And
that brings me to the leaders. Oh, the
leaders.
The statement slightly sexuality
slandering about hairdressers advancing to Executive Directorship was so
apropos that though it was coined by a man whose clay feet eventually left a feces-like
mudslide behind, it has come to be the measurement by which I look at
leadership within LGBT organizations. Of
the handful I’ve experienced and worked with closely they were hampered first
by the nature of again, where the majority of the funding came from; the
corruption of values and morals and that
the figurative left handed managerial stance, lacked a creative, innovative,
educated and strategic right hand to create, not simply an LGBT service
provider but a true, successful business.
It seems that it should seem obvious that in order to maintain an LGBT
organization you would want it to be a prosperous business but the places I was
at are bedeviled by the mentality that hampers and destabilizes and demoralizes
countless companies, inappropriate leadership.
The word leadership, particularly in
my teaching world---non-profit, educational, academic is often tossed around
without a quantification of what it means.
I personally think of Cyclops and Storm from the X-Men. When a leadership training component is
suggested and the deliberation for end goal outcome abilities for the clients
is bandied about, I think are we trying to create a Cyclops or a Storm? Or maybe a Jack Welch or a Martha
Stewart? Reginald Lewis? Reginald Johnson? Suzanne DePasse? Chew Guevara?
Malcolm X? Gandhi? Bernadette Devlin? How are we defining leadership and what kinds
of leaders do we need? Notice I
pluralize the word leader. There is
always a need for multiple leaders and multiple kinds of leaders. The hubris I’ve seen in Executive Directors
and their subordinates has been contrary to that thought, hence the ailing
disintegration of multiple organizations over the years.
Beware of any program you or your
nearest and dearest are entering as a client or professionally that can’t
quantify leadership to the three forms first: managerial, visionary and
strategic and then answer what kind of leadership they’re aiming to
instill and what kind of outcome they expect from their endeavors. Most leadership programs at LGBT organizations
end up being bullshit because of the lack of understanding, first by the
leadership in control of establishing them what leadership is in its three forms and more incisively, what kind of leaders they are and therefore will
impose as their vision of leadership. For
years I’ve watched control, domination and ego be what passes for leadership
and in spite of internal and external efforts to change, the reigning mentality
has torn them asunder. However again,
HIV and leadership are key funding friendly words. You know the whole plan is cockeyed and on
the road to perdition, in my experience, when either goal is named during
conception/creation time and that the train is way off the tracks when they’re
publicly advertising too much of both.
But I’m perhaps being unfair in not
describing through clear definitions the kinds of leaders, their merits and
weaknesses and what they look like so that you can picture for yourself how the
integration of all is necessary.
Managerial leaders
are:
·
reactive;
adopt passive attitudes towards goals; goals arise out of necessities, not
desires and dreams; goals based on, past
·
view
work as an enabling process involving some combination of ideas and people
interacting to establish strategies
·
relate
to people according to their roles in the decision- making process
·
see
themselves as conservators and regulators of existing order; sense of who they
are depends on their role in organization
·
influence
actions and decisions of those with whom they work
·
involved
in situations and contexts characteristic of day-to- day activities
·
concerned
with, and more comfortable in, functional areas of responsibilities
·
expert
in their functional area
·
less
likely to make value-based decisions
·
engage
in, and support, short-term, least-cost behavior to enhance financial
performance figures
·
focus
on managing the exchange and combination of explicit knowledge and ensuring
compliance to standard operating procedures
·
utilize
linear thinking
·
believe
in determinism, that is, the choices they make are determined by their internal
and external environments
Visionary leaders are:
·
proactive,
shape idea, change “the way" people think about what is desirable,
possible, and necessary
·
work
to develop choices, fresh approaches to long standing problems; work from
high-risk positions
·
are
concerned with ideas, relate to people in intuitive and empathetic ways
·
feel
separate from their environment; work in, but do not belong to, organizations;
sense of who they are does not depend on work
·
influence
attitudes and opinions of others within the organization
·
concerned
with insuring future of organization, especially through development and
management of people
·
more
embedded in complexity, ambiguity and information overload; engage in
multifunctional, integrative tasks
·
know
less than their functional area experts more likely to make decisions based on
values .
