Water and leadership
Leadership works best for me when no one knows I'm doing it
This month featured two invited local community appearances. One was participation on a panel at Leadership Whidbey’s Ecology Day on planning and the environment, with a focus on shorelines, a timely topic in light of the storms we have endured since my post last month on sea level rise.
The other was a presentation to Whidbey Island Conservation District on drinking water. This one drew a large crowd and a number of new subscribers - welcome! - for whom I’ll post some links to earlier drinking water posts.
***Edited to include links to the presentation and slides***
Leadership Whidbey Ecology Day
Leadership Whidbey is a fabulous leadership development program for aspiring community leaders.
Each fall, Leadership Whidbey selects 20 participants representing the private, public, and non-profit sectors across Whidbey Island for a 7-month intensive leadership development program with the goal of creating a network of leaders whose increased awareness and commitment to service will energize and shape Whidbey Island’s future.
This is the third year in a row I’ve had the honor and pleasure of being asked to join a panel of leaders for the program’s Ecology Day, hosted at Pacific Rim Institute for Environmental Stewardship.
The backdrop for the conversation was the County’s Comprehensive Plan update, which for the first time contains a climate resiliency element, as natural ecosystems come under pressure. The other panelists were a County Commissioner, the county’s Natural Resources Manager, and the executive director or Whidbey Environmental Action Network (WEAN), four individuals who were thoughtfully selected for their ability to articulate different viewpoints while maintaining a civil conversation, the whole moderated by a former county commissioner.
The same thoughtfulness infused the questions for the panel; in fact, the questions were so good that I’ll include a few here. This, for example, was the kickoff question directed to me:
What hard questions do we need to be asking ourselves and what hard conversations do community leaders and citizens need to be engaging with to realistically achieve climate-resilient shoreline management in Island County, especially considering sea level rise projections of about a foot by 2050 and increasing storm intensity and storm surges that are already impacting our beaches and shoreline communities?
It’s less than a month since I wrote about the season of king tides and storms that started in December.
Syzygy
It’s been a difficult month for weather here in the Pacific Northwest. Although the king tide and atmospheric river combo that we referred to a couple of weeks ago passed without causing coastal flooding here on Whidbey Island, our mainland neighbors suffered catastrophic flooding from the accompanying rain, while another storm shortly afterwards knocke…
We had just missed the trifecta of king tides, low pressure, and high winds all at the same time, but we went on to suffer three significant wind and wave events over the next two weeks which, although not causing flooding, did cause significant beach erosion and undermining of sea walls.
Almost a dozen moderated follow-up questions deepened the conversation, including this:
Limits of Engineering Solutions
What are the real tradeoffs between hard armoring and nature-based
shoreline solutions, especially given projected sea level rise—and how do we
lead when no option offers permanent protection?
and this:
Managed Retreat as an Adaptive Challenge
What role should managed retreat or relocation play in Island
County’s long-term shoreline planning, and how do leaders even begin to have
that conversation without triggering fear, backlash, or paralysis?
I was very glad to see these hard questions out in the wild. Many more and broader conversations will be needed before we can hope as a community and society to coalesce around solutions.
Here are links to all my posts on sea level rise and land.
The last question was different and addressed leadership.
Leadership Under Fire
Can you share a moment when doing what you believed was right for
long-term resilience came with real political, professional, or personal
cost—and what you learned from it?
I volunteered to go first. A number of years ago, as vice-president of a community board, it fell to me to lead the board in removing the then president for conflict of interest and other reasons. The circumstances made it very challenging. I stepped down from the board also so that it could function without the shadow of conflict and drama. My face is probably still on a dartboard somewhere.
Around the same time, I’d begun to realize that my neurodivergent personality functioned best in one-on-one conversations or in small groups at most. I went on to quit all the county, state and non-profit boards I was serving on—about ten in all, too many for sure—but regretted it immediately, as I realized that I would miss the people terribly. Further, I was afraid that if I wasn’t chair of this or a member of that, would anyone be interested in what I had to say?
For me, leadership works best when no one knows I’m doing it.
I’d had a difficult relationship with leadership from my schooling in England and my experience in corporate America. The model I knew conflated leadership with authority—telling people what to do. When I was first asked to step into these leadership roles some years earlier, I knew that model wouldn’t work for me, and that I would need to find a different model. A Google search, or all things, led me to a weekend workshop that was nearby and which, in 2017, introduced me to the idea of leadership through hospitality and inquiry. The group I met there still meets monthly on Zoom.
The uncomfortable experience and its aftermath described above put these principles to the test. After quitting the boards and teams, I started reaching out individually to the people I missed the most to get together for coffee and a catch up, slowly building a network of contacts built on deep trust. I also started an email newsletter to a dozen or so people that’s grown in just over three years into the publication you’re reading now with over 800 subscribers! And my opinion and participation? They’re more requested than ever.
For me, leadership works best when no one knows I’m doing it. I was happy to share my experience with these future leaders, along with the idea that there are many different styles of leadership, that they’re all needed, and that we’ll lead most effectively when we find the one that works best for us. Or as our moderater put it: “You can lead from any chair. You don’t have to be the conductor. As second violin, you’re still supporting the orchestra.”
Water on Whidbey
Whidbey Island Conservation District’s mission is to promote natural resource stewardship and resilient ecosystems for present and future generations.
Conservation Districts are the community hub that bring people and resources together through voluntary, locally led conservation to ensure a healthy and sustainable future. We engage our community on Whidbey Island in voluntary actions that keep our air, water, soil, habitats, and working lands healthy for all. As a non-regulatory and non-partisan arm of Washington state, we support your stewardship goals by offering free educational and financial resources. We’re here to provide guidance as needed, on your terms.
Last fall I was asked if I could present on the drinking water situation on Whidbey Island to the board of the Conservation District as part of their educational program. Showing the value of networks, the Executive Director of the Conservation District is a 2025 alumna of Leadership Whidbey, when I was also on a panel. The board decided at some point to advertise these sessions more broadly, typically drawing maybe half a dozen attendees. This time, over 160 registered, although my nerves are grateful that only 60+ showed up. I extended the talk, originally slated to last 20 minutes, to 40 with the original10 minutes for questions extended to another 40 right up to the end of the call with many questions unanswered. Here’s the recording of the presentation:
And here are the presentation slides: Water On Whidbey Presentation Slides
The presentation went over our groundwater, aquifer recharge, sea water intrusion, climate risks, and more, topics that I covered in this post from two years ago:
"Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink"
Over the past few weeks, we've taken a look at water in the challenging environment of the desert. Desert communities in the American Southwest are able to bring water hundreds of miles from the Colorado River. Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a closer look at water in another challenging environment, islands, though the lens of my home of Whidb…
I was gratified that so many people gave up an hour and a half of their evening for a deep dive into drinking water issues, and the questions were thoughtful. I had a lot of fun presenting and answering questions. I was further gratified to find seven new subscribers when I got home. Thank you all, and welcome. For you, and anyone else who’s new here, here’s a link to all my drinking water posts.
I’m working on series of posts on travel, and one on ancestry. I don’t yet know myself which will be ready first. To make sure you don’t miss the surprise, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
John, your inherent wisdom that leadership is built on deep trust through dialogues, always inspires me greatly. I am definitely under-confident on my leadership skills in any organisation I move and I have a thing or two to learn from your humble yet confident stance with position of power. I love your strength. Thank you for leading by example.
Great piece, John. As always.