Gil Rendle

“it is about a thoughtful and purposeful courage, it is also, as noted, necessarily a book about the assumptions and temptations that keep us from courageous leadership. One of the realities that I will explore is that in times of great turmoil, leaders are always asked to produce change—to make things different in their systems so that others will find a better future. But if asked for change, leaders will not be rewarded for the change produced, only for how well they keep things the same—following the known ways and the established rules so that they don’t make people uncomfortable. It is the difference between management and leadership, following the old adage that management asks the question of whether we are doing things right, while leadership asks the question of whether we are doing right things. Doing things right is comforting because it is a known and familiar path, even if it doesn’t lead to a viable future. Being asked if we are doing right things is, by contrast, deeply disturbing. Because now the people must stop to figure out, again, who they are, what their purpose is, and how they will live out that purpose in the context that has changed around them. It is, I suppose, as natural as it is disconcerting that we ask our leaders for change that will prepare our way into the future but then reward them for the comfort of continuing to do things in the old, known ways that make us feel secure but lock us into the limits of the present. It takes courage to make people purposefully uncomfortable.”
― Gil Rendle, Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World