The Journal, Winter 2015

THE

JOURNAL

I N S P I R AT I O N

F O R

THE COMMON GOOD

VOLUME 7 - ISSUE 1 - WINTER 2015

               

WHO

IS

4-H

FOR?

$10.00

THE

JOURNAL

The Journal (Print edition: ISSN 2328-4366; Online edition: ISSN 2328-4374) is published quarterly by the Kansas Leadership Center, which receives core funding from the Kansas Health Foundation.

The Kansas Leadership Center equips people with the ability to make lasting change for the common good. KLC focuses on leadership being an activity, not a role or position. Open to anyone seeking to move the needle on tough challenges in the civic arena, KLC envisions more Kansans sharing responsibility for acting together in pursuit of the common good.

KLC MISSION To foster civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities KLC VISION To be the center of excellence for civic leadership development KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS David Lindstrom, Overland Park (Chair) Ed O’Malley, Wichita (President & CEO)

Ron Holt, Wichita Karen Humphreys, Wichita Susan Kang, Lawrence Carolyn Kennett, Parsons Greg Musil, Overland Park Reggie Robinson, Topeka Consuelo Sandoval, Garden City Clayton Tatro, Fort Scott Frank York, Ashland WEB EDITION

http://issuu.com/kansasleadershipcenter SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Annual subscriptions available at klcjr.nl/amzsubscribe ($24.95 for four issues). Single issues available for $10 by emailing cgreen@kansasleadershipcenter.org.

PERMISSIONS

Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. For other reprint, copying or reproduction permission contact Mike Matson at mmatson@kansasleadershipcenter.org.

KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER

325 East Douglas Avenue Wichita, KS 67202 316.712.4950 www.kansasleadershipcenter.org PHOTOGRAPHY

Jeff Tuttle Photography 316.706.8529 jefftuttlephotography.com ARTWORK

Angie Pickman www.ruralpearl.com MANAGING EDITOR

Chris Green 316.712.4945 cgreen@kansasleadershipcenter.org GRAPHIC DESIGN

Novella Brandhouse 816.868.9825 www.novellabrandhouse.com ©2015 Kansas Leadership Center

about the cover: A scrapbook photo shows Don Winger, an officer of Grant County 4-H in the late 1950s, standing in a milo field.

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contents

Welcome to the Journal

By President & CEO Ed O’Malley . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Dispatches from the Kansas Leadership Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Balancing Act

By Erin Perry O’Donnell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A Soaring Economy, Whether Cars Fly or Not

By Chris Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 A Mission to Grow

By Brian Whepley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Point of Case-in-Point

by Jill Hufnagel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 The Intersection of Art and Social Change

By Laura Roddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Heat Raiser

By Laura Roddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Artist: The Storyteller

By Angie Pickman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Poem: An Arrangement of Hearts

By Roderick Townley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The Back Page

By Mark E. McCormick

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

tell us your story YOUR TALES OF LEADERSHIP SUCCESS – AND FAILURE – CAN HELP US RAISE THE BAR

So, I wonder: What special leadership moments have you had over the past year? What are your stories? What did you try? What worked? What failed? I would love to know.

I am writing this on the last workday of 2014.

The office is quiet. I won’t be back until the New Year. I reflect and plan.

I savor special moments from the past year.

Personal moments stand out: Jack’s smile after his first home run; Lizzie confidently heading to her first day of kindergarten; volunteering with Kate at the Kansas Humane Society; and walking on the beach with Joanna.

KLC asks a lot of questions. We send out a lot of surveys, trying to learn what’s working and where we fall short. We dive into that data and modify our efforts accordingly.

But as I sit on the precipice of another year – the ninth for KLC – I want more than data. I want your story, or at least just a nugget of it.

I think about my special professional moments too: the big decisions we made within KLC; the successes we notched in 2015; and the mishaps that led to great learning.

For eight years, the Kansas Leadership Center has been working to answer big questions. What is leadership? How do you help people learn it?

What will it take to build the leadership capacity of a state? What would happen if vast more numbers of people began exercising more leadership?

I think of you and other Kansas Leadership Center alumni. Great people doing great things. What a privilege for those of us at KLC to interact with you!

In the “old days,” we could really get to know almost everyone who interacted with KLC ideas.

Now, because we’re scaling up, that’s harder.

The questions can be haunting. We want to get this right.

We’ve had success. People apply the ideas we teach and report progress. We’ve failed plenty, too. Some initiatives fall short. Some ideas we teach are muddy.

4.

Our constant struggle to learn and improve means we never feel fully satisfied. It’s hard to celebrate.

There is always more to do.

Finally, let me say thank you. Thank you for exercising leadership. We need more of it and, frankly, it’s not often appreciated. THANK YOU!

When you share a leadership story – success or failure – with us, it’s like seeing that first bloom of spring. We are energized and uplifted. It reminds us why we labor over those questions.

Will you send me a quick note? Tell me what’s different in your world because of your leadership.

Let me – and by extension KLC – learn from your story.

What’s been your greatest leadership success of the last year? We all fail. What’s one of your latest failures? What did you learn from it? What idea from KLC has resonated with you the most? Why? Send your story, wisdom or thoughts directly to me at ed@kansasleadershipcenter.org. I would like to share your response with the KLC team.

But please let me know if you want it kept just between you and me.

5.

Ed O’Malley President & CEO Kansas Leadership Center

P.S. As an extra incentive, I’ll send a copy of a new book about leaderhip in organizations, “Adaptive Capacity” by Juan Carlos Eichholz, to the first five people who respond.

DIsPAtcHes FROM THE KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER

February marks the launch of a slate of intense but enriching leadership training opportunities from the Kansas Leadership Center in 2015. All sessions of the programs detailed below will take place at the Kansas Leadership Center & Kansas Health Foundation Conference Center, 325 East Douglas, in downtown Wichita.

Participants will gather for an initial four-day session and reconvene for a follow-up session about two months later. The length of this experience makes it ideal for individuals looking for sustained support as they work to create systems change on entrenched issues in a community, foster culture changes within organizations or navigate diverse perspectives on important issues requiring collaboration and coalition building.

YOU. LEAD. NOW. Kansans from all walks of life who want to improve their leadership abilities can attend You. Lead. Now. This three-day program experience will be offered monthly in 2015 through November.

The program allows people to add value to their efforts by gaining knowledge, skills and insight that will help them advance what they care about.

It is designed for those who live or work in Kansas, although out-of-state residents may apply. The ideal participants will be working to better their own leadership capacity, create change within an organization or enhance their effectiveness on a team or group.

There is no prerequisite for attending the program, although it is a great follow-up to the three-day experience, You. Lead. Now. The cost of the program is $800, which includes meals and most materials. For more information or to register, please visit: klcjr.nl/lead4change

The cost of the program is $300, including most meals and materials. For more information or to register, please visit: klcjr.nl/youleadnow

Two Upcoming Sessions in 2015:

Upcoming Sessions:

Begins May 4-7, ends July 21-23; Begins Aug. 3-6, ends Oct. 20-22.

March 16-18; April 13-15; May 18-20; June 15-17; July 13-15; Aug. 17-19; Sept. 14-16; Oct. 12-14; and Nov. 16-18.

TEACHING LEADERSHIP CONFERENCES Two multidisciplinary conferences will allow teachers, coaches, facilitators, consultants and mentors to learn new methods and enhance their skills at teaching leadership.

LEAD FOR CHANGE Looking for a sustained, experience-driven leadership program with intensive coaching and support to help you foster large-scale change? KLC’s multi-episodic program, Lead for Change, is designed to help you bring your aspirations to reality.

The conferences will run June 10-12 and Oct. 7-9.

Deborah Helsing from Minds at Work will deliver an interactive keynote at the June event. Carter and Teri McNamara of Authenticity Consulting will deliver an interactive keynote at the October conference.

6.

Both conferences will allow participants to choose from four skill development tracks. In June, the tracks offered include: (1) Teaching KLC Principles & Competencies, Part 1; (2) Coaching Foundations; (3) Case-in-Point Fundamentals; and (4) Strengthening Community Leadership Programs.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALUMNI Alumni of KLC programs can continue their learning and stay connected to leadership ideas and other alumni through Konza gatherings and On the Balcony conference calls.

Konza gatherings provide an opportunity for alumni to refresh their leadership skills and identify opportunities to practice them. Learn more about Konza gatherings by visiting klcjr.nl/konzagatherings.

You can find out about upcoming Konza gathering events near you on KLC’s Facebook page at klcjr.nl/konzaevents

The cost for attending a conference is $300.

For more information or to register, please visit: klcjr.nl/tlconf

TEACHING LEADERSHIP WORKSHOPS Participants can develop specific leadership teaching skills at eight one-day workshops offered this year.

On the Balcony calls are a monthly conversation about leadership for the common good hosted

by KLC President and CEO Ed O’Malley. For more information, visit: klcjr.nl/onthebalcony.

The workshops are ideal for individuals using KLC’s leadership framework, although anyone with the passion and aptitude for developing others may attend.

Upcoming On the Balcony Sessions:

March 10, Engage unusual voices; April 7, Hold to purpose; May 12, Start where they are; June 9, Make conscious choices; July 7, Inspire a collective purpose; Aug. 11, Leadership is risky; Sept. 8, Take the temperature; Oct. 6, Act experimentally; Nov. 10, Identify who needs to do the work; Dec. 1, Get used to uncertainty and conflict. .

The cost of each workshop is $100. For more information or to register, please visit: klcjr.nl/tlwrkshps Upcoming Sessions:

March 12: Case Teaching in the Classroom; April 8: Case-in-Point in the Classroom; May 13: Coaching in Leadership Programs (Helping Learning Stick); July 8: Team Coaching for Leadership Development; Aug. 12: Storytelling for Teachers and Coaches; Sept. 9: Case-in-Point in the Classroom; Nov. 11: Facilitating Leadership Coaching Circles.

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HOW DOES A B ELOV ED YOUT H DEVELOPMENT ORGA N IZAT ION ENGAGE ITS FU T URE WIT HOU T LOSING ITS HERITAG E?

BALANCING ACT

Nicole Small stands with her sons Dexter, 11, and Maddix, 8, on her family’s farm near Neodesha in southeast Kansas. Growing up, Small was immersed in 4-H and her children are carrying on the tradition.

8.

By Erin Perry O’Donnell

As a farm kid in Montgomery County, Kansas, Nicole Small was more than involved in 4-H. She was immersed. She raised beef cattle, hogs and sheep. She studied bugs and veterinary science. She cooked; she sewed. She learned photography. “My favorite thing to do in 4-H was to give talks,” Small says. “Crazy, I know.

Most kids hate to get up and speak.” And she was an expert on beef cattle. She raised and showed animals at the county, state and national level. She was in the beef quiz bowl and beef ambassador competition. Everything she did required a lot of record keeping, organization and just plain hard work. Small has carried that work ethic into adulthood as a farmer and rancher near Neodesha, where she and her husband run a cattle operation and also grow corn, wheat, soybeans and milo.

“My brother and I both feel we wouldn’t be where we are today without 4-H. We learned to set deadlines and meet goals – to finish what we started,” Small says.

9.

A collection of photos and ribbons from a scrapbook in Grant County provides a glimpse into what 4-H participation looked like in the late 1950s.

The Smalls’ sons are carrying on the tradition.

This year, Dexter, 11, and Maddix, 8, each raised his own small plot of crops. Dexter’s took second place at the state level. They’ve raised bucket calves, polished rocks and baked award-winning cinnamon rolls. The Smalls attend their 4-H community club’s meetings as a family every month, where students work on yearlong projects in subjects that range from livestock to rocketry to crafts and submit them for judging at the county fair – the highlight of the 4-H year. Nicole leads the club, one of several in Wildcat Extension District 4-H, serving Montgomery, Labette and Crawford counties.

But what if the Small boys didn’t attend 4-H year-round?

What if their club weren’t led by a parent? Or if they didn’t enter a project in the county fair?

What if they were like the Lavigne family in Ulysses?

Twins Jace and Kyle Lavigne joined Grant County 4-H in 2013, when it began offering a series of short-format, after-school special interest clubs.

The clubs met once a week in nine-week segments, each with a different focus: ceramics, robotics, gardening, and foods and nutrition. The clubs are led by volunteers, and the boys’ mother picks them up when she gets off work.

But sometimes when 4-H officials do try new things, they’re rejected for not being 4-H enough.

“Our model has always been that the long-term experience in 4-H is one of best things you can get for kids. But it’s not necessarily the only way,” says Barbara Stone, the head of Kansas 4-H Youth Development and assistant director of K-State Research and Extension, where the program is housed.

What 4-H veterans believe, and research has shown, is that mentorship from engaged adults is the single most important factor in youth development. “The magic sauce is a positive relationship, in a positive environment, with positive experiences. That’s over the long term. Who says we can’t condense that?”

Stone says.

But there’s an underlying challenge in making that shift. For many families and volunteers, 4-H is more than a club. It’s an identity. And expanding that identity to include different types and intensities of experiences can be a big change for some whose roots in 4-H run deep.

Is that kind of experience still 4-H?

“We all think of 4-H as our own experience, and we want it to be exactly that way for others.

It’s hard to give that up,” says Rhonda Atkinson, associate director of public relations and publications for the Kansas 4-H Foundation.

What is 4-H Enough?

A Troubling Trend

A growing number of Kansas 4-H agents, staff members, volunteers and members are answering “yes.” They’re working to expand the definition of the 4-H experience in hopes of extending the program to new populations, especially as they have watched enrollment dwindle across the state.

Kansas’ changing demographics are partly responsible as the population shifts from rural to urban and suburban areas, and the state’s Hispanic population grows every year.

