Generosity can be contagious in a healthy way.
Brother David Steindl-Rast

Christian Smith is a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. The university gained funding to start the Science of Generosity initiative from the John Templeton Foundation. The initiative tag line is “exploring an essential human virtue” and they consider this the infancy of a new science focused on human generosity.

In a recent article in Science and Religion, Smith tells of the current research projects they have going:

• Ariel Knafo, a psychologist at Hebrew University is working on “The Family Cycle of Kindness and Generosity.” This uses studies of identical twins to find how nature and nurture (child development, genetics, and environment) work together in children in the development of a generous disposition.

• Carolyn Warner , a political scientist at Arizona State University,  is working on “The Role of Religious Beliefs and Institutions in Generosity” by looking specifically at Catholicism and Islam. She hopes to help us better understand how specific religious beliefs and practices differ between these religions, how they help foster or create obstacles to generosity, and investigate whether they encourage generosity toward outsiders or toward their own communities.

• James Andreoni, an economist at the University of California, San Diego has a project called “The Inherent Sociality of Giving and Altruism.” It takes his research on the positive emotional experience charitable donors experience (the “warm-glow”) and expands it to understand the relationship dyadic between the donor and recipient. He regards generosity as a principally social act and seeks to understand the role that empathy plays in the donor-recipient relationship.

• Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist at Harvard University who focuses on social networks. He hopes to investigate how much social networks rely on generosity to keep them solvent and functional. He will also research how generous acts can spread and cascade through social networks.

Here we have the fields of psychology, human development, political science, religious studies, behavioral economics, sociology, and communications all studying the trait of generosity. And the John Templeton Foundation is funding research beyond just the work going on through Notre Dame. It seems that generosity studies have become popular. Smith says, “The science of generosity is in its infancy.” Indeed!

It’s not that you’ve got to be generous, but you get to be.
It’s not haranguing or threatening. It’s liberation.
Dr. Martin E. Marty

Interconnected by Beth of Glos Programming

Over the last year we have lived through a profound and perhaps epochal shift
in the distribution of power.
- Mark Pesce

Closed and strictly hierarchical systems of management are vulnerable to challenge by the forced transparency of digital hyperconnection and the might of web-connected polities. Mark Pesce is a technology writer, researcher, and teacher who gives vivid examples of breakdowns already occurring in the public arena when hierarchies clash with digital crowds. How do you enact effective leadership in a new, open, and hyperconnected system? Become more flexible and welcome change; move from opacity to transparency and then to permeability – so that crowdsourcing works to your advantage; share your power and be generous in your inclusiveness. In this new epoch, leadership is more about convening and synergizing than it is about commanding.

Mark Pesce on Mark Molaro's interview web page, "The Alcove"

In our digital era, as Mark Pesce details in his writings and teachings, our hyperconnected-ness (access to inconceivable amounts of information) has led to hyperintelligence (vast numbers of individuals in a network coordinating their efforts), which  transforms into action by adhocracies (groups of connected people concerned about an issue), which spreads and replicates itself through hypermimesis (mimesis is learning through imitation). Pesce writes compellingly about how hyperconnected and hyperintelligent networks of individuals using hypermimesis are already smashing into institutions and traditional hierarchies to thwart and disempower them.

The question is:

• As a leader, how can you direct individuals (who are curators of individual knowledge-bases) to become unified polities, and get everyone pulling in the same direction?

Here is what Pesce says:

Top-down hierarchies which order power precisely can not share power with hyperintelligence. The hierarchy must open itself to a more chaotic and fundamentally less structured relationship with the hyperintelligence it has helped to foster. This is the crux of the problem, asking the leopard to change its spots. Only in transformation can hierarchy find its way into a successful relationship with hyperintelligence. But can any hierarchy change without losing its essence? Can the state – or any institution – become more flexible, fluid and dynamic while maintaining its essential qualities?

I propose that the way to lead in this new epoch is by being open to input from all directions, caring about others’ intelligences, embracing change, and being a synthesizing agent. This leadership is about lending direction through influence and sharing power; I would call that generous leadership.

How does this actually work; how is it structured? What are the traits and qualities of effective leadership in this unimorphic system? How can you learn to do this? A good start is to be internally connected (mind, body, emotions, spirit), flexible, and open to change in your self. If you can do that and keep yourself grounded while moving forward with purpose, you may have the ability to do the same with your leadership in outward structures.

…power must surrender power, or be overwhelmed by it.
Sharing power is not an ideal of some utopian future;
it’s the ground truth of our hyperconnected world.
-Mark Pesce

Here is a video of Pesce speaking about this at the Personal Democracy Forum in June, 2009:

Sharing Power (Global Edition) from Mark Pesce on Vimeo.

