I’m an organizational consultant, working mainly in Israel, specializing in Jewish organizational leadership. Tzipi very articulately raises some of the difficulties experienced by leaders – and even non-leaders – who innocently enter the Jewish organizational world and within a very short period of time burn out, taking their talent, idealism, vision and energy with them, never to return. While Tzipi expresses the pain of one individual, the loss each year of hundreds of Tzipi’s to the world of Jewish organizations can only result in organizational deterioration and eventually organizational death.

My belief is that until the root causes of the problem are dealt with, the situation can and will only continue and become worse, until Jewish organizations just implode – as some are already doing – because they cannot retain the quality human resources they so badly need in order to successfully meet the changes and challenges they constantly face. Without going into deep analysis of the subject let me raise a couple of questions (in order to raise more questions) regarding these organizations:

· Was the organizational culture competitive, coercive or hostile, or was it in keeping with the mission of the organization?
· How much of a “vision imperative” of and for the organization did Tzipi’s immediate boss, (and her boss’s boss, etc. all the way up the chain of command) have, that guided both her actions and her upward, downward and sideways relationships within the organizational system?
· Who in fact, led the organization – the CEO? the Board? The founder? Different people at different times? Nobody?
· What kind of disparity was there between Tzipi’s salary and that of her CEO?

These are some beginning systemic questions that must be looked at in order to better understand the broader organizational complex which caused Tzipi’s unfortunate, but not at all uncommon brush with the Jewish organizational world.

I’m very happy to further discuss these concerns in private e-mail correspondence with regard to specific issues.

Best wishes

Mike Lowy mikelowy@netvision.net.il

tzipi, drop me a line… yoni {at} leadingup {dot} org.

I know bad supervisors exist in real life and not just Jewish life, but the problem with bad supervisors in Jewish life is that not only are they bad supervisors, but they’re in your synagogue, they know all the people you know, they’re at events you go to, etc. And in the case of being placed in a new city, they are also the point of reference for your job success (people know him/her and are friends with him/her and if you aren’t successful because he is creating a hostile environment, people only see that you aren’t successful – they don’t know who you are, how hard you’re working; and it’s the whole community that sees this, the people you see at services or in the JCC gym, not just other people in your field).

I’m glad most of the concerns are already being addressed I’m glad I’m not the only one who has these ideas/problems and I hope the Insight Fellowship is successful.

As for ending up with a bad supervisor, that happens in real life not just on fellowships. There can be an opt-out mechanism for the fellow that allows, under certain circumstances, for the fellow to move to another place of work. It can be arranged that as part of the evaluation mechanism, the fellow requests anonymity regarding negative comments. This would allow him/her to stay on in their job if the institute can’t or won’t remove them to another place of work.

Often the fellowships send people all over the country to work, which means that each fellow is dealing with a very different community with very different issues – usually a community that the fellow did not come from. The fellow then spends a good amount of time simply adjusting to a new community and is not actually productive until months later. Maybe some kind of real research about each community should be done in advance so that the new fellow can be prepared and shorten the adjustment time. This way, the training can be customized in a way to keep it from existing in an ideal world that has no real bearing on what they do. Or, if you are relying on out-going fellows (which you can’t in the first year, haha), have some kind of regulated process so that the incoming fellows aren’t depending on the outgoing to care enough to spend a lot of time and energy not only trying to leave advice but also figure out a way to most effectively present that advice.

Also, I think a mentor in that community and organization would be helpful. Someone who knows how the community works, who to go to for what you need in different situations, etc but who is also closer to the fellow in age (if possible). Someone who also understands the real goals of the fellowship and can help the fellow achieve them, not someone who is in the position to use the fellow as an assistant or subordinate or someone who feels like they are responsible for the work the fellow does, or has to “clean up” after that person’s mistakes. I think this would help by giving the fellow a reality check – but not in the “what you want to do is completely impossible” way, but the “i like your ideas, let’s figure out how to integrate them into our organization” kind of way. This mentor’s goals would be to prevent burn-out by empowering the fellow in the organization, helping him/her to navigate the system without the frustration of repeated trial-and-error for EVERYTHING, in addition to helping the fellow turn the idealistic training into realistic opportunities. The fellowship would have to have two types of training for this purpose – one for the fellows, which would be intense, one-on-one as well as group sessions; and one for the mentors who are from the communities in which the fellows are placed, which wouldn’t be as intense but would help them understand the fellows’ goals and help them to help the fellow customize them for the specific community.

Fellowship follow-up with the supervisors in the organization that is participating in the fellowship. My experience is such that my (former) supervisor treats his employees like crap/ignores their existence and then reports positive change to fellowship supervisors and board members so the fellowship (or anyone else) has no idea what a hostile environment it is for the fellows. I’m not sure how to get around that – during the fellowship, the fellow often feels as though he/she can’t say anything negative about his/her boss until the end due to the boss’ ability to make the environment that much more hostile/difficult to work in, so maybe setting up some kind of frequent feedback from the beginning would be helpful. The fellow could give feedback honestly and the fellowship would talk to the supervisor one-on-one in general terms at regular intervals, not specifying whether there was a complaint or not. (I would hope this would prevent the suspicion that the fellow is complaining about the supervisor, preventing the supervisor from feeling inadequate) This would go in the other direction as well, although I am less familiar with that end of the relationship. This would also allow the supervisor to discuss the fellow’s ideas with the fellowship and try to come up with strategies to work with the fellow, keeping him/her in line with the program as well as the organization’s goals.

I think a lot of it has to do with one-on-one support on every level, and customized for each community in which the fellow is placed. The fellowship is a good idea, like I said, I like the idea of putting young people/fresh eyes into organizations to help make changes, but the support and protection from that sudden reality shock is so important in my eyes. Keeping the training truly relevant to each placement, creating a supportive and positive environment, and preparing the fellows honestly – those are the main things I think are important for success in a program like this. Like I said, not exactly feasible…

I am a young Jewish leader whose idealism was snuffed out by working in the Jewish community immediately after graduation. I worked hard, often more than 60-70 hours a week (making very, very little money) for 2 1/2 years, not counting the numerous weekend-long and multi-day conventions I staffed or went to in order to improve myself as a Jewish leader. None of my work was credited to me, none of my effort was recognized. I just worked, worked, worked. I made a lot of little changes, but only after a lot of grief, countless nervous breakdowns in the grocery store, screaming fits in my car, and illnesses that left me bedridden. I had no real idea of what I was doing or what to expect and I was thoroughly abused, chewed up and spat out.

I have decided to go to grad school and study something that will take me far, far away from ever working in the Jewish community ever again.

I certainly hope this fellowship provides people with more support – even more support than the JCSC fellows receive. I think most are not prepared for the realities of working in the Jewish communal world after their training session and get a nice abrupt wake-up call once work begins (then they spend months trying to live the JCSC idealistic dream, leading to frustration and even emotional breakdowns, etc). I hope they prepare their fellows for the difficulty of working in the Jewish community and the special problems that arise – for example, the people you work with are not just the people you work with, but they are also the people you go to shul with, the people at every Jewish event you attend.

What can I say… I think having these fellowships is a good idea but I have doubts as to whether throwing recent grads to the wolves is really the best way to enact real change.