In Kansas, 4-H programs exist in 60 counties and 16 multicounty districts. Extension staff members operate the programs at the county level, but 4-H relies heavily on volunteers to lead individual clubs. Those may take the form of a community club – the most well-known model, with members meeting monthly and working throughout the year on long-term projects. But 4-H also offers in-school clubs, after-school clubs, military clubs, special interest or short-term programs, overnight camps, day camps, school enrichment, individual study and mentoring, school-aged care programs, and instructional TV or video programs.

4-H HISTORY TIMELIN E

1901 School principal in Ohio, A.B. Graham begins promoting vocational agriculture “clubs.”

1902 Graham organizes the first clubs, considered the founding of 4-H. Original 3-leaf clover symbol is adopted.

11.

1903 Creation of the USDA Office of Cooperative Demonstration Work.

PHOTOS OPPOSITE PAGE FROM TOP LEFT: The saying of the 4-H pledge at meetings is a tradition that has continued even as the youth development organization seeks out new audiences through shorter-format special interest or SPIN clubs; Barbara Stone, the head of Kansas 4-H Youth Development, sits with children participating in a SPIN club on health in Ogden; Grant County 4-H agent Mary Sullivan (left) assists Emma Bahl with making “pumpkin pie in a baggie” while Stephanie Castillo of K-State Research and Extension (far right) helps Jayden Gutierrez with the same task.

48% Male

YOUTH PARTICIPANTS GENDER

52% Female

As the 21st century dawned, state 4-H and foundation leaders watched as youth participation began a marked decline. “We were being challenged with changing norms, changing family structures and changing demographics,” says Gordon Hibbard, who recently retired as president of the Kansas 4-H Foundation, a not-for-profit organization independent of K-State Research and Extension that helps assist and maintain Kansas 4-H through private fundraising.

“There is this out-migration in a large number of rural counties that are losing population.”

Participation hit peak levels of 150,000-plus youths in the early 2000s, according to Kansas 4-H figures. Since 2004, an average of 76,000 children have participated in Kansas 4-H each year. In 2013, the figure was 65,206. School enrichment programs, which occur during school hours and support school curriculum, usually account for a little more than half of the participants.

Enrollment in organized clubs, which are led by adults with a yearlong planned program, averaged between 22,000 and 28,000 members through the 1980s and ’90s. Since 2004, that number has hovered near 23,000 after peaking at 42,000 in 2002. In 2013, there were 20,420 youths in organized clubs. Aside from population changes and an ever-growing menu of youth programs to choose from, there’s no definitive reason behind the decline.

As the traditional 4-H population was shrinking, organizers began thinking that they needed to bring 4-H to new audiences. That’s the objective of the Growing Kansas Leaders expansion grant pilot program, made possible by a donation from the Kansas 4-H Foundation.

19%

15%

19%

YOUTH PARTICIPANTS PLACE OF RESIDENCE

26%

21%

Central Cities of >50,000

19%

Farms

19%

Towns < 10,000 and Rural

26%

Towns/Cities 10,000-50,000 & Suburbs 21% Suburbs of Cities > 50,000

1904 Corn clubs and corn-growing contests are introduced in Hamilton County, Indiana.

15%

The foundation’s strategic planning committee led a capital campaign in the late 2000s, through which fundraisers identified a donor who wanted to contribute significantly to 4-H programming. Atkinson, meanwhile, had joined the first leadership class at the Kansas Leadership Center in 2008 to work not only on declining 4-H enrollment but also a decline in volunteerism. Atkinson thought that if volunteers didn’t feel obligated to stay with 4-H for life, they would be more likely to sign on for short-term involvement.

“An adult working with a young person on a meaningful project is how we do business,” Atkinson says. “If you have more volunteers, you can reach more kids, and the dominoes just start to fall, in theory.”

1905 The Nebraska Boys Agricultural Association and Nebraska Girls Domestic Science Association are formed.

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1906-1914 Clubs were started in nearly all states.

1911 The first full-time state club leader is appointed in Iowa.

4-leaf clover approved.

Twins Jace and Kyle Lavigne participate in a Grant County 4-H program conducted last year. The pair joined Grant County 4-H in 2003, when it began offering a series of short-format, after-school special interest or SPIN clubs.

Soon, KLC faculty, state 4-H and extension officials, and 4-H Foundation staff members joined forces to guide county 4-H agents in developing plans for growth. Three cohort groups of five 4-H agents each were chosen to participate, with the first group beginning work in 2012.

Each county received $5,000 and guidance to diagnose the situation they faced. Then each agent drafted a three-year business plan that included programming ideas and goals for increasing membership and volunteers.

“You’re not going to get a very strong program if you don’t get volunteers involved. That’s been a hallmark of 4-H for years and years,” Hibbard says. “With the changing dynamics of today’s family and economy, the model we had when I was in 4-H in the ’60s isn’t the same one that’s always going to work today.”

Its signature clover is a familiar sight to most Midwesterners, even if they don’t know what the four H’s are. They stand for the values the program is designed to teach to children and teens: HEA D

Managing, Thinking HEA RT

Relating, Caring HA NDS

Giving, Working HEA LTH

Being, Living

The agents organized town-hall meetings with their most active families, local residents, current volunteers and board members to talk about where 4-H appeared to be headed in their communities and how it might need to change. Eventually a leadership team was formed in each county to help carry out the plan objectives.

The goals for each of the 15 participating counties or districts are: • • • • • •

Increase volunteer participation by 20 percent.

Increase 4-H community club membership by 15 percent.

Increase the number of 4-H youth by 25 percent.

Increase retention of 4-H families by 10 percent.

Recruit a volunteer to be a new families coordinator for each county.

Reach out to underserved populations, such as low-income or minority families.

Hibbard says the involvement of Ron Alexander, an Overland Parkbased member of the KLC faculty, has been key to the program’s success. Because of Alexander’s long history of working with 4-H and extension, he’s been able to shepherd participants through some tense conversations. The great fear was that 4-H would change to the point of losing its core values.

“Ron has a level of empathy that very few people would be able to provide,” Hibbard says. “Anytime you have a change, there is a sense of loss.”

1915 44 youth in corn clubs each won a trip to the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.

1921 Formation of the National Committee on Boys’ and Girls’ Club Work for the purpose of obtaining private support.

1919 One of the most important meetings in 4-H history was held in Kansas City.

11.

21.

1922 A canning club team from Iowa wins a national contest and is awarded a trip to France to give canning demonstrations.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We all think of 4-H as our own experience, and we want it to be exactly that way for others.

It's hard to give that up.â&#x20AC;?

R H O N DA AT K I N S O N , Kansas 4-H Foundation

Laura Porras shows the model car she built out of empty paper towel rolls in a Grant County 4-H special interest club. SPIN clubs focus on a specific topic, including ceramics, gardening, nutrition and science and technology subjects, such as crime-scene investigation, zoology and robotics.

A scrapbook photo shows Don Winger, an officer of Grant County 4-H in the late 1950s, standing in a milo field. The history of 4-H Youth Development in Grant County lives on in the photos of members such as Winger, a longtime teacher and athletics coach, who died in 2011.

the hist o ry of 4-h

The seeds of 4-H Youth Development were planted in the late 1800s by rural leaders who worried that young people were turning their backs on farm work for better prospects in the industrialized world – a refrain that’s still heard. • O. J. Kerns of the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station was one of the first to build a youth club around farm and home topics, known as Farmers’ Institutes. In 1901, Ohio school principal A.B. Graham created clubs in rural schools to promote vocational agriculture. The following year, with help from the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station and Ohio State University, Graham formed what are considered to be the first 4-H clubs, with officers, projects, meetings and record requirements.

• Currently, 4-H serves about 7 million children and teens in 50 countries. The program is housed in the research and extension departments of 110 land-grant universities throughout the United States, including Kansas State University.

18.

14.

‘It’s an Addition, Not a Subtraction’ Officials and agents hope this 4-H pilot program will inspire innovation statewide. Their big experiment is the special interest or SPIN clubs. These short-form programs distill the 4-H experience by focusing on a single topic over a short time frame. They’re designed to: • • • •

Encourage young people to investigate topics that may or may not be typical 4-H projects.

Encourage new and underserved youth and families to get involved.

Provide an easier way for members and volunteers to try out 4-H. Recruit subject-matter experts as volunteers.

THE VALUES OF 4-H drawn from the Edwards County New Family Guide

1.

4-H youth are more important than the project exhibit itself.

In western Kansas, Grant County 4-H agent Mary Sullivan almost didn’t apply for a grant. Her program was growing and had started to reach out to the region’s growing Hispanic population. A visit with Stone at the Kansas State Fair changed Sullivan’s mind. “(Stone) said, ‘You’ve got some things there that we need to explore.’”

So Sullivan applied and was accepted into the first cohort. The group took its growth proposal to a community meeting with Alexander and representatives from the 4-H Foundation and state offices. Sullivan says the SPIN Club idea got a good response – at first. But then people had questions: Would this siphon kids away from the community clubs? How would kids learn citizenship and leadership and public speaking on a short-term basis? Could a SPIN Club possibly offer the same results as projects that take a year to complete? What if parents just dropped their children off and never got involved?

“All of a sudden the whole room came to this realization that 4-H was never going to be the same,” she says. “They felt a horrible loss. Ron said, ‘I can see it on your faces that we’ve hit a roadblock here.’”

The same scene unfolded in Reno County, says 4-H agent Joan Krumme.

In 2013, Reno County started an after-school SPIN Club for photography and video production, open to fourth- through sixth-graders.

2.

Learning how to do a project is more important than the project itself.

3.

To “learn by doing” through a useful work project is fundamental in any sound educational program, and is characteristic of the 4-H program.

4.

Generally speaking, there is more than one good way of doing most things.

5.

Our job is to teach 4-H members how to think, not what to think.

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Winning isn’t always measured by the results of the ribbon or judging event, but by the character of the 4-H’er, parent and leader.

Interest was high, but there was only enough equipment for 12 youths to join. Months after the club formed, Krumme says, she still heard people say it didn’t count as “real 4-H.” Although she didn’t agree, she understood.

1948 First International Farm Youth Exchange between American and European youth.

1952 The 50th anniversary of 4-H is celebrated and a U.S. commemorative stamp is issued.

11.

21.

17.

19.

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1950s 4-H extends into urban areas.

“I think they felt threatened that we might want to change their club, and 4-H is a very traditional thing,” Krumme says. “It’s part of who you are. It’s woven into your life. It’s like trying to change the traditions of a family, because 4-H is just that – a family.” Sullivan says she tried to emphasize that “this is an addition, not a subtraction. The thing we kept coming back to was, ‘Do you believe every youth in our county deserves a taste of 4-H?’ And they would always say ‘yes.’

So the question is, ‘How are we going to do that?’ ” In 2013, Grant County started its first four SPIN clubs.

The Lavigne twins were among the first members.

In 2014, there were 56 participants. The county's 4-H membership grew by 32, well above the goal of 20, and the program also added nine volunteers, when the goal had been three. Community clubs grew from two to three. Since the county got its grant in 2012, membership has increased 50 percent. In 2014, 88 percent of families returned from the previous year.

SPIN Club participants are full-fledged 4-H members, and they’re encouraged – but not required – to take part in other 4-H activities. SPIN Club meetings follow many traditional practices, such as saying the 4-H pledge at meetings, displaying the 4-H clover, providing a showcase for what members learn and using their skills for community service.

For most of the SPIN Club members, though, 4-H isn’t the family tradition that it is among many community club members. Melissa Lavigne, whose sons joined the Grant County SPIN clubs, was never a 4-H member.

“When I was a kid, I thought it was more of a farmer’s thing,” Lavigne says.

The boys are in their second year of SPIN Club membership, and Lavigne says they’ve enjoyed finding a creative activity to go along with everything else they do. That’s a long list, and it includes soccer, baseball, tae kwon do, Odyssey of the Mind at school, Awana youth group at church and the Boy Scouts.

“They’re interested in so much,” Lavigne says.

“I think 4-H gives them a little more range of different ideas to think about.”

1960s - 2000 4-H experiences two significant trends:

1) The basic purpose of 4-H is the personal growth of the member

Last fall, Jace and Kyle entered their ceramics projects in the county fair's open class category, which anyone in the community can enter. It's separate from the categories designated for 4-H community club members. The boys took first and second place, and Jace was named grand champion for his category.

While longtime 4-H’ers are beginning to accept SPIN as legitimate 4-H, some of the original community clubs are changing, too. “It’s not just cows and cookies anymore,” Sullivan says. Only four out of 45 members who are doing traditional projects in Grant County are raising livestock, she says.

Small, the Montgomery County farmer, says modern 4-H is definitely not just for farm kids. “I think the kids who don’t live on farms get more out of it than kids who do,” Small says. “It takes them out of their comfort zone. I think it’s great to get that interaction between rural and city kids.”

Dozens of SPIN clubs are springing up statewide, and science and technology are hot topics. In Seward County, an agent from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation led a crime-scene investigation (CSI) club. Reno County just launched a zoology club, in partnership with the Hutchinson Zoo, that Krumme says is formatted like an internship for teens. Several counties have partnered with their local libraries to do reading clubs.

Kathy Bloom, 4-H agent for Seward County, says: “I feel like our people have been a little unsure about how this was going to affect the community club. But actually we’ve had a lot of community club members join in the SPIN clubs.” A few SPIN members have crossed over to the community club. That’s not a stated goal of the grant, but it may reassure some stakeholders that SPIN clubs can be an entry point to a deeper 4-H commitment.

