Paul Hill, Jr., KNFP-10, CEO/President, East End Neighborhood House
This article was originally published in the April 2003 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.
Paul Hill Quick Fact: 2002 recipient of 100 Black Men Mentor Award (Cleveland, OH)
Recently completed an 18 month professional training program – Organization and Systems Development via The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland
Hill, P (2002), Africentric Rites of Passage: Nurturing the Next Generation, Counseling African American Families, 61-71
How have you, though your leadership, made a difference in one of your communities?
In 1993, I founded The National Rites of Passage Institute (NROPI). The purpose of NROPI is to create a critical mass and community of adults to serve and develop youth. Since 1993, NROPI has provided training to 732 men and women from 20 cities and the District of Columbia. They have been actively involved in rnentoring and supporting a minimum of 10,000 children and youth in neighborhood and community based programs.
What sustains you in your practice of leadership and your commitment to change?
The understanding and practicing the concept of sankofa. I am, because we are and therefore I am.
What is your passion?
Family and community.
How do you practice good self~care?
Treating my body as a temple.
How do you measure success?
Success is based on the fruit we bear in the October of our lives. October answers to that period in our lives when we no longer depend on our transient moods, when all our experiences ripen into wisdom and every root, branch and leaf glows with maturity. What we have been and done in spring and summer appears. We bear fruit.
If you had to give an aspiring leader one piece of advice, what would it be?
First, live a full and balanced life! Second, there is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the practice of freedom.. .the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with the reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
How are you different or what do you do differently as a result of your experience as a Kellogg Fellow? Why?
I am more global and have a better appreciation of other people and their cultures.
Are you a better leader than you were five years ago? How do you know?
I am a different type of leader; I have transitioned from the warrior-king to the spiritual-guide. I am in a generativity period of development and leadership. I know because my Gestalt experience has afforded me the opportunity to bump-up against myself which resulted in an aha!
Can leadership be invisible? How and why have you practiced invisible leadership?
Yes! Leadership is situational and developmental. My leadership style has transitioned from being provocative to being evocative in my generative and spiritual-guide developmental period of life.
How do you lead through a crisis?
By being informed, strategic, decisive and with meditation and prayer.