Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

When given that particular choice, 90 percent choose dying.7 In a study of those who were faced with exactly that choice—stop drinking or you will die, stop smoking or you will die, change your diet now or you will die, the vast majority choose to risk death. In a world where we now have the technology to do heart valve bypasses and even complete heart transplants, we continually fail at getting people to change the behavior that makes these procedures necessary. As Ronald Heifetz says, “We have the technology to fix the heart, but not change it.”8 True change of heart, true transformation, is so profoundly challenging because “the sustainability of change depends on having the people with the problem internalize the change itself.”9 This demands new ways of thinking and new ways of behaving that depend entirely on new ways of relating. The transformational leader cannot rely on competence and credibility alone. In an address to a Duke Divinity School Convocation, Ronald Heifetz said, “Adaptive processes don’t require leadership with answers. It requires leadership that create structures that hold people together through the very conflictive, passionate, and sometimes awful process of addressing questions for which there aren’t easy answers.”