4/12 part 1

eadership

 From Mandy Smith's The Vulnerable Pastor, pp. 122-124:

Being a woman can feel like weakness.  When you are a woman, your  own body teaches you your limits. From the time you're small, there is always someone bigger, with a stronger body and a deeper voice. And as you grow, you learn how little control you have over your own body, from a sometimes painful, often embarrassing inconvenience that will visit you every month to the strange season of having a person growing inside of you for 9 months. When the little bundle makes its appearance, your body goes from creator of life to sustainer of life. All kinds of new systems kick into gear. It's a miraculous process but one completely beyond your control. As you go from mother to grandmother, your body begins to change again, throwing you into a state of confusion as the steady cycles you have grown accustomed to become syncopated and erratic and then finally stop altogether.

If being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

Inhabiting this ever-changing form forces you to acknowledge (even celebrate) your limits and to sense your responsibility to and reliance upon the broader community.

 So if being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an artist can feel like weakness.  If you're an artist, you are spurred on by an unending search for truth and beauty. You can have your breath stolen by the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing and be unfit for anything else but crying or singing or writing about it for the rest of the day. And once you've found that tiny sign of hope, you must make sense of it. And so you make things to process and express it, trying to capture all the feeling and meaning for others through the limited media of notes and words and paint. You step into a creative process that is sometimes cruel and raw, a little too close for comfort. Then, with shaking hands, you put that outpouring of your soul into a public form and hope that someone understands.

If creative people know how to find truth and beauty, even when it's hidden in brokenn

 ess, if they're comfortable with mystery, failure, and vulnerability, isn't it a strength to be an artist?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

 

Being an outsider can feel like weakness. Being on the outside means always having that vague sense that you didn't get the inside joke. You feel like a child again as you have to learn things that are obvious and basic to everyone else. But over time you compensate. You learn not only to speak but to listen in other languages. You become self-aware as those things which were once transparent about yourself (back when everyone around you was the same as you) are suddenly glaringly visible. For the first time you feel the weight of the lens of your own culture, your own assumptions, and eventually, you learn how to switch glasses.

If being displaced helps us relate to the ways God's people have always been the sojourners, isn't it meaningful to be displaced?

If outsiders know how to be flexible and self-aware, to communicate in a relevant way in many contexts, isn't it a strength to be an outsider?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an introvert can feel like weakness. Thinking of the perfect answer a day after the question makes you feel dumb, even though your belated but perfectly-worded response is more insightful than the one given by the quick-thinker in the room. Needing to recover from extended periods with people draws labels like "anti-social," even though you may have great social skills. Longing for depth and complexity and silence makes you feel like a precious egg-head in a world hungry for sound bites and noise.

If introverts know how to listen, and are unafraid of silence, depth, and authenticity, isn't it a strength to be an introvert?

(link from a pre-book article by Mandy)

 Similar article
 ---



More by Mandy on women and weakness

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/#sthash.ct0bK0sh.dpuf

eadership

 From Mandy Smith's The Vulnerable Pastor, pp. 122-124:

Being a woman can feel like weakness.  When you are a woman, your  own body teaches you your limits. From the time you're small, there is always someone bigger, with a stronger body and a deeper voice. And as you grow, you learn how little control you have over your own body, from a sometimes painful, often embarrassing inconvenience that will visit you every month to the strange season of having a person growing inside of you for 9 months. When the little bundle makes its appearance, your body goes from creator of life to sustainer of life. All kinds of new systems kick into gear. It's a miraculous process but one completely beyond your control. As you go from mother to grandmother, your body begins to change again, throwing you into a state of confusion as the steady cycles you have grown accustomed to become syncopated and erratic and then finally stop altogether.

If being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

Inhabiting this ever-changing form forces you to acknowledge (even celebrate) your limits and to sense your responsibility to and reliance upon the broader community.

 So if being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an artist can feel like weakness.  If you're an artist, you are spurred on by an unending search for truth and beauty. You can have your breath stolen by the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing and be unfit for anything else but crying or singing or writing about it for the rest of the day. And once you've found that tiny sign of hope, you must make sense of it. And so you make things to process and express it, trying to capture all the feeling and meaning for others through the limited media of notes and words and paint. You step into a creative process that is sometimes cruel and raw, a little too close for comfort. Then, with shaking hands, you put that outpouring of your soul into a public form and hope that someone understands.

If creative people know how to find truth and beauty, even when it's hidden in brokenn

 ess, if they're comfortable with mystery, failure, and vulnerability, isn't it a strength to be an artist?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

 

Being an outsider can feel like weakness. Being on the outside means always having that vague sense that you didn't get the inside joke. You feel like a child again as you have to learn things that are obvious and basic to everyone else. But over time you compensate. You learn not only to speak but to listen in other languages. You become self-aware as those things which were once transparent about yourself (back when everyone around you was the same as you) are suddenly glaringly visible. For the first time you feel the weight of the lens of your own culture, your own assumptions, and eventually, you learn how to switch glasses.

