Leadership

leadership folly: making all the decisions

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While its true that leaders are known for the decisions they make, its folly to think that making all the decisions is a mark of great leadership.  Its actually a dis-service to the organization and the leaders who serve with and under you to believe that you must be in on   every decision.

Steven Sample, President of the University of Southern California, writes in his book The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership of his two general rules for decision making:

1.  Never make a decision yourself that can reasonably be delegated to a lieutenant.

2.  Never make a decision today that can reasonably be put off to tomorrow.

His first rule is my interest today.

Leaders can find good reason to send decisions back down to others, not as a matter of shirking responsibility but as a way of developing the organization and the people who serve with them.  The leaders that empower others to make decisions are generally characterized by a strong sense of internal security, clarity regarding the values informing the organizational life, the ability to describe/story these values, communicate trust as the expectation that others will make good decisions, and a delight in seeing others excel and grow.  Why would leaders delight in others making decisions?  Sample gives three reasons:

“Even in small organizations there are compelling reasons why a leader should consistently delegate most decision to selected ones of his lieutenants.  The first has to do with time constraints.  Making a good decision is hard, time-consuming work, and no leader can make many good decisions in a month’s time, much less in a day or a week.  So he needs to carefully reserve for himself only the most important decisions and cheerfully delegate the rest.

A second major factor in favour of delegation is that it helps develop and nurture strong lieutenants.  As we’ll see in a later chapter, a leader can’t expect his lieutenants to grow and grow up unless he gives them the opportunity to make real decisions that will have real consequences for the organization, without their being constantly second-guessed by the leader…

Finally the contrarian leader who is willing to delegate almost all decisions to lieutenants has an opportunity to build a much stronger and more coherent organization than does the leader who tries to make all the decisions himself.  This assertion is very counterintuitive; one would think at first blush that strength and coherence would be on the side of the absolute dictator.  But here’s the key:  the leader who delegates is forced to build coherence by putting together a team of lieutenants who have shared values and common goals.  If he’s successful in this regard, his organization can survive the loss of the leader himself (which will always happen eventually).

By contrast, when a dictatorial leader leaves the scene there is usually no strong and well-knit set of lieutenants to carry the organization forward in a coherent way.  An abrupt ending of years of dictatorial repression usually leads to an eruption of bitter factions and infighting (think of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death).” p. 73-74

Cold Hard Truth & Dyslexia

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I read Kevin O’Leary’s Cold Hold Truth over the holidays.  As to business, money and life, his perspective reminded me of the axiom, “Facts are our friends.”  I most enjoyed the early chapters that explored his family of origin and early influences.  O’Leary faces the challenge of dyslexia and was blessed to have early intervention through the active concern of his mother who accessed care at Montreal’s Children Hospital.  Dr. Sam Rabinovitch and Dr. Margie Golick gave O’Leary both skills and perspectives on dyslexia that helped him harness his strengths and get ahead of his weaknesses.  I believe this early intervention is a huge contributor as to why we know his name and recognize him in Canada today.

O’Leary writes:

It’s no exaggeration to say that enrolling in special education changed my life completely.  To be told that my dyslexia had an upside shifted my perspective on myself and the world around me, and it left me with five very important principles that carried me through the rest of my education, all the way to my MBA and into my business life.

1.  Stick it out through difficulties.  You don’t have to be perfect; you just have to finish.
2.  Stand up for yourself.
3.  Explain what you need, clearly.
4.  Ask questions.
5.  If you don’t understand the answer, ask for a better, clearer explanation.

Margie gave me this list, reminding me again and again that no one else would do these things for me.  I had to do them for myself.  Cold Hard Truth p. 22

Until a child has the means to advocate for themselves parents, teachers and others must do it for them.  Early intervention with dyslexia has proven helpful over and over.  Its important to intervene before the spirit of a child is crushed and they become infected with a resentment that spoils most of their life.  O’Leary goes on to say, “There is a lot of shame when children are told over and over they can’t do something.  These children rarely grow up to be success stories.  Margie Golick removed that shame at the exact right time in my life, before it took root and hampered me, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.  I hope everyone finds his or her Margie.”

missional pastors

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Tod Bolsinger responds to Gali on chaplains today:

But increasingly, this is not the mission of the church today. In a post-Christendom context, the metaphor of pastor as healer, chaplain, or curer of souls is inadequate to the task and literally killing the church.  Churches that continue to cling to a Christendom context and expectation for pastors (as seen mostly in mainline churches like my own) are dramatically in decline and becoming increasingly irrelevant to the changing cultural contexts that are far more like a mission field in the first century than the cultural contexts of the most recent past centuries for which Galli (and most of us, frankly—even me) pine nostalgically.

