Effective leadership comes from the marriage of vision with practical skills of organization and personal eloquence; respect for persons and responsibility for the group with the ability to assess the consequence of actions; decisiveness with patience; the capacity to take satisfaction in the accomplishment of others with a willingness to be held accountable for one’s decisions and actions.
— Paul Lacey, Quakers and the Use of Power, p. 27
In his 1909 Swarthmore Lecture William Charles Braithwaite identified several organizational phases in the history of the Society of Friends: “The early Friends believed in leaders, but not in a system; the Friends of the second period in leaders and a system; the Friends of a later period were content to have a system without leaders.” Where do Quakers stand today?
“And all will teach, and learn, and our long night of preparation shudder into light,” wrote Kenneth Boulding during a workshop in 1979 on Friends as Leaders: the vision, instrument and methods. The traditional vision of Friends was reaffirmed ending in “a Society that can call and attract a new generation of leadership to raise a new standard of righteousness and to respond and live by God’s way of truth and love.”
In examining leadership, the group addressed the paradox of leading and being led, in recognition that true leaders are not initiators, but responders to the Divine Will: “the chief determinant of authentic leadership is not human talent but availability to the divine. The only authentic leadership is divine fellowship . . . a high degree of interdependence and mutuality is required between leaders and the community of faith.” They suggested various directions of implementing this, including meeting present leadership needs and creating an atmosphere in which the ministry of all Friends at the monthly meeting level could be discerned and nurtured, the creation of internships, youth programs and service opportunities, the development of a leadership pool and an enlargement of our understanding of stewardship.
A recent job advertisement recognizes the tension involved in seeking appropriate Quaker leadership when it states “demonstrated miracles are preferred, but not required.” In small yearly meetings the employed staff may need to be able to pull off occasional miracles, for the expectations laid on them are vast. When Friends are not clear about their organizational needs, administrative and charismatic expectations are unreasonably high, and burnout occurs.
Leadership comes not from the administrative staff but from all Friends within the yearly meeting. My own Yearly Meeting has not been able to move forward on a full examination of what are appropriate forms of ministry for this time. An experiment with Peace Elders has now ended in some bitterness, and it took a decade to come to clearness on the service of Friends as federal penitentiary chaplains. Until we nurture all our gifts, we will not move out of our long night.
Are the recommendations of 1979 being heeded? That is, the clear definition of the roles of all involved in a committee or organization; mechanisms to evaluate expectations and performance honestly, discreetly and regularly; and significant priority to the discovery, nurture and development of the gifts of leadership.
Paul Lacey continued the examination of leadership among Friends in Quakers and the Use of Power. As I read this, I recognize over and over again the traps into which Friends still fall.
an invitation to serve . . . seems increasingly like an invitation to waste substance and break one’s heart in dedication to illusory Quaker ideas of participation in and responsibility for decision-making.
. . . boards, committees and constituents do everything they can to neutralize those leaders’ abilities to act, while evading responsibility themselves for unpopular decisions.
. . . deep and unexamined ambivalence about the exercise of power.
At various times in the life of the Society of Friends concerns have arisen which have taken time before the Society could respond with one voice. The issue of slavery comes to mind. Now we are seeking direction on several concerns including homosexuality and abortion. These “pelvic issues” have the potential to divide us, but under God’s guidance we will be brought to clarity. The Holy Experiment continues.
Robert K. Greenleaf worked for AT&T, becoming Director of Management Research. As a lifelong student of organization, he distilled these observations into a series of essays on the theme of “Servant as Leader.” This idea came from reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East, which tells of a band of men on a journey. The central figure of the story is Leo who accompanies the party as servant but also sustains them with his spirit. Leo disappears and the group falls into chaos. Eventually, one of the party finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had first known as servant, is the leader of the Order. While this may seem idealistic, especially in terms of for-profit organizations, Greenleaf’s vision is now being promoted by a Center named for him, and several major corporations have adopted his principles. Greenleaf’s vision is strongly affected by his Quaker experience.
In Servant: retrospect and prospect, Greenleaf notes that many church leaders are more concerned with maintaining than with leading, and calls on leaders to bring into being a contemporary theology of institutions which will be regenerative and enable them to grow in their capacity to serve.
A quotation from Roger Wilson’s 1949 Swarthmore Lecture on Authority, Leadership and Concern states: “A pure-bred pedigree flock looks well; and it feels good to be a member. But imaginative cross-breeding may be what is required of us.” Wilson identified four interlocking responsible elements relating to the Friends Relief Service: the Society of Friends, the relief workers, the committees and the administrators. Today, these elements are still present, and we need to uphold all elements of leadership and discern the appropriate role for each. Too often we assume committees and administrators are leaders, and objectify these individuals and the Yearly Meeting itself. Distinction between moral and administrative responsibility is needed, with moral responsibility being found through the Sense of the Meeting and administrative responsibility being the translation of this into action. In practice, the confusion between leadership and administration remains. We seem to try to resolve our spiritual quandaries by naming the “right” person to leadership. The individual is then set up in a “messiah” situation and is often sacrificed when the necessary changes are not made.
Friends Relief Service found it necessary to develop a Representative Conference. Members from all four groups met to look at the overview of the service, but these gatherings did not have executive authority, being purely advisory:
There was a freedom and quality of participation that could not have existed had we remained conscious of our difference of age, function and experience. . . . It was primarily in our Representative Conferences that we came to have this sense of being sharers of the whole Body, having a joint Fellowship and Communion with all. It was in so far as the whole Society is a working, waiting and worshipping fellowship that it could gather up its own shortcomings and those of its relief workers and set the whole under the guidance of God.
So often we come to our gatherings wearing particular hats and are unable to let go. We are concerned with schedules and budgets and relate not at all to the divine economy—the Kingdom of God. I am told by clergy friends that their training suggested that at least two working hours a day are to be spent in quiet time, reading, praying and meditating. Initially most ignore this, yet come to recognize its necessity. Friends do not always maintain a healthy balance between worship, recreation and business and rarely encourage administrators to pace their lives appropriately.
Management for Productivity focuses on the leader’s use of power, and sources of rewards, coercion, legitimacy, expertise and reference. Aspects such as “don’t be afraid to create a sense of obligation” and “create feelings of dependence” illustrate the divergence between the ideals of Friends’ leadership and regular business practice. In the Quaker context a leader must function in a democratic, motivational, participative and transformational manner, which is both task and relationship oriented, and maintain open communication in a situation of low control.
Each generation of Friends needs to experience for itself the unity of faith and works, but today we seem to pay too little heed to the experiences of Friends who have gone before. Experiencing afresh does not mean reinventing the wheel, and the resources of history and experienced individuals are there for our guidance. Is it not time to move from “our long night of preparation and shudder into light?”
These articles are from Resources
for Fostering Vital Friends Meetings
See also: the FGC Quaker Library
