All About Groups Excerpt
Stepping Up and Stepping Back
Advisors are partners with leaders. They support self-advocates to be the best leader they can be. They also lend their talent and energy to the group. This is the art of stepping up and stepping back, finding your balance as you go.
Group members and leaders can also practice stepping up and stepping back. Challenge yourself to step up if you are quiet, and to step back and let others speak if you tend to speak a lot. Officers can let the other people in the group step up- you might start the ball rolling, but then you step back a little bit and let others run with the ball. That’s how you motivate people. It’s a group effort. That’s how you get to be a great group and let people develop their skills.
If you are just starting out, the advisor might step up to do most of the tasks in a group. As the group members grow and learn, the advisor can step back. At some point, the advisor might just set up the room, be a liason with the agency, give advice and help solve problems, and the group members run the group.
Especially in brand new groups, advisors are teachers. They help people figure out what works for them. The goal is to support people to find the way to do things that works best for them, which may not look the same as the way a person without a disability would do things. Good advisors let groups grow in ways that may be outside of the box.
A group can be a place to discover your talents, and learn different ways to deal with the things you can’t do. It is a chance to take on a challenge. How do you know what you can or cannot do? A group should be a judgement free zone to try things out. It should be a supportive place to try taking on leadership and learn to lead. That’s how people learn things and discover the talents that they have.
Step up, step back, lead, follow and find your way.