And in Reno County, members of the photo and video club found so much enjoyment that they chose to convert from a SPIN Club to a traditional community club. They’ve done projects in arts and crafts, foods and, of course, photography – all 4-H mainstays.

2) Program and organizational consolidation results in combining 4-H organizations divided by gender and race into a single integrated program.

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21.

2002 4-H celebrates its 100th anniversary.

“With the changing dynamics of today’s family and economy, the model we had when I was in 4-H in the ’60s isn’t the same one that’s always going to work today.”

GORDON HIBBARD Retired president of the Kansas 4-H Foundation

Israel Moncay listens during a Grant County 4-H SPIN Club meeting. Over the last decade, 4-H officials have worked to introduce the organization to southwest Kansas’ growing Hispanic population by hiring bilingual staff members and developing marketing campaigns in Spanish.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: A scrapbook photo shows a typical 4-H activity from more than a half-century ago; the modern face of 4-H includes Jayden Gutierrez, a Grant County 4-H participant; and Ginny Barnard and Kalea Santos-Chatfield play a “following directions” game for a “human body” class in Ogden.

Volunteers Still Hard to Find With the decline in 4-H enrollment came a decline in the volunteer base. Traditionally, the majority of club leaders have been parents or grandparents of 4-H kids.

The SPIN Club model encourages more leadership from other areas of the community, and Krumme says it can be easier to find volunteers for shortterm programs.

“When we ask them to volunteer for 4-H, they automatically think it’s a life sentence,” Krumme says.

“So it’s really nice to be able to say, ‘You’re only committing for a six-week period.’ If they want to continue after that, it’s fine.”

Being part of the pilot program “has opened up some creativity. It’s nice to get out of that traditional box and think of some new things,” Bloom says. But other agents are still waiting to see a payoff.

In October, agents participating in the grants submitted their year-end reports to the 4-H Foundation. Some were clearly discouraged that their efforts had fallen short.

Edwards County staffers Marty Gleason and Amy Sollock noted: “It has not been easy!” They had tried to create SPIN clubs around topics like aviation and genealogy but couldn’t find volunteers to lead them.

“I’m not sure why we are struggling in this aspect,” Gleason wrote in his report, “but Edwards County has not embraced the SPIN Club model.”

It doesn’t help when area families give conflicting reasons about why they don’t participate. The community club can seem like too much of a commitment, but then some reject the short-term SPIN clubs because it isn’t the familiar model.

In Seward County, Bloom says, the CSI SPIN Club was already in development when she joined the Growing Kansas Leaders program. Now she’s pursuing volunteers for unusual topics like glassblowing and a photography club that would focus on historic or tourist sites around Liberal.

Barbara Stone, the Kansas 4-H head, says volunteers often have specific ideas about how they want to run an activity. “Most nonprofits are trying to figure out how to attract and keep them. We’re in that same place,” Stone says.

2013 TOTA L 4-H PARTICIPAT ION WIT HOUT DUPLIC AT ES ALL DELIV ERY MODELS

Less than 100

100 to 500

500 to 1,000

2,000 to 10,000

10,000+

Derald Winger, a Grant County 4-H member in the 1950s, and “White Rocks,” one of the photos kept in a scrapbook detailing the county’s 4-H history.

DISCUSSION GUIDE How would you diagnose the situation facing Kansas 4-H? What are the different stories that might be told about what’s going on here?

Name the stakeholders you see emerging in this article.

What goals and values do they embody?

Where are values coming into conflict?

What process challenges do you see emerging in this story?

What type of leadership work needs to be done to navigate the balance between upholding core values and promoting growth?

Where do you see the desire to maintain tradition clashing with the urge to grow in your community or organization? What steps might be taken to help your community or organization navigate this balance?

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Krumme says building community partnerships has helped 4-H in Reno County offer more robust programming. The video club got hands-on experience in the production studio at Hutchinson Community College, and Krumme is also pursuing a partnership with local radio stations to start a broadcasting club.

Coming Full Circle Hibbard retired as head of the Kansas 4-H Foundation this winter after 10 years as president.

One of his proudest accomplishments was helping to introduce 4-H to the growing Hispanic population in southwestern Kansas.

Two foundation board trustees made personal donations to fund outreach in that area, Hibbard says.

The money helped hire bilingual staff members and develop marketing campaigns in Spanish. Local extension and 4-H agents also had to learn about Hispanic family culture, Sullivan says, to form those relationships.

In many counties, agents went to meatpackers and agricultural employers to encourage their employees to try 4-H. Extension agents who were already working with immigrants in their family and nutrition programs began to pitch 4-H as an activity they could do alongside their children. The agents developed a marketing campaign called “Una vida mejor con 4-H.” “A better life with 4-H.” The outreach is working, as Hispanic participation blossoms. “It’s almost like 4-H looked 100 years ago.

The whole family comes,” says Stone. “It’s so gratifying. You hear people say 4-H is dying, and then you look at this audience that’s just hungry for it because they see 4-H as something for the family.”

Krumme says she understands why it’s hard for some to accept innovations like the SPIN clubs, even when they succeed. “There are certain things about 4-H that lifer 4-H’ers believe only 4-H offers,” she says.

But the 21st century may be seeing the creation of a new status quo. The challenge for those in the Growing Kansas Leaders program is to plant the seeds of positive youth development in a new way and perhaps come up with a hybrid that meets more needs than ever. If everyone can agree that results are what’s important, it may matter less and less which road they take to get there.

The more traditional involvement of families such as the Smalls in activities such as their community club still represents a core part of what 4-H is and does, but there are other paths to become part of 4-H. While Jace and Kyle Lavigne may never join the 4-H community club in Grant County, their mother can already see the influence of the organization’s values showing up in the lives of her fifth-graders.

At school, the boys had a choice to take a test on plant cell structure or do a project to demonstrate their knowledge. Jace picked the project and built a cell out of Jell-O. Who’s to say where that influence might end?

Today’s 4-H members will likely be tomorrow’s 4-H leaders and volunteers, carrying on a tradition of lifelong involvement in their own ways. As Krumme says, “Kids who grow up in 4-H never really leave it.”

In the end, 4-H officials say the thing to remember is that what matters most isn’t so much how children and families choose to engage with 4-H; it’s that they do and that their lives – and the lives of others – are positively affected because of the experience.

“The principles of 4-H are key,” Atkinson says. “How we apply them in today’s world is different, but the results should be the same: Are we helping produce citizens you would want to live with and to work with and call your friends?”

Find out more about 4-H Youth Development in Kansas, locate clubs near you and learn how to join here: www.joinkansas4-h.org

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A SOARING ECONOMY, WHETHER CARS FLY OR NOT Travel to the future – and back – to see why harnessing our demographic shifts and increasing the level of minority business ownership might be crucial to the future of the Kansas economy.

BY CHRIS GREEN

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BEAR WITH ME FOR A SECOND. I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE. THIS COLLECTION OF LETTERS AND SYMBOLS MIGHT LOOK LIKE A MAGAZINE ARTICLE. BUT IT’S ACTUALLY A MAGIC TIME MACHINE. LET ME REATTACH A FEW LEVERS AND ADJUST THE FLUX CAPACITOR A LITTLE BIT.

BOOM. IT’S THE FUTURE.

That’s 2050 to be exact, a leap of 35 years. We’re standing together at 325 East Douglas in Wichita, just outside the current location of the Kansas Leadership Center and Kansas Health Foundation Conference Center, which feels both hauntingly familiar and strangely changed. I’ll give you just a moment to get your bearings.

The changes in Kansas might not be quite as big as they are nationally. But they’re here. And if I took you from the street corner on a tour, community by community, it would likely be hard to find a place that hasn’t been touched by these demographic shifts.

We’re a long way from the 1900s, or even the 1970s, when more than 90 percent of the people who called Kansas home were white.

We didn’t come to Kansas in 2050 to see whether we finally have flying cars. Our mission today is to try to understand the state’s economic future. I must warn you: It could turn out to be a bit of a wake-up call.

Our economy here is humming along better than ever. Kansans have higher per capita incomes. Things are far from perfect, but these are good times. A lot of factors went into this surge, but one of the most important is people. Residents put their focus on people and developing their abilities to bring their business ideas to fruition, impacting the economy for the better.

At first glance, it might be surprising how recognizable Kansas is in 2050. What’s really different, though, might not be noticeable at first, unless you’re a demographer.

The America that Kansas sits in has changed. It’s a vastly more competitive world, but we’re still a major economic world power. There are 100 million more people living in the U.S. than in the time we just came from, more than 400 million people in all. Kansas is more populous, too.

People from across the state – governors, state lawmakers, local-government officials, businesses, banks, chambers of commerce, economic development officials and community groups – foresaw the demographic changes. They upped their emphasis on a high-quality education for all Kansans.

They recognized the role that promoting more entrepreneurship and business ownership could have in invigorating our economy. And they made the decision that one of strategies for bolstering our economy would be to foster the growth of minority-owned businesses.

It might be hard to spot from this busy street corner, but one big change that has occurred is that as a Caucasian, I’m a minority in this country. People who look like me, non-Hispanic whites, still make up the largest population group in the U.S., but now there are more people, combined, who are Hispanic, black, Asian or American Indian/Alaska Native. Plus, more people now straddle multiple races, ethnicities and identities.

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less entrepreneurial over time reinforced the need to foster increased dynamism in the state’s economy.

A Critical Asset I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. There must have been doubters and dissenters, many of whom had some really great points. And there were countless barriers to explore and try to overcome. But there were a lot of reasons it made sense, too. The data we had 35 years ago told us that minorities were significantly underrepresented as businesses owners in Kansas.

These statistics served as a warning that something was wrong and needed to be addressed.

Taken together, information showed that minorities would play an even larger role in our economic success.

First-generation immigrants wanted to start businesses at a higher rate than nonimmigrants, so encouraging them to create businesses represented a leverage point. Data showing the U.S. economy becoming

Faced with all that, government, business and nonprofit sectors made some clearly-thought-out, strategic decisions. They knocked down barriers to financing. Mentorship programs were started to help build capacity. Kansans recognized how important a resource people are for powering economies with their ideas and risk-taking. They understood that smart, talented people like to cluster around other smart people pursuing the same interests. They wondered if bolstering minorityowned businesses could give the state a competitive advantage in the global economy. They mulled over whether increasing minority business ownership represented a “low hanging fruit” approach to bolstering the Kansas economy.

MINORITY BUSINESS OWNERSHIP PARITY

ratio of minority population to ratio of minority business owners

50%+

30-40%

40-50%

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less than 30%

But you don’t need a time machine to see this future on the horizon. Author Joel Kotkin, Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California, penned a book in 2010 that described an economically surging future America fueled by immigration and entrepreneurship, and featuring a period of renewal for Great Plains states such as Kansas.

Their efforts didn’t come with a lot of guarantees.

But over time, the rates of immigrants starting new businesses in Kansas ticked up. Places such as Wichita tapped into a wealth of know-how and innovation in manufacturing to reinvigorate that sector. A number of these new businesses were started by minorities. As the ranks of minority-owned firms grew across the state, they also mostly grew in the right places, limiting the displacement of existing businesses, particularly in the service industry. More and more minority business owners starting firms worked to tap into the global economy by exporting their goods, helping build the state’s export power.

“The Heartland offers the country an outlet for the entrepreneurial and creative skills of its rising population,” Kotkin writes. “It will offer millions the chance to enjoy more spacious, less congested, and more healthful lives than can be found or easily afforded in the largest cities. No longer geographically isolated or cut off from vital information, the Heartland is one of America’s critical assets as it prepares to accommodate the next hundred million.”

It’s always hard to attribute economic changes to any one strategy, but there’s a widespread belief in 2050 that Kansas has a more dynamic economy at least in some part because of the increase in minority-owned businesses seen over the previous 35 years.

All this, of course, hasn’t happened yet. It’s just one potential timeline for the future. An aspiration, really.

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36%

Firms Conducting Business in Language other than English by percent of firms

Minority-owned firms are six times more likely to conduct business in a language other than English compared to nonminority-owned firms.

6%

minority-owned firms

The choices we make here in 2015 and beyond will play a role in whether this future actually happens.

To get a sense of where this more prosperous future could start, we’ll have to hop back in the time machine.

We’ll be leaving 2050 behind – or is that ahead?

I’ve set the dial for August 13, 2014.

nonminority-owned firms

Kansas trails nearly a dozen other states with less diverse populations.

It’s certainly hard to argue against the social value of having more minority-owned businesses in Kansas. But the question before the group that day hinged on economics. Would increasing the number of minority-owned businesses in Kansas actually improve the state’s economy?

What Makes For a Good Economy?

What looks clear from the vantage point of our imagined 2050 feels fuzzier in this room. To help us understand things better, Hill, Ginther and Catlett – economists and experts – explain just what we know about making an economy hum.

Just up the main staircase and to the right in KLC’s building is the High Plains classroom, where 35 stakeholders have gathered to discuss the state of minority-owned business. It’s a diverse group of people from a variety of different sectors: government, business, finance and the community. Sitting at the front of the room are three economists, Donna Ginther of the University of Kansas; Jeremy Hill of Wichita State University; and Rob Catlett of Emporia State University. Ed O’Malley, KLC’s president and CEO, is moderating the panel. Wayne Bell, district director for the Wichita office of the U.S. Small Business Administration and someone who has tried to bring a lot of attention to the need for more minority-owned businesses in Kansas, speaks as well.

Some high-level takeaways for those who snoozed through econ: People are really important, both in terms of having a growing population and having well-educated people with strong skills. Universities can fuel innovation, but Kansas currently lags in patents. Tax policies can help but generally take awhile to have a “real economic impact.” Increasing exports, particularly in the already established manufacturing sector, and having people in other countries increase the level they are investing and owning companies here can make a big difference.

