A couple of podcasts have recently talked about leadership of pagan groups - about feeling unqualified, even while attempting to lead, and associated issues.
This is an interesting thing for me to think about, if only because it's never once occurred to me before. Which incidentally also makes me wonder about my bad person potential.
I take leadership roles almost by default, in pagan groups and in other areas of my life. I don't think I'm pushy, or demanding. I've certainly never had a problem where there's an established authority taking care of business. But in, say, a group of friends talking the endless circle of "What do you want to do? I dunno. What do you want to do?" I pretty much immediately make a decision - "I want to watch Iron Man. Let's do that."
Sometimes everyone shrugs and goes with it. Sometimes someone gets all "Well, why do we have to do what you want to do?" to which I'll reply, "Because no one else would make a choice." If it annoys them enough, they start voicing their actual preference. I do this because the two outcomes are either A) People start being honest, and none of the false social modesty crap or B) We always do what I want. It's kinda a win for me no matter what.
Similarly, where people start waffling in general....if I think I have a right to a say, I'll say it. And this lands me in leadership positions regularly. I'll tell the boss what I think should be done, if she asks. I'll tell a group how I would do it. I tell pagan friends how I practice and why. If they ask.
And it never occurs to me to doubt myself. Reading this over, I'm pretty sure half the internet already hates me, and I'm going over past scenes asking myself "Was I being a pushy bitch?", but I don't think I am. I wait for people to ask. I wait for there to be a vacancy, so to speak, before throwing myself into it. And once I'm there, I try really, really hard to be worthy of that.
In running Pagan Student Union, that meant the unusual tactic of actually listening to what club members wanted to do. They wanted to sit in a room once a week and bullshit about various topics. They were totally on board with me setting the order of topics, as long as I had a topic suggestion meeting once a year. They did NOT want to: plan a ritual every month, engage in pagan politics, do any community awareness that involved their mandatory attendance (though most would float by for a few minutes when I set up a table at some event or another), do any field trips aside from a fall camping event, or anything complicated enough to require going through campus bureaucracy for funds.
One of the reasons the club was falling apart before I took over, and then promptly fell apart after I left, is that this was apparently a legitimately different "leadership style". People who stepped in had a very strong idea of what they wanted the club to be, and were determined to set that in motion....as though the members would show up and do what they said no matter what.
I stepped in because there were only 4 members in my freshman year, the president was leaving, and the remaining people didn't want to do it. This is the only time I doubted myself - we agreed to a "dual presidency", where I would sign all the paperwork and Snarky would help me run the club, as he'd been a member for a couple years. I didn't think I was qualified by myself - I was only a freshman, after all.
This was a mistake. Snarky and his teammate Wimpy proceeded to undercut me at every available moment, on very general things like "Hey, I'm going to put up some posters, anyone want to help?" (I would have taken 'no' for an answer. Seriously.) Until one day, three weeks in, with a good 5 or 6 new people in the room, I tried to pull us back on topic. (I think we'd degenerated to something celebrity-related) Wimpy retorted, "We don't have to, Snarky is President too!", and I snarled "Not anymore!"
"What?!"
"I signed the papers. I put my name on everything. I put up the posters. I did the work. I'm the president of this club, you're the vice-president, and we can go back to topic now."
Ok, fine, pushy bitch moment. Snarky and Wimpy didn't have a word to say, though. And I stopped doubting myself as a leader.
Being the leader of a group doesn't need to involve knowing more than anyone else. You don't need to be a legitimate authority to the highest level. You need to have an idea of the purpose of the group, and try to husband that group. That can mean taking on administrative tasks to let more time for people who know more about a topic than you. It can mean passing those tasks off to a volunteer when it is really time for you to teach. And it really means knowing when you have something of worth to say and when you don't. I can think of a dozen people who are experts on different topics, and have no desire at all to lead a group. A good leader would tell these people, "Come in. Hang with us. I'll take care of the politics."
I'm good at teaching people when it's time to tell experts to shove it. Most pagans don't need too much help there, which is nice. I'm good at helping people who are just starting. I've got some good background in celtic and norse mythology and tradition, though I'm not an expert by any means. I've got a shallow, but broad, knowledge of a lot of areas and styles - just enough to direct someone in a direction if they're looking.
And I think this makes me qualified to run a beginner's group. Probably qualified to join a not-beginner's group. If I was part of a fairly advanced study group for a while, and the leader left, I would feel ok with taking over if no one else wanted to do that. Because dammit, organizing people and places is something I'm good at.
Still, every time someone else ponders "Imposter Syndrome", I wonder why I don't have it, and if I come off a lot pushier and bossier than I think I do.
Blessed Be,
Pennanti
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