·
more
willing to invest in innovation, human capital, and creating and maintaining an
effective culture to ensure long-term viability
·
focus
on tacit knowledge and develop' strategies as communal forms of tacit knowledge
that promote enactment of a vision
·
utilize nonlinear thinking
·
believe
in strategic choice, that is, their choices make a .difference in their
organizations and environment
Strategic leaders are:
· synergistic combination of managerial
and visionary leadership
· emphasis on ethical behavior and
value-based decisions
· oversee operating (day-to-day) and
strategic (long-term) responsibilities
· formulate and implement strategies
for immediate impact and preservation of long-term goals to enhance
organizational survival, .growth, and long-term viability
· have strong, positive expectations of
the performance they expect from their superiors, peers, subordinates, and
themselves
· use strategic controls and financial
controls, with emphasis on strategic controls
· use, and interchange, tacit and
explicit knowledge on individual and organizational levels
· use linear and nonlinear thinking
patterns
· believe in strategic choice, that is,
their choices" make a difference in their organizations and environment
Part III
In 5 LGBT organizations I worked for
or under 1 managerial leader and 4 Visionary leaders, hence the layoffs,
firings, piss poor integrity, vanity battles and general financial ruin they've all suffered (and continue to spin around the drain from.)
At one organization, wrangled in, I
looked around at the whole business set-up, the level of services and
production and the leaders themselves and estimated that they would collapse in
two years. Technically speaking it
occurred in 23 months. There was some
emergency triage attempts to pull it back together but by then I had accepted a
contract elsewhere and to examine the firm now---all senior management has left
or been replaced, the membership has dwindled to staff and friends of staff,
the funding was internally sabotaged so it’s already rapidly eroded and the
work, all important for the community, has over a decade amounted to not even
hill of substantial beans, more like small, calcified beans. Which is a horrendous shame because the
Visionary Leaders had a good vision….but damn that spotlight of ego didn't seduce both into following the path of least integrity. In fact personally, having loved the play Macbeth for years, I marveled at how the
crossover with Othello occurred so
rapidly within the organization, precipitating its downfall. This agency was evicted out of their office,
set another one up under the aegis of a community leader, lied to…the CDC in an
attempt to get more gravy train funding and has since risen from the ocean
depths, like little shards of broken glass, indistinguishable from the glittery
community. By that clever metaphor I mean
that so many members have re-christened, re-created, re-established, and
reiterated the organization in churches, basements, apartments and once a
school gymnasium, drawing in a loyal but ineffectual dozen or two, that another
organization leader outlined to me, quite succinctly, how they were at heart
and best, a cult.
Another organization went very King Lear, with varying factions under
the titular Visionary Leader fighting against one another because of their
inability to unify against the Visionary Leader. Anyone of professionalism and education
abandoned the organization, the passive aggressiveness and general mental
health turmoil being too much for anyone of sanity to tolerate. Of course during this time, much like the first
organization, the CDC was cutting funding each and every year, which tightened
salaries, lessened chances for promotion, minimized healthcare (the irony at
one organization I was at was that for all their salvos at the world about LGBT rights---they wouldn't pay for same sex partner healthcare), lowered
social expectations, a clientele that was then at one point close to 80% HIV+
men which in turn meant that again our social measurements of poverty were
disproportionately present to healthy men…and healthy men avoided the agency in
droves. The norm became programming from
the CDC and Welfare agencies; in effect a vibrant organization was turned into
a poverty based soup kitchen that ironically was bested by multiple other
organizations that could provide housing, financial assistance, medical care,
social groups and even the basics of food to HIV infected men. The clientele stopped by for the odd
Metrocard and occasional freebie cash or trips from surveys sponsored by…..the
CDC. Even, impossibly HIV testing dried
up as the testing services just became a revolving door for HIV+ men to re-test
for the free cash and Metrocard.
