It is often said that if leaders want to see high achievement they must cast bold visions. It is less often pointed out that proclaiming a large vision creates a gap between the vision and the current reality that must be managed. Ron Heifetz, in his book Adaptive Leadership puts it this way.

“Adaptive challenges are gaps generated by bold aspirations amid challenging realities.”

“Wait a minute,” you say, “I was hoping that my leadership vision would help things move ahead. I wasn’t trying to create gaps!”

But that is precisely what true vision does. True vision calls us to venture into unknown territory, to take risks, to innovate — “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Or, to put it in Heifetz’s terms, vision creates a gap between current realities and the preferred future. The bolder the vision and the more challenging the realities, the larger the gap. Good vision casting understands this. It’s goal is to “widen the gap” in a way that appeals to our desire for achievement and sense of adventure.

One of the most powerful ways to frame the gap between reality and vision is to understand it as a challenge that calls for adaptation and new learning. The way to bridge and adaptive gap is not to work harder. You’re probably already working as hard as you can. Instead, an adaptive challenge is a call to work smarter, replacing current strategies, tools, and methods with new ones that help you move faster and farther with the same effort.

Do any of you have examples of vision creating an adaptive challenge? A gap that calls for new learning? How are you meeting the challenge of bridging your adaptive gap?

Leadership models matter because they influence how we think, and how we think determines how we act. Are there distinctive principles that should mark we lead in God’s work? If so what are they?

To focus the question more, let’s ask, “What is that makes leadership in a Great Commission movement unique and different from leadership in other areas of activity?” The only way to answer this question is to dig into the same book that gives us the Great Commission: the Bible. What can the Scriptures teach us about what makes leadership in God’s work unique?

Rather than looking at specific texts, I’d like to “open the lens” and consider the grand sweep of the Bible’s “leadership story” across the whole span of our creation’s history. The diagram below attempts to capture the main principles.

The Bible’s Leadership Story
Click to Enlarge

Staring from the top we have:

(1) God’s decisions in eternity (right and left) followed by

(2) Creation (on the left) and the renewed creation in the New City (on the right);

(3) Our world’s collapse into sin (left) with final judgment of sin (left);

(4) The penalty for sin on the cross in humility but one day he will return in glory (right).

Our unique time (in the center marked by the red arrow) is an age during which God is calling people to join his new human community. Those of us who follow Christ are entrusted with this invitation and empowered by His gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus sent to counsel and empower us for this task. Read More

He shared in their humanity so that he might free those
who were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15

“How does the resurrection of Jesus transform your understanding and practice of leadership?” If someone asked you this question could you answer it clearly? Think about it for a minute. If this most pivotal event at the core of our faith doesn’t have an impact on how we lead then surely something is wrong. Isn’t it?

Toxic Leaders and the Fear of Death

As I thought about this point, I recalled a fascinating analysis of toxic leadership provided by Jean Lipman-Blumen in her book on toxic leadership. As with other poisonous things, these leaders come in varying degrees of toxicity. Some are mildly poisonous — one might say “not altogether bad” and are found in small domains, offices, churches and ministries. They set unreasonable goals, promote excessive internal competiton, and create cultures of blame. Others rise to the senior ranks of great corporations and lead their companies into disaster. They violate the dignity and rights of others, bend or ignore ethical obligations, and divert resources to elevation of their own grandeur.The worst are among the monsters of history who names have become bywords for evil. Their legacy includes death, fear, and devastation. What all toxic leaders have in common is that they “leave their followers worse off then they found them.” Read More

Questions are powerful. Getting to the right answer begins with asking the right question. A particularly probing question can press us toward new perspectives, new insights, new methods. A very few questions–just the right questions–can stimulate wide-scale transformation

The Power of a Transformational Question

Robert Quinn relates the experience of consultant Kurt Wright who was working for a huge software project that involved a $100 million dollar contract. 400 hundred engineers were 38 months into a 60-month schedule. The project was slipping behind every month and was now 18 months behind. Worse still, if the project was not on schedule within 10 months, the contract required the company to pay a $30 million penalty. Disaster was 10 months away.

