Patricia Infante  0:04  
I wanted to just spend a few minutes reminding leaders to pay attention to healthy leadership practices. It's, it's a time when those things can really kind of give us a little bit of a dare I say a vaccination against some of that anxiety and some of the uncertainty and some of the resistance that's, that, that is inevitable in our systems. So leaders need to remember what their role is. Part of your role is that nimbleness, modeling flexibility and adaptability and inclusivity. Part of the leader's role is to communicate clearly and honestly, as honestly as you can. People who don't have information that increase, can increase anxiety. And sometimes people will seek information in ways that are not healthy. So if whatever we can tell people is important, leaders have responsibility to create the structure to create policies to issue some guidance. Some, some communities might use a tool like RACI. So there's a tool called RACI, where you, you figure out who's Responsible, who's Accountable, who needs to be Consulted, who needs to be conformed, Informed. And it just kind of helps to kind of figure out what people's lanes are, so that folks can can really focus on what is needed in the moment from them. If you're on a board, if you're a board leader, if you're staff, you don't have to do everything, try to remember you don't have to do everything. Part of your work is to create and uphold the structures that allow others to do their work joyfully. And efficiently. Excuse me, the communication piece, healthy communication is really important in a time like this. Communicating with clarity, timeliness, and compassion, about the changes that are coming, how you're making decisions, create a strategy around communication, and make sure that all of your message, all of your messaging is this sort of reinforcing the overall message. Don't confuse people if you can, if you can help it. And leaders have to be willing to own a certain amount of uncertainty in this time. It's it's okay to say, we don't know how, we don't know when, we don't know who. But this is what we do know, this is what we can tell you now. And these are the things that we're working on, the things that we're working towards. Leaders should kind of relearn some of those skills. If you haven't had an opportunity to look at our LeaderLab, there are some great, some great board training resources for you. But how do you, how do you help reduce the anxiety in the overall congregation, don't take that anxiety on, it's really important as leaders to kind of resist the calls for, there will be calls for urgency, people will be anxious to move forward. And I know Reverend Sunshine is gonna talk a little bit more about urgency in this time. Resist that, that we want to do things the way we did before. Let's not normalize that in this time. And then finally, it's just a really important time to think about your own self care. And think about, you know, what are the spiritual touchstones for you, for you, as an individual, for you as a board, for you as a community, and return to those touchdowns as often as you can.

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