Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

Culture is not the aspired values printed on a poster or put up on a website. Culture is the combination of actual values and concrete actions that shape the warp and woof of organizational life.

When a value leads to a behavior that results in a desired outcome, then the values and behaviors become embedded in the group’s DNA.

Actions form the organizational culture, and that culture—like the DNA of a body—keeps reproducing the same values and behaviors. Note again, it’s not the aspired values that shape the church culture but the actual values that produce and are expressed in actual behaviors.

culture will trump strategy, every time. The best strategic idea means nothing in isolation. If the strategy conflicts with how a group of people already believe, behave or make decisions it will fail.”

Creating a healthy culture with the capacity to experiment, innovate, take risks and adapt is one of the primary preparatory tasks of a leader. That culture creation work rests on identifying the gaps between aspired values and actual behavior, and then working with the leaders to bring every aspect of the organization into alignment with the core ideology (core values, mission, primary strategy).

If constancy is the hallmark of a trustworthy leader, then consistency is the hallmark of a trustworthy system.

Before leaders begin any transformational work, cultivating a healthy environment for aligned shared values to guide all decision making must be a priority.

Adaptive capacity is defined by Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow as “the resilience of people and the capacity of systems to engage in problem-defining and problem-solving work in the midst of adaptive pressures and the resulting disequilibrium.”

face and clarify our own core beliefs. And for each organization, this facing-the-unknown moment asks us particular questions we need to answer honestly together: Why do we exist as a congregation, institution or organization? What would be lost in our community, in our field or in our world if we ceased to be? What purposes and principles must we protect as central to our identity? What are we willing to let go of so the mission will continue?

With a recommitment to core ideology (values and mission) there is a critical moment to reframe the strategy for the mission at hand. In adaptive leadership, reframing is another way of talking about the shift in values, expectations, attitudes or habits of behavior necessary to face our most difficult challenges.

For church leaders facing this missional moment, the reframing of church strategy from a sanctuary-centered, membership-based, religious- and life-service provider to a local mission outpost for furthering the kingdom of God enables our congregations to discover a faithful expression of our corporate identity in a changing world.

At the heart of adaptive leadership for the church is this conviction: The church is the body of Christ. It is a living organism, a vibrant system. And just like human bodies, human organizations thrive when they are cooperating with the wisdom of God for how that system is designed, how it grows and how it adapts to changing external environments. You know your body has to adjust to a new time zone after a plane flight, or to new foods when you arrive in a new culture. And you know you have to learn a new language or develop the skills for navigating an outdoor market in a foreign land. That is what adaptive leadership is all about: the way that living human systems learn and adapt to a changing environment so they can fulfill their purpose for being.

Our churches and organizations are systems—organisms—with a unique life and vitality. They are not mechanistic religious production lines but bodies that need to be tended, cared for, challenged and strengthened so they can adapt to their environment. This is what adaptive leadership is all about: hanging on to the healthiest, most valuable parts of our identity in life and letting go of those things that hinder us from living and loving well.

*REORIENTATION* In a Christendom world, vision was about seeing possibilities ahead and communicating excitement. In uncharted territory—where no one knows what’s ahead—vision is about accurately seeing ourselves and defining reality.

leadership vision is often more about seeing clearly what is even more than what will be. As the former CEO and leadership author Max De Pree has famously written, “the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.”1 And perhaps one of the most important pieces of reality that must be first defined is the reality that every organization, indeed every organism, functions within a larger system. Seeing this systemic nature of all living things and seeing how one part of the system affects every other part is a crucial but often overlooked component of leadership vision. But to see the system, we must understand what systems are and how they function. An organizational system is the composition and interaction of the people, resources, interconnections and purpose of a group. So a congregation is not just the group of people who gather on a particular Sunday, or merely those who have their names on the membership roles, but the combination of people, their relationships to each other and the mission (or purpose for being) of this congregation. This combination of elements makes up the larger system, and as any one element, relationship or the purposes changes, the system must adjust. This system definition is assumed in the working definition of leadership we are using here: Energizing a community of people toward their own transformation in order to accomplish a shared mission in the face of a changing world.

A healthy church, like any healthy living thing, is always defined by the nature, quality and behaviors of the relationships. As Wendell Berry said in a classic address titled “Health Is Membership,” “I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.”3 Indeed, even the Trinity is best understood as a relationship of distinct persons who share one essence.

When describing a church’s DNA, we are talking about the particular pieces that make up the church’s identity and mission—the critical, essential elements that make a congregation who they are. It includes elements like core values, essential theological beliefs, defining strategy and mission priorities.

