Innovation Blog

Additional Author 1: Sally Z. Hare

Sally Z. Hare (KNFP 11), Director, Center for Education and Community, Surfside Beach, South Carolina.

This article was originally published in the September 2004 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.

Ask Dr. Sally Hare her thoughts on public education, and she’ll come right to the point: ”I care passionately about public education in the United States. I think it’s the foundation of our democracy, the foundation for living in peace on our planet.”

Dr. Hare knew from a young age that she wanted to be a teacher and to make her mark in public education. ”I’ve taken many side roads on my professional path, but I’ve never veered from wanting to positively affect public education.” As the director of the Center for Education and Community, and the Singleton Professor of Education at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, she is living her dream.

In her Kellogg learning plan, Sally investigated the concept of community. Her focus was all encompassing: ”Across cultures, across countries, in classrooms and towns and nations.” Her approach was to follow the advice of the poet, Rilke. ”I lived my questions, not searching for answers, but truly loving the questions, and I landed at the intersection of education and community.”

In 1993, at the end of the fellowship, Sally resigned her position as Dean of the Graduate School and Continuing Education at Coastal Carolina University, and she created the Center for Education and Community on the campus. The center’s mission is similarly all encompassing: To strengthen the community through education, and to strengthen education through the community.

She explains, ”The fellowship affirmed for me that hierarchy was in direct conflict with community. I knew that a seat at the top of the hierarchy, whether as a dean or a college president, was not where I wanted to sit.”

Among the major milestones in her work, Sally counts her own learning, and she credits the many wonderful teachers she has had along the way. One of these teachers is Parker J. Palmer, who she met during her Kellogg Fellowship. Describing the lessons Palmer taught her, Sally says, ”He affirmed for me that each of us has our own inner teacher, and that often we become disconnected from our own inner wisdom in the hurry and noise of our outer world, we literally can’t hear ourselves. I’ve come to see teaching as creating a space for others to reconnect with that inner teacher.”

She has worked with Dr. Palmer for the past decade in a movement called the Courage to Teach. At the Center for Education and Community, she applies the tenets of the movement to teacher formation, teacher renewal, and ”the development of teachers as reflective practitioners.”

Says Sally, ”The major issue for me is care of the teacher’s soul: retaining and renewing our teachers. I see us facing a major crisis of a very real teacher shortage. And I see my work as creating a space for teachers in which they can remember who they are and why they were called to teach.”

Currently, she serves as a senior adviser to the National Center for Teacher Formation, and mentors new facilitators. Her work, along with that of a growing community of others, has spread to hundreds of teachers across the country. Sally enthuses, ”I have watched teachers reclaim their gifts and their calling.” 

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Written by Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance

Additional Author 1: William Tyler Norris

Tyler Norris, KNFP-15, President and CEO, Community Initiatives, LLC

This article was originally published in the March 2003 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.

Quick Fact: Tyler’s firm, Community Initiatives LLC, provides strategic consultation and performance support to community collaborations and healthcare organizations. As a volunteer, Tyler chairs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Active Living By Design program..

How have you, though your leadership, made a difference in one of your communities?

My primary community is actually a national and, in many ways, a global network of change agents. Over the past ten years, I’ve worked to cultivate teams of people to help them bring about change in their communities. I’ve made some contributions of tools and capacities–community planning approaches, indicator strategies, communications approaches, and the like–but my most important contribution has been to support the creation of these networks.

In the 1990s, a band of consultants like myself, others running organizations and people doing work on-site began to see that the consulting model had huge limits. Our goal became to create a peer network between staffs and volunteer boards working to improve health and the quality of life in communities We worked to bring people together face to face and via technology, to organize conferences less around keynotes and more around peer learning models. We wanted to help develop relationships that could change peer to peer, to connect leaders across the country for teaming.

Now we’re networking networks. “Healthy community” networks are made up mostly of public health and hospital people The “sustainable community” networks are mostly made up of environmentalists, business leaders, and social justice activists. The “livable community” networks are elected leaders, planners, architects, all thinking about the physical design of our communities. Others are focusing on education, the arts, and more. There are movements occurring in these sectors, but there’s not enough crossover. We’re working to create a network that bnngs competencies and resources together to create systemic, holistic thinking about the quality of life.

There is so much talent! People understand the problems, the solutions, and the resource requirements; all that is completely intact. The bigger challenge is to develop the community and political will to move these agendas forward, to connect the grassroots and the leadership. To me, it’s not a top-down or bottom-up model. Each is necessary, but not sufficient. We need both at once. That’s the kind of difference we’re trying to make.

What sustains you in your practice of leadership and your commitment to change?

What sustains me is seeing how many thousands and thousands of community-based efforts are making a measurable impact on the health and quality of life of their citizens. I get to see these stories unfolding. I’m intellectually stimulated by their innovation, emotionally stimulated by their good wilt and results. Below the national media radar screen, I can see the workings of a healthy democracy at the community level, and it’s very heartening. On a spiritual level, I’m sustained and centered by my daily practice of kriya yoga. It allows me to take joy in small things. Yoga and meditation keep me healthy and strong and focused on the work that’s mine to do They remind me of my contribution and allow me to leave plenty of room for others to make theirs.

What do you consciously say to yourself or do that helps you stay on track with your coats?

I’ve had multiple mini-careers. I trained pilots for years. I worked for a senator, produced concert/educational events for John Denver, helped establish the national park system in Tajikistari, and started multiple nonprofit groups. Over the years, I’ve tried to stay true to my vision, have faith, and let providence create opportunities in front of me. That has always given me the opportunity to serve.

What is your passion?

