Leadership Conversation over Shortcake

During our community conversation this week, Sudip started us off with an interesting fact: the lag between research and implementation of research (especially in politics) is 20 years. 20 years for something proven to work or make a system better to be put into action! We all thought that that does 

this country a great disservice, but there are efforts to streamline the implementation process by teaching researchers how lobby, take part in the legislative process, and become advocates for their work. Interestingly enough, Olivia and Sudip’s separate workplaces came into contact with one another last Friday, when Matt Toburen from MAP went to a seminar at U of M where Sudip is conducting research, in order to speak to a group of nurses and doctors about lobbying.

We went around the table with strawberry shortcake and ice cream and talked about our individual leadership styles. A recurring theme was the ability to empower others to take ownership of their actions within the context of a group or a leadership role. In this sense, we were equating being a leader with personality traits—the dichotomy of “being a leader” or “not being a leader.” That led us to consider the difference between leadership as a trait and leadership as something one exercises. We found the second description of leadership to be more powerful because if leadership is something you exercise, anyone can be a leader, not just those who “are” leaders. If you see yourself as a leader, if that is a trait you use to describe yourself, it is easy to become a passive leader, whereas “practicing” leadership is a much more active and inclusive kind of leadership, one that leads to that sense of empowerment and ownership that we all felt was so important.

Sonja found a website about leaders for social impact before the conversation. It showed how non-profits or other social change areas need to come up with ways to collaborate with for-profit companies so that the non-profits can learn assessment methods. Nicole related this nicely to Lutheran Social Services. As a large non-profit with a fairly corporate model, LSS would do well to collaborate with other organizations that are working towards the same or similar goals, such as the goal of ending youth homelessness. However, we talked about how through collaboration can also come a sense of competition, which could result in harm to the services an organization provides. Non-profits specifically have to be very outcome-oriented to maintain funding, keep board members happy, etc., so the leadership of non-profits will naturally be thinking about how they can do their job better and provide better outcomes. While that conversation didn’t necessarily relate direct to the leadership directive, we thought it was interesting to think about how non-profits decide to move forward, to work with other organizations, to assess whether their services are still needed, especially since several of us have been having those conversations with our bosses or as a greater organization at work.