People at every level of the Church need leadership skills: from bishops, to priests, to laypeople, and even consecrated religious. While Catholic Leadership Institute’s (CLI’s) offerings typically target clergy and lay leaders, we recently had the opportunity to expand our scope by helping religious sisters gain valuable leadership skills that will aid them in living out their charism and, ultimately, in glorifying God through their lives.
The Little Sisters of the Poor is a religious order dedicated to the service of the elderly poor, founded in 1839. Recently, with more laypeople taking on leadership roles in their nursing facilities, the sisters realized they needed help to fully integrate these lay administrators into their mission. Sr. Julie Horseman, LSP, the sisters’ Mother Provincial, explains that the Little Sisters reached out to CLI because “we realize more and more that [in] the complex world of healthcare in which we minister, we need to develop our skills of leadership and our ability to share the leadership of our Homes with others.”
Luckily, CLI board members Tom Heule and Richard Clark have worked with the sisters before, and suggested that CLI could help provide training and support for the sisters as they tackled these challenges.
Sisters from five different nursing homes across the country came together with lay administrators for an open dialogue facilitated by Leadership Consultants Lucille Smith and Linda Banecker. Lucille and her team pulled together resources from the many trainings that CLI offers to create a custom offering for the sisters. “We additionally had some Zoom meetings with some of the sisters to say, ‘What is their greatest need?’ These groups are coming together, what would that look like?” said Lucille of the planning process that went on prior to the training.
Responding to a Charism
The Little Sisters needed to find a way to facilitate communication between members of the religious community and lay staff members. “What they were looking for is some training and leadership skills, and in particular they were looking at having some conversation and dialogue between people in the lay administrative positions and the sisters that would be in charge of the nursing facilities,” Lucille explained. “They have to balance the fact that as a community they have a call and they have a charism and they’re trying to respond to that in a very specific way in terms of how they want their ministry and how they want to serve in their facilities.”
Sr. Julie shares that she saw “a greater understanding and appreciation among the attendees for how much our distinctive behavior personalities influence the effectiveness of our actions.” She adds, “For our lay staff who were present, [there was] a growth in their understanding of where they fit into the whole picture.”
The Call to Lead
Remarkably, the training also helped to reaffirm her calling as a religious sister: “For me personally, the tools provided in the workshop reaffirmed the type of leader I want to be, both within our community and in our ministry.”
Through the training offered by CLI, the sisters were able to re-experience their calling and natural talents as a gift bestowed on them by God—one that is meant to be shared with the world. The leadership strategies and self-knowledge they gained will help them to continue living their mission of sharing God’s merciful love with the elderly poor, and drawing laypeople into a fruitful participation in that mission.
This story was written by Trinity Chester, Communications Intern in the Summer 2024 Cohort.
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