Ensuring that people have the opportunity to share their voice, and that others listen well to allow authentic democracy to occur in communities. That’s what I love to be part of and why I feel blessed to get to do this kind of work. It’s also why I’m so challenged by current strategies at our federal level, which are so deeply disconnected from what everyday people in their communities are saying, wanting, caring about. Our senior political leadership is so Intoxicated with its own sense of self, it’s lost track of the will of the American people. It’s one of my passions to connect the voice of folks across the country with the policy-making process so we have a leadership that is more connected to, engaged with, and guided by a representative democracy that doesn’t leave the civil society behind when it acts.

How do you measure success?

Overall, I look to see if the quality of life is improving in the communities we serve. I judge that in two ways. First, my intuition gives me a sense that things are changing, that the difference is being made. Second, I look closely at tangible indicators that tell us if we’re making a measurable impact on health status, quality of life, and economic vitality in communities. I want to know that all the activity adds up.

If you had to give an aspiring leader one piece of advice, what: would it be?

To the aspiring leader in each of us, my advice is to listen to the voice within that calls you and reminds you of the unique contribution that is yours to make. Leadership at every level is sacred work, so if you take time for the sacred, you will hear that voice and it will guide you. You will see the opportunities that are yours to step toward and the ones you should step away from.

Are you a better leader than you were five years ago? How do you know?

I really don’t know whether I am. I honestly hope so. I do know that I try to know less and listen more. Perhaps I was so humbled by the talent of Kellogg Fellows that I had to learn to suspend my own sense of the "best way” long enough for something new to form from the gifts of others.

Can leadership be invisible? How and why have you practiced invisible leadership?

I think leadership can be very subtle. I don’t believe that the impact of leadership is ever truly invisible. Its fruits are felt. An act of authentic leadership may seem small in the moment. Even years down the road, when that seemingly small act is having a big impact, it’s almost impossible to link back to the subtle and graceful acts of individual leaders. But that’s why I take joy in the small things. I know they add up. I’ve seen it.

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Written by Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance

Additional Author 1: Thomas J. Gallagher

Tom Gallagher, KNFP-10, Leadership Development Specialist, Oregon State University.

This article was originally published in the January 2003 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.

Tom Gallagher Quick Fact: Heads the new Ford community Leadership Training Program to bring leadership training to small towns in Oregon; Leadership development specialist, Oregon State University extension service and Professor of natural resource management, University of Alaska (retired)

What sustains you in your practice of leadership and your commitment to change?

It ”recharges my batteries” when a person in a leadership class that I am offering in a rural community has an ”aha” moment about some leadership theory or practice, or about their own style and capacity. Sometimes this new awareness is a small step forward for them; other times it is life changing. For me it renews my commitment to my practice as a rural community leadership trainer. It more than makes up for the long drives and late hours.

What do you consciously say to yourself or do that helps you stay on track with your
goals?

Never underestimate the capacity of ordinary citizens to lead in their communities. Leadership is always about people and always about relationships building bridges across individual, professional, and cultural diversity.

What is your passion?

Understanding! As a professor-type, I look for the systems and models, the nodes and connections that create the context for effective leadership. When I die, I want, first, to understand people and leadership.

How do you practice good self-care?

I don’t do as well as I should, but what works for me is physical work on our small farm — cutting wood, building fences, remodeling. While I work, I think and ideas flow. After physical work I
sleep well at night. I also entertain dreams, i.e. to buy another boat and take it up the coast from Oregon to Alaska.

How do you measure success?

One person, one conversation at a time. I must admit that for all of the courses I’ve taught, papers I’ve published, programs I’ve developed and managed, what matters is when someone I contacted, perhaps years ago, tells me that I made a difference.

If you had to give an aspiring leader one piece of advice, what would it be?

Build relationships. It is not possible to lead someone unless you have built a relationship that creates trust.

How are you different or what do you do differently as a result of your experience as
a Kellogg Fellow? Why?

Without doubt the Kellogg Fellowship permitted me to move from my career in natural resource management to one in leadership training. Although I continue to teach NR courses, they are
now much different, I now look much more broadly at issues and opportunities. I strive to embed leadership training in my classes, so that graduates are leaders as well as professionals. Why? Because Kellogg’s leadership experience can be ”taken home” and applied in one’s daily life
and profession.

Are you a better leader than you were five years ago? How do you know?

I think I am, I am more aware of how I serve as a leader, and I am more aware when my expression of leadership causes problems for others, particularly when it annoys organizations.
Certainly I can teach the modules of knowledge and skills needed to be a leader, but I now know much more about my own leadership style preference and how to use it, subtly, in service to
others.

Can leadership be invisible? How and why have you practiced invisible leadership?

I think leadership is much like an iceberg, 10 percent of leadership is visible and 90 percent is invisible. In a community, leadership, which I define as influence through relationship, is very
widely distributed. I practice this form almost entirely. In MBTI-speak I am an INTJ, introverted intuitive thinker. I am not particularly social, at least not in large groups. I am not drawn toward
the extraverted, gregarious leader and/or simple solutions with catchy slogans. As much as the world needs public leaders, there is a greater need for private leaders. The Kellogg experience
has helped me to work to my strengths and manage my weaknesses (or at least some of them).

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Written by Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance

Scattered thoughts. Those of us who are routinely asked to speak about or somehow on behalf of black people should stop moralizing

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Written by Lester K. Spence

The circumstances of Trayvon Martin’s death bring back memories of my childhood. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. The Brooklyn of my youth was quite brutal.

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Written by Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance

At triumphal moments, the past and its presents can fade like ships at a distance. With a president’s hand on King’s bible, the inconceivable in two eras converge in place and time.

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Written by Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance