Continuing to Develop RC Leadership
From a talk by Tim Jackins at the Pre-World Conference for Aotearoa and Australia, February 2022
In RC we believe that every human mind is capable of everything that every other human mind is capable of—that if there are differences in our intelligences, they are too small to be measured. This means that everyone is capable of leadership.
We have our own thinking about and definition of leadership. How we see it is in sharp contrast to how it’s seen outside of RC. For us, leadership involves collecting the thinking of members of the RC Communities and helping to decide the best path forward. And we think that everyone is capable of doing this.
To lead in RC, a person needs to know a lot about RC (and we’re still learning more—for example, about the discharge process). They need to have had experience counseling many people. We don’t understand RC well until we’ve counseled other people, and been counseled ourselves, for many, many hours. We need that much experience to be a leader in RC. We also need to understand RC’s idea of leadership (as summarized above). And we need to be able to work on where we get restimulated by other people, because our job is to lead everyone in our Communities, even those who restimulate us. I
have always thought that the most important leadership position in RC is being an RC teacher. What we do as Reference Persons is important, but the RC teacher has direct contact with new people. Teaching new people is the way we find out that we don’t know RC as well as we thought we did. Everyone who teaches a fundamentals class relearns RC at a deeper level.
A NEW TASK FOR REFERENCE PERSONS
All our reference positions are important. We need people in them. We also have a problem with these positions. People learn a tremendous amount when they are in them and get better and better at doing the work. That doesn’t seem to stop. If it stopped, we’d have a reason to remove people from these positions. Other groups get rid of leaders when they start to malfunction. We keep discharging, so for us removing people doesn’t happen in that way.
However, it can still make sense for Reference Persons to leave those positions. I think of two reasons: One is that we need more people to have the challenge of doing the work. The second, which I hadn’t recognized clearly until recently, is that the experienced leaders need to be relating to people new to RC.
If we have been referencing for a long time, we know RC like “the back of our hand” [thoroughly]. We have a confidence in and understanding of the discharge and re-evaluation process. We’ve gotten more and more solid [competent] as we’ve gone along. But being a Reference Person can also mean that we step away from the front line of our Communities. So I want to see what happens in the Communities if some of us start moving out to where we’re accessible to new people.
I also want Reference Persons to be around long after they leave their positions. I want them around to support and mentor, for at least five years, the people who take their places.
Being a Reference Person is an interesting job. We learn things we wouldn’t learn any other way. Being in the position pushes us to do things we wouldn’t do for ourselves. We learn and grow. So there are reasons to like being in the position. It’s good for our growth.
And, of course, there are also distresses that make us want to be in the position. We’ve all been hurt in ways that can make us feel like some recognition will make our distresses go away, or at least quiet them for a while. That’s not a good reason to be in a reference position, and it may have played a role in our staying in it, so we need to work on that material [distress].
Things are also changing. Many of us started leading long ago when not as much contention was being stirred up in society. Forces of reaction were not trying as hard to restimulate people and turn them against each other. Leadership is a different undertaking now.
For these reasons, I want all of you in reference positions to think again about staying in them. I’m offering you a new and exciting task. It’s a little more challenging. Working with people who don’t remember yet how to discharge is a challenge. But as society collapses, it’s something that we need to get better and better at doing. Also, having someone new take your position will give our Communities a chance to bring up more leaders.
CHANGES AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
As the International Reference Person (IRP) of the RC Communities, I work with Diane Shisk, the Alternate International Reference Person (AIRP), every day—and we talk about everything. There isn’t a day when something doesn’t appear on my screen from Diane, no matter where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. And we text, and talk, and Zoom, and do FaceTime. We do all these things because that much is going on [happening] in the RC Communities.
We would be much farther behind on what we’re handling in the Communities if Diane wasn’t there. We are very fortunate that she has chosen to function in a particular way and have her life largely be in service to the RC Communities. Along with being the AIRP, she leads RC in many other ways—and those are two different things.
I chose Diane as my Alternate the day after my father died, in 1999, when I became the IRP. Then two years later, the World Conference confirmed me as the IRP and Diane as the Alternate. The Alternate’s job is basically to stay in good enough shape [condition] that they can step into the IRP’s role, if needed. That’s what I did as Alternate for about twenty years. I also did many other things in RC, but they were separate from my role as AIRP.
Diane has suggested, and we have discussed and agreed, that she will never stop working fully for RC. However, we think that the next World Conference is a good time for another person to start being the AIRP—the person who could step in if I, for some reason, couldn’t play the IRP role. We’ve discussed it, and I’ve thought a lot about it.
Therefore, at the (Zoom) World Conference this August, I’m going to ask that the conference accept Teresa Enrico as my Alternate. She has done enough work, in enough places, that almost all of you know her. You know her thinking, you know her caring, you know her integrity. The person in the Alternate role needs these things, and she has them. I have great respect for Teresa’s intelligence and ability. I wouldn’t be worried with her in the AIRP role. And I intend to stand behind her for at least five years after I leave my IRP position.
I want to remind you that at the last World Conference I said you had eight years of me left. It’s still my intention to stop being IRP (though it’s unclear, because of COVID, whether that will be in eight or nine years from that time). As I am suggesting for other Reference Persons, I want to move on and do other things for RC. I also don’t think I’ll be needed in this position for two reasons: one is Teresa, and the other is how the RC Communities are growing, spreading, and getting a deeper understanding of the RC process. More and more of us are regaining our intelligence, functioning better and better, reaching more people, and building the Communities.
WE’VE COME A LONG WAY
My father left the IRP role when he died, so he couldn’t help me when I took it on. But I’d had enough time around him that I knew his mind well. That was a fortunate and rare situation.
Now as new people take over being Reference Persons, those of us currently in the roles can be available to support them. I think this is the period for learning how to do that well. For a long time when my father was the IRP, it was important that he played that role. It would have been a gigantic setback if we’d lost him much earlier than we did. But we’ve come a long way since then.
Part of what I’ve always tried to do in this role is get more people to do more instead of adding more at the center. This has been effective—because you have gone ahead and done the work. So I don’t think the change I’m proposing is dangerous in any way. I do think it may restimulate a few people, but we know what to do with restimulations.
(Present Time 207, April 2022)