Inside the Kind Leadership Guild: How We Set the Ground Rules (Challenge #81)

Back in late May, as I prepared to facilitate the first meeting of the Kind Leadership Guild, I was kind of nervous. Of course I worried about the standard stuff like would people show up to the orientation meeting (spoiler, they did), and would they find it helpful enough that they would be willing to invest in a monthly membership to the Guild? (Spoiler, they did!). However, I was also concerned about another question: How would I go about setting the values and rules of the kind leadership guild, so that the group experience would be effective, humane, collaborative, and, well, Kind? As usual when I embark on these ambitious projects, I was overthinking things and underestimating both myself and the wonderful people who have already joined in this little experiment. In today’s episode I’ll share how we worked together in the first meeting of the kind leadership guild to determine our mission, our values, and our code of conduct, and I’ll suggest some ways you can implement this process in your own team.

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where every Monday morning I teach you to heal your school or library in the next ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational and library leaders who want to build a better world without burning out. 

Kind leaders make the tough decisions without becoming jerks. We plan effective systems that help us get the job done with less money and effort. And we’ve learned that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, any vision becomes possible. To be clear, Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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So, how do you do empower your team to create ground rules for working together that will lead to less fear, confusion, and drama, and more confidence, excellence, and trust? Well, the first order of business is for you to create a framework that clarifies both your expectations around a kind team culture and provides some guidelines to support your team in their creative process. After all, you want your team to have the sense of ownership that comes from creating a shared set of norms, but at the end of the day, you as leader are responsible for making sure those norms are followed, and that they serve the vision and goals of your larger organization.

At the end of the day, as the founder and chief everything officer of the Kind Leadership Guild, I’m responsible for facilitating and enforcing a culture that makes it easier for guild members to grow effectively, manage effectively, and create collaboratively, both in the guild itself and in their daily work and life. I take that responsibility seriously, because the last thing a leader needs in their life is more drama and nonsense. So, rather than presenting my intrepid charter members with a metaphorical blank sheet of paper at the first meeting, I decided to provide a basic framework in the form of a mission statement. 

The mission of the Kind Leadership Guild is to create a safe space where kind leaders and aspiring leaders can confidentially share our challenges and wins, in order to heal ourselves, our organizations, and our communities.

That mission statement left a lot of room for creativity and flexibility, while setting up some clear boundaries. The Kind Leadership Guild, by definition would be a community that strived for a culture of psychological safety. I also knew that one of the best ways to foster that safety would be to enforce confidentiality alongside candor. And finally, I didn’t want the guild to just be a place for complaining and gossip, but where we worked hard, thought deeply, challenged each other, and made the decisions needed to build a better world.

So, I presented the mission statement to the attendees of the first session of the guild, and talked a bit about psychological safety and how I hoped this mission would foster it. Then I explained that we needed to identify the core values we wished to live by as a guild working toward the mission of using our leadership practice to heal our communities. The first members discussed and brainstormed, with me facilitating, and we came up with three core values that we would practice in order to attain that mission: Kindness (ok, not a big surprise there), Growth Mindset, and Responsibility to the group and to ourselves to fulfill the Guild mission. In other words, we would make healing decisions that enabled us to grow as leaders and strengthen the guild as a tool to empower other leaders.

So we had the mission and the values. The final piece of the puzzle to make the kind leadership guild a psychologically safe community was to  set some rules of the road, that every member and potential member would read and agree to before attending their first meeting. The guild members came up with 7 rules to start, knowing full well that these rules might and likely will evolve as we go along. 

1. Presume positive intent while being mindful of negative impact

This one kind of merges two things that came up in conversation. Most people who say something that others find hurtful don’t intend to hurt, and listeners should be willing to extend grace in the moment. However, a speaker should always be open to constructive feedback on how to do better, and that includes taking feedback about how their words are received and changing where needed. 

2. We encourage all questions—there are no stupid questions. 

Pretty self explanatory.

3. We strive to meet people where they’re at. 

If you’ve been a leader for a week or a decade, we don’t care. All we care about is that you are ready to grow humanely, manage effectively, and create collaboratively with the goal of building a better world. All of us who care about developing those skills and fulfilling the mission have something to add to the conversation. 

4. "Don’t be an ass"--i.e, treat each other with respect.
 This one was suggested verbatim by a guild member, who suggested we reword it to something more polite. The rest of us unanimously agreed it was perfect as-is. 

5. We challenge the ideas, not the person having them

Another self-explanatory one.

6. We Assume responsibility for our growth as leaders from our time in the guild

As the name Kind Leadership Guild implies, we are a collective of mutually supporting leaders. Yes, I run the meetings and provide the space, but we are all smarter if we collaborate and take responsibility for our own growth.

7. We protect this space by sharing what we learned when we can help others, but keeping details within the guild.

And one more that’s pretty self-explanatory.

So, that’s how we roll at the Kind Leadership Guild. I have the podcast to teach, and as you heard last week, I do set the space for our monthly gatherings with an introductory lectures. However, ultimately the Kind Leadership Guild is a collaborative community, and like any community needs rules to maximize psychological safety and trust, and minimize drama and fear.

Which leads me to your challenge this week—what is your team’s mission, and have you clarified values and rules that enable you to more humanly, effectively, and collaboratively work to fulfill that mission? If not, or even if they just need a refresh, consider doing a similar ground rule-setting exercise in an upcoming staff meeting. 

Next week concludes our introductory tour of the Kind Leadership Guild, as I share a brief interview with one of the Guild’s charter members, Juanita James, a public Library branch manager in Brooklyn New York. After all, I can sing the praises of the guild all I like, but it’s better coming from a member. 

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Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge, and for growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively in your own organization. And if you know someone who might find this episode helpful, hit share in your podcast app or send them over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/81. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.