7
The Courage to Answer Your Calling
Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.
—Polly Berends, writer and sculptor
Jonathan Zeichner grew up in a middle-class community in suburban Connecticut. When he was twelve, his parents divorced, and he moved to a tough inner-city neighborhood in New Haven. At his middle school, it wasn’t uncommon for students to carry guns and knives and to fight with teachers. As the one Jewish kid in a school where only 10 percent of the students were white, Jonathan at times had to protect himself.
“I learned not be a victim or a target. I had to stand up for myself. I had to develop some bravado.”
Jonathan also had to learn how to do more than survive. “I realized early on that certain shared interests transcended class and race. Art. Music. Movies. Pop culture.”
After high school, Jonathan moved to the Bay Area and later to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a writer and director for theater and the screen. With every move, Jonathan faced the challenge of how to provide for his eldest brother, who was suffering from schizophrenia and living between the streets, hospitals, and jail. Jonathan had long been a lifeline for his brother, a go-between with the rest of their family—and sometimes his brother’s anchor to reality itself.
“Adam would follow me whenever I moved, and I often struggled with the feeling that I was abandoning him when I decided to relocate. It wasn’t easy, but I ultimately came to the conclusion that restricting my pursuit of life and work was not good for anybody.”
In 1989, Jonathan was in Los Angeles, working in the entertainment business, when he learned about and got involved with an organization doing theater work in psychiatric and homeless settings. The work allowed him to have an impact on young people and adults who shared his brother’s struggles. “Once again, I saw how the arts transcended the differences that so often divide people—class, language, background, all those ‘us and them-isms.’”
“In 1992, when the Rodney King beating verdicts came down, the civil unrest was devastating. As I sat across town and watched it all unfold on television, what caught my eye most was the kids,” Jonathan said. “They were being swept into this wave of anger and indignation for actions and a history that they had no hand in creating. I saw a need for a creative outlet for young people who needed healthier, more empowering and productive ways to express themselves, other than violence.”
With a group of like-minded people, Jonathan helped start The School Project in 1993, which ultimately spawned a new nonprofit agency called Inside Out Community Arts, which Jonathan cofounded with a friend and fellow teaching artist-actor. Over the following ten years, Jonathan continued writing and directing, but he gradually divested of his entertainment industry career and began to focus mostly on running Inside Out. After sixteen years there, he was invited to take on the task of turning around a similar but struggling nonprofit in South Central Los Angeles that provided after-school education, arts, counseling, athletics, nutrition, and college scholarships for youth and families facing poverty and great adversity.
A Place Called Home (APCH) was struggling, not only because of outdated facilities and a lack of funding but also because its staff was beleaguered and morale was very low. Decisions were being made behind closed doors by well-meaning board members and lead staff, but the staff culture had become one of mistrust and discontent.
When Jonathan was approached to take on the executive director role for APCH, he knew that this was a do-or-die moment for the organization. He also knew that if he accepted the challenge, he had to do everything possible to succeed.
“I took some time to accept the calling, and I did a lot of meditation and consultation. I went to APCH often over three months to explore the organization inside and out and determine how it matched up with where I was as a person and a leader. In the end, like with any relationship, once all the data is in, you have to go with your gut. I decided to jump in.”
Jonathan describes his path as organic, but imperative. “I’ve always done things that called out to me and that were right for my developmental phase—even the mistakes I’ve made have been mostly humbling and instructive when that’s what I needed. I’ve never considered taking on a job that wasn’t an expression of my values or to satisfy some curiosity. And usually I learn a lot—not always the easy way—and then apply it in the next setting.
“In accepting the appointment at A Place Called Home, I was definitely leaving the known and heading into the unknown. I knew something different would be needed from me as a leader. Without tending the wounds, the needs, and the fears of the staff, execution of the mission couldn’t take place in a strong, authentic, healthy way. The board and staff needed to have their hope rekindled.” Jonathan knew he needed to grow as a leader to meet these new challenges.
“For years I had the idea that leading meant I had to project a certain kind of energy that was a combination of vision, control, and striding out in front with a banner leading the charge. It was liberating and affirming to realize, from my time in reflection, that what my staff most needed was not for me to put on an act of leadership, but to actually be myself.”
“I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen years old, figuring out life without adult role models. I’m used to making things up as I go along, and willing things to happen. The Courage Work created something more constant inside, an inner sanctum that I have learned to draw from and depend on.” He realized that he could shift his leadership to embrace all aspects of his life, what might be thought of as his true self. He could call on his willingness to be foolish, to humble himself, to experiment and fail, to try things and have them not work out.
“It was all experimental to begin with, because I hadn’t done this particular turnaround thing before. I set about fixing things and going down to bedrock to give the most battered staff new faith, hope, and trust in the value of the work and in the organization’s ability to get to a new, better place.”