Now that we’ve seen the aspiration for the future, we’ll be exploring our less-than-ideal current reality.

Some pretty stark statistics illustrate the gap. Minorities accounted for just 7.7 percent of the state’s business owners last decade, even though nonwhites and Hispanics made up nearly 23 percent of the state’s population. It’s hard to come up with any justifiable reasons for this situation. While no state reaches parity, Kansas fares worse than most, ranking 42nd. More diverse states tend to fare better in terms of minority business ownership parity. But

Jobs often grab the headlines, but per capita income might be a better measuring stick. And wealth, too.

If you look at the wealthiest states, Catlett of Emporia State says, you’ll find “extremely, extremely high levels of education in terms of their work force.”

That means increasing levels of educational attainment would be important for the Kansas economy.

Perception matters, too. Firms looking at the state need to know that Kansas has a qualified workforce to employ and is a good place to locate a business.

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already rooted in Kansas that have growth potential, especially ones with the potential to increase their exports, such as Wichita’s manufacturing sector.

Provide high-quality education for children from early childhood on. Increase levels of educational attainment, particularly in minority communities. Mentor prospective business owners and foster business-ownership skills early on.

“When you talk to companies, they have a very difficult time because of this negative image of the state,” says Hill, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at WSU. “So specific for us is a strategy of really changing and giving resources that say, ‘Here’s why you really do want to come here.’”

The state can also derive economic benefits, Catlett says, from the clustering of companies and talent operating in the same sector near the same location.

Whether it’s Hollywood, Silicon Valley or the aerospace industry, the pull to be among firms and talented people working in the same field is a strong one.

Encourage the development of succession plans that allow minority owners to keep established businesses alive. Clear away structural barriers to financing and government contracting. Make the state a magnet for smart, skilled people who have great business ideas – whether they were born here or not – and find ways to encourage them to bring those concepts to reality.

Pitfalls Along the Way

But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

The promises for Kansas in increasing the ranks of minority-owned businesses lie in harnessing factors that we already know help create economic growth.

“As a strategy, it’s a new one,” says Ginther, director of the Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy at KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research.

“There’s a short-term version of it, which is working with businesses and people right now. And there’s a longer term version in terms of creating an infrastructure through the state so that (more minorities) have the capacity and potential to be entrepreneurs.”

The simplistic formula could look something like this: Cultivate more minority-owned businesses in sectors

Regardless of Firm Size, Minority-Owned Firms are More Likely to Export

There are pitfalls, too. As Hill points out, it matters what sectors minority-owned businesses are located in. The largest number of existing minority-owned businesses in Kansas are located in support sectors and “may not be necessarily creating new wealth to a regional economy,” Hill says. A given area can only support so many service businesses. Increase minority business ownership as currently structured in Kansas with a wave of a wand, Hill says, and you’re likely to displace other businesses, both minority- and nonminority-owned.

by percent of all exporter firms

16.6% 13.8%

9.4%

Furthermore, as Ginther explains, not everybody is suited to be a business owner. Entrepreneurship by its very definition involves assuming risk and courting failure, and not everybody has the skills, disposition or interest in bringing a business concept to market or managing an existing business. And while increasing business ownership is a leverage point, it’s also important to recognize the role that larger, more established firms play in increasing employment and paying higher wages. Don’t expect to find a magic economic bullet.

6.9%

$500,000 to $999,999 in sales

$1 million plus in sales

minority-owned firms nonminority-owned firms

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“The Heartland offers the country an outlet for the entrepreneurial and creative skills of its rising population ... It will offer millions the chance to enjoy more spacious, less congested, and more healthful lives than can be found or easily afforded in the largest cities. No longer geographically isolated or cut off from vital information, the Heartland is one of America’s critical assets as it prepares to accommodate the next hundred million.”

JOEL KOTKIN

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There are also plenty of unknowns.

As our state delves into the issue, we’re only beginning to discover just what the barriers to minority business ownership actually are. Some of the barriers might be as much about perception as structure. We’ll have to get to the bottom of why these barriers – both real and perceived – exist and try to counteract them.

For instance, many banks in Kansas don’t see a lot of minority applicants for business financing. They simply don’t come in or take the final steps. Bankers make decisions, as one participant in the meeting stated, based on the five C’s of credit, including capacity, capital, collateral and conditions. But one of those C’s, character, is subjective. It’s judged by having someone sit down for a talk with you. To prosper, we’ll need more minorities who can look past the stereotype of the “stodgy conservative banker” and take the risk of seeking out financing for their businesses. And we’ll need lenders who’ll actively work to create climates to attract qualified applicants from any cultural or ethnic background.

As with many complex adaptive challenges facing Kansas, we can only address the problem by learning along the way as we try to solve it. Which makes it

hard to know how we’ll get from Point A – where we are now – to Point B, that vibrant economic future I gave you a glimpse of earlier.

What we have right now is a lot of questions. Foremost among them: Do we have the will to advance this issue in the service of the state’s economy? Because changing the status quo will require engagement not only among minority communities, but also among many who are neither minorities nor business owners who might not see yet how change benefits them.

How far exactly are we willing to expand our circles of concern to act in making the Kansas economy more vibrant?

It’s a deep question even our magic time machine cannot answer. As residents of this state, we’re the ones who must respond to it.

A future that’s sure to be influenced by changing demographics lies ahead. And there’s enormous potential for increased economic opportunity lying just over the horizon, if we can harness these demographic shifts to benefit the common good.

What shall we do next?

Learn more: “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050” by Joel Kotkin, published by The Penguin Press (2010), explores how a projected rise in U.S. population will translate into economic strength.

In “Welcome to the Failure Age” in The New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes about how our lives and work are being transformed by the “innovation age” and what changes might be necessary to cope with the increasing risks we’ll face. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/ welcome-to-the-failure-age.html?_r=0 In an interactive essay, “The Next America,” Paul Taylor, senior fellow at the Pew Research Center, highlights “a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.” http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/

DISCUSSION GUIDE What’s your gut feeling when you read about the demographic shifts described in this article?

What do you think influences you to feel that way?

What difficult choices might need to be made to make progress on promoting minority-owned business in Kansas?

In what ways might individuals experiment to be part of the solution?

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WHY WE SHOULD GROW MINORITY-OWNED BUSINESS IN KANSAS DEMOGRAPHICS

PEOPLE

With Kansas growing more diverse, we’ll need more minorityowned businesses to help our economy grow and prosper.

Individuals, their knowledge, their skills and abilities play an important role in economic growth. If we can equip more people to excel as business owners, it could benefit our economy.

CLUSTERING

COMPE TITION

People like to be around other smart, talented people. Kansas could see benefits from becoming a destination for minorities who want to start businesses in certain sectors.

We are increasingly competing not nationally but globally. If we don’t invest in fostering the development of people and increasing our capacity to devise and execute big ideas, we’re liable to be left behind.

POTENTIAL PITFALLS What are the possible side effects? Intervening in an economy can produce unforeseen effects. What would be the political consequences if some businesses ended up being displaced?

Not everybody can or should be a business owner. How do we encourage minority business ownership without overreaching?

Will increasing minority-owned business really increase the economy, or is it more about the social value of equity? Or are the two connected somehow?

Most Kansans will not be minority business owners. Are we willing to expand our circle of concern? Do we have the will to advance minority business ownership in service of the state’s economic good?

a

mission to

g row RURAL KANSAS HOSPITAL SEEKS TO CHOOSE ITS OWN DESTINY WITH A FOCUS ON BOTH SHARED LEADERSHIP AND PURPOSE

BY BRIAN WHEPLEY

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A week after Benjamin Anderson took over as the CEO of Kearny County Hospital in June 2013, he learned that one of its four family doctors was leaving.

The departure, a shock to the system for both Anderson and the hospital itself, illustrated one of the many challenges that rural hospitals such as Anderson’s face. The demands of delivering health care in a rural setting can be draining. Stability is difficult to achieve and maintain. The smaller the hospital is, the more uncertain its future is.

Like a game of Jenga, one piece removed stresses the remaining ones and can threaten a cascade.

Anderson – in his mid-30s with a trim beard, stylish wide-rimmed glasses, spiky hair and more energy than most can imagine – looks more fitting for the role of a tech start-up CEO than the administrator of a hospital in a county of fewer than 4,000 people.

And in some respects, they might have a similar mentality – security comes through growth.

Strangely enough, though, key approaches for fostering that growth sound less like a business strategy and more like the driving force for a nonprofit – shared leadership and tapping into people’s desire to do mission-driven work overseas and at home.

Although hospital officials ultimately filled the doctor’s slot, the situation reinforced a belief of Anderson and others that the hospital needed to commit to a “surgical” approach to growth to try to increase the odds of survival in a chaotic health care sector while continuing to meet the medical needs of a region short on health care providers and services.

“We have an opportunity to choose our destiny here.

We are looking at a health care delivery system that is sick, and we are vulnerable,” Anderson says. “We have

Kearny County Hospital in Lakin, about 230 miles west of Wichita, represents a crucial pillar to the future of a western Kansas county of nearly 4,000 people. The hospital is the largest employer in the county with more than 220 employees, two-thirds of whom live in Kearny County.

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More than convenient doctor’s office visits and ready access to an emergency room are at stake if a rural hospital doesn’t survive. In communities such as Lakin, 25 miles west of Garden City on U.S. 50/400 and about 40 miles from Colorado on the High Plains, adapting and growing are essential not only to the health of the hospital but to the vitality of the city itself. Quality of life means many things, and close access to health care – whether a trip to the ER or a place nearby for mom when she cannot live on her own any longer – is one of them.

two choices: One is surgery, and the other is palliative care. Surgery is painful and expensive and risky but brings with it a good chance of healing and growth and prosperity. Palliative care is just as it sounds: choosing the most painless way to die. We have calculated the risks and believe we are making the right choice.”

Rural hospitals face many financial challenges, including that more than half of their incomes typically come from federal programs for the elderly and the poor. The Affordable Care Act delivered another challenge when Kansas, along with a number of other states, decided not to expand Medicaid coverage to many Kansans without insurance. Hospitals have been squeezed because they’ve seen federal cuts in Medicare subsidies that, because of the state’s decision, have not been offset by greater Medicaid payments.

“Communities that lose their hospitals lose their community,” says Jon Wheat, a dentist who headed the hospital’s board until early in 2013. “You can’t recruit teachers, and then your school system goes south.”

The current climate has basically left rural institutions with a choice, “grow or die,” says Fred Jones, Lakin’s city manager for seven years before becoming a water resource manager in Garden City.

The multifaceted nature of the hospital’s approach is intriguing, particularly since the risks it faces are hardly theoretical. Since 2013 began, more than two dozen rural hospitals have closed across the country, according to the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. Small, rural hospitals have always faced challenges, but the pressures they face have ramped up in a hurry as populations shrink and they’re pushed to cut costs and keep patients for shorter amounts of time.

For Kearny County Hospital, a small facility in a state with many even smaller ones, growing means serving more patients, adding staff and providing a wider range of services. It means reaching a scale where the hospital has the equipment and expertise – from scanners to doctors to billing and reimbursement specialists – so

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A BIG CHUNK OF THE ECONOMY that it remains a place patients choose to use. And it needs to be a hospital that has the heft and resources to navigate the changing health care sector and not become a greater burden on county taxpayers.

Such an expansion requires leadership that fosters creativity, vision and resources. It involves a volunteer board that sets a big-picture view of the hospital’s future but trusts others to carry out the day-to-day mission of caring for the community. It involves doctors, nurses and other providers attracted to the mission, and a chief executive who seeks out partnerships with businesses and other organizations. It involves collaboration among the county commission that funds the hospital, the board that oversees it, the administrators that direct it and the providers who see patients.

And it involves openness about the hospital’s moves, successes and failures. That’s important, as about 10 percent to 12 percent of the county budget goes to the hospital, and in the past some taxpayers have questioned what they’re getting for their money.

The 25-bed hospital and its accompanying 70-person senior living center are big business in the county and in Lakin, which is near enough to Garden City that many residents shop and do much of their other business there. With more than 220 employees, two-thirds of whom live in Kearny County, the hospital is the largest employer, trailed only by the Lakin schools – home of the Broncs. “For us to even have a chance as a county, the two things that hinges on are the school system and the health care,” says Jerrad Webb, a Kearny County commissioner and an EMT instructor at Garden City Community College. “The two things that anybody moving to town wants to know about are access to health care and the school system.”

Crucial to the hospital’s growth is tapping into a deeper purpose that could attract physicians.

It recruits doctors and other staff who see medicine as a mission, one they practice primarily in Kearny County, Kansas, but also as far afield as Zimbabwe, Haiti, Ecuador and elsewhere around the globe.

“When people don’t understand what you’re doing, they fill in the blanks,” says Rita Stockton, a hospital board member, retired district court clerk and, now, priest of an Episcopal house church.

LEFT TO RIGHT: Dr. John Birky, a Kearny County hospital physician, assists student Jaimie Dungan with a female patient in the southern African country of Zimbabwe.

