Healthy Congregations: Leadership
Rev. Joan Van Becelaere
Ohio-Meadville District
Overview
 Part of a larger series of workshops on building
Healthy Congregations.
 Full series is available
 Intro to Systems Thinking
 Some Myths and Theories
 Healthy Leadership
 Case Study
Healthy Leadership
 In healthy congregations
 -leaders promote health through their presence
and functioning (instead of techniques or skills.)
 -leaders challenge people (instead of comforting.)
 -leaders provide immune capacities (instead of
enabling disease processes.)
 -leaders empower others (rather than dominate or
cure them)
“Relationships are all there is.
Everything in the universe only exists because it is in
relationship to everything else.
Nothing exists in isolation.
We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can
go it alone.”
Margaret Wheatley
Basic Elements
 System Thinking = the 7th Principle in action
 Things do not exist independently, only in
relationship
 Change in one part produces change in other parts
 Everything is co-causal - every cause is a reaction
and every reaction is a cause.
Basic Elements
 Systems thinking removes polarities of either/or,
cause/effect thinking. No single cause to current
state of being.
 Interactions between people affect the whole for
good or bad
 Relationships are not merely interesting-that’s all
there is!!!
Basic Elements
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Where two or more are gathered, there is an
emotional system. All human beings live in
emotional systems.
The same emotional processes occur in all
relationships (family systems, etc.).
Driving these systems are innate forces that seek
survival.
The resulting behaviors are not learned or
thought out. They are “wired in,” automatic,
instinctive, reactive, natural phenomena.
Basic Elements
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Emotional systems driven by two innate forces:
-the need to be separate/stand alone/independent
-the need to be close/connect/interact with others.
Balanced Separateness & Closeness forces = SelfDifferentiation
Ability to define self to others and stay connected to
them. Taking responsibility for own emotional
functioning.
Healthy leaders/persons/groups are:
-separate and responsible for their lives
-connected and responsive to others.
Self-Differentiation
 Self-definition
• 1 . Sensing limits, knowing where self and others begin
and end, making the distinction between self and nonself yet being aware of the part self plays in relationship.
• 2. Knowing what you believe, being aware of your goals
and values, letting your own convictions determine your
behavior.
Self-Differentiation
 Self-regulation
• 3. Taking a stand, articulating your position (and in
doing this not having to change the other or change
oneself to please the other), seeking clarity.
• 4. Staying on course, having resolve, possessing
emotional stamina, persevering, accepting challenge.
Self-Differentiation
 Self-other relations
• 5. Non-anxious, controlling the part one plays in
emotional processes, being calm and reflective, focusing
on one’s own functioning rather than the functioning of
others, no blaming or attacking.
• 6. Staying connected to others (we have to choose to do
this, not instinctive).
• 7. Going beyond self-promotion, being aware of the
“other,” being as invested in the welfare of the
relationship as in self.
Basic Elements –
Law of Fried Potatoes
 Self-Differentiation is evident in conflict.
 It is the capacity to “like the way your mother fried
potatoes but not to be overwhelmed by anxiety if
someone else’s mother fried them differently. This
means you don’t try to convert others to your
mother’s fried potatoes, nor do you give in to
another’s need for fried potatoes of a certain kind.
And you do not disconnect from another until they
fry their potatoes your mother’s way.” (Steinke)
Basic Elements
 Congregations are emotional
systems with habits that resist change
---even when dysfunctional.
 Current issues may have more to do with past
emotional processes (baggage) than with the logic
of the current situation
 We’ve always done it this way – even though we
hate it!
 No emotional system will change unless
people change how they behave and function
with one another in the system.
Myths of Leadership
 How did we learn about this myth?
 How has our belief in this myth kept us
from recognizing and taking ownership of
our own leadership abilities?
[T]here is an unconscious conspiracy in our country to
discourage and suppress genuine leadership. A
widespread unspoken fear of the potentially negative
consequences of creative leadership blankets our
thoughts and actions. It prevents the most talented
among us from talking boldly or expressing ourselves
as leaders.
This conspiracy is all-encompassing, lulling us into
conformity, complacency, cynicism and inaction. As a
nation, as organizations and as individuals, we fear
taking risks. We do not expect ourselves or others to
stand up and be counted, and become frightened
when they do.”
 Warren Bennis, Learning to Lead
Myths of Leadership- Bennis
 Leadership is a rare skill.
 Leaders are born, not made.
 Leaders are charismatic.
