“A leader does not impose a decision, [s]he moulds one.” Nelson Mandella
People say all kinds of things about leadership and are happy to tell me what they value most in a leader. My friend likes a leader with a good sense of humour, an easy-going nature and familiarity. Someone else likes efficiency, administrative strengths and reliability. I value strong character, courtesy, skill and humility. Whatever the personality of a leader, she won’t experience success of any kind unless people are willing to follow. What does make a good leader? Whatever your answer, it is guaranteed that others will disagree. That makes leadership challenging because to be a good follower there has to be a measure of trust. And the better the measure, the better the result.
I believe that good leaders must have the ability to provide vision. That is, they see where the organization needs to be moving and do what it takes to get it there. Not alone. No. But, ideally, together in community with like-minded people who share the enthusiasm and the conviction that drives the thing.
I read a moving article in the Globe and Mail a year or so ago that embedded its ethos into my core. Here is a quote, “A movement is an organized community of (com)passionate advocates who rally around an idea in the rising culture to change the world in some way.” S. Goodman
I have since asked myself as President of Women in Focus, “What is it that Canadian women feel strongly about? What is the idea that would unify us in changing something; some value, some issue of longing that we hold dear?” These are questions that unsettle me and have had me alert to every conversation, every encounter, every initiative to somehow better the lives of Canadian women in some significant way.
I am in the process of writing a proposal to our western Canadian board and eventually the national board in support of a movement I believe will bring justice and mercy to Canadian women. Marginalized women? Yes, but also ordinary, mid-income women, career women, the budding young women in the throws of adolescence and women who have seen 7 or 8 decades.
The issue of dignity is a wide topic and we all long for the reality of it in every single encounter. How can we move toward a greater experience of it in our personal and professional contexts? I’m not exactly sure, but it is a topic worthy of exploration. It is my heart’s desire that each and every women knows her worth in the eyes of the God who fashioned her with the utmost care and love. It is also my desire that she knows it so completely that she experiences true freedom in Christ, the compelling grace of God the Father and incomprehensible peace in the Spirit as a result. A powerful outworking of that paradigm shift is that it is highly contagious. Can you imagine the ripple effect?
Dignity for women in Canada has come a long way in 100 years but there is still an unacceptable lack of it in some pretty disturbing pockets of our society. That needs to change.
Perhaps that’s another quality I will add to my list of sound leadership; the ability to create authentic and much-needed change with gentleness and grace. Isn’t that just like Jesus?
“Change starts when someone sees the next step.” William Drayton