The third organization, lead by a
Visionary Leader began an escorting service.
I kid you not. The staff also began
sponsoring sex parties in their home; pimping out younger clientele; demanding
sexual favors for services; using the Social Security numbers of the homeless
to boost their own tax returns; taking extravagant trips, buying designer
luggage and opening high credit limit charge cards for personal use. Literally it was Sodom and Gomorrah
personified. One could not be expected
to survive in such a climate as an employee because much like the last Jim
Jones Revival, you were either drinking the Kool-Aid or figuratively executed
for refusing.
The fourth agency was investigated
routinely by the IRS for mismanagement and mis-reporting of funds, the State
for misappropriation of funds, the police for drug dealing and by several
intrepid reporters/bloggers who created a Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin inspired spiked tea and crumpets
website geared towards anonymously writing about the often accurate shenanigans
going on at agencies. The highlights
being the Executive Director really earned the enmity of hundreds, if not
thousands of men of color who found his Rottweiler-esque personality to be so
abrasive that poverty, ostracism and even occasionally hunger, were preferable
to coming to his agency or when the time came for his demise, aid. Even the most inoculated to his acidic
personality couldn't help but smirk when he was fired.
From what I understand, the Ding, Dong the Witch Is Dead party
thrown by staff, the Board of Directors, clients and quite a bit of the LGBT
community was so crowded that it spanned not only days but two boroughs. I got, no lie, 14 emails about his
termination and was stopped in the supermarket by a triad of former clients,
now confirmed heroin addict to ecstatically tell me the news. Then a few weeks later I bumped into a
co-worker, who told me again. Then I got
some more emails with attachments to several articles written in newspapers and
blogs about it. Then I got an email and
phone call from an Executive Director of another agency who wanted to share tea
and crumpets about what had happened. You can’t make this stuff up!
The fifth agency simply eroded from
not being able to turn the Titanic mass of itself away from the inevitable
iceberg of the CDC. Or better yet, once
lodged into the iceberg of the CDC, it threw all engines into reverse---the
wrenching free tearing a significant hole in the hull of the ship and to this
day, CDC ice chunks lodged and trailing, it lists away, slowly sinking as
clients, HIV+ overwhelmingly, no longer in death throes but due to medical
advances, chronic throes, abandon ship.
However as we know no clients, no proof of services being rendered and
therefore no funding. Unfortunately
every one sat on the deck of this LGBT Titanic sympathizing with their and
others HIV for so long that practical, useful, vocational and profitable skills weren't offered in programming until it was too late. Their investment in their clientele didn't generate as the investment in any community would a bulwark of men to turn back
and assist and aid the agency. Which is
the great cost of focusing on only one aspect of poverty so intensely---you
don’t cure any of the others….so when the wolves of karma come for these
agencies, there are no warriors in their clientele, past or present to stave
them off.
The specific question to me, several
times from others was why didn't I stay and fight the good fight; turn the
places around, change the climate if I knew the impending disasters on the
horizons?
Honestly, most times I was
outnumbered by inequity.
At one agency, a true Strategic
Leader left and without his presence, I knew the organization was now on the E
Ticket ride to failure, so I left.
Another time I sensed the financial
maelstrom of mismanagement about to be revealed, politely refused to submit
grants or sign anything financially related and resigned a few weeks before the
IRS stepped in and closed them down.
For most of them I often wondered if
I wanted my destiny to be marred by this kind of social fight against other men
of color to institute order, integrity, responsibility, accountability---manhood into the “community”. It was often with a heavy heart I left, my
last works to transfer the neediest clients to better agencies, better
services, and better life possibilities.
