towards leadership and culture

building or stumbling block?

I must reach beyond the comfortable stages of leadership[1] and throw off old habits so that I can change.[2] Robert Quinn wrote a book titled, Building the Bridge as You Walk on It and argues that your ability to enter into a fundamental state of leadership is dependent on your ability to abandon a comfortable routine of organizational management.  What? Should you stop doing what you are best at in order to become better?

I know that I need to move beyond the management tasks of leadership[3] and focus on the visionary tasks of leadership.[4] The things that I do well may actually be the stumbling block of my leadership skills. I may focus on the comfortable things too much while neglecting the things I do not want to do. When I lose focus I run the risk of becoming a manager instead of a leader. The difference between the two could not be greater. No life can be breathed into an organization through simple management. Simple management strives to maintain the status quo. While the status quo is not always bad it can never become better. Visionary leadership requires me to do things I am not currently doing. I must be willing to focus myself in new and uncertain directions.

What about you? Is your status quo leadership style prohibiting you from growing? Have you become too dependent on those things which you are good at?

fight or flight

Is my church afraid of sin or inspired by it? In what way do we respond to the need of Christ in our community? People respond to a threat in one of two ways: fight or flight. When we chose to run away we gain security by avoidance. When we chose to combat the threat we risk victory over loss. Sin is the greatest threat to all of humanity. It is not the root of all evil, it is all evil. What does my church do in response to this peril? Are we motivated to gain security or rick victory? These two values typify many churches today. Their entire modus operandi consists of keeping sin out or taking sin head on. I want to be a part of a church that chooses the latter. Sin should inspire Christ’s church to make disciples of all types of people. Those who are most caught up in the charade of sin should be the most compelling but the church often views them as the most repulsive. A Jewish teacher once asked, “Do the healthy need a doctor or the sick?”[1] Clearly, the sick need a doctor; but why do the healthy often chose to horde his medicine? Roger Gill discusses various ways in which people are motivated and believes that, “treating threats, problems and failures as opportunities to learn can be a source of great inspiration.”[2] When sin rears its ugly head in our community do we run away clutching everything that is precious to us or do we run towards it with everything we have?

[2] Roger Gill, Theory and Practice of Leadership,(London: Sage Publications, 2006). p. 243.

This is a response to a post by Donald Miller that can be found here.

The consumer is wholly moved by a creation. The creator who works with emotion is an artisan driven by skill and beauty. The creator who works without emotion is a simple drone. They have used half of themselves to make half of a thing. Feelings are not fleeting because they are always present. The pain of commitment is as powerful as the pain of love. You cannot kill your emotions without killing yourself. Use your whole self to create.

The artisan trusts emotion because it causes them to question. A maker who reflects upon their work will create something more meaningful than accurate. This process may be slow, conflicted and imprecise. However, precision is meaningless if pointing in the wrong direction. Don’t be accountable to the feelings of others but always remain aligned to the calling of your heart.

Stir up emotion before you work; it is the only thing that adds meaning to your labor. You can produce cogs for someone else’s machine most effectively when you do not feel. If this is your path, do not invest your whole self into the work; you will become a sniffling pre-teen swung by the emotions of others. You are meant to reflect your creator. Demonstrate His excellence with every swing of the hammer, every mixing of ingredients and every calculation of numbers. Create with skill and wonder in the same way He created you because you are wonderfully made.