Dr. Arlo Reimer and Ken Donahue, a physician’s assistant, stand at a nurses station in the hospital; Kevin Hoover, a registered nurse, works with patients in Haiti. The hospital recruits doctors and other staff who see medicine as a mission and provides eight weeks off each year to provide care in places such as Zimbabwe, Haiti, Ecuador and elsewhere. (First and third photos courtesy of Kearny County Hospital)

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“w e have an o p po rtu ni t y to ch o os e ou r d es tin y h er e. we ar e l oo ki n g at a he alth care deli v ery s ys te m t h at is si ck, a nd we a re vu lner ab le .” be nJami n an der s on CE O, Kea r ny Cou nty Hos pit al

Another key piece is Anderson, who was drawn to Lakin’s team of mission-driven doctors and a hospital board supportive of stepped-up growth. Raised on the rougher side of California’s Bay Area, Anderson went to college in Springfield, Missouri, and ran a student-mentoring and college-placement organization there after graduating. A stretch as a physician recruiter followed, as did the realization that he wanted to be on the other side – hospital management – of the recruiting equation. He and his wife, Kaila, a social worker, felt called to rural and underserved areas, and Kansas – “that big rectangle” – fit the bill. “I think he’s taken the framework that was already in place and just made that vision bigger,” says Drew Miller, a family practitioner who joined the hospitalowned practice in 2010.

practitioners provide a wide variety of care – though the hospital has a rarity for the region, an ear, nose and throat specialist. If residents can get care close to home, whether physical therapy, a colonoscopy or carpal-tunnel surgery, it’s a time and money-saver, a stress reducer and a blessing.

The hospital serves not just Kearny County but a sizable surrounding area that stretches into Colorado. English, Spanish, Burmese, Somali and other languages are heard in its halls and waiting rooms, reflecting the area’s farm and ranch heritage, its long-running Hispanic presence and the ever- shifting, heavily immigrant workforce of the Tyson Foods packing plant in nearby Holcomb.

“For years, our major problem, and it didn’t matter whether it was a director of nursing, a financial person or a doctor, no matter what we came up with, we could not recruit to Lakin, Kansas,” says Tom Vincent, chairman of the hospital board. “There was always something we couldn’t compete with.”

Mothers-to-be need prenatal care and someone to deliver their babies – something all four family doctors do. Diabetes and obesity, as in the rest of the nation, are major and growing problems. Specialists are few, and family

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The hospital’s plan to meet those medical needs is a three-year effort to increase the staff to six doctors and five or six midlevel providers – physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

The plan, formulated by the administration, board and medical staff after that doctor left in the summer of 2013, is partway there with the hire of a replacement physician in mid-2014.

“The mission piece put us in the first string,” says Shannon McCormick, a county commissioner. “We could start picking off that top tier of student applicants.”

To be an attractive employer for applicants, Kearny County Hospital seeks to tap into what they care about most. It seeks out doctors

Benjamin Anderson became CEO of Kearny County Hospital in June 2013 and has made growing the hospital a key strategy for surviving challenging times in health care.

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DISCUSSION GUIDE Where do you see Kearny County Hospital officials and supporters holding to purpose in this story?

What challenges does that create for them?

In what ways might hospital officials be acting experimentally in this situation? What leadership interventions do you see occurring?

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard about creating a growth mindset? What challenges do you find your own community or organization facing in trying to grow?

“Fo r years, ou r m aJo r p ro bl e m, and it didn ’t m att e r wheth er it was a director o F n u rs i ng, a F inanci al p er son or a d oc tor , no matter wh at we came u p wit h, we c o u ld n ot recrui t to lak in, k a nsa s.” to m vi ncen t Ho spi tal Bo ard C ha irm an

Tom Vincent serves as chairman of the hospital board.

and other employees who have a passion to perform medical missions, and it gives them paid time off to do it. The time off is a carrot, but it’s that drive to serve that meshes with the hospital’s core mission of serving local residents’ medical needs.

PUTTING A TEAM TOGETHER Part of the hospital’s recent success in attracting staff is that it’s intent on building a team of people – not just doctors but other providers and staff – committed to service. Word has spread about the mission-driven culture – in place for many years but now building momentum – and the hospital is now getting more applicants than it can hire, Anderson says.

For many staff, including Anderson, the drive to serve both near and far is fueled by faith – answering the call to serve “the least of these.” Although the drive doesn’t have to be spiritual, Anderson says, staff must have that commitment.

Most young doctors want to practice together – in fact, friends Birky and Miller interviewed as a team.

So they won’t have to cover every ER call, so they’ll have colleagues to bounce ideas off of and learn from, so that they can take a vacation, so they can watch their kids’ ballgames. The same goes for nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

All of the hospital’s family doctors, Anderson and many other staff members have ventured overseas on missions.

“The type of physician who is willing to go overseas and work where there are mud huts is also the type of physician who is more likely to go to rural Kansas where there is dust and wind and no Chipotle,” says John Birky, a family doctor who joined the hospital in 2011 and has done missions in Zimbabwe, Egypt and elsewhere.

The goal of adding staff – “to get a stable medical staff here who were able to put down roots and feel like they were part of the community” – is not new, and has long been supported by the board, says Arlo Reimer, the medical chief of staff who started at the hospital in 2000.

Besides the medical care they provide, the Birkys, Millers, Andersons and some of the other young professionals drawn to Lakin also deliver something else highly desired by shrinking rural communities: young families with children (and more on the way).

What’s changed, though, is intensifying the effort so Lakin’s doctors aren’t one departing colleague away from burnout.

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Dr. Lisa Gilbert looks over reports on a patient; Jerrad Webb is a Kearny County Commissioner and EMT instructor who believes accountability has grown with greater communication between the county commission, hospital board and the administration; Rita Stockton, a hospital board member, says that despite an uncertain future, the board believes the hospital is going in the “right direction.”

“The key step is the hospital board itself,” McCormick says. “It got really focused on recruiting, not just on doctors but recruiting a CEO,” one interested in taking the hospital’s existing commitment to mission-focused staff and running with it.

Wheat, the former board chairman, met Anderson when he was CEO at the Ashland Health Center in Ashland, Kansas, and saw a good fit. Anderson took some persuading – Birky and Miller made pitches to him as well. They convinced him that Kearny County had a staff, board and county commission – a team in which he would be one of many catalysts – united in taking the hospital to the next level in a time of great uncertainty in health care.

“Instead of just trying our best to make ends meet and outguess the government, it’s his philosophy that you provide the service in an atmosphere that people want to be there and it will all pay out,” says Vincent, the current board chairman. “He’s got his visions and his projects. But we also need to make sure this stuff is all working, and he’s coming up with ways to make it work.”

Part of making it work is working with others to set and carry out goals.

“Ben has been a great administrator, but it’s not just all about him,” says Reimer, the chief of staff. “It’s more of a team effort, and I feel like that’s how the hospital board operates. They don’t have their own personal agendas. You can’t just dictate it from the top and expect it to fall into place like it does here.”

SEEING NEEDS AND FILLING THEM Since Anderson’s arrival in Lakin in mid-2013, the hospital has hired one young doctor, Lisa Gilbert, and signed up two more who will start work in August after they have completed international family medicine fellowships at Via Christi Hospital St. Francis in Wichita.

Just as important, the hospital has added three physician assistants who not only see patients but also assist with births and other procedures and help share the emergency room load. Another is coming in September.

Patient visits are up year to year, as are deliveries in the roomy, modern birthing suites. The clinic’s not-so-big, toy-filled waiting room is often packed – a good problem. Partnerships with other organizations and hospitals, telemedicine, becoming a hub and supplying outlying spokes with staff and care: All are strategies the hospital increasingly utilizes.

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Dr. Arlo Reimer, the medical chief of staff, holds twins that he delivered at Kearny County Hospital. Since Anderson arrived, the hospital has hired one young doctor, signed up two more, and has added three physician assistants. (Photo courtesy of Kearny County Hospital)

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“there are answer s o u t t h e r e .

You have to e m b r ac e the change. You ca n ’ t b e o l d school in hea lt h ca r e ” deborah stern Vice President of Clinical Serv ices, General Counsel for the Kansas Hospital Association

“There are answers out there,” says Deborah Stern, vice president of clinical services and general counsel for the Kansas Hospital Association. “You have to embrace the change. You can’t be old school in health care.”

doctors. The partnership with the clinic – whose patients include recent immigrants, longtime residents, the poor, the insured and the uninsured, working people and the unemployed – benefits both the clinic and the hospital.

“I don’t think they’re jumping into anything just because they can,” says Jones, the former city manager and a Lakin resident. “They are looking at what their patients need. The things they are trying to do are to address a need or concern.”

And it allows Gilbert, a child of missionaries in Africa, to pursue her passions for working with diverse, underserved patients, particularly mothers-to-be. Recently, Gilbert’s passion to serve has taken her on a three-month, hospitalsanctioned leave to care for Ebola patients in Liberia and surrounding areas. “What’s great about Benjamin’s style of leadership is he does his best to find out what your passion is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s his passion or not,” she says.

One partnership with Swedish Medical Center in Denver and Tyson Foods brings orthopedists to Lakin twice a month for consultations and surgery. An emphasis will be carpal tunnel surgery, as meatpacking workers are susceptible to the injury because of repetitive motion.

Another relationship, with the closest wound specialist in Wichita, allows that doctor to see patients in Lakin via a telelink, working with a specially trained hospital nurse. That’s a way to address the wounds that can come from untreated diabetes. Julie Munson, the ear, nose and throat specialist, visits other western Kansas communities on a regular schedule to see patients.

And Gilbert, the new doctor, has spent two days a week seeing obstetric and other patients at Garden City’s United Methodist Mexican Amercan Ministries clinic, which has had trouble recruiting

“Benjamin, or course, wants KCH to succeed, but he also wants the rest of us to succeed, so he has a wonderful ability to balance the needs of his organization with the medical needs of the community,” says Julie Wright, United Methodist Mexican American Ministries’ chief executive officer. “If he meets the needs of the community, he feels like he’s been successful.”

The clinic-hospital relationship will soon take another turn. Birky will leave the hospital May 31 to become chief medical officer for United Methodist Mexican American Ministries.

“It’s a transition KCH strongly supports, as it will stabilize care for some of Kansas’ most vulnerable patients,” Anderson says.

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“the mission p i e c e p u t u s in the first str i n g. w e c o u l d start picking of f t h at to p t i e r of student ap p l i cat i o n s.” shannon mccormick, Kearny County Commissioner and hardware store owner

BE TRANSPAREN T TO THE COMMUNITY With the growth, though, comes questions from residents, as might be expected of a hospital that receives a sizable chunk of taxpayer money and is undergoing change.

Responding to the questions prompted by that change has become a big part of the hospital’s civic leadership challenge within the community.

In 2006, the same year a voter-approved hospital expansion occurred, repeated public votes were necessary to obtain an increase in the hospital’s operating subsidy. Now, Anderson totes a scorecard to hospital board and county commission meetings, tracking measures such as staffing, patient satisfaction and new services. The hospital holds quarterly town hall meetings to explain what it is doing and takes questions – and criticism – about funding and care issues.

Among the questions staff and board members have heard and addressed are: Why don’t all the hospital staff members live in the county? (Housing isn’t easy to come by, and sometimes spouses work in another city.)

Why did I see a physician assistant instead of the doctor? (So the doctors can concentrate on the more serious cases.)

Are patients from outside the county leeching off the hospital and costing us money? (We

can’t turn people away, and we usually get reimbursed by the government or insurers.)

Webb, the commissioner, thinks accountability has grown with greater communication and transparency between the county commission and the hospital board and administration.

“The public has the right to know. The hospital just did a big study on personnel.

They found they are overstaffed in some areas and understaffed in others. (Anderson) is willing to admit the faults,” Webb says.

“I think that’s something that has really changed the attitude toward the hospital.”

Even with the best efforts to lead with information, “there’s a little hesitation and fear that we’re getting in over our heads,” says Webb, who thinks growth is necessary if the hospital is going to deliver the care the community requires.

Despite all the initiatives and energy, the future remains uncertain. It’s an ambiguity that binds the hospital administration, physicians, staff and the community as they try to lead their facility into a secure, prosperous future.

“It is a leap of faith,” says board member Stockton, the Episcopal priest, “but we’re fairly positive that we’re going the right direction.”

THE POINT OF CASE-IN-POINT Six Anchors for Turning Classrooms into Living Leadership Labs

BY JILL HUFNAGEL

It's day four of our Foundations of Leadership course, and as is our practice at the end of class, a participant who has been "sitting on the balcony" (observing the class as a system) has come down front to offer her observations. With nervous laughter, she begins, "Class today? It was a mess."

And to her eyes, I believe that's how it looked. My guess is that many others in the class agreed with her assessment. She got quite a few head nods; some chimed in with laughter. And then, she talked about what she had seen: a pattern of certain students dominating the conversation and interrupting while others patiently awaited their turn. Emotional reactions to the ambiguity and unmet need for order from authority. A tense conversation about an alpha female dynamic present in the room.

For me, her â&#x20AC;&#x153;messâ&#x20AC;? was a resounding success. Participants experienced trademark challenges of engaging in acts of leadership in every other room they will enter: uncertainty about the rules of engagement, disappointment with authority, thicket issues around gender. In short, they pinpointed the frustrations and identified the capacities they will need to grow if they are going to engage in acts of leadership.

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CASE-IN-POINT TEACHING METHOD

TRADITIONAL TEACHING METHOD

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A CORE QUESTION – CAN LEADERSHIP BE TAUGHT? – IS ONE THAT TYPICALLY REMAINS WELL-HIDDEN, BELOW THE SURFACE OF SYLLABI AND EXECUTIVE EDUCATION OFFERINGS. Leadership is observable. It’s in actions we can point to. And leadership engages us beyond the cerebral, in below-the-neck, feel-it-in-the-gut sorts of ways.

What happens in leadership classrooms and largescale leadership development programs varies widely and speaks to the ambiguous nature of the word and the processes by which we might grow leadership capacity on both individual and organizational levels.

