeply enough in my life that my needle of consciousness finds it most every day. I am tempted to talk about how my confident approach to the select spheres I choose to participate in is sometimes misinterpreted as arrogance. I’ll admit, sometimes I am arrogant. But far more often, I am guilty of passion, perspective, and opinion. Interpersonal humility is something I am well acquainted with since a painful awareness of my own lack makes it easy for me to consider others smarter, kinder, and greater than myself. I have plenty of growing to do in developing a kind and humble approach to fellow humans and all of creation. I also confess that my limited ability to perceive and engage with systems of exponentially increasing complexity humiliates me on a daily basis. My response to such humiliation is not always as gracious as I would like.
The work of creating and sustaining a more equitable workforce and inclusive world is as compelling – and much clearer – to me than it was when I began this professional journey on January 2, 2007. I have had the privilege of partnering with the disability community and allies to make progress that I am deeply grateful for and I have made many errors along the way. I can see the same passion and relentless work ethic in leaders like Walter Fernald that have come before me. For that reason, I am committed to creating the sluices of communion with the disability community, shared leadership, and personal humility, in hopes of protecting the flow of true mission and abating overflows of error and unintended consequence.
How I long to passionately pursue this mission mindfully and well! Thanks for listening to me go on about it.
[1] Leave it to the white guys to empathize with one another. I know, I know.
[2] Initially, anyway. To see how this has faded, all I have to do is review support for Congress’s recent war powers vote.
[3] Episcopal for a parish board of directors. Kellie is joining ours at Christ Church, Hamilton Wenham. I am excited about that!