Jonathan said that earlier in his career, he was playing an aspect of himself, a role, as the leader. “Now I can still be large and in charge when I need to be, and there are times when that’s appropriate, but fewer and fewer. Mostly, I just show up as I am, and that allows others to grow and lead, too.”
Vocation at its deepest level is, “This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.”
—Parker J. Palmer
Listening for the Voice of Vocation
As Jonathan discovered, courageous leadership is based in bringing your full self to your work. We need as many people as possible addressing the world’s challenges with compassionate, creative thinking, so we need people committed to discovering their gifts and becoming aware of their shadows. We need leaders who are committed to showing up, sleeves rolled up, to apply themselves for the long haul. If it’s going to be hard—and it often is—then it helps when leaders can tap into a sense of meaning and purpose, heartaches and joy.
The typical way of seeking meaningful work—or vocation— is to figure out how to match your strengths with possible work or professions. Countless books and processes exist for identifying your personality, strengths, and interests to help you discover whether you are aiming for work that will be a good fit. That’s valid and valuable, but it is only part of what is needed.
The word vocation is rooted in the Latin for “voice.” Finding your vocation, then, first asks that you listen to the voice of your life. This is not the voices telling you what you should do to achieve success, or the ones telling you to follow in somebody’s footsteps or to satisfy harsh inner critics. It is not the voice of your ego demanding with grim determination that you make your life something it’s not.
In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer writes, “Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”1
Have you ever noticed how life itself is informing you and inviting you to show up, whether the work is what you had planned or not? Listening to your life speak—all of your life, through heartaches and mistakes, as well as your joys—can help you find the clarity and courage to bring your true self to your life’s work.
This isn’t about showing up as your work self or best self. It’s about showing up as your whole self. Showing up fully as a leader is not limited to bringing the parts you think are expected, demanded, or acceptable.
We invite you to reconnect who you are (your soul) with what you do (your role). Note that we say reconnect, not connect. Our assumption is that deep inside everyone is a true self that knows itself well. Other voices, authority figures, circumstances, and fears can cause you to hide or forget many aspects of your essential core self, but those aspects do not have to remain hidden or lost. Vocation is not a function of external expectations or aptitude or talent. Vocation is an inner sense of what your life is asking you to do, which is to reconnect your soul and role. You might say that a “calling” is your life speaking, and vocation is your response to that call with your choice of work. (Have you ever heard of the call-and-response style of music? Examples include old-time gospels, “My Generation” by The Who, and “I’ll Take You There” by the Staple Singers.)
Leaders like Jonathan don’t reconnect soul and role by following a set of instructions. They do so over time as they integrate their sense of self—their whole self—into their work. Vocation doesn’t have to mean doing one job or type of work for the rest of your life. Some leaders purposely set foot on the path of vocation, predisposed to seek meaningful work; others say they never thought of their work as a calling but more like “a special project for now.”
There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
—Nelson Mandela
The Meaning of Calling
How do you define the word calling as it relates to your career? Do you approach your career or other areas of your life as a calling? When researchers Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy asked people these questions, they found that as many as 68 percent resonate with the concept of calling, although with two different views.2 “Neoclassical” callings are experienced or perceived as coming from an external source, named as God, something spiritual, a need in society, destiny or fate, or a family legacy. By contrast, “modern” callings arise from within and are tied to ideas of individual happiness and self-actualization. Both views emphasize a sense of personal “fit” with a job and include altruistic motives to make the world a better place.
Jonathan observed, “Just about everyone I know who has been called to service work for others or for the planet is also working on healing themselves and discovering their value as a human being. I’m no different. I didn’t find this work; it found me, and it allows me to feel blessed and useful every day.”
Researchers notice that people who identify with their work as a calling view it in several ways: as craftsmanship (“doing work well”), as serving (“doing good work”), and as kinship (“doing work with others”).3 It doesn’t have to be just one of these. Each view can inform the others. How do you view your work? When have you noticed that the seasons of your life or different situations call for different views to take precedence? It seems that no matter how you define it, a calling arises from within your heart when you recognize the clues of your life.
In order to discover how life informs you and invites you to the work that is right for you, it’s vital to understand how to listen to “the voice of vocation.” How have you paid attention to those clues from your life? And how have you answered with your chosen work?
Start with a big, fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, or a crazy lovesickness, and run with it.
—Debbie Millman, educator and designer
Finding Your Voice in Hard Choices
One approach to discovering a sense of vocation is through the back door known as via negativa, the way of emptying, shadows, and suffering. Rather than viewing only your strengths or interests, you examine what your limits and heartaches are telling you about where you are meant to be. People often discover their right work by realizing where they are not meant to be or by noting how they are not showing up, how they are holding themselves back.
