Helping ourselves, helping each other | By Jennifer Comes

Soon Medicaid providers across Kansas will receive a letter from CCSR, letting them know about the self-help group database we maintain and containing magnets with information about how to access the database. The text of the letter is below. If you are interested in hosting a presentation or in using the materials we have available, information for connecting with CCSR is included at the end of this post.

It all began when one person recognized she could make a difference in the lives of others.

Back in the 1980s, social worker Evelyn Middlestat was facilitating adoptions for the Wichita offices of Lutheran Social Service. She saw that adoptive parents she worked with struggled with many of the same issues in raising their adopted children and started a support group for them.

At the group's first meeting, Evelyn realized that a group of peers facing the same challenges could support and advise each other in ways that professionals could not. Self-help groups, she thought, could be organized around virtually any situation or issue. Evelyn's contacts in the community made her aware of many support groups that met regularly, but group leaders often complained that people who needed group support locally did not know how or where to find it. Recognizing this, Evelyn gathered her notes and her telephone at her kitchen table and made it her mission to connect individuals seeking support with the right community self-help groups.

That vital connective piece that Evelyn recognized more than 30 years ago is the same work the Center for Community Support and Research continues today. As custodian of an electronic database of more than 2,000 self-help groups, national organizations and informational websites, we link anyone in the state with the support they need, wherever they may be located. Self-help groups can be found in most Kansas counties and have organized themselves around issues as diverse as living with cancer; coping with addiction or mental illness, grief or bereavement; physical or sexual abuse; divorce and relationship issues, and learning to be a better parent.

The database may be found online and a toll-free phone number, 800 445-0116, also links individuals with information on self-help group contacts.

“Support groups and community-based groups are a great way to give yourself a jump start and get yourself going,” said Aaron Scharenberg, director of the Central Christian Counseling Center in Wichita. When individuals find themselves dealing with a difficult situation, “they provide support, accountability, and a way to connect with others.”

Please use the enclosed materials as appropriate and feel free to share them with other organizations or individuals who may be helped through this free statewide resource. At CCSR, we especially welcome the opportunity to make presentations to groups and organizations. A presentation may be strutured from 1 hour to 8 hours on a variety of topics, either face-to-face or in a webinar format, and CEU credits are available. These presentations are a free service to Kansas Medicaid providers.

Helping ourselves as we help each other: We think Evelyn would be pleased.

To learn more, to schedule a presentation or to make sure a specific self-help group is listed, please contact Angela Gaughan at the toll-free number listed above, or at angela.gaughan@wichita.edu.

On leadership and authority in the Egyptian revolution | By Amy Delamaide

Yesterday, National Public Radio's Steve Inskeep interviewed Wael Ghonim about his role in the Egyptian revolution and his new memoir of the time, Revolution 2.0. Several of his comments about leadership reminded me of the distinction to be made between "leadership" and "authority." Here is a (long) segment of the interview:

GHONIM: ...And this revolution has no leader, has no face to it. And the collective effort of all the Egyptians is what mattered at the end of the day.

INSKEEP: Now, it's interesting you say that this revolution has no leader. Many people, of course, have said that. But reading your memoir here, "Revolution 2.0," I wonder if you're not giving yourself enough credit, because you describe yourself putting up Facebook pages, sending out statements, writing quite dramatically on behalf of causes, doing things that leaders do, and organizing protests, getting this revolution going.

GHONIM: I think this is not leadership. When I say a leader, it means that directs the revolution, where it should be going. Before the revolution came, what we were doing is increasing the awareness and calling people to action. What we did was calling for, you know, massive process that turns into the revolution on the 25th.

That doesn't, you know, give me the title of leadership, because at the end of the day I don't - you know, I did not - and I would have not been able to take charge and tell people what to do and negotiate on behalf of them.

The fact that there is no leader is evident on the floor. There are so many people that have done extraordinary efforts and that have sacrificed. There are so many people that have died, but there was no clear leadership that made decisions on behalf of the people.

(emphasis added)

Ghonim's interpretation of a leader is someone who we would say is in a position of authority. Someone who has power and uses it to direct the actions of others. Given what we know of life under the Mubarak regime, it makes sense that Ghonim's concept of leadership is authority-driven.

Inskeep suggests that the organizing and motivating work Ghonim did through his online activities was something "that leaders do." Ghonim's definition of leadership does not include these activities. For him, activities of leadership are directing the revolution, taking charge, telling people what to do, making decisions for people, and negotiating on behalf of the people.

Within the framework of leadership offered by the Kansas Leadership Center's competencies, Ghonim's activities clearly fall within the competencies of Energize Others and Skilfully Intervene. Through Facebook posts, he spoke from the heart and oriented others to a common purpose. He captured attention, connected people from different groups, and engaged unusual voices.

