Changemaker in the mirror: Equipping ourselves for a new game
We hosted a book talk on April 19, 2021 with Changemaker Playbook author, Henry De Sio, in conversation with faith sector leaders. Learn more and watch the video here.
As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel grows brighter, many are asking what the world will look like when we finally emerge. Bruised and battered, grateful we have survived, grieved by those we lost along the way, relieved to return to community, angry about inequities, uncertain about how quickly jobs will return and what they might look like. How will this year have changed us? And perhaps more importantly, how will it have better equipped us for change?
Even before the pandemic abruptly disrupted the entire planet all at once, our world had become a place of constant change and accompanying uncertainty. It’s a new game, different than the one many of us have been taught to play - the one that plotted a linear path from education to job to career. And to power, for those with sufficient privilege and ambition to land in positions of leadership. The game has changed, and how we equip ourselves for it is the question at the heart of a new book by Henry De Sio, Changemaker Playbook: The New Physics of Leadership in a World of Explosive Change. Hint: everyone leads.
“Today, nearly everyone can make and lead change. The capacity for specialized problem solving and access to mass communications, once the domain of a few elite leaders, are now the domain of the many. This has enabled more of us to contribute and play more fully in virtually every aspect of society, and it is changing everything we know about change.”
Through the stories of changemakers across age and geography, as well as his own stories from serving in the Obama campaign and White House and working with the world’s largest network of changemakers at Ashoka, De Sio shows us what it takes to lead today: “an innovative mind, a service heart, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a collaborative outlook.” This is the new playbook.
But this is not a self-help book, it is a call to action. We must learn to navigate the new game as individuals, but also as communities and institutions.
“The new game is here, and we all need to jump in. That means nothing less than redesigning education, governance, how we run our organizations, and how we live and work together to accommodate a new reality. Changemakers can’t function in the old system, and the old system can’t accommodate everyone as a changemaker. To benefit from the new system that is emerging, we have to correct social imbalances and let go of vestigial attachments to the old system and the old mindsets it was founded on. We need social attitudes that recognize and value changemaking and embrace the capacities and structures that enable it.”
Though not a book about faith, Changemaker Playbook challenges us to ask whether our faith communities are embracing this new landscape. The stories of changemakers abound in our communities, past and present. But are we helping to equip people for this new game? Are we modeling it ourselves in how our institutions adapt to a world without silos and hierarchies? Are we positioning our institutions to lead in this dynamic era? And when we create space for the most marginalized in our communities, do we do so in a way that empowers them as leaders and changemakers as well?
Changemaker Playbook helps us see what today’s world requires of us. But just as importantly, it helps us see ourselves as changemakers already.
“Changemaker Playbook is not simply about what you can learn from the world’s most-recognized and highly effective self-identified changemakers, it’s what you can see in them that you already do yourself. It’s what you already do that you don’t notice. Changemaker Playbook is simply the mirror.”
The changemaker identity empowers us to change our perspective. So often it feels like change happens to us. Especially in the faith sector right now, where the most discussed data tends to paint a picture of decline. But changemakers accept that change is a constant and focus on their power to drive that change to the benefit of all.
Almost ten years ago now, my own Catholic church in Washington, DC, had disruptive change thrust upon us. The regional order of priests that led our church did not have a new pastor to install in our parish, and suddenly, decision-makers outside our own community were determining whether to close us down. A small but vibrant and beloved community, we found ourselves navigating an existential moment where it felt like the powers that be were forcing change upon us against our will. We proposed all sorts of solutions to the decision-makers, all of which they rejected. It felt disempowering at best. People were angry. The decision ultimately came down that we would merge with a nearby church, but many left the community for good. Many in the church we joined felt similarly disempowered and disrupted by the decision.
While the decision-makers failed to demonstrate changemaker leadership in that moment, many members of our church, and the one with which we were merged, ultimately decided to embrace change. They chose to see it as a call, not a curse, and to create ways to use the moment to deepen the potential of our community even in the uncertainty of what form it would take in the future. Those people saw a changemaker in the mirror, and they stepped up to shape our new beautiful merged community, which in turn is driving positive change in our neighborhood. The more of us who see ourselves as changemakers, the more our institutions will ultimately transform as well, and our communities thrive.
In Christian Scripture, St. Paul says, “the present form of this world is passing away.” No one who followed Jesus or any of the prophets in our varied faith traditions sat still for long. They left monumental, often radical, change in their wake. Our traditions tell the stories of unlikely leaders who in turn spurred on other unlikely leaders. Those stories can inspire us to find our footing, and our power, in today’s world of relentless change.
Changemaker Playbook will help you see the changemaker you already are, guide you to live powerfully into that identity, and inspire you to help build institutions and communities that enable everyone to find and live into their own changemaker identity so we all can build a better world together.
Author: Danielle Goldstone