When it came time for both Sally and her husband to retire in 1998, they visited a number of small rural communities and decided that Nevada City, California, was a perfect fit. Given her background in serving under-privileged children, Sally was invited to join several nonprofit boards, where her reputation for wise leadership prospered. Indeed, she was awarded for her community service in 2010 by being recognized as Western Nevada County Nonprofit Citizen of the Year. This led to the Center for Nonprofit Leadership inviting Sally to become one of the ten-person team who interviewed the 100 community Sage leaders. Sally is now 74, and she and her husband recently celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. They make frequent visits with their three grandchildren, all of whom live in Dallas, Texas.
Lisa Underwood
While she grew-up in Cedar Rapids, Michigan, Lisa decided to attend a major public university in Texas, where she graduated with a BA degree in psychology. Her marriage at an early age resulted in a male child but ended in divorce. She had the additional burden of having to care for a very ill mother for almost 45 years and serve as a guardian for her disabled nephew. After her divorce, Lisa moved with her mother and son to a Midwest city; she earned both her MFT master’s degree license and Ph. D. in clinical psychology at a major public university. After completing her 3,000 hours of supervision, Lisa and her mother and son moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Over the years Lisa established a very successful therapy practice and wrote many books on the psychology of women. This attracted the attention of her national professional organization, which she served as a board member for 12 years.
When her mother died in 2005, Lisa decided to move to the warmer climate of Northern California. She lived in Redding for three years but decided to retire to Nevada City and the ski slopes of Lake Tahoe. Lisa very quickly became sought after as a speaker and seminar leader for the Center of Nonprofit Leadership. She was invited to become part of the ten-person interview team of the community Sage Leadership Project. Now fully retired at age 70, Lisa occasionally provides pro bono services in helping Western Nevada County nonprofit governing boards to strengthen their missions and their capacity for public accountability.
The Preconditions for Deep Caring
We have now set the stage by introducing the fundamental theme of our play: deep caring. We have identified the four roles of generativity and have identified the cast members who not only are providing the action but are also providing much of the script. We have also acquainted you with our four Featured Players. One more task needs to be completed in setting the stage. We want to provide a preliminary backdrop for this generativity play. What is required for someone to be generative? How do we engage in deep caring? And where might a professional coach be of value?
Competency
We specifically propose that deep caring requires the capacity to see our complex, unpredictable and turbulent world from several different perspectives. It also requires the willingness to act courageously midst this complexity, unpredictability and turbulence. To understand how this capacity and willingness unfold, we turn to the remarkably insightful work done by William Perry (1998) concerning cognitive and ethical development. Perry conceived of a four-stage developmental process that leads to an increasingly sophisticated epistemological (knowledge-based) stance. He identifies the first stage as Dualism – the tendency of some men and women to place everything into one or two categories: true/false, good/bad, honesty/dishonesty, etc. This dualistic stage often remains intact for many men and women as they mature, leaving them cognitively inflexible and often unable to generate much empathy or caring toward those people who are different from themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, political attitudes, abilities and disabilities.
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