Stallion or Sailor?

Those of us who lead do so with an intention to bring about change. To create a better world or a better product is in our blood.  Our orientation is to see what could be and then make it happen.

“Make it happen”. That sounds like we can control process and outcome. Is that possible?

The premise of this “Nomadic Leader” blog is that effective leadership requires a nomadic spirit. You can read more on that in my inaugural blog from Sept 2009. We live in a world that itself is constantly transforming, therefore its essential we develop the skills to see what is changing in our world, then change ourselves accordingly. Gone is the great man theory of leadership where he/she sits atop their trusty stallion as the consummate expert and ‘general’, charging ahead into the future, leading the troops to certain victory.

I recently came across another image besides the Nomad, to characterize the kind of leadership required in this day & age. The Sailor.  Credit to the authors of the book “Getting to Maybe” for this image.  These 'sailor skills' reflect the spirit of the nomadic leader and are an essential leadership skill of this age.

“We tend to prefer the image of the leader on the charging stallion to that of a sailor trying to navigate stormy seas. The leader on the stallion seems to be in control of his destiny, while the sailor has no chance of controlling a stormy sea. The sea is too powerful to overcome with force and too unpredictable to reliably anticipate. Instead, the sailor needs to be adept at reading the weather, understanding the patterns, reacting to changes and adjusting his sails”. (p 20; "Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed") 

I began my leadership life in the era of 5-10 year master plans, secured by a ‘stallion’ leader in place at the top. The attitude then was “come hell or high water we are going to make this happen”. That was the lingo of a true leader. I am not suggesting this age of uncertainty requires we ditch all long term planning. However, we do need a different leadership dynamic.  Here are some examples of how that dynamic is revealed in the life of a leader:

• Learn, learn, learn. Question, question, question. The moment you believe you know all there is to know and create a ‘certainty’ about things is the moment you relinquish the role of true nomadic and transformational leadership.  You have become a Settler. 
• Develop and tell a compelling story of the change you dream of creating. If you are going to get on a stallion at all, let this be what you champion! 
• Draw up your tactics in pencil. Unknown or emergent challenges & opportunities will require shifts in tactics so that you can better achieve your mission. Learn to tack like a Sailor. It may look like you are making many zigzag moves, but as long as it’s in the direction of your mission, you will make headway. 
• Talk to your employees/followers about trends and changes in real time. Keeping them in the loop, even if you are not yet sure what to do tactically, means they are better prepared in mind and commitment to make any shifts eventually required. Hold regular progress check-ins and 'status of our world' updates. Engage their input and you will find they are far more willing to adjust to changes than if you arbitrarily spring it on them. 
• Replace a need to control with toleration for ambiguity. That can be a painful transformation for some. On a practical level, it may simply mean stepping away from a knee-jerk decision and letting it sit for a day or so as a way of developing this tolerance. 

Are you suited to lead in this fluid world?

You are when you choose to be part of the dynamics of transformation rather than a separate figure sitting on a stallion leading the charge.

The Cautioneers

Just when I thought I had invented a new word, Google Search popped my balloon. Turns out the term ‘Cautioneers’ preceded my innovative musings. It’s the name of a band out of Toronto! It is also a term used by the Enneagram. Interestingly the Enneagram captured some of the essence of my (once innovative) meaning: ‘safe, secure, reliable, predictable, cautious’. I will take this definition & expand on it in the context of leadership, especially those who lead the followers of Jesus to their mission of restoring the world back to God.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a leader who occasionally demonstrates the characteristics of The Cautioneer. If we did not display some of these qualities (or was connected to someone who does), leadership and followership would be chaotic. Ask any follower of a purely idea-driven, “squirrel!” kind of leader.

However, to lead from the posture of a Cautioneer is what is bringing the church to a slow crawl in its mission to restore the world to Jesus. Shepherds and pastors by nature default to organizing systems and safe pasture for their flocks. These gifts dominate the paid leadership roles of the organized church. Thus, the resulting church has been defined and confined by boxes, programs and systems. It is certainly busy, but rarely is it found in the cracks of human experience and at the edges of society. There is still a “come to check out what we offer” mentality that drives the church’s mission. It’s safer that way, isn’t it? It’s a Cautioneer approach.