A core question – can leadership be taught? – is one that typically remains well-hidden, below the surface of syllabi and executive education offerings. Serving as counterpoints to a certain collusion in avoiding that tough question are both a decade-long research project that resulted in Sharon Daloz Parks’ 2005 book “Leadership Can Be Taught” and a symposium of the same name hosted by the University of Minnesota.

Both posit that leadership can indeed be taught.

While leadership has wormed its way into curricula across the country and around the world, leadership can’t claim discipline status, which occurs when there is something of a consensus about what is known and how we should research and teach. At least not yet. Those of us in this loosely-held-together field may share the same landscape, but what’s happening in leadership classrooms is so disparate that the gold standard “discipline” remains beyond our reach. We have little to no shared language, and the pendulum swings past the outfield in terms of any concurrent belief in how to grow leadership capacity.

We have yet to sort out what is truly essential in a leadership education experience, much less how we might assess participant development. If we aspire to stake out the territory that is leadership, then we have much surveying and debating before us.

As a foothold along the way, the turf I aim to claim is this: the power of Case-in-Point teaching, a methodology pioneered by Ron Heifetz and his Harvard Kennedy School colleagues. Case-in-Point is a framework that connects the dynamics in the moment with key leadership concepts, in effect breathing life into

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theory through the unfolding narrative in the room.

Positing that the challenges endemic to engaging in acts of leadership mirror those within the learning community, the method seizes the opportunities alive in the classroom to both discern and dissect vital leadership thinking and strategy. Case-in-Point offers participants a thoughtfully crafted inroad into mapping the systemic forces at play in the moment, while simultaneously inviting participants to notice their own default patterns and relationship to authority.

No other leadership model is charged with the human element in the ways that Case-in-Point is.

Which underscores my belief that if you're not teaching through an experiential framework such as Case-inPoint – at least some of the time – then you're not really teaching leadership. That's because you're not providing a way for participants to learn leadership through their own practice.

While in its 30th year, this innovative methodology is alive in only a scattering of classrooms. (Editor’s note: This includes the Kansas Leadership Center, where Case-in-Point is a primary teaching method.)

Those using Case-in-Point are experimenting with a vital question: How do we shift our classrooms to become spaces to practice leadership rather than simply study it? If our hope is to prepare people to exercise leadership, then this aim is quite different from the academic learning on the agenda of most courses. The cornerstone of Case-in-Point is a belief that to teach leadership well, those in the teaching role must be actively doing – not simply talking about – the very things they’re aiming to teach. What are these doings? Managing self, exploring the relationships to authority playing out around the room, surfacing factions, orchestrating conflict. In short: the complex work at the heart of engaging in leadership outside the classroom.

Rather than continuing to work and live in ecosystems of less – fewer resources build unrest; a desire for less risk squelches innovation; with less time to think,

DISCUSSION GUIDE After you read the article about the anchors of teaching Case-in-Point, watch this video about why the Kansas Leadership Center uses the method with its participants. http://vimeo.com/45326837

What do you think is the most challenging aspect of teaching Case-in-Point from a teacher’s perspective? What is the hardest part for participants? If you have experienced it yourself, what was the hardest part for you?

we jump to solve the wrong problems – this is a leadership development model built on more. If, as we hear far and wide, we need more leadership, then we also need to create frameworks that serve that up more: more opportunities to experiment, more relationship-building skills, more moments for honing insight, more diagnosis, more possible responses beyond our current defaults.

At the same time, Case-in-Point also asks more of facilitators: more willingness to think aloud, to change course, to remain open to what is alive in the room not printed on the schedule. Yet with this promising “more” comes another, rather daunting set of “more”: more possibilities of not knowing which direction to head, more chances of appearing incompetent, more moments that feel like failure. In this way, the efficacy of the session is often a direct result of the facilitator’s willingness to model those very dicey leadership capacities many of us avoid at all costs. To create training spaces every bit as alive as the world outside them necessarily involves risk.

And tremendous reward.

This approach to leadership development uses the learning space as the ultimate laboratory to observe and unpack the complexities of exercising leadership as they show up in the room, thus the term Case-inPoint. Keeping one eye on the shared work – in this case, learning leadership theory while understanding the classroom system in which we are all embedded – participants are challenged to identify acts of leadership as they occur. Here, an act of leadership is cast as an intervention that advances that shared work: identifying the challenges of engaging in leadership as they show up in the room.

What typically gets in the way of this work? The need to appear competent, and therefore avoid asking questions. The need to be right and in turn avoid experimentation. The need to act quickly and thus skip over diagnosis to engage in hasty action.

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In what ways might teachers and participants use these challenges as productive tools for learning?

What do the challenges of teaching Case-in-Point tell us about the challenges of exercising leadership more broadly?

These trends are the hallmark of the idea that “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Whether teaching leadership or attempting to engage in acts of leadership in service to our deepest challenges and concerns, ambiguity typically holds center stage. It’s when we don’t know how to solve a problem, what to do, where to turn that we need leadership. Here’s a stroke of brilliance, care of Case-in-Point: Make that ambiguity wildly productive. The methodology allows a facilitator to acknowledge and use that inherent messiness to engage participants emotionally while emboldening them in action.

How, then, do we help folks see what it is that they’ve always done and that they continue to do?

With lots of mirrors and an overarching maxim: The only person we can’t see fully is ourselves. Scary.

To be sure, it’s a high-wire act – one that requires the very capacities that participants are working to grow in themselves: an ability to manage one’s self in the midst of action, a willingness to listen to conflicting opinions, the strength to call out work avoidance in its many nimble, subtle forms (creating a new subcommittee, screen-scrolling, harboring old conflicts).

To do that, facilitators must observe the system as it is revealing itself, generate multiple interpretations of the data in the room, and then craft interventions that help the system both see itself and engage more purposefully. This ability to reflect in the midst of action demands a discipline and clarity that is surely humbling and then some. But with practice and purpose, I’ve found my own trepidation is surmountable.

In attempting to both use and encourage others to use Case-in-Point, I’ve discovered six anchors that help keep me grounded as I navigate the unsteady-by-design terrain of Case-in-Point teaching.

1 FRUSTRATION AND DISCOMFORT ARE PART OF THE PROCESS.

The deeply countercultural components of Case-in-Point often erupt into frustration with the person at the front of the room. In varying forms, participants will say, “I thought you were going to teach me.”

My response is always the same: “I thought I was.” Here’s the twist, though, which must also be voiced: Case-in-Point involves being a learner in ways that we don’t yet know how to be. Ditto for teaching in this way. Just as our students will ask to be taught in the way they already know how to learn, this force will rear its head again and again in the classroom. And it tends to get traction, showing up in other forms.

The song beneath the words tends to be some arrangement of “keep me comfortable” – in work (leadership) that is by its very nature deeply uncomfortable. Because participants’ varying expressions of wanting their own need for comfort to be honored shows up repeatedly, helping them notice this proclivity is incredibly helpful. When we cast the “comfort” net a bit wider, we’re able to counter push-back wrapped in language around “respect” and the noble elevation of one’s own values. Rather than entertaining requests that legislate “respect” (a highly subjective quality, individually scripted and culturally entrenched), I've found that encouraging experimentation and generosity of spirit with one another can disrupt this debate. Similarly, participants will demand order – “hand raising, please!” – or equity – “no interrupting” – when they feel frustrated, when facing ambiguity or uncertainty. To cede to comfort rather than to leverage this moment, so that participants learn to be more effective in the face of frustration, is to lose sight of the power of Case-inPoint.

IF PARTICIPANTS WANT TO GROW THEIR LEADERSHIP EDGE, THEY WILL HAVE TO GROW THEIR CAPACITY FOR BEING UNCOMFORTABLE.

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2 TO ENGAGE IN MEANINGFUL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, WE MUST LEARN TO NAVIGATE DISAPPOINTMENT.

In traditional training settings, the front-of-the-room contract with participants is based on having answers, on expert knowledge. The person at the front of the room is there for a reason: typically, to share expertise, wisdom, experience. Participants have a set of expectations based on this same reasoning: that they will learn in familiar ways from the authority figure, that a certain hierarchy will govern the day’s interactions, that the front of the room “knows more” than the bulk of those across the room. Case-in-Point both surfaces and subverts these expectations and in so doing generates losses. These losses might be participants themselves who leave the classroom, negative course evaluations, the loss of control on the line when we lean into the moment rather than the PowerPoint. These losses cut across the system, and therefore wrestling with casualties becomes most productive when this wrestling is taken up as the shared work of participants alongside those facilitating within this framework.

My sense is that we always have losses in our classrooms. We simply agree not to surface them. We disappoint our participants in myriad ways: with concepts out of sync with their lived experiences, by boring them with our lectures, by assigning group work. Those losses are tangible if we look for and name them.

EXHIBIT A:

EXHIBIT B:

EXHIBIT C:

The participant who flips from his workbook to Facebook.

The participant who comes to class late.

The participant who zones out for half the session.

The list is long, and we’re typically complicit in pretending otherwise. To honor these losses is to connect them clearly and compassionately to the purpose of the leadership classroom. For participants to develop the thicker skin necessary to engage in acts of leadership, they will both disappoint and be disappointed by authority. Again. And again. Allowing them to navigate that disappointment in a learning environment means they can become both more skillful in intervening and more resilient in the face of the inevitable disappointments and losses that come with acts of leadership.

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3 EXPOSING MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT AUTHORITY FUELS LEARNING.

When authority fails to behave predictably – by providing protection, order, direction – participants will wonder whether what’s happening in the classroom is contrived, planned or otherwise manufactured.

I cast this as a “magical thinking” kind of authority relationship – one on the Wizard of Oz spectrum.

Beneath this sentiment is a set of beliefs about authority:

(1) THAT AUTHORITY IS WORKING THAT HARD.

(2) THAT AUTHORITY IS SO ALL-KNOWING TO BELIEVE THAT IN BEING “SET-UP” PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN.

(3) THAT AUTHORITY IS BY NATURE A VEHICLE OF MANIPULATION AND ONE DEMANDING A LEVEL OF SKEPTICISM AT ALL TIMES.

(4) THAT AUTHORITY KNOWS MORE/BETTER THAN I DO.

As these sentiments are voiced, they present an opportunity to examine the ways in which these mind sets both serve and skewer individuals and systems. Ideally then, in-the-moment examination of these beliefs allows participants to experience their own seeing and to expand their ways of thinking about and in turn interacting with authority.

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4 FACILITATORS MUST SEPARATE WHO THEY ARE FROM THE ROLE THEY ARE PLAYING.

Participants will confuse self and role as they experience and make sense of this disorienting approach to facilitation. Participants often expect authority to take care of them, to be likable, to meet their needs.

Case-in-Point, however, posits that by catering to those very needs we do little to activate participants attempting to deepen their leadership capacity. Therefore, the facilitator must be adept at serving the system rather than the self – a leap that is both frightening and liberating. The role of the facilitator is not to perpetuate dependence, which feeds our own sense of competence. Rather the role of the facilitator is to serve as an anchor while participants get their bearings, to help them renegotiate their dependence on authority and to seed the belief that, by experimenting in the training arena, participants are growing their own leadership capacity in ways that will serve them outside the room.

Here’s how this plays out: Participants will have an emotional reaction to the way in which I’m working at the front of the room. They will confuse my willingness to work my edge in service to systemic learning with who I am outside of this role, my deeper self. Richard Pascale, in his work on the Cambridge Leadership Associates advisory board, put his finger on this piece of the work of Case-in-Point:

“THE SECRET SAUCE HERE IS THE WILLINGNESS TO NOT CARE ABOUT BEING LIKED IN THE MOMENT.”

To connect Pascale’s insights to the work of leadership development, it’s also about keeping one eye squarely trained on the work in the room: helping participants grow their own leadership capacity. Nothing in that work promises being liked while doing so.

Another potential response to working this edge that I’ve found helpful: I can divide my self from my role in service to this work not because I don’t need to be liked but rather because I’m meeting that need outside of this context in the rest of the relationships in my life. This is also a caveat to practitioners. Unless we’re solid outside the room, it’s tough to do this work inside the room. In short, one demands the other.

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5 CASE-IN-POINT HELPS A GROUP DISCOVER ITS RESILIENCE. The temptation to privilege group harmony (not interrupting, tolerating unproductive conversation, attempting democracy) over group progress is both strong and seductive. Groups tend to skew toward rules of engagement that are pleasant and polite. Yet this sugar-coating also serves to maintain a surfacelevel illusion at odds with the work of leadership. By investing in this illusion – work the group is typically already quite adept at – the opportunity to engage in more challenging leadership development work is minimized. Collusion is a galvanizing force in every system – particularly when the collusion serves a “not.” Not behaving differently, not interrogating one's own assumptions, not rocking the boat. In short, it's a brilliant, collective engine for work avoidance. Suggesting that the group has some untapped resilience and burgeoning capacity allows members to test their assumptions about rules of engagement, work that results in a riper, more robust space to learn and develop core adaptive leadership skills.

6 GROWING CAPACITY IS THE POINT OF THE METHODOLOGY – AND THE DISEQUILIBRIUM. When we get lost, connect to purpose. In this case, the purpose is to teach others how to engage in acts of leadership, which means they must first experience the disorientation endemic to the methodology.

That participants tend to push back against that disorientation is to be expected. Countering that push-back by reconnecting to purpose is a tool that serves me and the groups I work with well. When I get lost – and I will – this is a place to hold tight. We create these educational environments rife with ambiguity, conflict and disappointment in service to something larger: growing our capacity to navigate those same thickets beyond the walls of the learning space. Again, the language of more, of abundance, of generating possibilities in the room thanks to the Case-in-Point framework can be helpful here.