If being displaced helps us relate to the ways God's people have always been the sojourners, isn't it meaningful to be displaced?

If outsiders know how to be flexible and self-aware, to communicate in a relevant way in many contexts, isn't it a strength to be an outsider?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an introvert can feel like weakness. Thinking of the perfect answer a day after the question makes you feel dumb, even though your belated but perfectly-worded response is more insightful than the one given by the quick-thinker in the room. Needing to recover from extended periods with people draws labels like "anti-social," even though you may have great social skills. Longing for depth and complexity and silence makes you feel like a precious egg-head in a world hungry for sound bites and noise.

If introverts know how to listen, and are unafraid of silence, depth, and authenticity, isn't it a strength to be an introvert?

(link from a pre-book article by Mandy)

 Similar article
 ---



More by Mandy on women and weakness

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/#sthash.ct0bK0sh.dpuf

women, artists, outsiders and introverts: strong church leadership

 From Mandy Smith's The Vulnerable Pastor, pp. 122-124:

Being a woman can feel like weakness.  When you are a woman, your  own body teaches you your limits. From the time you're small, there is always someone bigger, with a stronger body and a deeper voice. And as you grow, you learn how little control you have over your own body, from a sometimes painful, often embarrassing inconvenience that will visit you every month to the strange season of having a person growing inside of you for 9 months. When the little bundle makes its appearance, your body goes from creator of life to sustainer of life. All kinds of new systems kick into gear. It's a miraculous process but one completely beyond your control. As you go from mother to grandmother, your body begins to change again, throwing you into a state of confusion as the steady cycles you have grown accustomed to become syncopated and erratic and then finally stop altogether.

If being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

Inhabiting this ever-changing form forces you to acknowledge (even celebrate) your limits and to sense your responsibility to and reliance upon the broader community.

 So if being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an artist can feel like weakness.  If you're an artist, you are spurred on by an unending search for truth and beauty. You can have your breath stolen by the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing and be unfit for anything else but crying or singing or writing about it for the rest of the day. And once you've found that tiny sign of hope, you must make sense of it. And so you make things to process and express it, trying to capture all the feeling and meaning for others through the limited media of notes and words and paint. You step into a creative process that is sometimes cruel and raw, a little too close for comfort. Then, with shaking hands, you put that outpouring of your soul into a public form and hope that someone understands.

If creative people know how to find truth and beauty, even when it's hidden in brokenn

 ess, if they're comfortable with mystery, failure, and vulnerability, isn't it a strength to be an artist?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

 

Being an outsider can feel like weakness. Being on the outside means always having that vague sense that you didn't get the inside joke. You feel like a child again as you have to learn things that are obvious and basic to everyone else. But over time you compensate. You learn not only to speak but to listen in other languages. You become self-aware as those things which were once transparent about yourself (back when everyone around you was the same as you) are suddenly glaringly visible. For the first time you feel the weight of the lens of your own culture, your own assumptions, and eventually, you learn how to switch glasses.

If being displaced helps us relate to the ways God's people have always been the sojourners, isn't it meaningful to be displaced?

If outsiders know how to be flexible and self-aware, to communicate in a relevant way in many contexts, isn't it a strength to be an outsider?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an introvert can feel like weakness. Thinking of the perfect answer a day after the question makes you feel dumb, even though your belated but perfectly-worded response is more insightful than the one given by the quick-thinker in the room. Needing to recover from extended periods with people draws labels like "anti-social," even though you may have great social skills. Longing for depth and complexity and silence makes you feel like a precious egg-head in a world hungry for sound bites and noise.

If introverts know how to listen, and are unafraid of silence, depth, and authenticity, isn't it a strength to be an introvert?

(link from a pre-book article by Mandy)

 Similar article

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/#sthash.ct0bK0sh.dpuf

try these links

• here
• here
• here
• gallery 

post your comment under this post or the next (part 2)













"Time Bomb" (Dave Matthews Band) ..lyrics at bottom.
studio version:

live version; wow:

acoustic with Tim Reynolds:
 

If I'm a ticking time bomb
Waiting to blow my top
No one would ever know
Not until I blew up

No one would believe it
He was such a normal man
Shake their heads and wonder why

If Martians fell from the sky
What would that do to God?
Would we put the weapon down
Or aim it up at the sky

No one would believe it
Except the f#@king nut jobs
They'd laugh and cry
"We told you so!"

