Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

 

How Much is a Good Question Worth? Everything for Your Organization!

Posted on: August 2nd, 2009 by Hayim Herring

This week, I’ve invited my good friend and colleague, Rabbi David Teutsch, to share his knowledge about leadership.Rabbi Teutsch, an expert in many areas, has spent much of his life on helping leaders of synagogues and other organizations understand and fulfill their roles effectively. His most recent book, which grew from a leadership development program which Rabbi Teutsch designed and co-taught, is entitled Making a Difference. A Guide to Jewish Leadership and Not-for-Profit Management.

In his chapter on leadership, Rabbi Teutsch writes:

Perhaps most important, when organizations are out of kilter, genuine leaders ask the questions that need to be answered in order to find out why. You will not be an effective leader unless you’ve learned to ask questions. If you don’t know what is going on in your organization and why it’s happening, you must first find out in order to lead effectively. New leaders must be willing to ask questions about projects and how they work, and about how people in an organization work together, and about almost everything else… Empowering others means consciously involving them in discussion of the questions at hand (p.11).

So I’ve asked Rabbi Teutsch to suggest the kinds of questions that professional and volunteer leaders should be asking in today’s environment. In creating that “preferable future” that I wrote about in my last post, if one of the most important functions of leaders is to ask questions, what are the three most important questions lay leaders should be asking about their congregations? What are the three that clergy should be asking? Are these questions the same, overlapping or different? Answers matter, but I happen to agree that questions matter more. I’m looking forward to hearing from Rabbi Teutsch and seeing if all of us can agree about the big questions that we need to be asking!

Rabbi Hayim Herring

The Jewish Future: Probable, Possible, Preferable – A Response to Dr. Steven Windmueller

Posted on: July 24th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

Dr. Steven Windmueller, a highly-respected scholar of Jewish communal life, published a paper this past Monday entitled, “The Unfolding Economic Crisis: Its Devastating Implications for American Jewry.” He writes, “The full impact of the current economic crisis may not be felt for years….The long-term outcome of the transformation is likely to be a far weaker, less cohesive American Jewish community… In turn, a communal system weakened by scandal and economic dislocation will inevitably be less powerful.”  For Windmueller, the future is dark.

But as sociologists like to say, we have to distinguish between the probable, the possible and the preferable.  Absent fundamental change, Windmueller is probably correct.  But the future he portrays is not inevitable. Our ability to create the kind of future we prefer is an issue of collective leadership and collaborative action.

Far before the economic crisis, 5 significant transitions, that spanned several decades, have occurred in American culture. We have transitioned from or are currently transitioning from the age of:

These overlapping transitions have also impacted upon the American Jewish community and its historical and emerging organizations.

Without minimizing the irreparable economic pain of the moment, none of these transitions are related to the economic crisis nor are our responses to them dependent upon large sums of money. Rather, they’re about values, new thinking and capabilities. Because now, if we’re really serious, we can:

Of course, anyone who loves the Jewish people and community would loudly proclaim “Yes we should!” But here’s the rub: we can now say, “Yes we can!” and that obligates us to get to work in new ways.

As Windmueller notes, we’re going to see continued downsizing of organizations. But that means we have to upsize our ideas and creativity. What we’ve lost economically, we can compensate for in large measure with ideas, technologies and vision. We can create the preferable future of a proud and flourishing Jewish community. If we let the current data drive us to darkness, the fault will be ours.

Please—respond with one creative idea you’ve seen or are thinking about that offers hope for the Jewish future. If I receive enough responses, I’ll be sure to post them.

Thanks, Rabbi Hayim Herring