Leadership Lessons from Huge Grace - Dec 2, 2012

In May 2011 I began co-leading monthly visits to Shanghai Huge Grace Disabled Children Welfare Center (上海广慈残疾儿童福利院), which is commonly referred to as Huge Grace.  It began as a way to build a personal connection for the friends and members of the International Church of Shanghai (ICS) with an organization ICS had begun financially supporting in 2009 by paying for children’s surgeries. 

As I transitioned out of leadership this past weekend, I reflected on some of the key things I learned after taking nearly 150 individual volunteers down to Huge Grace over a year and a half.  As I review the list, what strikes me is the broad application of these skills to my personal and professional development.    

I would highlight at least three key things:

1) Work as a Team and Leverage Personal Talents and Passions:  Not only did I have an incredible co-leader who could leverage his unique strengths to focus on working with the orphanage director and his staff, but each month a volunteer brought unique gifts that I tried to leverage as much as possible.  Whether it was a preschool teacher who had a passion to play games with the younger kids or my local friend who became passionate about helping the less fortunate for the first time, each volunteer brought you particular talents and passions that made each trip unique.

2) Actively Listen, Continuously Tweaking and Personal Ownership:  Early on I decided to have a brief time of group reflection at the end of our time.  One of the key activities was asking “What practical things can we do to improve the impact of our next visit?”  Through actively listening and (most importantly responding) to the suggestions given, we came up with several marvelous “tweaks” to our monthly visits. 

Whether it was deciding to use a curriculum to teach the older kids (rather than picking an ad-hoc topic each month), brining simple instruments to sing songs with the younger kids or developing a booklet with a picture and short description of each child, there were incredible solutions that emerged as we gave everyone a chance to suggest how we could improve.  Furthermore, when someone’s suggestion was acted upon, especially if it was acted on by the one who suggested it, there was a noticeable increase in that person’s engagement the next time they visited.

3) Communicate Your Vision (The “Why”) and Your Plan (The “What”):  Each trip would begin with a short briefing where I would explain both the “Why” and the “What”.  Clearly there are benefits to explaining the basic “What” of the trip – the schedule, the details of the activities we will do with the kids.  However, I also saw a lot of benefit in clearly communicating the “Why” – going back time and again to communicate the overarching vision of each trip. 

There was clear benefit to the volunteers understanding not only that we wanted to obey the Bible that tells us true religion is to visit orphans in their distress (James 1:27), but also that we wanted to “have committed volunteers who can build a relationship with specific children and play a part in their educational development.”  The articulation of the “Why” help to clearly define the specific ways in which we were providing a small degree of assistance to orphans who had significant needs far beyond what we could address comprehensively.

Conclusion: Leadership requires working as a team, listening and responding to suggestions for improvement as well as clear communication of both the “What” and the “Why”.  It is my sincere prayer that has I move from orphanage volunteer work to volunteer work with children in our community who come from broken homes I would be able to carry these lessons with me.  What a gift to have such opportunities – both for my personal development, but more importantly so that I could play a role (even if small) in impacting the less fortunate around me.

Below is one of my favorite pictures from Huge Grace.  These are girls from the elementary aged classroom who were particularly active participants in our teaching time.