Courage: An Indispensable Quality of Leadership

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on October 31, 2024.

Let’s do a thought experiment. How many Jewish organizations do you think there are in North America? 2,000? 3,000? According to Leading Edge, the go-to address helping Jewish organizations improve their workplace culture and leadership, there are an estimated 9,500 organizations  – synagogues, federations, schools, Hillels, camps, social service agencies, and more – led by thousands of CEOs, clergy, and executive directors, 30,000 board members, with an astounding 120,000 Jewish communal employees serving their members and clients. All this, even as the Pew Research Center report “Jewish Americans in 2020” found that less than half (48%) of the 5.8 million adults made a financial contribution to any Jewish organization, the study using this as a proxy for engagement. I’ve done the math. This means we currently have one organization for every 293 ”engaged” adult Jews in the United States of America!

These nonprofit organizations are led by a partnership between Jewish communal professionals and their lay leaders who must articulate its purpose, cast a vision, meet a mission, raise funds, hire staff, build or rent space (real or virtual), develop programs, and engage a target audience. My questions are these: How did these leaders learn to lead? What are the stories of their leadership journeys? What lessons have they learned from the experience of leading the Jewish community?

In my teaching at the American Jewish University, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, and many hundreds of scholar-in-residence appearances, lectures, and mentoring opportunities, the focus of my career has been to share lessons learned about leadership with both these leaders serving the worldwide Jewish community. In the course of this work, I have befriended many outstanding individuals who lead their organizations. For my most recent book, Jewish Communal Leadership: Lessons Learned from Leading Practitioners (http://jewishleadershipbook.com/),

I invited nine of these leaders to share the story of their leadership journeys and to glean the principles they have learned over their careers and volunteer work. These are no holds barred interviews. All these folks are thoughtful, honest, challenging, and inspiring. They are a pioneering spiritual leader – Rabbi Denise Eger; an innovative Jewish Community Center executive – Zack Bodner; a phenomenal teacher and leadership coach – Dr. Erica Brown; a legendary Jewish Federation executive – Barry Shrage; the go-to expert on Jewish day school education – Dr. Bruce Powell; the leaders of two influential philanthropic foundations – Barry Finestone and Dan Libenson; a groundbreaking former Hillel director – Rabbi Mike Uram; and a top lay leader of a synagogue movement – Daryl Messinger. Dr. Steven Windmueller, a familiar and insightful presence in eJP, adds his voice to what he calls “a significant contribution to the discourse on Jewish leadership.”

Here are just a few of the critical takeaways from the book for even more effective leadership:

  • It’s all about relationships. Relationships begin with a hand and an ear – engaging with an embrace of welcome and listening to someone’s story.
  • Leaders are passionate advocates for their communities.
  • The most important role as CEO is to be the CIO – “Chief Inspiration Officer;” inspiring people to a greater vision of the possible.
  • Shying away from problems is the worst leadership strategy; “dig into the fire” – managing a problem well is a great leadership strategy.
  • Visionary leaders are lifelong learners, open to new and different ideas.
  • Humor is the most underutilized leadership trait.
  • Great leaders do not focus first on what the organization needs; instead they focus on what people need most.
  • The first step in leadership is to have a GPS; even if you have a good description of where you want to go, if you don’t know where you are, then you’re not going to get there.
  • A critical job of an effective board chair is to protect management – “to take a bullet for the CEO/rabbi/ED” – so they can do their jobs.
  • The relationship between the CEO/rabbi/ED and the lay leader is sacred. Whether serving a congregation or a not-for-profit organization, Jewish communal leaders, both lay and professional, are doing sacred work.

Leadership is an acquired skill. The leaders featured in this volume have much to teach about the art. Tzei u’lmad– “go and learn!”

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Dr. Ron Wolfson is Fingerhut Professor of Education, American Jewish University and President, The Kripke Institute’s Center for Relational Judaism, the publisher of Jewish Communal Leadership: Lessons Learned from Leading Practitioners.

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