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.

Properties, Part Two

In asking the question of whether or not we needed to own camp properties in order to make sure we continued to provide a camping and outdoor experience for girls, (May 14, 2009) we heard from many Girl Scout leaders and adults who believe that we should never discontinue our camping program. I agree. Outdoor education is an essential part of the GS leadership experience.
The question I continue to grapple with as we seek answers to strategic priorities as an organization, is whether or not each Girl Scout Council needs to own properties in order to have a rigorous camping program or whether we could put our collective resources together and offer even broader, more diverse camping experiences to girls. Looking around our region of the state, I wonder if there is a way to work with other GS councils and other owners of property in order to fulfill our mission to provide an outdoor education and camping experience in place of actually owning outdoor education property. This idea is based upon an economic reality and strategic thinking about our finances and the financial climate that we all are facing today.
To me, from a program perspective, giving girls outdoor experiences are essential. In May, we brought about 90 girls from the south side of OKC schools out to Cookieland (our council’s Girl Scout property in Newalla, OK). Girls who never experienced a walk in the woods were mesmerized by the beauty of the trees and land. Every year when we do this, it is a great experience for the girls. Most often, the bags we fill with donated goodies to take home are emptied and filled with pine cones, rocks and other natural materials they collect from the woods.
Like the volunteers from each of our legacy councils, I have a special place in my heart for the camp at Bear Mountain in New York where I went as a Girl Scout. While I think it would be awesome for my daughters to experience that camp, I know that it may not be possible to make that happen. Similarly, when I was little, my dad took me with pride to the site that once was Palisades Park. It was exciting to think about all of the images I had in my mind from the song of the same name and seeing the excitement in my father’s eyes as he told the story of going to Palisades Park as a boy. The bottom line is that the value of the outdoors is really the experience, whether it is in Oklahoma, New Jersey or upstate New York.
The challenge, I think for us as a movement, is to have a dialogue about this that helps us all continue to explore all of our possibilities. As a council, we are just beginning to explore a range of ideas regarding properties and our fiduciary responsibilities to the girls and to the future of the council in general. While I understand that many feel very strongly about the camps that they have a personal memory and connection to, it is important that we keep the dialogue moving in a positive direction, posing constructive questions and supporting the outdoor education program. We all believe in the importance of a viable Girl Scout movement for girls. The best way is to nurture the movement and address some stark realities. All questions and comments that encourage the spirited dialogue will continued to be welcomed from all corners of the council. I hope that in the future, reasoned responses will prevail and more girls will come to Girl Scouts to experience not only outdoor education, but all the leadership programs available to girls today.

Daughters and Dads

Eight years ago in August I lost my father to cancer. One Saturday morning while waiting for my car to be finished at the tire store, I read a magazine article about a man who lost his somewhat abusive father to Alzheimer’s disease. The disease had transformed his father and so while he was lost in one way, he became connected in another.
As a child whose mother did not work outside the home until I was in my tween and teen years, my father represented the world outside to me. Every morning he left the house in a suit and tie, clean shaven and smelling of cologne until his alcoholism got the better of him and meaningful work. He was a personality, most comfortable and animated in a crowd or telling a story. He never met a stranger. He drove a company car, knew how to deal with money (to my girl self). Unlike my mother, he watched the news every evening and read the paper every day.
As a girl, he represented a world that I wondered about, a world that I wanted to be a part of and at an early age, vowed I would not have to give up just because I was a girl. He was the master of mixed messages to me. He often chided me to be the best I could be and reminded me that I “could do anything that you put your mind to.” He set the bar high for me, his oldest child and I am sure that some of his critical messages were echoes of the ones he continued to hear in his own head from his childhood. His demand of perfection pushed me out beyond the girl boundaries my mother set for me based upon her upbringing and beliefs about girls and women.
He loved to drive home a point, a skill I probably relish in myself to this day. His love of history, music and storytelling enabled me to be the public speaker I am. While he never espoused any feminist leanings, he was always proud of his daughters (I have three sisters) and never saw, as my mother did, our gender as an inhibitor of something we wanted to be or do. He was not always a nice man, conflicted as he was with his own abusive behaviors and habits, but time and forgiveness has allowed me to see all of the positive ways he influenced my life.
As women and girls, the men in our lives, particularly the fathers in our lives, often shape our perceptions of the outside world. While they may be flawed individuals, as most of us are, they often instill in us a view of the world different from the world our mothers are able to share. Their influence, may have much to bear upon our willingness as girls and women to step out of our proscribed gender roles. Happy Father's Day.

