Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

Leaders, it is assumed, are visionaries who have the unique ability to see past the horizon, to see the future coming before anyone else and prepare the organization to meet that challenge. That is surely a valuable ability. But 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.

The first component of developing adaptive capacity is to realize that it’s a process of learning and adapting to fulfill a missional purpose, not to fix the immediate issues.

Adaptive leadership is an iterative process involving three key activities: (1) observing events and patterns around you; (2) interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is really going on); and (3) designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenge you have identified.

Just like a doctor who does not want to prescribe a medicine until she or he has done a proper diagnosis, leaders need to take the time to insure that they have clearly seen the challenge before them before attempting a new program or making a big change. Trying to get this larger, systemic perspective is what Heifetz and Linsky call “getting up on the balcony,” and it begins with making observations

In the observation stage, therefore, the group must intentionally withhold interpretations or interventions in order to gather as much data as possible.

Again, the goal is to get as many divergent interpretations as possible, all the while listening for the common thread, themes—the song.

What is going on in this situation that nobody is talking about but is affecting the whole system of the church?

It was actually a more demanding set of questions about energy, resources, focus and job descriptions. The competing values in the worship decline was about the focus of our ministry: Is the priority taking the congregation deeper in discipleship (which had been my emphasis for the greater part of three years) or do we need to double down on creating a community with a stronger web of connections outside of the Sunday morning services? And what would that look like if we did? It also led us to some hard questions for our own introspection: Do we need to reconsider our strategies built around Sunday morning? And, even more daunting, if we have been working on this for the better part of five years, why haven’t we made more progress?

Disappointing people “at a rate they can absorb” is a skill that requires nuance: Disappoint people too much and they give up on you, stop following you and may even turn on you. Don’t disappoint them enough and you’ll never lead them anywhere.

Leadership isn’t so much skillfully helping a group accomplish what they want to do (that is management). Leadership is taking people where they need to go and yet resist going.

The mission trumps. Always. Every time. In every conflict. Not the pastor. Not the members of the church who pay the bills. Not those who scream the loudest or who are most in pain. No. In a healthy Christian ministry, the mission wins every argument.

The mission trumps all.

Friedman calls “the persistence of form.”

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

The first question about leading into uncharted territory is not about change but about what will not change. First we determine what is precious, what is worth keeping no matter the circumstances, what will never change, what is the core ideology of the church.

The first step in adaptive change is “start with missional conviction”; the second is to “stay calm.”

They quickly had to learn how to “disappoint their own people at a rate they could absorb.”

They get really mad. Mostly, they get mad at you, and this is exactly the sign that transformation is beginning to happen.

It’s to make the best decisions for furthering the mission.

we will operate out of the Red Zone of high emotional reactivity based on one or more of four core issues: survival, acceptance, competence and control. Each person is different, and each person must negotiate different Red Zone issues. Red Zone issues come from our life experiences and brain wiring, they come out of the reactivity that assumes a system should focus more on how people feel than what we are called to do.

Nothing. Nothing changes. At least nothing really important. Oh, a few cosmetic shifts. But mostly everything defaults back to where it was. Homeostasis rules.

leadership is always relational.

Allies.

Allies, are all about furthering the mission. Period.

Confidants. To be a confidant, a person must care more about you than they do about the mission of the organization.

Allies Confidants Within organization Usually outside of organization See your goals See your heart Have other (even competing) loyalties Loyal only to you Give you perspective Give you encouragement Can build alliances Can build you up Not friends Not partners

when friends work together, they need even clearer boundaries and clearer agreements. They need even more communication, not less. Even more understanding of their roles and the responsibilities, not less.

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.

Knowing, respecting and staying connected to your opponents is a critical part of staying in the Blue Zone.

Senior authorities.

leadership is not the same thing as authority. Authority is your role, your position of formal power, but leadership is a way of functioning.

Dissenters.

encourages leaders to engage dissenters, not discourage them:

the maintaining mission group and the transformation team.

In churches the transformation team needs to be made up of both staff and lay leaders. In any organization the transformation team requires both those who have authoritative positions and those with informal influence. In short, the transformation team must be those with the most creativity, energy, credibility, personal maturity and dogged determination.

The ways we have been taught to lead are inadequate for this new terrain or circumstance.

Give the work back to the people who most care about it.

Engage the mature and motivated.

Stay connected to your critics

Expect sabotage.