Professional ethics, ethical use of power, and pastoral roles and responsibilities 

This session is intended for clergy, lay teachers, and others in leadership positions. The training focuses on three important aspects of the teaching and leadership roles. The first is the teacher’s/leader’s fiduciary responsibility to protect the welfare of students and guide their awakening with compassion. The second concerns the power dynamics that are always present between teacher and student and how inappropriate use of power can generate abuse. The third component deals with the psychological processes of transference and countertransference and their potentially deleterious effects when spiritual guidance is being offered. This session engages spiritual leaders in candid discussion of these three components of their responsibility and how they can establish and maintain healthy boundaries with their students.

Religious abuse, healthy boundaries, and the limits of the teacher/student relationship

This session is similar to that for teachers, above, but is designed for the spiritual community members. Sangha members will learn about healthy boundaries, power dynamics between teachers and students, and what constitutes a healthy vs. a predatory relationship. While we stress that it is the teacher’s/leader’s responsibility to maintain appropriate boundaries in their relationships, we also discuss what students can do to protect themselves from transgression of these boundaries. While the emphasis is on empowering sanghas to prevent abuse, we also draw on examples from our experience of the consequences to individuals and sanghas when abuse is not prevented and what sangha members can do to ensure that healthy boundaries are maintained.

Policies and procedures that support organizational transparency, whistleblower and abuse reporting, and grievance resolution and remediation

This session focuses on developing and implementing the tools that any organization must have to promulgate and support ethical behavior on the part of its leaders and members. An Olive Branch’s experience indicates that organizations that have and enforce strong ethics policies and grievance procedures are rarely the ones that suffer extreme chaos when allegations of ethical misconduct surface.

This training focuses on the components that make an ethics policy thorough yet streamlined and easy to understand. We share examples to help board members and leaders see how this important policy must have a clear definition of ethical behavior as well as a statement about to whom it applies and how it will be enforced. We also explore the components of a whistle-blower policy and grievance procedure from a best-practice view with examples. 

Roles and responsibilities for maintaining accountable leadership and governance

The content of this session is based on nonprofit governance practices in current use in the United States with attention paid to the special role of the spiritual leader and the relationship between the board of directors and clergy.

The session includes:

• Presentation and discussion of the basic responsibilities of a nonprofit board

• Fiduciary responsibilities of the board as a group and of board members as individuals

• The board’s responsibility to establish necessary policies (such as code of ethics, conflict of interest, whistleblower, sexual harassment, etc.)

• Key bylaws provisions for selecting board members, terms of office, powers of the board and spiritual leader, and relationship between the board and the spiritual leader.

Discussion topics include authoritarian vs. cooperative models of governance, rubber-stamping, governance as leadership, confidentiality, mission statements, strategic planning, accountability, risk management, and avoidance of hard questions. Additional governance services include conducting a board assessment, reviewing bylaws to bring them into line with best practices, and facilitating the development of a strategic plan to focus on important initiatives.