LTG Blog

LTG Partners Deliver Workshop to Standing-Room Only Crowd at 9th Annual Supportive Housing Network of New York (SHNNY) Conference at the New York Hilton: June 9th.

At the start of the morning as the hustle and bustle of a large crowd of about 125 or so filed into the Renaissance Room of the Hilton Hotel for LTG partners Steve Burghardt and Willie Tolliver's workshop "Transforming Leaders in Times of Uncertainty" there seemed to be a mixed bag of energies. There was the enthusiastic ready-to-go energy of, "Oh my gosh, did it already start? Hope I didn't miss anything" to the indifferent "Yeah I'll take a flyer lady,' while thinking... "I can use it as proof of my attendance." And, of course, there was the ever-unenthusiastic "I hope this will not turn out to be a waste of 1 1/2hrs of my already stretched-thin-never seeming-to-be-my-own time."

As the work shop quickly began to unfold and the LTG partners took their turns speaking, bouncing off of each other, both charismatic and intellectual but totally different styles of speaking, the energies of the audience began to change. A change directly due to the way that the information was being delivered which was most impressive.

After our 200-person book launch at Hunter College School of Social Work, Willie Tolliver and I were lucky enough a week later to be invited to speak about our book Stories of Transformative Leadership in the Human Services: Why the Glass is Always Full by our good friend Emily Rubin at the Supportive Housing Network of New York’s (SHNNY) 9th annual conference at the New York Hilton.

It went well; hell, it went really well. We started with 100 people in the room and ended with 125 folks, some of them crammed against the exit door. Nobody left, we got thoughtful questions, lots of folks wanted to buy the book. All good. Emily had ensured a well-organized event, and she came through. We felt honored to have been there; happy to see some former students’ faces, equally pleased that most came for the topic and not because we were known to them at all.

I know we've all seen it before haven't we?...The avid texter, IM chatter or E-mailer walking down the middle of the sidewalk, coming off of the elevator, or even crossing a busy street oblivious to what's going on around them due to the shear devotion of getting what ever message off they are so feverishly typing by any means necessary. This person most undoubtedly must be closing a multi-million dollar business deal. Right? Probably not. I must admit I have been a culprit of this crime a time or two (thousand) and let's face it on the train you almost look like a creature from another planet when u don't have the cords from a pair of iPod ear buds hanging from your ears. That being said I am not a total crack head well, not literally anyway my crack of choice is not the illegal kind sold on corners or in dark alley ways it is the perfectly legalized dope known as the Blackberry smart phone or better known in some circles as the crackberry curve 8830. With that said I would also like to proudly announce that I have now noticed the error of my ways and like a fellow friend of mines so modestly said today about his crackberry habit, I am working through my addiction.

Some argue that very statement or description of this affliction that my generation suffers so badly from as being an addiction at all. Mainly our elders... Most of whom absolutely hate, hate, HATE IT! They feel that my peeps (the I want it NOW-ers) are just being inconsiderate, irresponsible and rude.

The celebration for our book Stories of Transformative Leadership: Why the Glass Is Always Full was kinda' spectacular. It left all of us at LTG humbled at the outpouring from so many good people who have touched us over the years. Three weeks later, the magic from that night remains...

Maybe it was getting to re-connect with Gilbert Guzman's widow Donna Galeno and his beaming daughter. Their happiness showed that the quiet guy who gave us the title to our book indeed left a very full glass...

Maybe it was seeing two powerful people, Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta and Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, show the quality of their character as they relaxed in quiet away from the spotlight...only to leave a stronger imprint on people that they stayed so long...

Maybe it was the three young men from the Fort Greene projects working as servers for the first time who kept going the extra mile as the evening wore on, stepping up to the challenge Kami and Wanda gave them to serve the room with a touch of class...

Rare indeed is the occasion when one has the opportunity to offer deserved praise for a creative work to friends publicly. For many of us, this is one of those very special moments.

When reading Stories of Transformative Leadership in the Human Services: Why the Glass is Always Full, I was reminded of a scene from the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid. " Paul Newman and Robert Redford are being chased after robbing a bank. It was a bank like any other except they were being tracked and the posse was catching up. That was a new experience for them and every few moments Butch would turn around and repeat the same question, "who are those guys?" The same could be said for Steve and Willie.

"Who are these guys" to offer those of us toiling in the human services many hours each week and often under the most difficult conditions a book of such hope?

Who are these guys to reach back to the skin of specific simple truths such as "clean as you go" or the "second golden rule" as the basis for a complex rethinking of how we experience our practice work and reinvent it to meet the increasingly desperate needs of those we serve?

And, finally, who are these guys to have the audacity to offer a new teaching writing form for building new forms of practice thinking. One that seamlessly blends the coherence of fictional narrative the rigor of academic sources, grounded exemplars of transformative leadership with rich exercises to promote dialogue and critical thinking.

On Thanksgiving 2008, I went to visit my daughter and grandchildren in California. While there I was disturbed by the long lines of people waiting to get food from different food pantries. I didn’t realize the magnitude of people who are hungry.

When I got back in New York, I researched how many food pantries there are in the city and across the United States. And there are thousands of pantries and more going up each day because of the rate of unemployment increasing drastically. These pantries are run by churches, human service organizations and out of homes by every day people trying to help.

With this awareness, I began to check my mail and saw that every day I was receiving requests from all over the country for donations, especially to feed the hungry

When LTG was first founded, the partners decided that our focus would be with those often ignored and marginalized in our country, people we knew had remarkable capacity to do great things if only given the opportunity. Whether a ten-session training or a leadership forum facilitation, the message that evolved within our design was always the same: Our America, made up of people of color, LGBT folks, the old and the young, working people of any race and creed, could do great things that could make that other America pay attention. In the 1990’s and into the bleak years of W., we were proud of that message and the hope it inspired in people. Even if most of those with power weren’t listening, attention was being paid to who and what mattered.

And then, through the miracle of a man’s personal capacity and strength of will, a people’s hunger and openness to embrace new possibilities, and the collapse of the authority of an old and discredited regime (both political and economic), a new day for America arrived on January 20, 2009. “Our America” showed up by the hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., and countless millions more in public parks, stadiums, churches and synagogues. Probably more people stayed home with strange flu-like symptoms that day than at any other time in American history. Gripped by a fever of imagination and their hearts burning with hope, they, too, somehow managed to make that day special for themselves, too, even risking the same infection with the people sitting next to them in their living rooms.