There is hope for me yet!

I am a dedicated yet reluctant community steward. I care deeply about my community and want to be actively involved in it, but left to my own instincts I would also prefer to be back stage working in a supporting role and not out on the stage actively taking part in the performance. Point me to a need and I will volunteer. Leave me to identify the need and rally support to address it... that's much tougher for me, though I don't lack for passion about needs in our community. So participating in a community stewardship program like Leadership Snohomish County (LSC) necessarily causes me to stretch beyond my normal comfort zone.

One of the concepts we recently read and discussed dealt with the leadership value of sponsorship, the proverbial putting one's money (or time, energy, freedom, maybe even life) where one's mouth is.  Sponsorship may be speaking out publicly, or it may be taking an idea and pushing, driving, kicking until a difference has been made. As Bruce Cockburn says in his song Lovers In A Dangerous Time, "Sometimes you have to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight." 

Sponsorship says: this is what I believe, this is what I am passionate about, this, therefore, is what I shall do. And yet, passion alone may not be a sufficient guide for our community actions and efforts. When I talk to individuals who successfully advocate for community needs, who make things happen with their sponsorship, I see more than passion at work.

Oliver Segovia, writing in the Harvard Business Review a few weeks back exhorts us to forget about passion. He makes the case that it is more important to be aware of the needs around us, of our communities and neighbors, and of the world. Segovia stresses the need for a heightened degree of situational awareness and a knowledge of those things which most impact us very personally, and to cultivate an ability to work with others to solve large problems. Doing so takes us outside of ourselves and, frequently, beyond our individual passions.

As a path toward effective leadership and, more specifically, effective sponsorship, this rings very true to me. As I mull over what we have been reading and discussing in LSC, and continue to process how I will apply what I am learning, these are threads that come together to form, for me, a new perspective on community stewardship.

So how does all this translate at my personal street level? My impact team (and I feel very fortunate to be working with such a great team of talented community leaders!) is currently working to build a new basketball court for a local Boy's and Girl's Club (http://bit.ly/yXapo5). It is a wonderful project and addesses a very real community need in a very concrete (no pun intended) way.  It was not a community need that was previously on my personal radar screen, though, and building a basketball court is not part of my personal skill set. On my own, I would never have stepped up to lead this project, assuming there were far more qualified individuals than myself to tackle this kind of need. Yet our project is coming together very well so far, and each of us in playing an integral role in shepherding it forward.

This is a perfect example of the kind of beyond-personal-passion community awareness Segovia describes. It is sponsorship of an identified community need more than sponsorship of a personal passion (though both clearly have value). And it requires me to work together with many other individuals, people with more applicable skills and talents than I bring to this table, to complete this project. In so doing, I do have a constructive role to play, though it is a role I am having to stretch and learn into.

Hayden Bixby, herself an alumni of Leadership Snohomish County, recently wrote on her blog for the CURA Kenyan AIDs orphanage she sponsors with her activism, about the role of "connectors" in such projects. As someone who is naturally retiring, who would rather never pick up a phone to call someone, and who dislikes any sort of spotlight, I was inspired to hear that even she (someone I view as very successful at community sponsorship) sometimes feels stretched by the role of connecting people and needs. 

So here is what I am learning: Community stewardship and sponsorship do not necessarily depend on having a specific passion or vision.  In fact, it may be more important to listen to the needs of the community and to be willing to pick up a shovel (or phone) when and where most wanted. Passion is important, but passion needs to be linked with awareness of our communities, and not imposed on them. There is a role for everyone in community stewardship, though each of us may have to stretch ourselves to adjust to the needs that exist in our communities. There is hope for me, then, after all.

    - Kevin McKay