I've been writing for some time about the necessity of realizing our students bring the entirety of their lives to our doorstep, and it matters. We do not serve people in isolation, we serve complex individuals with rich full lives. As the world has shifted to requiring post-secondary education for all, it has challenged those of us in post-secondary education to think differently about how we serve these students. I've written about this issue before (The Poverty Informed Triangle), but today I'd like to look at another issue. Specifically, I'd like to talk about what it means to lead when you are someone with lived experience in poverty. Just like our students come to us with a different context and world view, I think the same is true for our staff with lived experience. And just like our students who sometimes feel mismatched with our schools' polices and procedures, I think the same thing happens to those of us who work at the colleges. So, I'm going to deviate this week and talk about something from a completely personal perspective. Although I often use my experience as an example, this is different because I just want to tell you my experience. I don't know if others share it, but my gut says they do.
Let's start by being honest. The type of poverty I experienced growing up and later in my 20's would be considered mild by a lot of folks. We always had a roof over our heads, and generally food was in solid supply (with some help). So, this isn't a story about proclaiming my poverty, which ranged somewhere between blue collar poverty and situational. All I'm saying is a persistent sense of having less, and possibly being viewed as being less, has influenced my world view and how I do my work. In fact, it informs everything about me. So, it must mean it impacts me as a leader, and I'm guessing it does for people like me as well. Now I'm Vice President of a college, so my financial difficulty is behind me (I hope, but doubting is an outcome of my history too), but just like the students, it still lives inside me. And as I changed jobs this fall, I started to wonder what it means to lead from this mental and emotional place. I think it has an impact. I think it has strengths and challenges, but I think most of all it means others don't always see me or the situation the way I do. Let me share a couple examples.
Folks in poverty tend to be relationship based and live in a more oral culture. This means we can see connections and we think a lot about people when leading. Middle class people tend to talk more about achievement and goals. I know this is true because I've picked up lots of middle-class norms over the years. A traditional path to leadership often begins with the ability to "get stuff done", which seems very middle class. I've read extensively on leadership, and the literature often discusses the transition from being an outstanding individual performer (read 'get a lot of stuff done') to having to get work done through influencing others and how hard the change can be. What if your skill set ran the opposite way? I can only speak for myself, but it has always been easier for me to influence people's hearts and minds than it has been to accomplish processes and tasks. In fact, I joke about it all the time (for my whole career) because it can make me feel outside the norm and deficient. But I wonder, maybe it's just a reflection of my skill set, and maybe that skill set is less common, but just as important. Am I rationalizing? I don't know. I just know I can often feel like I'm missing skills I'm supposed to have, yet I'm having some success. I often think our students need a sense of belonging to overcome impostor syndrome. I wonder what we do for our leaders with similar backgrounds. If I'm honest, every career transition I've made has had aspects of sheer terror as I work through feelings that pretty soon someone will figure out I don't really know how this works. But after two decades of mostly successful work and advancement, that can't be true, can it? Could it be the skill set my life gave me is enough? It never feels that way, which leads to the next issue.
If you can be bilingual between poverty and middle-class, I come close. However, it leads to my most vulnerable places. If you are always sure at some level you are faking it until you make it, the odds of feeling inadequate and defensive are pretty high. Again, after twenty years in education, I cover pretty well, but I'm sensitive to things others aren't. I remember being at an after work dinner at a fairly upscale place on a business trip a few years ago. I was with a colleague and friend who came from a much more affluent background than I did, although we had the same job and title at that time. And when they served the meal, I reached for the pepper immediately, like always. My friend casually said, "aren't you going to taste the food before you season it?" It was a throwaway line between friends, and I doubt he could sense my reaction. But on the inside, I was in a spiral, and the hamster wheel in my mind was spinning furiously. My lack of class had been exposed. I was being judged. I was outed, and would never fit in. None of those things were true of course, but that's where my mind was. I don't remember the rest of the dinner, but I remember my shame and feeling very angry at my friend and his "pretentiousness." "I'm just as good as you, damn it. In fact, I'm better" was the refrain in my head. It seems kind of crazy as I type it, but it's been years, and I can pull the memory and the feelings up easily. It's one of many times I was pretty sure a small behavior meant I was being judged as inadequate and a fraud. If my experience is not just limited to me, I wonder how many other leaders go there too, and maybe are limited by their response.
So, we often read about the crisis of leadership, and I wonder if it is because we define it on a particular set of norms. Even while I feel like an impostor as I try to figure out structure and process and generate products, I am taking daily time to connect with the people I work with and learn their stories. But my own internalized insecurity tell me this isn't "work." It's wasting time and makes me a procrastinator, at least in my head. Of course, I'm pretty sure everyone else sees it too, but what if there is an alternative version to the story I tell myself. I'm getting to do a fair amount of public speaking in recent years (feel free to invite me to your place of work, it's my favorite thing), and people often approach me to chat when I am done. On rare occasions they want to challenge something I've said or learn more, but fortunately they are usually pretty complimentary. However, without fail, someone will approach me to say they also grew up in tough circumstances, and they have connected with what I have said. It's the best part of those days, but today it is making me wonder if we are missing out on some potentially excellent leaders. The people who approach me usually share with me privately and quietly as if we just joined a club we aren't supposed to tell anyone about. What if, just like I'm asking us to do with students, we approached people with the skill set poverty develops from a strengths-based perspective and made them feel welcome and not like impostors. If we acknowledged and celebrated the rich complexity of our leaders, perhaps we would get better outcomes for the richly complex people we serve.
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