A Mason's Work

[00:00] I mean, beyond the personal function of record keeping and memory collection, the secretary in a relational level is the person who's going to be working to create that collective record, that mutual understanding of what's important and worth committing to the collective memory of the organization.
[00:22] In lots of cases, that is an editorial process where you might ignore or not commit to memory some of the strife that may have been required to go through in order for the outcomes to be achieved.
[00:44] Um, you'll note that if you look at your lodge minutes, or if you start talking to your secretary, there oftentimes will be situations or experiences that had a strong emotional charge, uh, that you may not have noticed, um, that maybe didn't get committed to collective memory.
[01:06] Uh, there's other times where that becomes part of the record.
[01:12] That's really important not to leave out.
[01:14] Um, for example, when, uh, when somebody in an organization is consistently hostile to the objectives of that organization, whatever that might be, it could be your logic could be in your community group.
[01:27] Um, you might want to record that hostility as part of the events of, uh, you know, the interactions with that person to then help determine whether or not they're appropriate to keep in the loop as it were.
[01:41] So when, when we look at this, um, again, from a relational perspective, there's a lot more meets the eye than just writing everything down.
[01:52] And in fact, uh, that memory keeper role is, you know, like we talked about in the guide function last week as the custodian of the future culture, the memory keeper role is the person who's carrying that collective understanding of the past culture.
[02:09] And by having, uh, having that correctly and meaningfully encapsulated, you can begin, uh, essentially to take that, that history and move it forward to project out the differences or the variations or the things that you want to, uh, change or include in future versions or future memories or future cultures that are emergent.
[02:35] So we build these collective memories.
[02:40] And from those, um, we get to determine how we want to interpret them and how we want to operate moving forward.
[02:47] More often than not, it makes a lot of good sense, um, before you put on that sort of secretary role in a collaborative function like this to actually set the guidance for the secretary function and say, Hey, listen, you'll know, we've got to where we wanted to go.
[03:03] So when these things start emerging in our regular meetings, these kinds of, uh, events, these kinds of things we want to record, being intentional about this from a design perspective, uh, and I know we're stepping out of a secretary role here for a second, but being intentional about this, uh, knowing what a good job looks like and being able to dictate that or write that down before it occurs, uh, is a really important part of meaningful leadership.
[03:30] So stepping back into that secretary function from a relational perspective, um, this again, gives you the chance, uh, as well to start understanding what meaningful engagement looks like, uh, try and note everyone's contributions as they are relevant to the overall objective.
[03:46] Um, to try and note everyone's, you know, um, um, individual nuanced understanding of, uh, how they can influence the organization or the group at large.
[03:56] We are, um, um, collectively much, much stronger if we start noting well, our strengths and bring those to the table and record those in our collective memory from a responsibility and, uh, relationship perspective.
[04:11] Um, then if we merely talk to the facts, um, I will tell you right now, everyone says the reading of the minutes, for example, is one of the most boring parts of the meeting.
[04:23] Uh, I will tell you right now, if somebody provided a valuable contribution and you called them up by name and the subsequent meeting minutes, they will perk up for listens and mentions of their name in future meeting minutes.
[04:35] Um, we had a secretary of my lodge early on when I first became a Mason who made it his job to include everyone's name in the minutes, in the proceeds of the meeting somehow to help them understand how they engaged and contributed to the overall participation of the lodge.
[04:53] That may, may not be a probe near lodge.
[04:55] I'm not telling you this is a prescriptive thing to do, but understanding that our role, when we take that secretary role at a relationship level, that role of memory keeper is a lot more.
[05:05] Uh, has a lot more potential influence than just the administrative functions of a secretary.