Interestingly the metaphors that describe the world changing ways of Jesus - salt, light, yeast and seed – inherently must be scattered in order to effect change. Yet the Cautioneer leaders find ways to gather and ‘nurture’ these elements rather than risk scattering them around. Thus, their churches are often active internally and launch out on a few forays into the world to ‘pillage the village’ and gather new recruits. Their activity makes them feel and appear they are on mission. Reality check: Activity does NOT equal mission.

I have two questions to pose, with my own answers (lest you think I don’t think about this stuff). I’m eager to hear your own responses.

1. What happened to us?

2. Can we do anything about it?

My personal opinion about what happened:

• In the past few generations or so, increasing wealth enabled resources to be poured into gathering places and then staff to take care of them.
• These places needed ‘pastors’, basically leaders who could manage the place and the activities that would justify the existence of the place.
• ‘Place’ came to define ministry and a programming boom ensued, which then elicited the need for more staff. This was helped along by a culture sympathetic to Judeo-Christian values that were eager to receive these services.
• This became the norm and our colleges and seminaries followed suit by training people for the model, but not necessarily the mission.
• We woke up to the reality that we are not in Judeo-Christian Kansas anymore, and have tried to tweak our model to be ‘relevant’.

Now here we are, in an era where many are speaking out about this. Hirsch, Barna, McLaren, Bibby, Devenish, Platt, Wright and a host of others are in various ways calling us out to cast off the Cautioneer mantle and discover new ways of thinking and organizing so that the mission can be forefront. In spiritual gift terms, the apostolic/prophetic and evangelist mantle needs a renewal within the leadership community of the local & global church. FYI those gifts will inherently seek out new models, forms and ways of being.

Frankly, I don’t hold out much hope for existing church institutions to be able to make the change. (I do hope they try). Mission rhetoric abounds, but it’s calling out from a model resistant to change and unable to change because it won’t face up to the fact parts of it won’t make it into the future. I see some churches tweaking at the edges, but unable to create a wholesale change without a decades long time-window or a commitment to disruptive change.

So to the second question, what can be done?

INDIVIDUALS or GROUPS - Start something. Don’t wait around for the wheels of institutional machinations to catch on and support your idea. The story of church growth has more to do with innovators walking out to the edge of cities, towns and social networks than it does intentional institutional initiatives. 

• Caveat: Don’t do it alone. Find mentors and advisors to help guide your endeavour. The truth is plans go wrong for lack of advice but many advisers bring success (Prov 15:22). A lot of harm has been done by Lone Rangers. A lot of good is done when pioneers rely on other pioneers.

• Encompass Partnerships is designed to assist you start something. It’s one of the key reasons we started in the first place. Contact info@encompasspartnerships.org if you want to start a conversation

CHURCHES – Become a hub of innovation. Your ship may not be able to turn easily or fast, but you can launch smaller vessels that use your ship as a resource hub. Within your gathering most definitely are those who are wired to go to the edge, to seek out new places and spaces for the gospel and do things unconventionally compared to what your church currently defines as ministry. They are those who by nature and gifting are the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists. You have already lost quite a few of them because of inattention and asking them to squeeze into what is. They leave and typically go somewhere else, start something on their own, or leave the church altogether out of frustration. So, why not instead embrace them (not too closely, because after all, they are pioneers) and develop an approach that encourages and coaches their ideas?

• Leadership is to equip ALL followers of Jesus for the work for He calls them. However, clearly your church programming is not capable of reaching as far as its people can reach. I hope that moves you to seek the answer to: How then do we empower those people? Struggle with that one! The Spirit will guide you. I’m not going to provide a 3-point answer.

• Appoint a staff person, create a department, assign time & space among existing staff – whatever works in your corporate environment, which shows and speaks to innovators that you are open!

• WHO can you partner with to ensure these people are given guidance and have some wind blown into their sails? Encompass’ coaching can help fill that role, but we have capacity issues too. You could find mentors for these people among current/former international mission workers or others who have worked in innovative, idea & project-generating environments. Find people with great coaching skills (not advice-givers) who can help a person walk through their thinking about an idea.