Photo by Istvan Hernadi

You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them,
but by building a fire within.
- Bob Nelson

Think of someone in your life who has been your leader. It might be a supervisor, a CEO, a teacher, a parent, a mentor, or a political figure. Why did you follow that person? What was it about what they did, about who they were?

If you generate a list of the characteristics of that person, it might include qualities like they are honest and forthright, empowering and challenging, inspirational and passionate. To me a key quality that a good leader has is vision. Yes I mean vision as in the ’vision thing’ – being able to visualize a profitable direction and make that direction clear and reachable for the people around them. That vision thing is about the future of an enterprise. But just as importantly, I mean the much simpler ability to see the people who are in front of you – being able to see them clearly in the present.

And what is seeing clearly? It is undeniably an act of generosity. Have you ever been in a situation where you were seen fully as who you are, with all of your strengths and your challenges? That is a true gift for all of us and tends to bring out our hardest and best work, our highest level commitment. When we are well and truly challenged by someone else, they are seeing what we can do (that we are not already doing) and it motivates us toward that better performance. When we are stuck in a system or an action and someone sees that and empowers us to free ourselves (or decides on a change to break that logjam), that not only opens an opportunity for us to deliver our best work, it also acknowledges that the logjam we were in was real and alterable.

It is an absolute no-brainer that acknowledgment and appreciation motivate and encourage follower-ship. Nothing more needs to be written about this. But what predicates acknowledgment and appreciation? Seeing the good work, seeing the person who did the good work, seeing the results of the good work. If you have ever gotten insincere appreciation you know that the person acknowledging you really did not see you or what you did.

As my good friend Kristin Kaufman of Alignment, Inc reminds us, being polite is also part of good leadership:

The strongest and most successful leaders with whom I have worked were the ones that took the time to thank, to acknowledge hard work, to say please and yes … to  say “I’m sorry” when a mistake had been made or an injustice had occurred.

And what is politeness? Seeing other people, acknowledging them as adults, and giving them the benefit of our consideration.

Are you getting the parallels here? If we are seen, challenged, our barriers are taken down, appreciated and treated politely, which all grow out of being seen clearly – we feel better about ourselves, we deliver better work, and guess what – we stick with our leader and follow them!

Good leadership is about seeing. And it is up to the leader to see. This means that to be a good leader and see people in their fullest authenticity and potential, you have to work on your ability to see clearly. Now this is not all rosy – leadership is challenging because you are also called on to see what is not working, who is not delivering results, and you must act on those things as well.

So how do you increase your ability to see? I have 2 simple suggestions:

• Practice by seeing yourself. Observe your own reactions, your own thoughts, your own feelings, and your own motivations (the list can go on…).
• Practice being more generous. Take the time to think about what would be a gift to the people around you and start giving it. Start with recognizing people’s good work and with politeness. Turn up the volume on these two and the others will follow.

Seeing clearly is much harder than it sounds and takes practice. It also goes rusty pretty quickly, especially when we are under stress. If you are going to be the leader that people want to follow, it is worth doing that practice – for the rest of your career.

We practice generosity with others and with ourselves, over and over again, and the power of it begins to grow until it becomes almost like a waterfall, a flow.
- Sharon Salzberg

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
- Victor Borge

According to the Wonder Time parenting blog, a baby’s first laugh in the Navaho tradition is, a sign of joy that signals his desire to join his earth family and community. The Up Your Consciousness Blog states that the baby’s first laugh, marks its birth as a social being for the Navaho.

Whoever is present at the first laugh is considered in some way responsible for that event. That person is not only in charge of arranging the Baby Laughed Ceremony for the child, it is also thought that the infant takes on the qualities of that person.

The A’wee Chi’deedloh (The Baby Laughed Ceremony in Navaho language) is a social event where guests file past the baby with plates full of food. With the help of an adult, the baby then gives a pinch of salt to each plate as a symbolic act of generosity. The salt is meant to rekindle and sustain the goodness in each recipient. It is also considered to kindle the generosity in the baby and be the first in a lifetime of generous acts.

To close the ceremony, at the end of the meal, either the host (who witnessed the first laugh) or a family elder blesses the baby, wishing for a life of generosity and gratitude.

The Up Your Consciousness Blog give these helpful lessons to draw from this ceremony:

• We’re social beings, thriving mainly in the company and support of others.
• Generosity is a noble virtue, best instilled from birth.
• Opportunities to celebrate generosity remind us of and regenerate our goodness.
• An act of kindness raises the endorphins of not only the receiver, but also of the giver, and of everyone who witnesses it.
• Genuine, heartfelt laughter is an act of generosity!

The salt of life is selfless service.
- Sri Swami Sivananda, Hindu Spiritual Teacher

There is a whole movement of social entrepreneurship now where people are using a market-based approach to help make significant change in the world, sometimes addressing the most intractable or desperate problems. Instead of creating change through volunteering or political action, these are enterprises with social programs as a core part of their business plan. It is kind of like building a charitable program with the funding source built in. This is significantly different from a for-profit business like Toyota, whose business is to sell cars, partnering in a social cause effort (sometimes called cause marketing).