As Egyptians comes to terms with their opportunity to determine who they put in positions of authority, I hope they consider that people in authority positions can also exercise leadership like Wael Ghonim did.

Students get experience serving the nonprofit sector at CCSR

Students gain real-world experience volunteering at WSU Center for Community Support and Research on a variety of projects in the fall semester.

Four students are from the Emory Lindquist Honors Program:

Victoria Eck at her desk

• Victoria Eck, a junior majoring in Pre-law and Political Science/History,  researched sources of resilience to help in building a model of trauma healing for CCSR’s work on Trauma-Informed Care.
• Emily Lancaster, a sophomore majoring in pre-medicine, created a logo and handouts to help people with mental illness keep track of their medical information so they can advocate for their own medical treatment.
• Janet Nghiem Phy, a freshman with an undeclared major, assisted leadership evaluation activities and reviewed literature related to leadership development and leadership programs.
• Shahla Pourkaram, a junior majoring in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Pre-medicine, made phone calls for a survey for the Kansas Department on Aging and conducted a phone survey of daycare providers for the Riley County Early Head Start program.

About her experiences at CCSR, Shahla says, “Medical school is very competitive and to have undergraduate research experience is very beneficial. I have been able to gain skills such as survey administration and database construction at CCSR.” Pourkaram is also president of Wichita State Society of Women Engineers.

Three graduate students are expanding their career opportunities at CCSR:

• Kaitlin Boger is a second year Master’s Social Work student who designed and facilitated leadership development sessions, supported a trauma-informed organizational process for a community partner in Topeka, and researched trauma-informed care models.
• Jennifer Comes is in her first year of the MSW program, contributing to CCSR’s mental health consumer initiative by creating a media kit for Self-Help Group services and writing the history of consumer run organizations in Kansas.
• Bailey Blair has earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Teacher’s License in English Literature and Psychology. She plans to pursue a Master’s of Social Work. Bailey is preparing a proposal to create a comprehensive network of care for transition age youth.

About her work at CCSR, Bailey says, “What I’m working on at CCSR is the same type of work as the other incredibly talented staff here. The work I’m doing now is what I plan to build my career on.” Jennifer adds, “Working at CCSR has been a terrific learning opportunity for me. Students here are encouraged to contribute in a variety of ways that I've been surprised to discover are actually closely related to our coursework. CCSR staff enjoys working with students and though most of them have advanced degrees, they seek out our opinions and consider us peers in an ongoing process of community building that we are engaged in together.”

Based in downtown Wichita, WSU Center for Community Support and Research is proud to be a place where WSU students can immerse themselves in learning about and serving the nonprofit and public sectors while building their professional contacts and career opportunities.

Sameville | Presented by Seth Bate

The WSU Center for Community Support and Research has been facilitating a leadership development process for two dozen staff members of Starkey, Inc. A foundational concept for CCSR’s approach to leadership development (and one shared with our partners at the Kansas Leadership Center) is that groups have to be in a productive zone of work for significant change to occur. Getting into that productive zone can be uncomfortable and risky.

Because they care deeply about the work they do, and because the challenges they face are daunting and complex, the Starkey participants have been doing the difficult work of learning how to exercise leadership. Some of them wrote this story to illustrate what it can be like when people exercise leadership to get themselves and others into that productive zone.

Sameville

Photo courtesy of Paul Stringer

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a happy little town named Sameville, Kansas, where nothing ever changed. Flowers were always in bloom, the sun was always shining and the birds were always chirping. Rain only came at night, and everyone always pretended to be happy. Door to door salesmen trying to sell new ideas were always turned away.

But one day, a mean, nasty ogre crawled out from under a bridge. He captured the queen and her lady in waiting. (Oh, my!) The mean, nasty ogre overturned all of their long-held, sacred beliefs, and uncovered their unpleasant truths. The weather turned hot and dry. The flowers died. Chirping birds spontaneously combusted! Everyone in Sameville grew hot, and sweaty and smelly and cranky. They were uncomfortable and afraid.

So the uncomfortable people of Sameville brought in fans to cool things down, but the fans just blew away the covers they had thrown over their unpleasant truths. They formed a committee and plotted to kill the mean, nasty ogre, but they could not agree on a plan, because no one was in charge, there was no agenda, and no one had the power to decide. The queen and her lady in waiting were not around to chase all their problems away!

But then, one day the earth started to shake. The people of Sameville were frightened, and large cracks opened up in the ground where their sacred structures once stood - as if to swallow them. But nothing fell in! Sameville was safe because of the changes the mean, nasty ogre had made. And all of the people realized that the mean, nasty ogre was a hero. His actions had saved their little town!