Whether you are that individual with a passion, or the church wanting to empower that passion, be ready for one common outcome: It will get messy. The world is messy. People’s lives are messy. Oppressive systems are messy. Yet this is where we are called to live the Life and show the Way of the One who is the key organizing Truth for a restored world.

Harv

Leadership Versatility

Leadership Versatility

Hosni Mubarak knew how to lead Egypt...in a certain way. Faced with a true democratic revolution, his old ways of leading fit the new Egypt like the pants he wore 30 years ago. No matter how hard you try...

How versatile are you?

We live in an age of specialties, even regarding leadership styles. Leadership assessments (and there are thousands of them) provide us with not only a galaxy of descriptors to narrow down our leadership style, but specific strategies to build on our strengths. But if I am a Conceptualizer (which I am), does just becoming an even better Conceptualizer help me as an organizational leader? Is that kind of narrow focus serving the leadership needs of our organizations well?

I am not arguing that in response we all become generalists. Generalist is not the same as Versatile. “Generalist” can sometimes mean you are good enough at most things and in most contexts, to fake your way through! I am emphasizing VERSATILITY, which I define as the emotional intelligence to shift leadership style according to the need of the team/organization.

Continuing my blog’s metaphor, the nomadic leader comes across multiple landscapes in their career. Just when you have made it around the proverbial corner, there’s a new mountain that represents obstacle, opportunity or perhaps an OMG! response. If you were a real-life nomad, you had better be prepared for everything and either have the resources at hand or the ingenuity to find a solution.

How versatile are you?

The specialist mentality approaches change with the same perspective they do with any other problem. When you are a hammer, everything is a nail. But when you are pounding on that nail and discover it’s now an egg, will you keep pounding? That’s OK if the goal is to break the egg, but what if the task is to incubate it? What resources will you draw from when your default style isn’t cutting it? Are you versatile enough to adjust, or does the organization need another leader? It’s not that we can be all things to all people at all times. That’s not possible. Sometimes we need to outsource, hand off, assign, or even resign. However, inherent in all of us is a wider range of leadership expression than we currently exercise.

What might it mean to the life and legacy of your organization if you were even 10% more versatile as a leader? Multiply that 10% though your entire circle of influence and it will have an effect on a much higher order of magnitude.

So, conduct your own 360 to discover the types of leadership behaviours that would better serve your organization. Use formal assessments if you wish. But I am challenging you to get out of the virtual assessment world and into the personal assessment arena. GO TALK TO THOSE YOU LEAD. If that’s a novel idea to you, then this is obviously the first place where you must become more versatile. It’s not possible to effectively lead those with whom you are not communicating!

It may be very awkward at first if you have not shown up enough “on the shop floor”, or your current communication style builds walls rather than opens doors. Perhaps you just need to start with a few general conversations, taking more time with employees and direct reports than in the past. But at some point, INVITE them to be part of a deeper conversation. WARNING – if you ask the questions I am about to propose, but then DON’T make any attempt to change, you will breed cynicism in your organization and block further effective communication. So, this is a risk and unless you are serious about changing yourself for the benefit of your organization, don’t start.

While not exhaustive, here are 7 questions you can ask employees and direct reports to help identify areas where you can develop versatility.

1. What inspires you to be your best?

2. What would free you to work to your optimal capacity?

3. Tell me the things that deflate your enthusiasm for doing a great job here.

4. When you are discouraged about your work, what picks you up?

5. What do you need to do an effective job?

6. Why do you keep working here?

7. What do we need as an organization to be better than we are today?

You will notice something – ALL these questions are framed to revolve around the person you are talking to. It’s not about YOU. By discovering what motivates them, you learn what is required of YOU as a leader. Where you see gaps in your default mode of operating will then define the areas where you can begin to exercise versatility.

If you are interested in engaging Harvey as a Leadership Coach or as a Facilitator for your team/organization, you can contact him through his website: www.visiontracks.ca or via email at: Harvey@visiontracks.ca