For a church this means that when the members, the relationships and the mission of the church are aligned and working symbiotically toward a shared purpose, the church functions well. People are both loved (relationship) and challenged (purpose). There is both a commitment to depth and authenticity (relationship) and space to welcome new people (purpose). There is an ability to accept people as they are (relationship) and to be continually transformed into the likeness of Christ (purpose). There is a deep desire to enjoy life together (relationships) and use our resources and energy to serve others (purpose).

in the same way that each person is different with a unique DNA, each congregation has its own organizational DNA that affects its relationships and purpose. As Kevin Graham Ford explains, different people connect to the code of different churches: “Code is like a magnet in that it attracts people who resonate with it and are eager to be part of a similarly committed community.”

at the heart of any adaptive work are three key questions church leaders need to wrestle with together:

What DNA is essential and must be preserved? What DNA can be discarded? What DNA needs to be created through experimentation?

pausing to think about a church in light of its system or DNA gives us a frame for considering the challenges we face and at the same time, acknowledge a tension in all adaptive work: To learn and adapt we need new, creative experiments in relationships and purposes. Although the old solutions may have been good and effective once, the old solutions are inadequate. When we are experimenting with new solutions within a living system, we are doing so with something that has a history, is alive and precious, and must be handled with care.

In his Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things, Laurence Gonzales writes that the key to surviving in a world filled with unknowns is keeping a constant posture of “curiosity, awareness, and attention.” But, says Gonzales, we are not naturally inclined toward these characteristics. Partly, says Gonzales, our brains work this way. We take experiences from our past and learn lessons—often the wrong lessons—from them. Specifically, we expect that whatever has been in the past will be the same in the future. That leads us to ignore “real information coming to us from our environment.”

Directional leadership offers direction and advice based on experience and expertise, while adaptive leadership functions in an arena where there is little experience and often no expertise.

*REORIENTATION* Leadership in the past meant coming up with solutions. Today it is learning how to ask new questions that we have been too scared, too busy or too proud to ask.

So, to get accurate observations, we must, as Heifetz and his colleagues say, “Look from the balcony and listen on the floor.”8 While we try to get distance and perspective to see what is going on, we can only understand it fully if we also know the dynamics on the field.

Leaders must be able to withhold interpretations and interventions long enough to be listeners who also have the vision to see the deeper systemic realities at work in the organization.

“Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.”11 That is, just like a hot water faucet that doesn’t immediately deliver hot water, there is a time gap between the cause (turning the handle) and when we experience the effect (receiving hot water). The tendency then is to overcorrect while waiting for the effect (so, turning the water even hotter), and the solution becomes a new problem (burned hands). Because of the gap between cause and effect, it is difficult to diagnose the true underlying causes of most problems.

We needed to focus our attention not on how to increase Sunday morning attendance but on how to strengthen and increase more points of connection for people, which would enable us to better pastor people through life transitions.

McRaney discusses a group of World War II engineers who were trying to make bombers safer by studying the bullet hole patterns in the planes after returning from a mission. They knew that the planes needed more armor (and if they wanted it to fly they couldn’t put armor over the entire plane), so they tried to determine where to put the additional armor. When they examined the planes, they discovered that they were shot up most on the bottom of the plane, on the wings and near the tail gunner. So, the engineers made preparations for putting more armor there. But one statistician, Abraham Wald, challenged the underlying assumption by pointing out that the planes they were studying were the survivors—these are the planes that were not shot down. In other words, Wald said, this is exactly where we should not put more armor—a plane can survive even if shot up in the bottom, wings and near the tail gunner. So they needed to look at other areas of the plane to reinforce. Through several tests they discovered that adding more armor to the ailerons, engine, stabilizers and around the pilot made the planes safer. Only listening to a different interpretation allowed them to find the right solution.

Interventions should start out modestly and playfully. The early experiments should not cost a lot of money, disrupt the organization chart, upset the center of the church life too much or be taken too seriously yet. They should instead be opportunities to try some things and see how the system reacts.

Mature leadership begins with the leader’s capacity to take responsibility for his or her own emotional being and destiny.

Leadership isn’t so much skillfully helping a group accomplish what they want to do (that is management).

The one in power doesn’t win every conversation: the mission trumps. A shared mission, when it is a matter of clear conviction, offers congregational differentiation. It allows us to affirm the wide variety of the body of Christ and still be clear about the decisions we have to make. If the mission trumps all, then a leader must develop the clarity and conviction to live out that mission no matter the circumstance, no matter whether the challenge comes from the context or the very community we serve.