But that day is gone.

The Missional Movement, as originally inspired by the insights of Lesslie Newbigin expressed theologically by Darrell Guder and others, has given rise to an entirely different understanding of a pastor as the leader of a people in mission.

In this post-Christendom context, the congregation, not the pastor, is the embodiment of Jesus (literally “the body of Christ”).  The congregation, not the pastor, is the true ‘healer of souls’ going into the world to demonstrate and proclaim the reign of God.

Read more here.

chaplains today

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Mark Gali writes of the need for more chaplains:

We find ourselves in an odd period of church history when many people have become so used to large, impersonal institutions that they want that in their church as well. Thus the attraction of megachurches, where people can blend in and not be seen if they want. Many thought leaders who ponder church life naturally end up championing massive institutions and denigrating (inadvertently, to be sure) the healing of hurting souls. And this in a community whose theology is supposedly grounded in the universal and cosmic love of God who gives attention to each of us as individuals.

There may be something else going on as well. A chaplain is a minister in the service of another. A chaplain at a hospital or in the military is clearly not the highest ranking member of the institution, clearly not the person in charge of running things. The chaplain’s job is defined by service—service to the institution’s needs and goals, service to the individuals who come for spiritual help. The chaplain prays for people in distress, administers sacraments to those in need, leads worship for those desperate for God. In short, the chaplain is at the beck and call of those who are hurting for God. He’s not his own man. She is not her own woman. There’s no mistaking a chaplain for an entrepreneurial leader, a catalyst for growth. No, the chaplain is unmistakably a servant.

Read the whole article here.

Media & Being “Proximate”

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If you turn your ear and eyes to media today it will be difficult to miss that this is the one year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti.  I still find the images painful to watch and the ensuing devastation in the lives of people feels like a weight even though I am thousands of miles away.

I’m now 100 pages into Tony Blair’s biography, “A Journey, My Political Life.”  In his chapter, The Apprentice Leader” he reflects on the impact Steven Spielberg had on him through the movie Schindler’s List.  He writes,

“There was a scene in it I kept coming back to.  The commandant, played by Ralph Fiennes, is in his bedroom arguing and she is mocking him, just like any girlfriend might do.  While in the bathroom, he spies an inmate of the camp.  He take up his rifle and shoots him.  They carry on their argument.  It’s her I think of.  She didn’t shoot anyone; she was a bystander.

Except she wasn’t.  There were no bystanders in that situation.  You participate, like it or not.  You take sides by inaction as much as by action.  Why were the Nazis able to do these things?  Because of people like him?  No because of people like her.

She was in the next room.  She was proximate.  The responsibility seems therefore more proximate too.  But what of the situations we know about, but we are not proximate to?  What of the murder distant from us the injustice we cannot see, the pain we cannot witness but from which we nonetheless know is out there?  We know what is happening, proximate or not.  In that case, we are not bystanders either.  If we know and we fail to act, we are responsible.

A few months later, Rwanda erupted in genocide.  We knew.  We failed to act.  We were responsible.

Not very practical, is it, as a reaction?  The trouble is its’ how I fell.  Whether such reactions are wise in someone charged with a leading a country is another matter.”  A Journey, p. 63.

Fortunate for many people around the world, the global connections media and the internet have created for us make us proximate.  Unfortunate for us, I believe, is that we are being conditioned to violence, awfulness, tragedy in a way that makes us inactive though proximate.  Unfortunate is to retreat to self-righteousness as a form of reason for non-action.  Compassion for others moves us to participate in both relief and development.  What we do with others more proximate than us, i.e. in this instance with Haitians on the ground in Haiti is I believe an essential though difficult process.  Leaders whose hearts are moved will do it.

Looking to take share in the responsibility of “proximate” try these organizations out:

haitipartners.org

worldvision.ca

churcheshelpingchurches.org

baptistglobalresponse.com