Sometimes we hold ourselves back because we feel the tug of hopeless obligation to tend to another’s concerns over our own. Trying to live someone else’s life, living up to others’ expectations or our own false expectations keeps us from realizing our wholeness, from doing what we are meant to do.
Finding and living into our vocation require courage because these choices are often neither simple nor without costs. It’s risky to leave what we know, even when the known is unhealthy. It’s risky to step into the unknown. Have you ever feared not being welcome, not being good enough, not having the answers? Anytime we are feeling conflicted and fearful, we hide who we are and refuse (consciously or unconsciously) to give our gifts where they’re needed. We may fear being punished somehow; being shamed, rejected, dismissed; being unheard or devalued. So we make the choice to play it safe.
Finding the voice of our courageous true self often comes at the moment when we reach a turning point and choose to finally fear not. When we choose to make the hard choices, to take a stand, to show up, to be seen and heard, to walk away so that we can move forward—these are moments when our lives speak out loud. Moments when we decide to step into more leadership responsibility are also moments we answer our calling. Moments when we claim our own life arise from courageous choices of free will that put us on the path of our calling.
We may not feel the hearty embrace of our new life right away, but if we look close enough, we may notice ourselves breathing more freely, sleeping more deeply, and walking with a different heft in our step. Our next work awaits.
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
—Howard Thurman
Finding Your Voice Leads to Creative Courage
The capacity to risk stepping into the unknown is seeded deeply in the rich soil of vocation. Leaders cultivate their capacity to risk by building trust in themselves and in others over time. By embracing the paradoxes of limits and strengths, leaders expand the boundaries of how much they are willing to risk showing up as themselves to grow into the next stage of life and leadership.
“People find innovative responses to impossible situations not because they are well-trained professionals or particularly gifted,” writes John Paul Lederach in his book The Moral Imagination.4 “Innovative responses arise because this is their context, their place. The essence of the response is not found so much in what they do but in who they are and how they see themselves in relationship with others. They speak with their lives.” Lederach goes on to say that what he calls the “journey toward change” requires vulnerability and a willingness to risk.
Jonathan’s cultivation of his willingness to look inward honestly and to risk being himself with his staff parallels the mission of A Place Called Home. He sees the paradox of strength and vulnerability and how it informs courage. “Kids who grow up in South Central LA and neighborhoods like this are streetwise and have evolved in certain ways, but they are undeveloped and naïve in others. Then there are sophisticated, successful people who are making things happen in the world, but they’re fearful and out of touch with their values. Whatever your ecosystem, courage shows up in how you respond to opportunities to go outside of what you know.”
Jonathan recalls taking a group of kids to photograph the neighborhood, walking over a bridge spanning the 110 Freeway. One boy just stood there looking down at the traffic, staring and staring, while the other kids were moving along. Jonathan finally went back and asked him, “What’s going on?” Still watching the cars speeding by and without looking up, the boy said, “Where are they going?”
Jonathan has never forgotten that moment when that boy’s life called him from the freeway. “It was such a powerful moment of epiphany for him to realize that a whole world existed beyond his own neighborhood and experience.”
Jonathan likes a Rumi couplet that says, “Be afraid, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.” He explained why: “I used to think courage was about being fearless. Now I understand that it’s not about denying my fear—there are a lot of things to dread in the world these days. But we can develop ourselves to be able to choose how we’re going to respond to those feelings.
“That’s huge for everybody, but especially our kids, our staff, and our constituents in this neighborhood. There are so many opportunities to get into trouble, to be drawn into tempting and unhealthy dynamics, and to self-destruct. To recognize that one can feel all kinds of ways and at the end of the day choose how to move rather than become a victim . . . that’s real courage.”
True leadership comes not from the sound of a commanding voice but from the nudging of an inner voice—from our own realization that the time has come to go beyond dreaming to doing.
—Madeline Albright
Giving Voice to Courage
What we’ve also seen over twenty-five years of our work, and what we have seen in the history of social change movements, is that reconnecting who we are with what we do has benefits for the common good. It’s as if by finding one’s voice, it becomes imperative to then give voice to those without voice. Courage Work is in service of something beyond the individual self, but it takes renewal of individuals before there can be positive change and growth in organizations, communities, or institutions.
Courage principles and practices, and a supportive community, give leaders the language to speak about their experience, affirm their intuitive leanings that they are on the right path, and help them see more clearly which way to go. In some cases, the way forward is to step into more responsibility or to lead with more voice. In other cases, leaders realize that they are in the wrong place or are ready to grow or need a course correction; they step out of one role to bring their voices to leading somewhere else, either in the same organization or somewhere entirely new.
When we reconnect who we are with what we do, we build the foundation for relational trust, which creates the kind of community where we can engage in greater collaboration and create greater collective impact. At each of those steps, we must tune in as life calls us so that we can answer with courage.