A CALL FOR TRANFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Closing remarks to the 2008 Carolinas Conference on Addiction & Recovery

              October 31, 2008

              by Jim Van Hecke

As we wrap up our week together I want to thank some very important people:

• Our wonderful staff:  Charlotte, Caitlin and Marsha who “made it happen”;
• The extraordinary faculty who taught us and inspired us;
• Fulton Crews and Bob Gwyther of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, who joined Addiction Recovery Institute as co-presenters of this event; and
• You----who are the future of this field and, by your active presence here this week, have worked hard to improve your personal and professional lives in ways that will enhance your abundant abilities to facilitate health and wellness in your clients.

I also want to thank Dr. Alan Dobson for his mention of Community Care as a “transformational program”---a perfect segue into my call for transformational leadership which is, I believe, so desperately needed if our field is to survive in any kind of effective way. 

I define transformational leadership as a radical break from the reality of “what is” to the hope of “what can be.”  To illustrate, allow me to introduce you to the concept of metanoa—from one of my favorite Greek words that means “a fundamental shift of mind.”  Let’s look at metanoa from three different perspectives:

• How we think about the world—by shifting our thinking from what is to what can be we move from a fixed reality to new possibilities that are open and dynamic;
• Our understanding of relationships—we move from relating only to those in our immediate vicinity or understanding that we are all connected…we are all parts of the whole, and what one does effects us all….so what each of us does is very important to all of us.
• The nature of commitment—a willingness to believe that change is possible and then acting on that belief.  This derives from a key concept in the world of recovery; living in a state of surrender.  By believing that “…self of itself is insufficient…” (The Source by James Michener, p.113) we turn to the God of our understanding where we gain power to change ourselves and our environment.

So how does metanoa play out with you?

--a new emphasis on recovery—we shift our thinking from being in the treatment business to being in the recovery business---and a whole new open and dynamic world opens up to us and our clients;

--a belief in the personal power that we each possess—the passionate presence that we talked so much about this week and understanding what could happen if we sought to harness the collective passionate presences in this room right now; and

--a belief in the dynamic of predictable miracles—we live and work believing that recovery is possible for each and every client we see.

If these things can happen to you, they can happen to a group (example: NC and SC Addiction Fellows), and if they can happen to a group, they can happen to society.

Individuals aligned around a common vision, as Mike Flaherty so eloquently told us this week, can have extraordinary influence in the world.  At first it may be lonely, as Robert Greenleaf  beautifully wrote in his classic book, Servant Leadership (p.330): “…servant leaders may stand alone, largely without the support of their culture, as a saving remnant of those who care for both persons and institutions, who are determined to make their caring count—wherever they are involved.”

We may start out alone, in our sole practices or in our agencies, but we will not be alone for long, for as Robert Kennedy said to a group of students in South Africa: 

               “…each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance….there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems…..few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.  Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.  Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change…I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.”

 I urge you to become transformational leaders, not satisfied with the reality of the status quo, but living and working in the “hope of what can be.”  The people we are called to serve so desperately need that and deserve that!  We have the power to make it happen.  I pray it may be so!

Go and do good work---blessings always!