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As I go back to that opening snapshot, I think about the points of adaptive-leadership theory on the slate for the course and how those concepts came to life in the room. The distinction between leadership (an action) and authority (a role based on protection, order, direction); the challenges of working across factions; the need to regulate the temperature in the room, so that the time is productive. All of these concepts on the page played out in the moment. No longer were they theoretical ideas; rather, they became a part of the lived experience in the room. Coupling opportunities to learn from successes and failures with the continued reminder that what happens in this room mirrors what happens outside of it, participants have a place to identify the complexities of leadership and experiment with how best to deploy themselves in service to meeting their most complex leadership challenges.

While I could use more conventional approaches to delivering this material, inherent in those methodologies is a gap between the subject of leadership and the ways in which I might engage in acts of leadership to catalyze learning. That gap is seductive, promising mountains of safety both for participants and for me.

However, I’ve yet to see that we need leadership in safe spaces. What I notice is a deep need for acts of leadership when the climate is unsafe, unsure, shaky. Thus the learning space has to reflect that same uncertainty if we are truly wedded to the work of meaningful leadership development.

Given that premise, using Case-in-Point does not come without losses. I often ask leadership educators and practitioners a core question to surface a tension in the room: “What losses are you willing to bear in service to your own leadership development? And to the leadership development of your participants?”

Their responses are typically steeped in fear: fear of losing the client; fear of upsetting participants and plummeting evaluations; fear of losing the little

ground we have in establishing leadership as a legitimate discipline; my shared fear of appearing incompetent, of failure, of being overthrown.

The antidote to this fear is the possibility inherent in Case-in-Point: the possibility of teaching leadership as an act of leadership. When we work from that angle, we gain access to a powerful metanarrative: impacting the trajectory of education. Case-in-Point rejects status quo, front-of-the-room modes of learning, effectively removing the veil that governs our current classroom structures and creating a more dynamic classroom setting. If we are to shape environments ripe for meaningful leadership development, we will have to start by aligning our rules of engagement to meet this deeper purpose. Case-in-Point offers us a map for that realignment, one that hinges on the notion that what is happening in the room is the ultimate fodder for honing our leadership strategy and capacity.

The idea that what we learn “in here” – in the leadership classroom – is somehow distinct from the “real world” – out there – suggests that all of us are trapped in the very systems we will have to dismantle and reimagine if we are to survive and thrive. Case-in-Point asks that all of us let go of what is comfortable, known, familiar in service to a larger aim: igniting and sustaining powerful leadership development in our students, our clients, ourselves, and in the world we all share.

Jill Hufnagel’s interest in the work of the Kansas Leadership Center began after working alongside KLC President and CEO Ed O'Malley as visiting faculty on the Harvard Kennedy School's Art & Practice of Leadership Development program in 2012. Since then, she has made three trips to Wichita, each time more deeply moved by the powerful leadership development work catalyzing at KLC. She is the associate director of the Batten Leadership Institute at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She loves hiking trails with her two dogs and cooking for her family of adventurous eaters.

ADDITIONAL CASE-IN-POINT RESOURCES: “Case-in-Point: A Taxing and Transforming Leadership Education Art Form” by Chris Green. Published by the Kansas Leadership Center. klcjr.nl/cipgdbk

“’The Class of the Forking Paths’: Leadership and ‘Case-in-Point’”

by Adriano Pianesi in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 24, No. 1. klcjr.nl/frkpthscip

“Case-in-Point: An Experiential Methodology for Leadership Education and Practice” by Michael Johnstone and Maxime Fern in the Fall 2010 Kansas Leadership Center Journal. klcjr.nl/cipexpm

“Leadership Can Be Taught” by Sharon Daloz Parks, published in 2005 by Harvard Business School Press. klcjr.nl/lcbtbook

“The Harvard Experiment: Living ‘The Art and Practice of Leadership Development’” by Patty Orecchio, Barbara McMorrow, and Marg Connor in the Summer 2008 issue of Principal Connections. klcjr.nl/hrvdexp

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Marshall Middle School students paint a mural, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Embracing Cultural Diversity,â&#x20AC;? based on a digital composite of their own art. The north Wichita mural, funded with the help of a grant from the Wichita Arts Council, is part of a broader effort to create public art by the ICT Army of Artists.

the intersection of art and social change By Laura Roddy

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on a crisp fall saturday, middle schoolers dab brushes in paint and carefully fill in the outlines on their canvas, which in this case is the side of a mechanic’s shop in north Wichita. cups filled with bright paint colors are scattered about, and a mom drops off a tray of hot chocolate. one student works on a ladder, while others paint at eye level.

Joel escarpita, their teacher, scales the scaffolding and helps a student artist fill in an upper quadrant of the work.they are working on a mural called “embracing cultural diversity,” fitting for the neighborhood, which is home to many spanish-speaking immigrants.

Seventh-grader Gabi Ehss inspects the details on the portion of the mural that was her creation: four figures of different nationalities who are eating what she sees as all-American food – a hamburger, a hot dog, a taco and a slice of pizza.

and American flags. The mural was vandalized twice in six weeks in early 2014. Both times, volunteers rallied and scrubbed away the racial slurs and swastikas.

Minjarez, an immigrant himself, says the community response was as important to the ICT Army of Artists as the art itself.

The students’ mural is part of a broader effort to create public art in the neighborhood. The ICT Army of Artists is the brainchild of Armando Minjarez and the Seed House (Casa de la Semilla), a community organization that promotes art, activism and social justice.

“We’re really shaping culture,” he says. “We’re shaping how people think and how they behave next to each other.”

Minjarez says measuring the impact of the ICT Army of Artists will take time and the community is taking small steps toward greater social activism.

“Hello, artists, creatives and provocateurs!” is how Minjarez addresses his troops via email. In person, he often wields a clipboard while dressed in a T-shirt and a trucker hat. He peppers his conversations with Spanish phrases and easily switches between the two languages. He asks questions, writes ideas on giant sticky notes and gently steers discussion back to agenda items.

“People in the neighborhood may not be ready to talk about running for office. This is the start,” he says. “What I’m seeing is relationships among artists, connections in the community.”

“I want artists to become agents of social change,” Minjarez explains. “The idea of community engagement is somewhat unusual for visual artists. You really have to let go of it and become a facilitator.”

collaboration and leadership

Over at the “Embracing Cultural Diversity” site, Escarpita, an art teacher at Marshall Middle School in Wichita, had a similar mission for his young muralists.

One of the first projects under the Army of Artists’ umbrella was “Immigration is Beautiful,” a mural constructed in the heart of north Wichita. Inside an outline of the United States are the Statue of Liberty as well as figures wrapped in the Mexican

“I really hope that I’m helping foster their artistic talents but also kind of building those leadership capacities – collaboration, working together to achieve something bigger than themselves,” he says.

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Marshall Middle School art teacher Joel Escarpita served as a lead artist on the mural painted by students.

He hoped the project would foster both their artistic talents and build their leadership capacities.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;i really hope that i'm helping foster their artistic talents but also kind of building those leadership capacities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; collaboration, Working together to achieve something bigger than themselves.â&#x20AC;?

Joel Escarpita

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“We’re really shaping culture.

We’re shaping hoW people think and hoW they behave next to each other.”

Armando Minjarez

The ICT Army of Artists is the brainchild of Wichita artist Armando Minjarez and Casa de la Semilla (the Seed House), a community organization that promotes art, activism and social justice. Minjarez says he wants artists “to become agents of social change.”

Escarpita spent the previous spring teaching a unit on diversity as it relates to race, gender, nationality and religion, inspired by an artists retreat organized

by Minjarez.

dealing With setbacks

In an assignment, Escarpita had his students create artwork that represented cultural diversity. He took many of those images and created a digital composite, which became the mural. Minjarez helped secure a grant from the Wichita Arts Council for the project and assisted with the logistics.

In the fall, just a few blocks away from the Marshall students’ project, a half-dozen adults worked on another mural, this one known as “Mujeres Educadas Hacen la Diferencia” (“Educated Women Make the Difference”). The central image was of a large tree in front of a pyramid. Female figures of different ages were ascending it, holding such things as a telescope and a book.

As with the immigration mural, the public art efforts of the ICT Army of Artists don’t always go as planned.

More than anything, Escarpita wanted to stimulate conversation.

Margi Ault-Duell, one of the artists, admired the final design as the notes of “Bohemian Rhapsody” rang out from a portable stereo.

“I want them to think about cultural diversity,” he says. “Too often we kind of get into a little bubble.”

As the students worked, parent Keith Eliot chronicled the progress in photos. As he reflected on the diversity message, Eliot also marveled at the makeup of the students who were creating it: “You look at the students who are here, and it’s everybody.”

Norma Saenz, one of the student artists, contributed a “Mexican lady,” reflecting her own heritage, which makes her think of parties with food and dancing.

“I think public art can be a really powerful tool for social change,” she says. “Murals are a big part of how communities tell their stories.”

For a couple of months before the “Mujeres Educadas” mural began to go up, Minjarez and Melissa Gettinger, the project’s lead artist, worked with group members interested in the topic of educated women.

In August, about two dozen people met at the nearby Tacos y Salsas for an ice cream social and brainstorming meeting.

Examining the mural, she says: “To me it feels like all of the people of the world are gathering together, and you can just be yourself.”

“We mobilize people by first of all going where they’re at,” Minjarez says. “That means meeting at a familiar and safe place.”

Seventh-grader Aaron Doell says he liked using art to convey a message.

Gettinger passed out copies of an initial mural design, featuring “the goddess of the North End” and asked what it means to be an educated woman. She talked

“You don’t have to say your thoughts,” he says.

“People can see them.”

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by the idea of “artivism” – using public art to share ideas of social activism.

about the big ideas — acknowledging the women who have come before them, the concept of women as maiden/mother/crone and how education fits in – and then those gathered broke into small groups armed with a black-and-white copy of the design.

The tables were stocked with crayons and watercolors to encourage creativity while delving into the proposed mural design.

“It turns out leadership is more about having to follow – it’s not telling people what to do,” Gettinger says. “I’ve had a lot of growing pains along the way.”

By the time October rolled around, the final mural design was a point of pride for Gettinger.

During the subsequent large-group discussion, there was a lot of debate about acknowledging many women’s nurturing roles while also highlighting their intellectual achievements.

Unfortunately, just days after her group began painting the mural along North Broadway Street in Wichita, the owner of the business effectively fired the ICT Army of Artists, Gettinger says.

Ault-Duell had a request: “I would ask us to be really intentional about the visual representations of women’s bodies.”

The owner had asked for a mural that represented educated women, but she disagreed with the design.

Gettinger and her team felt compelled to paint over their design as a result, not wanting to disregard all the community meetings and input that had gone into creating it.

By the end of the evening, Gettinger felt a little deflated.

“Everyone hated it,” she says. “They scribbled all over my drawings.”

“The experience has rocked me personally and the others, too,” Gettinger says. “I am really looking for the silver lining, but I guess a person has to grieve before they can move on.”

Back to the drawing board she went. It took another meeting to hash out the final details.

Gettinger, who has a degree in painting, knows about art, but working on a collaborative project became a lesson in leadership.

There’s already a glimmer of hope for her: Although the mural is on hold until spring when a new site can be procured, Gettinger hopes to retitle it as “Mujeres Educados Son la Fortaleza.” which translates to “Educated women are resilient.”

“When you’re an artist, you have control over a project,” she says. “Because it’s community, all of the sudden you have consider everyone’s views.”

Still, she was drawn to the group because she wanted to meet other artists and was intrigued

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Artist Melissa Gettinger holds up a drawing of a mural that wound up being rejected by a local business owner. The mural is on hold until spring so a new site can be found for it.

“it turns out leadership is more about having to folloW - it’s not telling people What to do.”

Melissa Gettinger

DISCUSSION GUIDE Creating a work of shared art can be similar to tackling a leadership challenge in your organization or community. As Melissa Gettinger says in the story, “When you’re an artist, you have control over a project.

Because it’s community, all of the sudden you have to consider everyone’s views.”

Think about a leadership challenge you care about.

What does the end result look like to you? Create your own mural by drawing the outcome on a piece of paper or flip chart. Stick figures are just fine! Ask others you work with to add their visions to your “mural.”

(Note: If you are working alone, try to imagine the ideal outcome for others and add it to your mural.)

Karen Countryman-Roswurm, executive director of Wichita State Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Combating Human Trafficking, has made a career of rallying others around difficult issues.

H eAt rAIser ADVOCATE FOR TRAFFICKING VICTIMS H E L P I NG B U I L D A M OV E M E N T T H R OUG H TOUG H C O N V E R S A T I O N S O N A D I F F I C U LT P R O B L E M

BY LAU RA RODDY

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I T ’ S H A R D TO E X E R C I S E L E A D E R S H I P W I T H O U T H A V I N G D I F F I C U LT C O N V E R S A T I O N S .

K A R E N C O U N T RY M A N - R O S W U R M , A W I C H I TA - B A S E D V I C T I M S ’ A D VO C AT E , H A S , I N A WAY, M A D E A C A R E E R O F H A V I N G T H E M T O R A L LY OTHERS AROUND AN ISSUE AND TAKE ACTIONS.

She was a teenager when she started working in street outreach with the Wichita Children’s Home.

She had a knack for getting teenage runaways to listen and begin to consider a life off the streets.

“I feel like I’m pulling a train by myself,” she says.

“This is a human-rights movement that we are part of. … It’s the lens. I see the whole world through this lens.”

Countryman-Roswurm later became a passionate opponent of the commercial exploitation of children for sex. She was appalled that human trafficking – often referred to as modern-day slavery – was happening in Wichita, with dozens of cases occurring each year. And she was infuriated that the teenagers whom she viewed as victims were seen as criminals in the eyes of the law and general public.

