Heart and Home is a monthly column by Josh Ishimatsu
One of my mentors/heroes/role models is Gordon Chin (SIDE NOTE: Please click the link and read the interview that I did with Gordon for Shelterforce magazine – it’s from almost 10 years ago and he’s talking about stuff that happened decades prior, but Gordon’s wisdom and insight are still very much relevant today), the student activist who became a postal worker who became the founding Executive Director of the Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco. One of Gordon’s favorite things to say is, “You can never have too much leadership.”
Gordon’s vision of leadership is expansive and open. It’s about people realizing that they have more agency and power in their own lives than they realize. It’s about individuals stepping into their own power and exercising leadership in their own context, their own communities. AND, it’s about coming together. It’s about realizing that we have even more power in community, in movements.
This vision of leadership is at odds with a “too many cooks in the kitchen” vision of individualistic/command and control leadership. A too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen style of leadership believes that a kitchen with multiple cooks ruins the meal because people squabble and fight for control if in the absence of a hierarchical leader imposing a singular vision. For me, command and control is not true leadership. True leadership is supportive and cooperative/collaborative – it lifts multiple people up, it relies on leadership coming from multiple places, from multiple people. True leadership, I believe, is what drives lasting, sustainable, positive social change.
In my career and in most of my adult life, I’ve always tried to enact this Gordon Chin vision of leadership. It’s what I try to cultivate in people that I supervise and what I look for in the leaders who I choose to work for. This vision of leadership – and SV@Home Executive Director Regina Celestin William’s embodiment of her own version of it – are why I chose to come work at SV@Home.
And this brings us to why Gordon’s saying is top of my mind: SV@Home is launching a new leadership development program, the Brick by Brick Fellowship. The Brick by Brick Fellowship is an opportunity for new staff at organizations in our sector in Santa Clara County to come together and build community while learning more about the affordable housing ecosystem, policy advocacy, and developing leadership skills. The Brick by Brick Fellowship is developed by and led by Kenneth Javier Rosales, SV@Home’s Leadership Development Program Manager, who can be reached at kenneth@siliconvalleyathome.org with any questions about the new fellowship, including how to nominate people for the fellowship.
Our intent with this fellowship – as with everything we do – is to bring people together. Everything we work on is always both an opportunity to accomplish the goal that is in front of us (more affordable housing!) AND also is an opportunity to build new relationships or to deepen existing relationships. Everything we work on is always also an opportunity to lift up and support people. These positive/affirming actions are the building blocks (the bricks, so to speak) of true leadership. And, after all, you can never have too much leadership.