For instance, when senior volunteers at Habit for Humanity temporarily run out of home building projects, they often contact nonprofit organizations to see if they can help. The commitment, responsiveness, and organizational ability among these senior leaders are particularly poignant, given that many of them don’t have the deep roots of continuity often found there.
Generative Roles and Responsibilities
There are a variety of ways in which sage leaders say they help the organizations in which they are primarily engaged in their Generativity Four roles. We suggest once again that professional coaches take note of these generative four roles. Furthermore, we urge professional coaches to help their clients identify and fully appreciate the distinctive knowledge and skills that they have acquired in their work and nonwork life.
In an interview with our coaching colleague, Bill Carrier, and one of his clients (Alex Petroff), we find that he is in the business of helping his clients discover their special skills. As noted by his client, Alex Petroff, Bill Carrier is also in the business of helping his clients reframe the way they approach their community service activities and their request for financial and nonfinancial support from other members of their community (Carrier and Petroff, 2020).
Emerging Sage Leaders
Seven themes reflect how the 50 Emerging Sage leaders say they most help their favored civic organizations: personal leadership, specialized expertise, collaboration, finance and fund development, youthful presence, thoughtful listening, and serving as mentors.
Personal Leadership: By far the most important contribution that most Emerging Sages make is in providing personal leadership. Sometimes this involves serving as founder of an organization. For others it entails providing vision, great execution, leading through others, or simply being able to bring executive level experience to the table. Many Emerging Sages say they lead by being the public face and voice of their organization, and in building effective relationships with the community. Others lead by developing new and innovative programs, in making certain that the doors of city hall are kept open to all the people, in undertaking needed strategic planning, or in working to turn-around organizational culture. Says one Emerging Sage leader who recently was a city mayor of Grass Valley:
“One of the things we did was to meet with all the city employee groups and really listen to what they had to say. Without any attempt to manage outcomes, we just sat down and had discussions with them. I believe we held six meetings in all. It was good to listen to their concerns, and to hear how they have helped people in our community in ways we don’t always get to learn about.”
Another Emerging Sage leader expresses her leadership role this way:
“My leadership in the areas of administration and strategic planning has helped us to begin evolving from an all-volunteer group of passionate individuals into an organization with paid staff, good bylaws, a better sense of our tangible goals, clearer agendas, and more work being done through committees. We need a strong functioning board, and I’m helping us move toward that.”