What would you do? Crack the whip and urge people on? Fire the managers responsible for the slippage and hire new ones? Give up?

After many conversations with people involved in the project Wright concluded that he had to change the fundamental “scripts” that were controlling the workers’ assumptions and behaviors. To galvanize everyone’s efforts and establish a new positive vision he concluded that it was necessary to change the underlying question. In short, those 400 engineers and managers needed a new and transformational question. Read More

There’s a marvelous article in the January issue of Harvard Business Review on “leading from behind” and “leadership as collective genius.” Professor Linda Hill is chair of the Harvard Business School’s High Potential Leadership program and an active researcher in the field of leadership. Leadership in the future, she says, will require “leading from behind” to create environments where people working in teams can contribute their skills for collaborative problem solving and innovation through the joint creativity of diverse teams.

Tibetan Good Shepherd (Click to Enlarge)

She compares this process to the work of a shepherd. Shepherds lead from the rear of the flock, helping them navigate and creating an environment where the more nimble and agile are able to run ahead so that the others can follow. The task of the leader is to help individuals flourish in their roles, setting boundaries for the flock, and helping to resolve tensions. Leading from behind is particularly important when the goal is to encourage innovation, discovery and implementation of new ideas and processes. Innovation flourishes where leaders both unleash and harness the creativity of the team, Hill says. “You have to create an environment in which” all the participants are “engaged and in which the collective talent of team members is tapped by having everyone take the lead at some point.” Read More

What does it take to be an extraordinarily effective organization? This is the perennial leadership question. There is something different about some organizations, something that helps them outperform others and even exceed their own goals.

In his book, Building the Bridge As You Walk On it, Robert Quinn says that these “extraordinarily positive” organizations can be called highly “productive communities.” In these communities, people find that they can contribute and excel.

What makes highly productive communities different?

During a visit to one extraordinary organization, a group of managers described the impact of several extraordinary people. These were people who had influenced the organization very significantly. They had inspired others to achieve at higher-than-dreamed levels.

“So what do they do?” the researcher asked. Quinn says that there was a long silence. Finally one director said, “That’s the wrong question.”

I like that. To ask first about what they do is to ask the wrong question. That question points us to look for behaviors, techniques, practices, and habits. It’s the dream of everyone concerned about leadership. “Tell me what I need to do!” We want the three-point short-list, the seven-part formula, the 21 irrefutable keys to successful leadership. If we could only find out what these extraordinary people do we could then capture it, teach it, and through imitation gain that same performance advantage for ourselves.

If only!

But if the answer is not what they do, then what is it? Quinn continues the story. After the long pause the director said, “It is not what they do, because each one of them is unique in how they pull it off. It is not about what they do; it is about who they are.”

It’s not what they do.
It’s who they are!

Don’t miss that point! The key to developing and sustaining positive and productive communities lies within. It’s a matter of heart and character, integrity and soul. Organizational excellence tends not to be a function of imitation, Quinn tells us. It’s a function of “origination” that begins within the hearts and minds of people who have a deep inner sense of purpose, integrity, and caring. Read More

It’s an ancient art. An aboriginal elder gathers an audience and begins to tell a story. As the story unfolds his hands move, gestures illustrating and reinforcing the drama of his tale. People listen with rapt attention.

The stories are entertaining–yes–but they are so much more. Through his tales people identify with the heritage of their people, weep over their tragedies, rejoice in their triumphs. The stories capture their dreams and longings, hopes and fears, values they cherish and behaviors they hate.

Great Storytellers are
great “truth tellers”

Some people think storytelling is about fantasy and make believe. But the heart of storytelling is “truth telling” says Peter Guber. It’s a profound observation coming from the man who produced such films as Rainman and The Color Purple and has headed up Sony Pictures, Polygram, and Columbia Pictures. Perhaps only Stephen Spielberg or George Lucas could claim more impressive credentials.

Storytellers become “truth tellers” to their people for in their stories people hear truth about the meaning of their lives. Effective storytellers, Guber believes, master the four truths of storytelling. At the end I’ll add one more of my own. Read More