Bullying of and by clergy: a way ahead?

Many thanks to people who have posted stories and comments on clergy bullying. This is no more than an open discussion, not a therapy point, but any posting of information and ideas helps break the culture of silence around the subject. I did promise to say what we were doing in our diocese.

Archdeacon Karen and Poli Shajko, our HR Lead, have been scoping a new policy and procedures in the light of the Dignity at Work national documentation, in collaboration with Anne Lee, an Oxford psychologist who specialises in this area. We are going to recruit two confidential non-hierarchical listeners in each archdeaconry, the Parish Development Advisor (who already works and is known by any clergy) plus one - a mixed gender team with access available from any to all. This includes congregational members who say clergy are bullying them, as well as clergy who say congregational members are bullies. We are working with an independent partnership to develop training both for awareness and implementation of a new dignity at work policy, with documents to go to Bishop's Council, then out. I'm not sure how and when this is published around deaneries, but that's got to happen well — a comms job.

It seems to me, along with some comments earlier this month, that everyone knows what bullying is, and when they feel bullied, but the description needs to be in terms of the behaviour that has to change. If we don't do that the onus stays in the wrong place, and things will never improve. The vast majority of claims I have drilled into dissolve into mutual recrimination. So I have to say that the perception of "bullying" boils down to a symptom of organisational malaise, the abuse of power.

We need procedures in place, as for whistleblowing, available to individuals; but this is not enough.

The key to progress is to have a public framework describing the proper use of power against which all behaviour can be measured.

Such a framework makes any anomaly look like an anomaly, rather than just a random incidence of "shit happens."

One final frontier remains, however. Church culture, deferential, hierarchical and often inclined to hypocrisy, breeds an alignment gap between aspiration and active accountability at the top. The Church is full of good intentions but some bishops, forgive me for saying but it's the truth, fear and loathe that kind of open accountability. Confronted recently with a proposed standard policy on appointments, out poured reasons why this was an impossible bureaucratic imposition to clip their wings. Ironically, much practice is consistent with what was proposed, and the law will probably carry my Lords kicking and screaming where they don't want to go.

Why does it have to be like this? Perhaps the Great Sacred Cow of diocesan exceptionalism belongs to good and decent people who think they are doing their best, so where could the problem be? "parked on the candidate, not them" is the answer. The problem is this: Candidates applying for jobs need to have confidence that their applications will be treated consistently and fairly, and that the rules of the game are being observed by everybody involved - or why should they waste their time offering their work and ministry in the first place? Without some public standard applicants will inevitably suspect stitch-ups all over the place without this elementary accountability — even where they aren't happening! So culture has to change at every level in the organisation, if our practice is to align with our values. The problem is not, of course unique to the Church, but this may be the next area in which us Don Quixotes need to grab Sancho and buckle up.

Don't pick the Fastest Lemming

A central part of my job is helping discern people's callings to particular jobs, with search groups. Very often “leadership” is high on the list of essentials. I uderstand why. Everyone is more or less disorientated in a fast-changing world. People look to clergy to help them through the shifting sands, fog, smoke and mirrors. What many busy people want much of the time is a messianic figure who will turn out and fix things for them. This is the age of the quick fix. Sadly some of the most intractable problems communities face didn’t arise like this and won’t go away without costly and potentially time-consuming social and personal transformation.

The temptation is to pick what seems the most obvious candidate — the competent performer to get things done. But what if the problems are not technical problems? One of the limitations of the Anglican Covenant, peace be upon it, is that it is basically a lawyer’s solution to a broader problem — an attempt to solve mutual incomprehension with aspirin — a quick fix to a chronic cultural issue. People would grow more if they engaged with it humanly and spiritually as well as trying to fix it legally; but maybe all we can manage for now is a bit of paper.

The best leader is the slowest, not the fastest lemming, the oddball who slows down, stands aside, and wonders why. She can be of far more value than the sleekest, zippiest rodent. Appointing to technical criteria is a good discipline for preliminary screening and showing up the issues to discuss at interview. Once that stage is reached, however, you need to look for the person's inner security, personally and spiritually, how well they know where they stop and others start, their sense of perspective, their eccentricities, and the factors that make them the slowest, not the fastest Lemming. Otherwise all you get is the greyest, sleekest überLemming who seems to lead the pack, and we all end up in the drink.

The race goes not to the fastest Lemming, but the one who comes back up the cliff. Discuss?

HR, me Hearties!

“If you’re a professional pirate, you don’t have to wear a suit.” I learnt that from Muppet Treasure Island. Now I’ve been reading Peter Leeson’s semi-serious exploration of early eighteenth century piracy as an economic phenomenon. Blackbeard and chums were the pioneers of participative meritocracy. It turns out they were usually less violent and more mutual than you’d think, strictly for economic reasons. They were certainly better paid than legit sailors. Treasure was equally divided, but with slightly higher shares for the really key people.

