emerging leaders

Measuring subtle successes

Old readers will know that I’ve spent a great deal of time working with my Emerging Leaders on establishing self care practices in their lives. We adopted the habit of opening our meetings up with a guided meditation, which everyone really loved. But I wasn’t sure how easy it would be for my young people to take these practices home with them, so to speak, because let’s face it: it’s not easy for anyone to transform their lives. At the start of my own efforts toward mindfulness and wellness, I would begin doing something like yoga or meditation with a lot of enthusiasm, but if something urgent came up, such as a big work project, all that would go to the wayside. Eventually, I found my way into my own rhythm of integrating yoga, meditation, cardio, and strength training into my life, but it’s taken years to get here. For me, it wasn’t so much finding the time for it all, but accepting the fact that I am probably never going to be someone who will have an established routine for all this. I do what I have the energy for in whatever combination I find appealing on any given day.

Since I’ve been approaching my youth work with a very light touch this year, I haven’t pointedly been asking my young people if they’ve been practicing self care. I don’t want to hound them about anything, because at the end of the day, I trust that whatever is meant to stick with them from all the things that have come out our time together, will take root. We like to celebrate the big victories, of course: graduations, college scholarships, first jobs, etc. But I count the subtler shifts in my young people’s lives as triumphs that are just as significant as external milestones, because what goes on under the hood lays the foundation for everything else. How I love to see these sprouts break ground. Such a moment happened just this morning.

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By Ysette, ago

Project and people management

This summer has been one long learning opportunity for the Emerging Leaders and me. With everyone’s schedules shifting over the summer, it’s been challenging getting regular meetings together, so it’s taken an extra toll on me to keep everyone abreast. The ridiculousness of the situation really stands out as I type that last sentence. Why is it my job always to be herding cats?

The obvious answer that it took me months to arrive at is: It isn’t. This year has been a crash course in management, which is very distinct from leadership (last year’s lesson). Just because a process appears plain and simple to me does not mean it will be readily adopted by my young people.

Something as simple as group communication is a cumbersome process. In my twenties email was—and continues for me today—to be the easiest way to communicate, both socially and professionally. To be honest, we are still trying to determine what platform works best for group communication. For a long while the temporary solution was redundancy: I would send out a group email, a group text, and then follow up with individual texts and phone calls.

This eventually became unsustainable on all sorts of levels for me. The upside of me going virtually insane from all this coordination work is that it forced me to take to heart certain management lessons (with many, many thanks to my husband—my acting CTO and executive coach): (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Learning to manage, to let go, to lead

Part of the reason it’s been so silent here is because this summer has been one long learning experience for me. If 2013 was the year I was reborn, the year when so many positive things and so many wonderful people flowed into my life, 2014 is the year that is testing me to see if I can really steer the ship of my life in this brand new direction. Can I get out of my own way and step fully into my power?

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By Ysette, ago

Behind the scenes

I know it’s looked a bit drafty in here lately, but there are a lot of good things going on at Minds On Fire behind the scenes. 1. My Emerging Leaders are beginning to come into their own this summer. I’m consciously making the effort to hand over the reins to Read more…

By Ysette, ago

Complaints, concerns, but also causes for optimism

I’ve been delaying writing this post because for a stretch I was too outraged about certain things I’d been hearing in the foster care scene. Outrage is healthy if you can articulate it well and channel it productively, but anger is not the emotion I want to lead with. So, what’s changed? So much in the last two weeks, it seems! But before I get to the good news, let’s start with the issues.

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1. Housing is the number one problem facing my emerging leaders, the youngest of whom just turned 21. At the beginning of last semester, we went around the table introducing ourselves to each other. I was struck that with the exception of the two eldest, who are working professionals in child welfare, every single person at the table was facing some form of housing crisis. A couple had to get extensions for their time in care; a couple others didn’t secure formal extensions, but were able to remain in their foster homes out of the generosity of foster parents willing to house them for just a little longer; one was on the verge of losing a NYCHA apartment due to bureaucratic inefficiencies; and still another two were worried that their agencies weren’t moving quickly enough on their housing applications.  (more…)

By Ysette, ago

My #emergingleaders inspire me

Most people who work outside the field of child welfare tend to assume that my work is dispiriting. They hear the words “foster care” and immediately think “at-risk youth,” a loaded term that conjures only negative images. They imagine that I am out every day fighting the good fight, doing Read more…

By Ysette, ago

Emerging Leader Jermaine finds his voice

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I met Jermaine in the fall of 2012, when I started doing my leadership and team building trainings with the NYFC Youth Advisory Board. He had always been the strong, silent type in a generally rambunctious group of young people. He spoke on rare occasions, never once raising his voice. This school year, he joined my Emerging Leaders group and we set two goals for him: (1) to gain a better grasp on his core values so he could link them to purposeful work; and (2) to speak up more. I’m very happy to report that within this semester he has really shown great progress in both.

Now one thing about Jermaine that I didn’t know until this school year is that he has very wide ranging interests. In YAB he is known as the finance/economics/math guy, so he’s always top pick for treasurer. But he’s actually remarkably creative, as well. I got a taste of some of his creativity over the YAB summer retreat, when he started to tell the beginnings of a gripping ghost story by the campfire. Since then I’ve learned he’s also a self-taught musician and a voracious reader. He is the type who will always pursue knowledge for the sake of bettering himself, regardless of whether or not he is a student.

Given his wide ranging interests, Jermaine was overwhelmed at the start of the semester with numerous business ideas. Part of the trouble was that although he knew money was not his primary motivation, he wasn’t quite sure what his core value was.  (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Decision-making with an #emergingleader

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Emerging Leader Maurice came into office hours last week wearing his red power tie. Our initial plan was to unpack his “hustle” from the Work On Purpose workshop we did in our last Emerging Leaders meeting, but he announced that he wanted to share some “good news” and a “dilemma,” which were in fact related. It turned out that Maurice needed to choose between two very different housing options that each appealed to conflicting values, and the decision was overwhelming him. With his permission, I’m sharing some of the details of our meeting because it contains an exercise that might prove useful to the young people you work with (or to you yourself, if you’re in the market for a decision-making tool).

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By Ysette, ago