And so the little town celebrated, and they changed their name to Changeville. No one was ever completely happy. The birds didn’t always chirp, and the sun didn’t always shine. But the little town of Changeville was safe forever and ever.

The end.

In the leadership development process, participants have experienced many moments an “ogre” has shaken things up in order to move the group into a productive zone of work. Sometimes the CCSR facilitators have been the ogres by doing something unexpected, using silence or asking provocative questions. Other times the Starkey participants have been pretty ogre-ish by challenging an assumption or offering a tough interpretation. Ogres might be scary, but sometimes they are exercising leadership.

For more about the productive zone of work (sometimes called the productive zone of disequilibrium) we recommend The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Heifetz, Linsky & Grashow.

What do you think? | By Dee Hinton Turner

Mystic Mountain via Wikimedia Commons

Will Meecham recently wrote a post on Mental Health Day: Should it be Spiritual Health Day?

I found this read to be quite interesting.  It seems to bring to point what I personally feel about “Spirituality” being such a vital part of mental health recovery, substance abuse recovery and even recovery from/through life in general.  What do you think?

Free workshop will help organizations plan for executive transition

Thanks to a partnership with the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, CCSR has been working closely with Tom Adams of TransitionGuides in the last two years to deeply understand organizational succession planning – and to make it useful and relevant for Kansas organizations. For most nonprofit organizations, this is specifically about planning for the day when the current executive director leaves.

On October 18^th, 1-5pm, CCSR will offer a free Compassion Kansas workshop in Wichita for nonprofit organizations on succession planning. This workshop will provide an introduction to Succession Basics: Emergency Backup Plan and Succession Policy. Call 316-978-3843 to register.

In his book TheNonprofit Leadership Transition and Development Guide, Adams says there are six areas to explore when an organization wants to define what a successful transition would look like. These areas also illuminate how close the organization is to being ready.

1. Strategy readiness
   How current is our strategic and business plan?
   What has changed or is changing in the environment that will influence our strategy or business plan in the next few years?
    
2. Financial readiness
   Do we understand our current financial health: income, expenses, assets and liabilities?
   What is the trend in our income and expenses and capacity to sustain a balanced operating budget?
    
3. Systems readiness
   Do we have in place up-to-date policies and procedures to guide and protect our organization? Where are we vulnerable?
   Does our technology infrastructure support the work required to achieve our mission?
    
4. Management team/staff readiness
   Are there key managers or staff who are doing more than one person’s job?
   Is there a culture and morale among managers or staff that results in retention, growth and ongoing advances for the organization in a capacity to achieve its mission?
    
5. Board readiness
   Does the board have effective leaders as chair and treasurer and leaders of key committees?
   Does the board have systems to support board regeneration and succession?
    
6. Executive readiness
   Is the executive clear about her plans for departure or engaged in a personal process to become clear?
   Does the executive support this planning?

This workshop will provide language and tools to begin to answer these questions and prepare organizations for fulfilling their missions beyond the tenure of the current executive.

Collective Impact Follow Up | By Amy Delamaide and Seth Bate

About a million years ago—or maybe just a few months—I wrote a post about an article we at CCSR are reading, “Collective Impact” by John Kania and Mark Kramer. I promised a follow-up post once we had discussed it at staff meeting.

Your wait is over. Here is that promised follow-up post.

We talked about the article at our August 10th staff meeting. In no particular order and without attribution to the staff members who contributed, here are some things we discussed:

• Communication is important to keeping collective impact efforts going. When different organizations are working on the same issue, sharing what each organization is doing and the impact it is seeing would energize the other organizations and support mutually reinforcing activities.
• The idea of collective impact seems rather utopian. In real-life, it was suggested, change takes much longer than the article indicated. The work is never done and practitioners are constantly revising their approach.
• It is worth exploring what barriers exist that prevent us from moving towards collective impact. How do you reinvigorate organizations at a grassroots level when they are in crisis or under stress, such as many are in these economic times?
• When doing research, especially participatory or action research, it is worth engaging the people doing the work as co-researchers and co-evaluators. This could result in having several “layers” of researchers—the participants in an intervention, the direct service staff delivering an intervention, and those academics observing at a distance could all contribute as researchers.
• It is useful to us as an organization to continue sharing articles and periodically discussing them as a large group. This makes sense for us as a university-based center where continued learning is valued. This might be something that makes sense for your organization, too.

We’ve continued hearing “backbone support organization” and “collective impact” in meetings with partners, so the ideas from the Kania and Kramer article are definitely worth grappling with if you haven’t yet. There is also a blog where the authors and other contributors are continuing to develop their ideas: Collective Impact Blog. Check it out.