What is Leadership?

It might be weird to see a cucumber growing on a trellis as a sample image of leadership right? Bear with me, I have no idea what I am doing but I am getting there.

Leadership.

In no order of preference I am aware of a few different types of leadership that I have come across in my life. There is the leader who plays the boss. The rules are the rules, do what I say, it’s my way or the highway. I have never found this useful, constructive or empowering. There is a type of leadership where the intent is very similar but it’s communicated in more docile reconcilitary terms. The tone of leadership is more cordial but the discipline is still insisted on. Then there is a type of leadership where grains of truth are dropped. Explanations are given and reasons and the leader follows by example and just keeps reiterating the truth grains the reasons, and sticks to their guns and checks in on what is going well and how much progress is being made. At the other end of the scale is the leader who talks but doesn’t walk the talk and finally one who abdicates responsibility and throws the hands up in the air when things don’t go to plan. It’s a complete breakdown in leadership as I understand it.

Trying to push a project forward or should I say grow a vision, in collaboration, perhaps one can find at different moments all these examples and issues around leadership in any given day.

I have elected to stay away from the didactic insistence, trying to show that if you step into your power and take responsibility for yourself within given guidelines, what you hope to achieve will be successful. I was hoping to be compassionate and understanding. I was hoping to have someone meet me half way who gets it, who is ready willing and able.

This approach is fantastic if you have someone onboard who has the self discipline, the willingness, the insight and the openness to a given goal. However it can also be shirking responsibility. What if your team mate or pathfinder doesn’t have these abilities developed to the necessary level to be able to help themselves in a given environment?

You see recovery takes time, it takes patience and it takes compassion. It also takes far more energy than I have available alone. Leadership can be difficult.

I have learned in 12 programs and other communities that leadership doesn’t have to be argumentative or aggressive. It can be a calm gentle guidance towards a perceived truth.

I have spent about 8 years working on a business plan, consulting, praying, meditating, researching and pulling on my own experiences to build a program which I feel works. I am convinced that any addict or alcoholic who can give themselves to this goal of the Healing Path, will absolutely get some solid sobriety, a build up in self esteem, and get to live a life where the need to rely on outside substances is removed.

I also can’t force it. Or at least I have chosen not to force it. One of the questions I am asking myself these days is, is my reluctance to create a row, a hot headed discussion where I am obliged to lay down a set of rules, really just me avoiding some responsibility? Is my reluctance to lay down the law a whip the community into shape actually me in my disease? Am I deluded to think this can work as I have seen it?

Every item on the timetable has been brought into question and instead of saying, no, this is the way it’s done, I have tried to be flexible and see why it should or shouldn’t change. What difference is 15 minutes here or there, or what difference does it make if we switch the study block with the work block? Most of the time the only argument I have for not changing something is that timekeeping is a spiritual discipline. We have plenty of free time in the calendar and asking for more is pushing boundaries. When enough boundaries get pushed, the tail wags the dog and the path becomes a furrow that leads nowhere. When I jettison the time table I am saying that my 8 years of work, that the experts who I sought out, and that I myself have all made a mistake and now we need to change.

There is the understanding that intelligent people will question everything. They should. Addicts are intelligent. There is also the question of rules and boundaries and it doesn’t matter why we do it at 7am. We do it at 7 am and show up or not but don’t keep people waiting. It’s respect, it’s self care and it’s responsibility.

Or, is it as black and white as that? So the cucumber .. I have planted about 5 cucumber plants and this is the only one that has succeeded. I have no idea when my cucumbers are ripe. They are growing in the cage, or trellis for support. The structure around the plant helps it thrive. I have picked two cucumbers. They have been slightly bitter so perhaps they were picked too soon. They still have some spikes on the skin, perhaps I need to wait for the spikes to drop off before I can pick them. As I write this I am very aware of the analogy between cucumbers and trellis and pathfinders and timetables and discipline.

I am acutely aware I cannot do The Healing Path on my own with addicts and alcoholics who have not yet engaged in the work on self. So I am looking for someone to join me as a leader. I would like someone to share the load, and the vision, who is open to what I see and to trying out my vision for themselves.

I had invited someone to join on the basis of being a leader or guide as we call them here but we found out quickly this person is a pathfinder. Lots of progress has been made it would seem which vindicates the program as it’s set out, even if I view it’s realisation as being something less than stellar.

We are not perfect, we value progress not perfection.

So I am looking for a fellow leader on this path. Someone who gets me and gets the vision.

If you know of someone who is doing step work and wants to move forward on a Healing Path and be ecologically conscious practicing principals of permaculture on the earth and in a community then you are probably the person I am looking for. Reach out.

If you happen to know about step work, permaculture, herbs, healing, or any other useful modalities, then perhaps this is a place for you to bring your gifts and help people heal?

Or perhaps Higher Power has some other plan. This is why I choose not to insist even though it’s difficult? It’s not for me to insist what will make a person well, I can just give what made me well and if a body doesn’t want that, there are plenty of other places that charge silly money to get you dry and through some step work and throw you back out the door.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts for today, and once again I will try to post more regularly. I believe the comments now work … if not, reach out through email…

thanks for reading.

Collie