Be a builder or be a leader?

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to lead Summa Institute. What does it mean to be an Exeuctive Director? What am I trying to do? What do I want to inspire and how do I do that?

Recently I attended two education conferences, the NW Holistic Education Conference on Orcas Island at Salmonberry School and the AERO conference in Portland. At both conferences I met amazing people doing incredible things and I began to think about my role and what I am trying to do with Summa Institute. I began to deeply participate in the question that drives this blog. And an idea took root and has been growing in me over the last few weeks. It is this: I am not leading, I am building. I am a bridge builder. A bridge is built by first seeing a need (we have to have a way of crossing this body of water – and not by boat); then a plan for the bridge is created, what kind of bride is it?; when it comes time to build the bridge, one side is fixed and the other side is variable (you never know exactly where the bridge will land on the other side until you start to build it).

The need: a fundamental change in the way people relate to themselves and the other people in their lives. A need to be in relationship to consciousness, to allow it’s un-obstructed manifestation through each of us, as each of us.

The bridge: is NLR, no question.

I recently became a part of a really interesting group of people at Cooperative Catalyst (this is related, I promise). This group of people have come together to “change education as we speak”, sounds like what I want to do. While reading a post there I came across this post reference and I was struck, he said: “Here's the problem in a nutshell. What leaders "lead" are yesterday's organizations. But yesterday's organizations are broken. Today's biggest human challenge isn't leading broken organizations slightly better. It's building better organizations in the first place. It isn't about leadership: it's about "buildership", or what I often refer to as Constructivism. Leadership is the art of becoming, well, a leader. Constructivism, in contrast, is the art of becoming a builder — of new institutions.”

And so, my friends, I am coming to realize that I am not a leader, I am a builder, a builder of bridges. I am building a bridge from where we are today (a society in relationally confused hell), to one in which we care for our children and ourselves by being in relationship to consciousness, the way it is talked about here.