To accomplish her goals, Countryman-Roswurm had to intervene skillfully by “raising the heat,” which means taking action to help a group make progress on an issue without pushing the members of the group beyond what they can handle.

It was a tough issue that required tough conversations. She brought together law enforcement officers and social workers to talk about human trafficking. The meetings were heated – people yelled. Years passed, and her reach expanded.

She worked with judges, state legislators and the attorney general.

‘gently fIres tHem uP’ Countryman-Roswurm has had both successes and setbacks with the Anti-Sexual Exploitation Roundtable for Community Action that she founded. The group, organized under the auspices of the Wichita Children’s Home, helped to focus the conflicts among police officers, prosecutors and social workers. They all could see the victimization that was occurring, but sometimes they disagreed as to whether it involved an element of criminality. From a law enforcement perspective, an arrest could serve as a tool to get a teenager off the street and away from a pimp. From a social work perspective, advocates were concerned that those being trafficked were not being viewed as victims.

It hasn’t been easy. Countryman-Roswurm, now in her mid-30s, found her passion, but she not only had to get others to think about a difficult subject, she also had to get them to reframe their entire understanding of it.

It’s a sometimes solitary exercise that requires frequent, skillful effort.

Sarah Robinson, chief advancement officer of the Wichita Children’s Home, has watched CountrymanRoswurm have these difficult conversations among people with disparate agendas.

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“First and foremost, she is earnest, and she is passionate,” Robinson says. “She really believes in what she is doing. She is articulate without hurting feelings. She gently fires them up.”

“Karen’s been an effective translator,” he says, noting that people respect both her passion and her grasp of the subject matter.

The law enforcement perspective, Schmidt says, is that the legal system has tools to get victims off the streets. Fully decriminalizing human trafficking takes away some of law enforcement’s ability to intervene.

Countryman-Roswurm hasn’t always found the perfect balance. As a Kansas Health Foundation fellow, she had an opportunity to learn from a Harvard University leadership scholar who advised her to learn to anger people at a rate they could tolerate.

Countryman-Roswurm listened to the law enforcement community and was open to persuasion, Schmidt says – willing to help improve the law even if it didn’t go as far as some victims’ advocates would like.

That meant gritting her teeth when police officers used terminology that was offensive to her. She used the word “victim,” and they used “prostitute,” but together they investigated ways to help the juveniles who were being exploited.

For example, the 2014 legislative changes do call those who have been trafficked “victims” and provide a safe place to take them. However, they do not completely decriminalize the matter. Schmidt says the law does allow enhanced opportunities for affirmative defenses, which mitigate a defendant’s culpability, and for eventual expungement of a criminal record.

“Some of it was staying strong and staying firm but meeting people where they were,” she says.

Taking the long view paid off. Some of the police officers and social workers who she thought treated sex-trafficking victims so poorly 10 years ago have become some of the best advocates in the community in her view. They just had to find a way to understand one another and find common ground.

For Countryman-Roswurm, the changes represent a revolution in thinking that has been nearly two decades in the making.

“I could not be more proud of my state to be taking this stand, for saying we get it – this is not prostitution,” Countryman-Roswurm says. “I feel like I’m in a different world today.”

Over the years, Countryman-Roswurm has altered the language that frames how society views minors who become victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

In 2007, when Kansas passed its first human trafficking law, children were still referred to as prostitutes. The law was updated in 2014. Children are now called victims, and the state Department for Children and Families is required to provide a staff-secured facility to take care of them. Before the law was changed, judges often felt compelled to lock up minors for their protection, even if the judges understood them to be victims of sexual trafficking.

beIng reAl, beIng vulnerAble In her efforts to turn up the heat, CountrymanRoswurm has found success by opening up and allowing herself to be vulnerable. She let The Wichita Eagle profile her in an eight-part series in 2000.

One factor that helped her connect with runaways as a teenager was that she had been in their shoes, choosing life on the streets over foster care after her mother’s death when she was 13.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has worked with Countryman-Roswurm on human trafficking, both in his current office and previously as the state’s Senate majority leader.

That ability to relate to people has served her well in her role as an advocate.

Law enforcement and victim advocates have a common interest, he says, but it is like they are speaking German and Italian to one another.

“I think a lot of times people don’t bring their vulnerabilities to their jobs,” she says. “There’s always casualties. Many times my husband and I weigh things – will the impact be good?”

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In one manner of thinking, Countryman-Roswurm may have been too effective at turning up the heat on the trafficking issue. In some instances the challenge for her has become: “How do I kindly engage or disengage these appropriate citizen groups or allies?”

Countryman-Roswurm counts seeking justice and being bold among her spiritual gifts, but she always thinks about what the repercussions might be for her own two children. She doesn’t want her efforts to help other children to get in the way of her being there for them.

Sexual exploitation has gained more attention from the public in recent years, as the media report more frequently on the issue and more traffickers are prosecuted. Sometimes Countryman-Roswurm finds herself meeting with people who want to get involved but are ill-equipped to work with victims.

And she’s not intimidated by people in positions of authority, so she seeks a relationship with the U.S. attorney the same way she seeks a relationship with a troubled teen.

“People are people,” she says. “I pursue people with less fear.”

“It’s so tempting to embrace this rescue-savior complex,” she says.

new cHAllenges

That’s where people, from their place of privilege, start to think they are irreplaceable in the fight to end sex trafficking, she says. Despite her own experiences, Countryman-Roswurm does not view herself that way.

Today, Countryman-Roswurm has more allies than ever. In 2013, Wichita State University created the Center for Combating Human Trafficking and named Countryman-Roswurm its director, recognizing her significant national influence on the issue. A tenuretrack professor in the School of Social Work, she relishes her association with the university. It allows her to help at a macro level and unite the spheres of direct practice, research and policy.

“My significance is not found in this human-rights movement,” Countryman-Roswurm says. “When it becomes that way, it’s really easy to let your ego become involved. … One of the things that has helped me is knowing that it wasn’t about me rescuing anybody.”

“I get to get my hands on multidisciplinary students before they ever go out into the field,” she says.

She wants to make sure these students, as they prepare for careers in social work or law enforcement, understand the complex nature of trafficking, whether it be for purposes of labor or sexual exploitation.

She finds another grounding force by not defining her own worth as a human-rights advocate, which helps keeps her in balance and well-positioned to intervene when she can make a difference.

“You have to commit to the fact that this will become part of who you are,” she says. ”You have to learn to balance and take care of yourself. If I am to be effective, I have to take care of myself.”

DISCUSSION GUIDE The article mentions five ways in which Karen CountrymanRoswurm has utilized the skill of raising the heat to advance her purpose.

Which of what she has done would you feel comfortable doing? What interventions has she undertaken that you would feel uncomfortable doing? Why do you think you feel the way you do?

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Design an experiment in which you try a new way of raising the heat. Use pages 104-105 in the For the Common Good Participant Handbook as a resource.

f Iv e wAys to ef f ect Iv ely rAI se t He H eAt: AN ADVOCATE’S APPROACH

1.

HELP PEOPLE SEE AN UNCOMFORTABLE REALITY.

Notice how Karen Countryman-Roswurm influences people to confront an issue – the commercial sexual exploitation of children – that exists but most people would probably prefer to avoid.

2.

GET PEOPLE TO EXPLORE THEIR PART OF THE MESS.

She engaged with others, including law enforcement, to help them see how the language being used might be contributing to the problem.

3.

ORCHESTRATE DIALOGUE BETWEEN POLARIZED GROUPS.

Changes to the law came when she helped two groups with different ways of looking at the same problem started talking and starting sorting through their differences.

4.

ASK PEOPLE TO ASPIRE TO A HIGHER IDEALS.

She kept the focus on protecting and securing the human rights of exploited children.

5.

USE BOTH THE ACCELERATOR AND THE BRAKE.

She stayed influential by pushing sometimes and pulling back, as the moment demanded, but never doing one or the other all the time.

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FEATURED ARTIST

tHe storyteller

by AngIe PIckmAn

I began cutting paper in 2003 after seeing “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” – a cut paper stop-motion silhouette animation from 1926 by a German artist, Lotte Reiniger. I had always wanted to be an “artist” – I knew from a very young age that it was my calling – but it took me a long time to figure out in which medium this would manifest itself. The traditional forms taught in school never felt quite right, but when I saw Reiniger’s work, something clicked.

My life philosophy revolves around achieving simplicity, winnowing away at all the things that are not needed so that the individual can be reduced to the rawest, purest being possible. I think, at this level, one is more readily able to truly observe and take in the natural beauty that exists around us, finding awe in all the parts and not just the whole. Cutting paper is metaphorical for this – the cutting away of all that is unnecessary to reveal the subject in a simple, bold form, where the most intricate details can be revealed.

As a native of Kansas, I feel a strong connection to the landscape of this region. After living in New York City for many years, I discovered, while still there, that I wanted to strengthen that connection and began revolving my work around the spirit of the Kansas terrain.

Moving back to my homeland has proven to give me the inspiration that I need to make my art continually: a simpler lifestyle combined with constant access to my muse.

Angie Pickman, a native of Atchison, lives and works as a full-time cut paper artist in Lawrence, often operating under the moniker “Rural Pearl.” She combines traditional paper-cutting techniques with collages of various colored and textured papers to achieve an aesthetic similar to relief printing or screen printing. She earned her master’s degree in 2004 at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where she focused her studies on cut paper art coupled with stop-motion animation. She continued living and working in New York City until returning to Kansas in 2009 to pursue her artistic career full time. She exhibits at galleries and art fairs nationally, does illustration and design work, conducts public presentations on her art and teaches various art classes and workshops. She is a member of the Lawrence Art Guild and the Guild of American Paper Cutters.

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FEATURED POEM

An ArrAngement of HeArts by roDerIck townley Thinking about kings and how to keep from winning I fail to notice her head lower over the cards.

An arrangement of hearts tips forward. “Mom,” I say, knowing she’d want to play it out, “Mom, it’s your move.”

Death scene in stained bathrobe?

Her hair red as a setter, white shining through. But look: the blue eyes open wide: “Are you sure, dear?

Oh!” (Smiling.)

“I seem to have gin!”

The author of 16 books, Roderick Townley has published two volumes of poetry, “Three Musicians” (The Smith) and “Final Approach” (The Countryman Press), and two of criticism, “The Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams” (Cornell University Press) and “Night Errands: How Poets Use Dreams” (University of Pittsburgh Press). He is best known for his novels for young readers, including “The Blue Shoe” and “The Door in the Forest” (both from Knopf), and “The Great Good Thing” (Atheneum). He has received the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, the Thorpe Menn Award, the Peregrine Prize and two prizes from the Academy of American Poets. His greatest honor is his marriage to Kansas Poet Laureate Wyatt Townley. (www.rodericktownley.com)

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THE BACK PAGE reconcIlIng tHrougH tHe Power of sPeAkIng to loss South Africa called its version of racial segregation Apartheid, or literally, “apartness.”

What a time for Brand to visit with a sunny message of racial reconciliation.

Their apartness began like ours, only their cotton plantations were diamond mines. Their racial identification “one-drop rule” was more bureaucratic – a government agency determined a person’s race and then dispensed papers determining where you could live and work.

Two national cases of unarmed African American men killed by police closed without indictments for the white officers have spawned widespread racial turmoil.

Our American “apartness” glares in our justice system.

In a white community, a belligerent man carrying a semiautomatic rifle enjoyed the privilege of a 12-hour negotiation before police arrested him. In a black community, officers shot and killed a 12-year-old carrying an airsoft gun less than two minutes after arriving at the scene.

It seems South Africa has made more progress more quickly than we have. The races there share governmental power. They held public hearings to address past wrongs.

They elected a black president before we did.

That president, Nelson Mandela, was the reason for Christo Brand’s trip to Wichita.

Brand said racial animus in his country hadn’t vanished, but provinces that share power experience greater prosperity.

Brand has devoted his life to sharing the story of his friendship with Mandela, which developed when he worked as the late South African leader’s prison guard on Robben Island. That friendship reflects the healing and liberating power of not only acknowledging past wrongs, but speaking directly to them.

How’d they get there?

Largely through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a restorative justice agency that allowed victims of gross human rights violations to testify about it, and to have perpetrators acknowledge what they did, apologize, and seek amnesty from criminal and civil prosecution. Through the agony of those admissions, a new nation emerged.

Wichitans met Brand when Mayor Carl Brewer’s delegation toured what is now a museum on Robben Island in late 2014. They invited him to Wichita. Brand spent three days here, speaking to students and civic groups and signing copies of his book, “Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend.”

The oppressed majority understood that their vengeance -- righteous or otherwise – could cost the nation its future.

The ruling minority learned that they weren’t being oppressed because the majority gained rights the minority always had.

Ted Ayres, Wichita State University’s vice president and general counsel, took Brand to a Shocker basketball game at Intrust Bank Arena in December. Ayres allowed me to tag along.

Here in America, we run from our racial history, and its enduring legacy.

“May I ask you a personal question?” Brand asked me amid the crush of black-and gold-clad fans in the arena concourse.

There can be no agony for us until we run toward it.

Mark E. McCormick is the executive director of The Kansas African American Museum in Wichita.

“Sure,” I said, “ask away.”

“Where are the blacks?” he asked innocently, having never been to a basketball game before. “Are they not interested in this sport?”

My answers felt feeble. I couldn’t explain why both teams were predominantly black but the crowd, predominantly white.

80.

“Life is sentimental. Why should I be cold and hard about it?

That’s the main content. The biggest thing in people’s lives is their loves and dreams and visions, you know.”

– poet Jim Harrison

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