There were two particular notables

1. The Cap’n, of course. He managed the ship’s reputation, designed bloodthirsty flags to scare people into surrendering without a fight, made hard executive decsions about where to plunder, who to shoot and when, maimings and maroonings. The Cap’n got the parrot, but was also radically accountable. If the crew felt he wasn’t delivering, they marooned him. The elected Cap’n dealt with star Exec tactics within an (illegal) regulatory framework called articles of association, which everybody signed up to, laying down the ground rules.
   
   
2. Enforcing the articles was the job of the Quartermaster. He (and very occasionally She) dealt with the enforcement of the rules, resolved disputes between pirates so that they didn’t damage the ship, dealt with health and safety, repairs, crew welfare, discipline and supplies. S/he also handled transitional arrangements between Cap’ns if the boss went mad, got shot, or fell overboard. Cap’n and Quartermaster were entirely dependent on each other to perform at a high level, or everybody got hanged.
   

To stay alive both jobs related to each other and were not entirely mutually exclusive, but there had to be great respect between the office holders, and both had to work together on the basis of mutual respect and giftedness shared. It’s called collaborative ministry.

Now I notice that a lot of human enterprises need these two different kinds of functions performed well and mutually. I can even think of teams of clergy and churchwardens who divvy up the work like this very effectively. But what history does not record is the existence of a kind of Uber or Super Cap’n who could somehow perform both roles simultaneously and effectively.

Now as I read person specs in parish profiles for new vicars, I notice a tendency to try and bag everything in a one-shot genius. People brainstorm lovely things about the best vicar they ever met, and roll it all up into a Poly-Combo Super Amazing Ask. S/he will be better at boiling the Gumbo than the cook, super navigator, entrepreneurial, rational-bureaucratic, inspiring storyteller, incisive questioner, ship’s doctor, carpenter and purser. Why, S/he even has to fly better than the ship’s parrot, whilst simutaneously making fewer waves than the ship’s Cat — and all this on cabin boy’s wages.

Not surprisingly this kind of recruitment usually disappoints. How could it not, when it’s all based on fantasy? It would more effective for the crew to work out answers to few more basic questions — what kind of ship is this? what kind of crew? what are we willing to forego in our Cap’n?

OK. Here’s a particular snare. The last Cap’n was very inspiring, but not terribly good or enthusiastic about swabbing the decks. So the cry ascends for a new Cap’n who is absolutely as inspiring, drum roll, but also far more infrastructural. What we recruit is a new cap’n who is slightly more infrastructural, slightly less strategic. We think we’re all going to be happy but before long we’re disappointed because s/he is not enough of either. And s/he gets fed up too, because s/he feels s/he’s simply expected to be everything in an unfocussed way. Which of course s/he is. Result disappointment. Another perfectly good vicar is semi-successfully forced into an artificial mould that kills off their giftedness and enthusiasm. And the cult of mediocrity notches up another skull, and lumbers on in its highly effective quest to take over the entire C of E.

So, if recruiting, ask, who are we looking for here? How is our lousy job going to fulfil anyone who’s up to doing it? How realistic are we being? What are we willing to do without? How will they fit in with the gifts and skills of everyone else? If you want an inspirer who is gong to inspire them? And if you want a quartermaster, who is going resource them, and do the inspirational star stuff in a genuinely collaborative way?

Clergy numbers and deployment

I return from a period of monastic study and reflection, and meet with a group to discern a clergy apppointment. Meanwhile Doug Chaplin has been raising significant questions about local clergy deployment cuts under the challenging title “The Big question in an elderly and inward-looking Church”. This relects acute and timely ventilation of similar and significant issues by Ruth Gledhill and, especially, John Richardson. I don’t know details of the various anecdotes circling the ether, but it’s good these questions are being raised openly.

What I wonder about is the quality as well as quanitity of staff appointments and the criteria we put in parish profiles, and the way they relate to the rule.

Benedict’s criteria for job selection are clear. Relying on pragmatic knowledge of a person’s deeds revealing their character and intentions in community, people are given opportunities to prove themselves faithful, diligent and competent. They should work to the best of their ability, in an ordered way, within the fundamental balance of prayer, contemplation, work and rest, accepting radical mutual accountability to God through the community, incuding the disciplines of chapter and listening to the least voice. Discernment should be led by the abbot, shared with the community. High commitment to Conversion, stability and obedience, Gospel zeal, competence, openness to others score high. Ego, opinion, outside status and Politics score low.

Such appointments are difficult, if not impossible, if we...

• are not sufficently a community to know our people properly and what they bring to the party;
  
  
• pretend or waffle about our intentions for the job
  
  
• do not observe the highest standards of justice in our equality and diversity practices. There are indications in Jesus’ teaching we would aspire to even greater and more honest relationships with our people than, say, Marks & Spencer, but we have to treat our people at least as fairly as they would treat theirs.
  
  
• score results rather than motives, surrender awarenss of competence, balance and intentions for a vague concept like “performance.”
  
  
• allow dirty information or untested assumptions into the process, including politics in the mean sense and anecdotal based assumptions
  
  
• measure character mainly by checking for failings, rather than accounting it in positive descriptive terms as we weigh any offer to take on a job