“With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.” ~ G.K. Chesterton
We’re in the middle of a worldview shift across the western world ~ or so says Brian Mclaren, and I am inclined to agree. As with the shift from the Medieval to the Modern Era, new data about the nature of the universe and what it means to be human has blown apart current paradigms of who we are and how the world works.
I’m excited to welcome back Jenni Catron to the blog this week! Jenni serves as the Executive Director of Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, where she leads the staff and oversees the ministry of five campuses. She loves a fabulous cup of tea, great books, learning the game of tennis and hanging out with her husband and border collie. Jenni’s passion is to lead well and to inspire, equip and encourage others to do the same. Jenni blogs at www.jennicatron.tv. Her new book, Just Lead! A No Whining, No Complaining, No Nonsense Practical Guide for Women Leaders in the Church, co-authored with Sherry Surratt is available now.
Leaders make life better. They believe and develop. They identify giftedness and call it out. Leaders leave the world and others better as a result of their presence, and they influence those they love.
Sometimes the word leadership is scary. That seems to be especially true for women. Maybe it’s because of the gross feelings of inadequacy and insecurity we tend to wrestle with. Perhaps it’s because society, culture, and the church have been slow to endow us with this title. But for whatever reason, a lot of us run away from it. This makes me angry for you, one of our world’s best leaders. It makes me angry for all of us: the world that needs you to come out of the shadows and be the leader you were created to be.
“Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal ~ and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.” ~ Walter Wangerin Jr.
Last week, I wrote that for a leader to inspire authentic culture change in an organization, he or she must do three things:
Here’s what I mean by these:
“Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.” ~ Richard Hooker
I’ll bet you’ve seen those nature shows where a school of fish reshapes itself into a ball when threatened by a predator. Every time I watch a scene like that, I’m mesmerized by it. It’s like this collection of individual life forms somehow transforms itself into a single entity, becoming this cloud of life that moves and reacts to its environment as if it were one creature rather than a collection of hundreds. How do they do that? How does this balled-up life form decide where to go, how to move in response to a predatory threat? It looks for all the world like those hundreds of fish are operating with one mind. But where is that mind?
“We are not made of skin and bone, we are made of stories.” ~ Sue Monk Kidd
Culture is the lens through which we see the world. It shapes and shades absolutely everything about our lives, and ourselves. I like that well-known quip about two fish who went out for a swim one morning. Along the way, they ran into a third fish, who greeted them warmly and declared, “The water’s great today, isn’t it!” before swimming on past. But the two fish just looked at each other quizzically and asked, “What’s water?”
That’s how most of us experience culture. It’s the bubble around us that we don’t see, but through which we see everything. This is true whether we’re talking about our national culture, our family culture, or the culture of our church or organization. Culture is ubiquitous in this way at all levels of our experience for the simple reason that it is essential to our human journey. We don’t have instincts as animals do; so the only way we learn to survive in the world is by being taught. Sometimes we learn from our elders; sometimes we learn from our peers. But the end result of all the learning we assimilate ~ about what the world is, how it works, and our place in the grand scheme of things ~ is what we call culture. Culture tells us who we are, and defines for us the story we are living.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
I was in Houston a few weeks back working with the leadership team of a faith-based organization there. We’re doing culture-change work, which is one of the most exciting things I get to do in my coaching, and also, as you might imagine, one of the most challenging.
“We don’t see things the way they are, we see things the way we are.” ~ The Talmud
When coaching leadership teams, one of the foundational agreements we make going into the work is “Everybody gets to be right…partially.” For any team to become fully empowered and effective, this agreement is essential, because it allows for the basic fact that nobody sees the complete picture of any situation or challenge facing the team, and that every person’s perspective includes some truth that the team needs to hear and integrate into its decision-making.
Beneath the clever verbiage, it’s really just a way of agreeing to be humble with each other…to not assume that you (and you alone) have all the answers and see everything perfectly, or that “they” (that is, whoever sees things differently) are utterly misguided and wrong (and possibly evil) and have nothing of value to teach you at all.