One of the most famous, and financially successful of these philanthropic entrepreneurs is Jonathan Greenblatt, who worked on the X Prize and helped found Ethos Water. He has gone on to publish Good Magazine, which combines entertainment with social change and makes charitable donations as part of its business plan. You can check him out in an interview on the wonderful National Public Radio program Speaking of Faith. Ethos Water has grown so big it is now competing with some of the big bottled water producers. A portion of the income from every bottle purchased goes toward humanitarian water programs around the world. The X Prize Foundation gives large cash prizes to teams that look to achieve things like sending a robot to the moon, producing a super-efficient car, and finding ways to use personal genetic information to prevent disease. Their method inspires people to put millions of their own dollars into the development of these products, which multiplies the benefits gained. Greenblatt says that he now is working with the X Prize Foundation on using the model to address persistent poverty.

Is this generosity or is this just smart business – appealing to the altruism of its customers so it can make them feel good about consuming and sell more products? When people are financially successful and things grow to a larger scale this basic question gets harder and harder to answer. After all they are marketing to us to fund programs for people who do not have what we have. The entrepreneurs get a viable business and compensation for their work, we pay for a product and get it – along with the knowledge we are helping a worthy effort, and the beneficiaries get something they need: a win-win-win situation. However, the opportunity for personal gain at the expense of others, or the original values of the enterprise, must be rife.

One company I find charming in its directness and ebullience is Tom’s Shoes, started by Blake Mycoskie. Tom’s produces simple espadrille type shoes that are commonly warn in Argentina (called alpargatas). These are available in all type of fabrics, colors and patterns. For every pair of shoes you buy, Tom’s gives a pair of shoes to a needy person or child. Those people get the same basic shoe you do. Since 2006, they have given away 85,000 shoes in Argentina and South Africa. Having shoes to wear can fight significant health problems from cuts and infections in the developing world, where people often have to walk long distances to get water and other supplies. Tom’s also engages high school and college kids in a program to distribute the shoes (called a Shoe Drop) and to travel around the country talking to their peers about issues of poverty and promoting social entrepreneurship, and of course Tom’s Shoes.  From their web site, the whole enterprise looks like it is fueled by joy, which is not surprising given the benefits they are distributing. And I love that the consumer uses the same product as the beneficiaries. That connection emphasizes that we all have the same basic needs and just how small the world is now.

One of the definitions of generosity is: freely giving more than is necessary or expected. It certainly seems like these companies are doing that. Is bears watching what freely means to them as they grow and prosper.

So many people are concerned about their children – helping them to be thoughtful about media messages and their influence, particularly commercial messages, and giving them sound values about money and its use. There are some wonderful books out about the topic, including Raising Charitable Children by Carol Weisman and A Kids Guide to Giving by Freddi Zeiler to name a few. Like many other children’s resources (saved for later postings!), modeling generosity and teaching charitable giving through engaging in generous behaviors are effective techniques for this.

Yesterday in the online version of the Denton Record-Chronicle, a Texas newspaper, posted a story of a family who effectively taught their son about entrepreneurship and charitable giving as well. Rosa Peregoy was evidently being pressured by her 10-year-old Trey, to allow him to open a lemonade stand near their home. After a first day of unexpected financial success, Trey’s parents talked to him about raising money for a charitable cause. He decided to donate money to buy school supplies for kids who could not afford them (a cost usually assumed personally by the teachers of those classes). Although he initially wanted to give a percentage of the profit for school supplies, but that proved confusing, so his parents offered to match whatever he earned and donate the total to the local PTA.

Trey Peregoy, pictured in the green shirt

You can see by this story already that his parents were encouraging and supporting Trey’s ideas, guiding his thinking about the role and use of his resources, and joining him with their own generosity. It was clearly not a chore from Trey, nor did it seem to spoil his original hopes for the stand. Rosa Peregoy said, “I wanted him to see the importance of working; I wanted him to not just think of himself, but someone else.”

As the stand stayed open, over five summer weekends, it became more popular and more people came to donate rather than just buy lemonade. Midway through the summer, neighbors started to bring food items to sell and help by volunteering at the stand. In this way, Trey learned about how generous other people are – neighbors and strangers – and that being generous attracts the generosity of others, especially if it is for a good cause.

In the end, the stand earned $262.50 so with his parents ‘match’, Trey donated over $500 to the local PTA. It also earned him recognition with an honoring at an upcoming PTA meeting and an article in the local paper. But I think what might prove to be more valuable is a young boy who learned some valuable lessons early in life about commerce, charity, community organizing, living out his ideas, and the goodness of people if you give them the opportunity. This is a great example for any parent to follow.

You can see the whole of Britney Tabor’s article here.