I realized within the decade experience that for me personally and
professionally it gave me a solid lens to focus my education through; it gave
me a solid Petri dish to watch all these machinations and madness inspired
shenanigans transpire; it gave me an insight into how and why men of color who
are LGBT undercut themselves when handed the opportunity to progress their
sub-community and that gave me greater insight into the Black and Latino
community. The fears and biases that
prevented LGBT agencies from logically partnering with non-heterosexual
agencies (once to the loss of $75,000 in a weekend---but myself and the other
agency coordinators, risking our jobs because our “leaders” couldn’t agree how
to split the money, covertly started programming with that funding to get it to
the HIV- and HIV+ clients alike; guerrilla transformational work, indeed!) and reaping
the social and material rewards of a larger community that isn’t in total
opposition to LGBT people of color.
I learned a lot about leadership,
about what kind to desire to be, what kind not and what kind to avoid working
for. Much like the coordinator who I
inadvertently inspired to leave his position, I inspired myself with my
accumulated work to press on higher, to greater educational goals and teaching
expansiveness. A few days ago I was
looking at the demographics of my television show, videos, books and blogs and
saw that I was being read/viewed in among dozens of other places, Zimbabwe, China, New Zealand, Portugal,
Greece, France, Canada, Brazil, India, the United Arab Emirates! The handful of agencies I worked for
landmines, lily pads and sinkholes alike, I would've never embarked on such a
globally expansive career. I looked at
my accumulated boxes upon boxes of materials and thoughts and notes and memories
and realized that I could coalesce it in some ways, I could codify it and more
importantly disperse it throughout a world community, to achieve some of that
parity I was always seeking.
Somewhere, someone is agreeing,
disagreeing, considering my work beyond simply my own experienced context of
the term men of color as African American and Latino---I’m talking real men of
color throughout the world. The
world. Really colored men, all over the world, who
recognize something within their hearts, their minds, their souls that says to
them their sexuality is something else, not simply heterosexual as we define it,
perhaps one of the myriadical other
sexualities possible in a human.
Going into that meeting a decade
ago, looking for fellowship, companionship, friendship I could’ve never dreamed
I’d get such an education and avocation to what I’ve taken my learning and
created. I was thinking recently about a
relative, a good person, give or take, who works at a very uninteresting,
tedious job; that eats nearly the same thing every day; that watches the same
level of TV and then washes his clothes and repeats his life the next week. I was thinking about the 15 years he’s spent
at this current job and I was wondering other than the monetary pay a week and
the material survival that brings---what had it actualized or manifested into
his life? What had it manifested into
the community around him at large?
Then I turned the question back on
myself, I review my life and its winding roads often so that I don’t fear the
future, and I realized my relative hadn't been anywhere that really challenged
him to learn a new field, become an expert, tested his manhood (integrity,
responsibility, accountability), blossomed into seeds of work that spreads
across the Earth. I put up a world atlas
over a wall (I use it in classes sometimes) and I started putting little post
it strips onto places where the demo-graphical survey has shown my readers/viewers. I would've never electronically traversed the
world without these faulty organizations, without my outrage and frustration
and disgust at them. I wouldn't continue
to do so, getting bigger and bigger, receiving so many communiques from distant
lands, I’ll probably never see without the above described organizations. Even in their madness, if personally honed, if
walked away from, if ignored and even if seen clearly, they have value. The individual can make it what I term
anti-mentors, those who teach us what not to do and not to be and inspire us to
do something good, useful and educational.
If you’re personally in, as an
employee or a client, such a mix, such a madness, know that you can take the
bile, the lessons, the foolishness and act out the vision, perhaps with some
consciousness and strategic editing, but know that the individual can transcend
the poverty of some LGBT men of color and the misshapen organizations they form
and affect and effect the world. And
more importantly broader than clients meetings that are often focused on one
disease, chicken and chairs and piteous emoting, corrupted staff members and
gross mismanagement, you can transcend all that rubbish
and strike out, strategically again, to truly advancing the community of
African and Latino LGBT to its desperate need of eliminating and mitigating all forms of poverty that riddle
it.
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Kyle Phoenix, 2014
Manhattan, New York