 Leaders exist only at the top of an organization.
 Leaders control, direct, prod, manipulate others.
 Leadership (doing the right things) vs
Management (doing things right)
 Super-heroes – No one can do it like I can. If I
don’t do it, no one will
Morphic Leadership - Martoia
 Morphing: “Morphic leadership means profound
interior transformation, and it forms the basis for
seeing culture change with lasting results.”
 Leaking: Our attitude, disposition, world view, mental
model, approach toward people confirmed in the
stories we tell in word and deed.
 Ethos: Corporate culture of the congregation, world
view, sum total of all of the mental models, paradigms.
Leadership Leaking - Martoia
4 LAWS OF LEAKING (Ethos Creation)
 All of us leak. (all have effects, all can be leaders)
 Leaking has pervasive effects, and bad leaking works
faster than good
 Leaking is usually unconscious and unintentional.
 Leaking can’t be faked or fabricated in the long term.
Shifts in Leadership Concepts
 OLD CONCEPT: leadership is about finding the
answers we need.
 SHIFT: leadership is more about the right
questions being asked in the right context in the
right time.
Shifts in Leadership Concepts
 OLD CONCEPT: Leadership is about skill set
acquisition.
 SHIFT: leadership is more about fully being,
inhabiting my destiny, and having an inner
morphic (transformational) spiritual life.
Shifts in Leadership Concepts
 OLD CONCEPT: leadership is about arriving at a
goal, taking a summit or storming a hill.
 SHIFT: leadership is more about crafting the
present ethos, which is the organic soil that
nurtures the future ministry of all members of the
congregation.
Shifts in Leadership Concepts
 OLD CONCEPT: leadership is about serial
sequencing, getting qualified first.
 SHIFT: leadership is about parallel simultaneity,
learning while doing and taking important risks.
Shift in Leadership Concepts
Ronald Heifetz
Leadership Without Easy Answers
“Leaders do not need to know all the
answers. They do need to ask the
right questions.”
Telling Our Stories
 Small Groups
 Tell a story about when you felt most like a leader..
 What was the outcome and how did you feel?
 How were other people impacted by the event and
your actions? Did it change anything in your life?
 Discuss the elements of leadership seen in the story.
Healthy Leadership
 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
Healthy Leadership
 Leaders and followers are a system. Leadership is
co-created.
 The leader is the person who most influences an
emotional field or system.
 Leaders learn to manage themselves first.
 The differentiated, non-anxious leader thinks from
an “I position” and focuses on their own
functioning while still staying connected to others.
Healthy Leadership
 His/her influence does not rely on personality,
consensus, techniques or skills, piles of
information, or expertise.
 Responsible for their own functioning & not how
others function. (no superheroes!)
 The system is influenced most – positively or
negatively - by the leader’s BEING (non-anxious,
self-aware presence) and DOING (selfdifferentiated, balanced functioning).
Video Case Study
Discussion – Large Group
After viewing the video –
 Do you think that the more leaders accept
responsibility for anxiety that is not theirs, the
more they become stressed, function less
effectively, and lose sight of their goals?
Discussion-Small Group
 Leaders need to be able to tolerate “pain” both in
themselves and others. They often need to make
decisions that can bring change and, thus, pain to
others.
 How well do you tolerate pain/uncomfortable
feelings? What impact does this have on your
leadership?
 What groups or persons in your congregation are
unable to tolerate pain and change?
Leaders as Health Promoters
“Leaders contribute to the health of a
congregation. They are healthpromoters. The true mark of a leader is
spreading health throughout the
community. The presence of mature,
self-aware, and faithful leaders means
health is possible in the community.”
(Peter Steinke)
Leaders Provide Immunity
Leaders Provide Immunity
 Everything is co-causal, mutually influenced.
Both health and illness are the result of
interrelated factors.
 Viruses are always present. Disease only happens
when surrounding cells cooperate.
 There are similarities between viral infections and
relationship conflict.
Leaders Provide Immunity
 Anxious, reactive people function like a virus. They
are secretive. They selectively invade. They get
other cells to go along - to avoid upsetting the
system.
 Viral infections and anxiety/conflict – both are
contagious and enabled & nurtured by the larger
system.
Leaders Provide Immunity
 Healthy leaders function as the community’s
immune system when anxiety/conflict might
damage the community.
 Leaders recognize what does and does not belong
to the group and if behaviors are damaging to the
welfare of the whole.
