Navigation Skills, Race and Childhood

Our personal characteristics give us navigational tools that steer us in the world. The craftsman who sanded and resurfaced the floors in my house is deaf and through the “feel” of the sander on the surface he could tell the depth and make-up of the sub-floor. His senses sharpened in one area because of his limitations in another make me think of a recent story in the news about bats and their use of sonar to navigate the world.
My heritage is Irish and Welsh. My daughters are African American. I believe that like deafness, our heritages can sharpen our senses in unique ways, too, and our personal characteristics reflect the way that we use our senses to navigate in the world. My daughters use their senses very differently to find their way in the world.
My 11-year-old is a quiet, reflective young woman. She shows up in public life softly, never asserting herself, striving to fit in. In spite of her quiet characteristics, she has had her share of conflict with peers and adults. I believe that some of the conflict is a result of her skin color. Her response to conflict is to not fight back. Whether she detects discrimination at play in some of the conflict, I don’t really know. But from my perspective, race can be a factor when she is accused and sentenced at school and in community activities by white and black people alike. Her response when accused is to take whatever punishment is meted out and move on. In her efforts to fit in, she accepts the actions of others, believing that it is she who has failed. To explain herself or resist would go against her quiet nature and bring the attention she strives to avoid. I can’t help but wonder if she detects a difference in the way that her white friends navigate their world, especially in the way that they are listened to and understood.
My 10-year-old is very different. She demands to be seen and heard for her full personhood. Her “in your face, this is who I am” nature seems to keep her from being the victim of someone’s inability to see past the color of her skin. She connects with adults and children in a lively, open way. It is hard to get past her “me-ness.” She won’t allow her race to be the reason for someone’s judgment of her. She leads with a big personality that demands and receives attention.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina who was raised by a single mom in the Bronx. The richness of her heritage and experience has shaped her direction and point of view. Yet during the hearing it appeared as if the white male point of view still dominates certain types of thinking – even to the point where it seemed she nearly renounced her previous remarks about the power of experience and heritage in accruing knowledge and wisdom. I understand why she repositioned her point of view, but believe her experience and persona would bring an important point of view to a Court decision. I think that even Lady Justice, blindfolded and all, knows that the more diversity is brought to an opinion, the better the outcome. I also imagined my two girls in Sotomayor’s seat and how different their responses to the questions would have been.
Watching my daughters navigate the world, listening to my own heart, trying to help them figure out how to live peaceably, lovingly, and wisely in the world, I am reminded of a song I learned at a church retreat: “how could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful, how could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole, how could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle, how deeply you are connected to my soul.”

Leadership Part II: Finding Your Voice

One of the ways I think we discover our own voice is to spend quiet time alone. As a single working mom with two kids, that is not always an easy task. I know many moms and dads who have difficulty finding that time to listen to our inner voice. In Girl Scout Essentials, our initial workshop for new volunteers, we created a guided imagery that takes volunteers back to that 8 or nine year old self who is unabashedly truthful. There, many women and men get to begin the discovery of the voice of the self through that process. For, if we are to help young girls become the leaders of today and tomorrow that Ken Blanchard (see previous blog) and Steven Covey (see below), believe we need, understanding and having a relationship with the self is critical.
Covey, in his blog on his community web site, believes that finding your voice is answered in four questions: “1) What are you good at? That’s your mind. 2) What do you love doing? That’s your heart. 3) What need can you serve? That’s the body. 4) And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your spirit.”
He points out that sometimes key to finding your voice is a mentor or someone who really sees you. I have experienced this both as the mentee and the mentor and it is powerful. When someone really sees you for your gifts, you are more likely to step into them more fully. Even more powerful is when someone sees your talents and challenges you to step into them further. A wonderful man I once worked for always said to me “Stackpole, you are a giant, and you need to practice giant behavior and be around other giants.” I knew exactly what he meant and his words encouraged me to be the leader he saw in me.
As a supervisor, I have had many occasions to hear from someone that I had encouraged to step into their greatness as I was encouraged to do. Over the years, I have received several notes from people who shared specific incidences in which I had helped a person step into her greatness just by acknowledging the talents that I had seen. One woman wrote, “You always challenged me to try just one more thing that I didn’t think I could do. Your encouragement helped me to be the person I am today.”
In Girl Scouts, this mentoring model is woven into the very fabric of what our leadership development program is all about. Girls are encouraged to try on new behaviors and ideas, in a cooperative learning environment. Along the way, adults also benefit as we have to practice that which we seek to instill in others.

Leadership: The Importance of Self

Like many traits or characteristics (joy, beauty), I believe leadership is an inside job. Socially conditioned to think of others first, women, most often forget the Self in the equation when it comes to leadership. Ken Blanchard in a speech to the Association of Girl Scout Executives in Phoenix this summer said that leadership has three parts: Leadership of the Self, Leadership to one other and Leadership to the team. In her ground breaking work that still resonates in my life, Carol Gilligan talked about the importance of discovering your own voice. She points out in her book, Meeting at the Crossroads, that girls at 9 are more than willing to tell you what they need and want. But at 13, those same girls, when asked, shrug their shoulders and say “I don’t know.”
In my work with women and children who have been abused, I thought that it was the abuse that took away their voices, but as I have witnessed in other arenas including women and girls in Girl Scouts, and many of my friends and peers , we all put others first at the exclusion of the self. I think this idea of self exclusion is key, for as women and girls are socialized to think about what others need, we bring to the world a relational style that is often missing in our world and I think badly needed. In a video blog on www.bigthink.com, Carol Gilligan points out that when considering a moral dilemma, women most often think of themselves as “living on a trampoline.” We can’t think about something without thinking about its connection to others. She says that for women, the questions of morality cannot be considered without understanding the relational parts of the issues.
However, without having a clear relationship to the self, we may be unable to really understand or empathize with another. We may think we know what another needs and wants, but unless we are truly understanding our own needs and wants, we may miss the mark. To me, the pinnacle of good leadership includes the ability to empathize with all concerned, not just the loudest voices. In addition, when you have an understanding of yourself – I find you are better able to speak from the heart.
All of us involved in Girl Scouts are committed to helping one girl find her true voice, to help her see her and express what she wants in life. Accomplishing that is the true measure of leadership.