We Proceed On
Do you ever feel like you aren’t finding the right answers to your questions about leadership? Been there. Whether you lead a church, a business, a non-profit, a team or a family, there are questions at every turn. Some questions can be answered easily. Should you spend $100,000 when you have $1,000 in the bank? No. Should you communicate clearly and frequently with your team or family? Yes.
Obviously, many questions involved with leadership are not that simple. Could it be because we’re asking the wrong questions?
In the church world, the questions about why church attendance and involvement is in decline and how to correct that situation are big ones. So many studies have been done on statistics and solutions. Maybe, though, we’re just asking the wrong questions and looking for solutions in the wrong direction.
Lewis & Clark and their traveling company faced LOTS of questions. At every turn - questions. I love this simple quote that comes from their journals:
“We proceed on.”
They proceeded on. The key, though, is that they did not ever “proceed on” in a safe, traditional, follow-the-norm type of way. At every turn, we find that they sought the BEST way to proceed on taking into account their current situations and obstacles. They didn’t stay locked into “the way it’s always been done” thinking. They took into account all the experience and wisdom within their team, weighed what they knew and what they didn’t know, and chose an imaginative and adventurous solution. They forged ahead when many others would have turned back. But they didn’t just forge ahead - they adapted their approach as necessary and as often as necessary!
In chapter 15 of Canoeing the Mountains, Bolsinger refers to a phrase coined by Edwin Friedman - “imaginative gridlock”. He proposes that “imaginative gridlock… keeps a system locked into old mental models and outdated strategies even though the world has changed.” Friedman describes these imaginatively gridlocked systems as “marked by three common characteristics that are both symptom and cause of a locked-in perspective:
An unending treadmill of trying harder
Looking for answers rather than reframing the questions
Either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies”
Bolsinger writes “leadership off the map is inherently risky and frequently lonely. Leaders are those who ‘separate themselves’ from the emotional processes of the group around them and ‘go first’. But even beyond inspiration, exploration is also a profoundly powerful teacher with valuable lessons to bestow”. This involves reframing the questions. “This reframing or ‘an ability to think about things in more than one way’ is perhaps the most critical skill for adaptive leadership”. Doing things the way they have always been done is not an option. Moving forward in the best way for the current conditions IS.
This kind of thinking begins with the leaders. “A strong leader… recognizes that not only does learning keep leaders relevant but expert expectation is a form of collusion between an organization that doesn’t want to change… and a leader who wants the security, in Jim Collins’s poignant distinction, of being the ‘time-teller’ instead of a ‘clock builder’”. Leaders must be able to look at situations with an open mind - a blank slate. They also have to be willing to be transformed themselves. A leader is key to any change. A STRONG leader learns that personal transformation leads to organizational transformation. They are key. They need to focus on their own growth, focus on what is ahead (and not behind), and continually strive toward learning (and not what they already know).
Sound familiar? Romans 12:2 says:
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
GOD’S goal for us is transformation! A holy reorientation. Bolsinger writes “God is taking us into uncharted territory to transform us. The great discovery in following Christ into His mission is that we find ourselves. And the beautiful paradox is that the more committed we are to our own transformation, the better leader we will be.”
