Leadership Is Building Capacity

We thought we were going for an interview. Instead, they handed us the keys and told us to be bold. We were 23, had just been made co-executive directors, and were splitting a $27,000 salary for a nonprofit that was $10,000 in the red. 

That was a Thursday. The utility company was coming to turn off the power on Monday. 

Lutherwood, a summer camp on 36 acres in Oregon's coastal range, had 11 buildings, seasonal staff of 40, and was supported by about 60 member church congregations. Two major factions in the organization existed - each telling us behind the other's back that we didn't need the other.

Elise and I had been married for about 8 months. She was a religious studies major, I was a college dropout. And now we were living in isolation, out in the woods, 30 minutes from the nearest town.

To say it was a stressful experience is a massive understatement. 

Stakeholders were skeptical of us, the camp's viability, and one another's motivations. The most enthusiastic supporters still spoke of the organization in qualified, apologetic ways.

We grew close to our program director and had a couple friends in Eugene, 40 minutes away. But we lived on site, our house only 50 feet from our office. It was nearly impossible to stop talking about camp and the financial situation we were in.

How would we pay the bills? Could we pay ourselves this pay period? How would we find more donors? How would we increase our campers and rentals? Should we quit? Did anyone even care about what we were doing?

After two years, we had answered a lot of those questions. With the incredibly hard work of a few very dedicated people, and the increasing support of newly enthused stakeholders, we had reversed many of the years-long trends that had plagued the camp.

We had built a new climbing tower, a low-ropes course, a new swimming pool, and remodeled two of our cabins. Donations were up, camper numbers were up, members organizations were up, and rentals were up.

But we were exhausted. We'd given everything we could to the organization over the course of two years - without having an adequate support system or way of grounding ourselves in healthy habits.

We had told ourselves that if we didn't do the work, no one would. We felt that our successes weren't appreciated and our failures put everything in jeopardy. The stakes of it all felt like life or death.

We were bitter, broken, and burnt out.

Our time at Lutherwood taught us a lot about nonprofit management and leadership. We learned about the power of narrative, the ingenuity of people, the generosity of strangers, and the importance of boundaries.

But 13 years later, the thing that sticks with me the most is the sense of isolation and loneliness that we felt most days over those two years. Even running a place that was meant to be a retreat, a respite for weary people, we felt the weight that a lack of self-care placed on us and our relationship.

Time and distance, along with travel around the world working with people who try in their own ways to make the world a better place, has shown us that we were not alone in our exhaustion. 

Community-minded people - whether in nonprofits, universities, civic roles, or their everyday lives - often martyr themselves for the sake of their chosen cause. I've seen volunteers burn out right next to program directors. I've seen community-facing professors take out their desperation on students and neighbors alike. And I've seen executives and civic leaders compromise their deepest held values in the face of an unrelenting sense of scarcity.

Burnout, bitterness, scarcity, martyrdom, desperation, exhaustion, ethical compromise; all in the name of a better world.

Some of this comes from very real concerns. When we had no money at camp and were each working 80 hour weeks for our half of $27,000 - scarcity was a fact, not just a perspective.

Still, our perspective was not simply cold-blooded rational concern. We were making it, slowly but surely. But our accomplishments were never sustainable having come from unhealthy means.

Our story was not unique.

Perhaps the ugliest side of the work to make a better world is the wide-spread habit of dehumanizing and abusing the people who make significant commitments to the endeavor. Particularly by stakeholders, funders, and we ourselves.

We make every excuse for our self-sacrifice, finding examples in the stories of our icons to justify the pain and suffering. We celebrate those who refuse to take a breath and lionize those who demonstrate no boundaries.

And at the most fundamental level, we refuse to take action when opportunity for healing, grounding, connecting, and resetting is offered. We don't build our capacity; we stretch our limits and set out to do more with less.

But what might we accomplish if far fewer of us were walking through life lonely, bitter, or scared?

Looking Bear Leadership is our attempt to build the capacity of the countless people out there who are brilliantly engaging their communities for the sake of life together. And, equally, it is our attempt to create for ourselves the spaces, habits, and attitudes that will sustain our own efforts for social and environmental justice. We're claiming for ourselves and for one another the same dignity and wellbeing that we fight for on the behalf of others everyday.

What exhaustion or bitterness have you witnessed in your context or within yourself? What opportunities for health and wellbeing should you be considering? What might change in your life if you built your capacity rather than simply stretched it?

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