Start with conviction, stay calm, stay connected, and stay the course.

*REORIENTATION* There is perhaps no greater responsibility and no greater gift that leadership can give a group of people on a mission than to have the clearest, most defined mission possible.

when leaders develop the deep understanding of how these three come together, they develop a clear, core conviction that is expressed in the core ideology, the mission statement and through the strategic priorities that will enable us to accomplish our mission and live out our values.

What are we passionate about? What do we have the potential to do better than anyone else? What wikl pay the bills?

the real challenge of leadership is not tactical or strategic but emotional. Not only do we have to deal with the inner uncertainty that goes with leading into uncharted territory, but we also have to manage the two-front battle, which includes our own need to be liked, to gain approval from others or to be seen as a competent professional.

*REORIENTATION* When dealing with managing the present, win-win solutions are the goal. But when leading adaptive change, win-win is usually lose-lose.

The challenge of leadership is learning how to keep innovating and experimenting while attending to and caring for the disappointment of these particular people.

Bringing good, healthy change to an organization, family, church or business is like cooking a stew in a Crock-Pot. Every person is a like a hard, raw vegetable or a firm piece of uncooked meat. Each has its own identity, opinions and beliefs. For the pieces of food to become a meal that will feed a hungry tribe, each bit must be transformed at least a bit. Each vegetable must be softened, the meat must share its flavor, and each morsel must contribute to a healthy sauce for all to share. When the components combine, we end up with something altogether different and tastier than if we were to cook carrots separate from the beef and separate from onions and then put them all together. Without enough heat, nothing changes. Too much heat and it burns. In either case, nobody is fed. A leader’s job is to regulate the heat. The leader is like the thermostat on the Crock-Pot, keeping enough heat in the system so things begin to change, but not enough that individual parts get scorched.

When we keep our deepest purpose/mission/vision as our true urgency, it should not wax and wane; it should remain the central root of urgency around which we regulate the heat of peripheral issues.

For leaders the point of calming down is not to feel better; it’s to make better decisions. It’s to make the best decisions for furthering the mission.

For leaders this is the point to remember about anxiety: People who are overly or chronically anxious don’t make good decisions. When anxiety spikes we revert to more primitive ways of being. We fight, we flee, we freeze.

To stay calm is to be so aware of yourself that your response to the situation is not to the anxiety of the people around you but to the actual issue at hand. Staying calm means so attending to our own internal anxiety in the heat of a challenging moment and the resistance around us that we are not tempted to either cool it down to escape the heat (thus aborting the change process) or to react emotionally, adding more fuel to the fire and scorching the stew we are trying to cook.

As the thermostat of the transformational Crock-Pot, the leader must be able to stay calm enough internally so he or she can help the leadership make the best Blue Zone decisions (see fig. 11.1).13 Red Zone Blue Zone • Emotionally charged • Values are in conflict • Personalized conflict • About issues • Unresolved issues in self • Self-awareness is key • Disproportionate intensity • Proportionate intensity • Conflict is unsolvable • Conflict is solved • The conflict is always about me! • The conflict is always about the mission

Six different teams that reflect the different kinds of relationships a leader must attend to in order to bring transformation to the whole organizational system.

1. Allies. An ally is anyone who is convinced of the mission and is committed to seeing it fulfilled. 2. Confidants. To be a confidant, a person must care more about you than they do about the mission of the organization. 3. Opponents. Potential opponents are stakeholders who have markedly different perspectives from yours and who risk losing the most if you and your initiative go forward. 4. Senior authorities. As I have said from the outset, leadership is not the same thing as authority. Authority is your role, your position of formal power, but leadership is a way of functioning. 5. Casualties. In any transformational leadership effort there will be casualties. You can’t go into uncharted territory without risk. 6. Dissenters. In true adaptive change there are no unanimous votes. Someone, usually a significant number of people, will say no, no matter what. These voices of dissent are extremely important at every step of the way. They will help you see how opposition will take form and will raise the arguments that eventually will come to full volume. Dissenters have the uncanny capacity for asking the tough key question that you have been unwilling to face up to yourself or that others have been unwilling to raise.

Our theology affirms that leadership is a shared task, and the church is meant to be both a safe environment for protecting the community and a group willing to lay down their lives for the vision of God’s kingdom come to earth.

If “adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive,” then if nobody is being mobilized, nobody is being led.

Steven Johnson, in his study of innovation, writes, those who can “cobble together” the parts and pieces in front of them with the tools at hand for a new discovery.