 Leaders respond thoughtfully and carefully, and
then remember how to respond to similar threats
in the future.
Discussion
 What signs do you see that a person may be acting
like a virus?
 Are there instances in your congregation where
someone or a small group has acted like a virus?
How did the congregation respond?
 How do congregations enable anxious reactivity to
viruses?
 What can you and other leaders do to provide a
strong immune system?
Leadership and Mission
 Humans have a pervasive need for connections and
relationship.
 A congregation is an expression of that need for
connectedness and purpose.
 We need to explore and know why we have come
together (Mission!)
 Leaders help the congregation develop a vision of how
it will live out its mission and purpose.
Leadership and Mission
• Healthy congregations have ‘coherence’ in midst of
change/conflict, provided by leadership.
• Aaron Antonovsky : coherence results from:
◦ Meaningfulness-overall sense of purpose that enables
folk to make commitments, get involved, and shape
destiny (Mission!)
◦ Comprehensibility-making cognitive sense of what is
happening, objectivity, clarity that allows for hope
◦ Manageability-confidence in ability to deal with life,
belief in ability to control and influence events (no
victims allowed)
Leadership and Mission
 When a congregation focuses on mission and strength,
it will look to the future and increase its ability to
handle conflict, change or renewal.
 A group focused on weakness and what is wrong will
fall into hopelessness, pathology, blame and deficits.
 A group focused on its purpose and
strengths will build on them & move
forward through change or anxiety.
Healthy Congregations
Workshops
 Facilitator training – March 4-6 at West Shore
 Creating Healthy Congregations
 Healthy Congregations Respond to Anxiety and
Change.
 Leadership in Healthy Congregations
 Relationships in Healthy Congregations
 Healthy Congregations Nurture Generous People
 Healthy Spirituality
Bibliography
 Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times , by Peter
Steinke, Alban Institute
 Leading Change in the Congregation: Spiritual and
Organizational Tools for Leaders, by Gilbert R. Rendle.
Alban Institute.
 Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach, by Peter
Steinke, Alban Institute.
Margaret Wheatley:
People are the solution to the problems that
confront us.
Technology is not the solution, although it can help.
We are the solution – we as generous, open-hearted
people who want to use our creativity and caring
on behalf of other human beings and all life.
Thank you for being here today!
Unitarian Universalism is a
Covenantal Faith
We are a covenantal faith, not a creedal faith.
We share a covenant of how we try to be together,
not a creed of what we all must believe together.
 Rev. Thom Belote (adapted)
A Covenant …
 Is a statement of agreement about how congregants
choose to be in relationship with each other.
 Comprises promises, not rules.
 Is a framework of expectations.
 Is about behavior, not personality.
 Offers an opportunity to explore and deepen our
spirituality.
Core-Practices of Life Affirming Leaders
- Wheatley
 Know they cannot lead alone.
 Have more faith in people than they do in
themselves.
 Recognize human diversity as a gift, and the
human spirit as a blessing.
 Act on the fact that people only support what
they create.
Core-Practices of Life Affirming Leaders
- Wheatley
 Solve unsolvable problems by bringing new
voices into the room.
 Use learning as the fundamental process for
resiliency, change and growth.
 Offer purposeful work as the necessary
condition for people to engage fully.
Healthy Communication
 Truth-telling
 Willingness to discuss difficult issues
 Staying connected through conflict
 Understanding boundaries
 Respecting Confidentiality
Problematic Communication
Quandaries
 Rumors – misinformation
 Gossip – may be accurate but spread outside of established
communication channels
 Exposure – revealing too much information that would be
considered socially appropriate
 Leaking – information is released intentionally, without regard
to covenants or established boundaries
Level of Information Disclosure
 Private – known only by person who owns it
 Confidential – released to a second person with assurance that it
won’t be shared without expressed permission
 Limited access – known by 3 or more but protected from
distribution by agreement
 Open – share openly with the congregation but not easily
accessible to public
 Public – information that is easily accessible
The Elephant in the Room
 What issue is difficult to
talk about in your
congregation?
 Do you believe that people’s
functioning will improve if
they know the truth?
Telling the Truth
 Half-truths or shaded truths can be as destructive to
community life as no truth.
 Secrets (deceit, the unspeakable, denial, lies,
clandestine gatherings, shrouded truth, underhanded
behavior, cover up, covert activities) increase when
conflict thickens and expands.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it
does enlarge the future.”
~Paul Boese
Without forgiveness, there is no future.
~Desmond Tutu