Questions for Discussion/Reflection

1. Does your Unitarian Universalist community currently have diversity within its lay and/or ordained leadership? If so, how does your community proactively hold the challenges that difference and diversity can create? If not, what implicit and/or explicit barriers might be hindering greater diversity within your congregation and/or its leadership?
2. When meaningful, positive things happen in your community, how are those accomplishments named and celebrated as a collective achievement? Does your community similarly name and hold collectively—as a whole—challenges and problems, or are individuals (individual staff members and/or individual lay leaders) blamed for problems when they arise? Is doing one of the above easier than the other (holding accomplishments collectively versus holding problems collectively)? Why or why not?
3. What are “trust differentials?” Can you think of a real-life, personal example in which you automatically confer or don’t confer trust, based on implicit assumptions, whether in your congregation or the wider world? How might the existence of trust differentials be challenging for diverse leaders within our UU communities?
4. Does “Dave” (see Part 2, questions # 2 and 3 above) live within you? How so and/or how not?
5. How can we human beings interrogate our own implicit biases and preferences? What helps you do that? What supports that?