Images of Women: How Do We Continue to Tolerate?

In this morning’s paper, there is a syndicated cartoon of the Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor on a rope suspended, a caricature of Obama with a bat outstretched to the GOP saying ”Who Wants To Be First?” The T.V. cameras drawn in the cartoon are poised to capture the spectator sport of misogyny. The caption on the cartoon reads “Fiesta Time at the Confirmation Hearing.” There is an Adrienne Rich poem in which she talks about the billboard-like images of women in the media, and she writes, “These images are so powerful and pure, we fail to ask, are they true for us?”
Anytime a woman is chosen for a position most often filled by men it seems that all of the images expose for me once again the underlying inability of us as a society to see woman as fully human, fully capable. After the last election, GSUSA Research Institute did focus groups with girls and boys around leadership and found that both groups, girls at a higher rate, believe it is harder for a woman to attain a leadership position than it is a man.
But what is even more disconcerting, more painful to see, with all of the violence against women in our society, is the image of the captive Sotomayor, about to be hit with a bat. I wonder if girls, little girls, will have the extra sense they will need to see the picture differently, to call out what is wrong, what is hateful. Images of a woman on a rope and men taking turns hitting her with a bat are too real, too every day to be played as a cartoon.
When did we, as a society, lose our ability to disagree honestly based on real merits of argument without resorting to out and out dehumanizing women? When will the collective civility of men and women say “enough!” When will fathers and brothers, husbands, grandfathers and uncles say “Stop. These images are insulting to me and my daughter, sister, wife, granddaughter and niece.” When?

The Role of Camp Properties To Girl Scout Future

The other night I read a letter to the editor on-line about the need for Girl Scouts to change. (It wasn’t from Oklahoma.) The letter ranted about the need to stop doing crafts and camping and address really meaty issues for girls like science, technology and environmentalism. (Her daughter was 7 so I imagine she hasn’t gotten into much of the GS experience yet.) As an organization, Girl Scouts relies on volunteers – they are the voice and the face of Girl Scouts to girls. We are in the process as an organization of changing the way we recruit, retain, train and retrain our volunteers. We have a new set of program activities which are focused on leadership experiences for girls. It seems as though, while it is changing, I know sometimes it just doesn’t seem fast enough. As the CEO of another Council suggested in a national meeting, it is hard to turn a big luxury liner out on the high seas around quickly.
One of our challenges is to become more nimble. As a smaller Council, we have an advantage, but we are still grappling with this same issue. The merger brought us four camp properties. With 14,000 girls and about 1000 campers, we need to let go of tools that are no longer serving the needs of our customers (girls). I saw an article in a fundraising journal recently from the CEO of a large Boys and Girls Club. She and their board had a strategy to purge themselves of properties as they were too costly. Their new focus was to be on collaborations in which they could address the needs of youth, without spending so much money on maintenance and the physical upkeep of aging buildings.
If the core of our business at Girl Scouts is leadership development for girls, what role does the outdoors play? We have a legacy for taking girls outside and connecting them with the land for the purposes of teaching them leadership skills. We know there are many ways to do that. Yet, we have yet to have a national discussion as Girl Scouts around the role of the physical environment. Our legacy volunteers would like us to keep our camp properties as they remind them of their wonderful youth experiences there. But our legacy volunteers don’t have deep pockets and for many residential camp properties across the country, the difference in what men make and what women make an hour is no more obvious than the physical condition of our camps.
Becoming more nimble, building collaborations, documenting and then sharing our outcome data, these to me seem to be important for us as a movement as we go forward. There are many ways to connect girls to the land. In order to achieve agility as an organization to keep up with the changing needs of girls, we may need to decide that camp properties are not critical to our overall mission and the future for girls, for Girl Scouts.