Baby when I get home
I want to believe in Jesus
Hammer in the final nail
Help me pick up the pieces

When everything starts to fall
So fast that it terrifies you
When will you hit the wall?
Are you gonna learn to fly?

No one would believe it
Except for all the people
Watching as you fly away

Baby when I get home
I want to pick up those pieces
Hammer in the final nail
And lean me up against Jesus

Baby when I get home
I want to believe in Jesus
Hammer in the final nail
Help me pick up the pieces

Baby when I get home
Help me pick up the pieces
Hammer in the final nail
I wanna believe in Jesus!!
--------------------------------

i preach=lie for a living

Chris Erdman:

"So many churches have no real room for the kind of honesty preaching requires. In fact congregations and their preachers often move in a direction opposed to truthfulness and become places we experience as contrived, artificial environments where the raw stuff of real human life is kept out of bounds, despite the rawness of the texts we read together each ...Preaching is a kind of truthtelling-even if there are enormous pressures to do otherwise. Rock and roll, says Bono, isn't much different. There are enormous pressures to hide, deceive and entertain, keeping us inside a false world. U2's success may be just at this point. They seem able to name pain in realistic yet hopeful ways....At the close of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" {at Slane Castle, 2oo1, video below}...Bono chants, one by one, the names of those killed {in the Omagh bombing}..

This is rock and roll that cuts


through masks and bleed red the passions of the heart..If rock and roll can do this, how much more our preaching?

..Bono: 'Never trust a performer, performers are the best liars. They lie for a living...You are an actor in a certain sense. But a writer is not a liar. There's a piece of Scripture: Know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

-Chris Erdman, "Countdown to Sunday," pp. 28-30

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-preachlie-for-living.html#sthash.13U8bFHD.dpuf

Just like you would at a museum, spend some time pondering this work of art below(Rublev's icon of Троица: Trinity) before reading the links below:

 Okay, just kidding.  That photo  above was indeed an artistic reeenactment of the Trinity at one of our  Sunday gatherings.  The worst part of it is that I am arrogant enough to "direct" the Trinity (what else are pastors for?".  And  Keltic Ken, Shy Stevens and Kevin Deisher ARE quite godly (read about it at this link "most guys do" : pregnant dancing with the Trinity)

But here is the art to ponder before reading the links:

  Links (I would love to hear Mark DeRaud's take on all this, feel free to comment below, Mark):

• 1)Good detailed artcle detailing the icon, including thoughts by Henri Nouwen: Icon of the Holy Trinity

• 2)See page 12-15 of "Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service" by Stephen Seamands here

•   3)See Richard Beck's\My Rublev Icon Tattoo

•   4)"Rublev’s Icon: Contemplating the Trinity, Inwardly
  and Outwardly" by Paul Fromont

•   5)Trinity (Andrei Rublev) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

=

Studies suggest the following activities can  (some literally) make your brain grow,  and make you smarter.

• thinking in parables, puns , analogy, synesthesia, comparitrast and metaphor
• IMPROV!
• studying, and practicing satire..being a Holy Fool, Trickster ..becoming a character (copping a Colbert, mocking McPhisto, pulling a prosopeion.
• swimming
• chess..  hmm, Paul Hewson's secret? (But remember Chesterton's warning)
• music, especially when the lyric and/or the music creatively combine/mix genres (essentially a subset of #1); some suggest especially jazz....(some studies debate this thesis)
• being bilingual/bicultural
• healthy sex life (also here, and here)
• laughing
• giving up TV
• dancing
• wearing wearable tech
• coffee (stimulates neural connections to make analogy connections..so also a subset of #1)
• art
• thinking in threes, trinities, trialectic, third ways, tertium quid, fuzzy set   (vs. triangulation)
• giving birth
• being a mother
• daydreaming
• being in a  terrible mood,
• exercise
• reading..especially if in variety
• wearing  a lab coat
• ping pong
• faith
• electricity to the skull
• believing you can become smarter
• Googling  (see this, article, this one, or just start here!)

I won't even mention these studies:
(Don't read/believe them!)

• 'Alcohol makes your brain grow'
• Cigarettes makes you smarter
• video games
• hyperstimulation makes you smarter

--

Dropping the Fresno Drop

Since I live in Fresno, I have been amazed that hardly anyone in town even knows about the world-changing "Fresno Drop."

It seems that not even a 50th anniversary of the Drop, let alone the current Wall Street-Main Street news, merits a mention in local press..

..So why is it news in the Poughkeepsie Journal and beyond?

The basic story :

"America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958," writes Joseph Nocera in his fascinating book, A Piece of the Action. He is referring to the day when the Bank of America 'dropped' 60,000 credit cards in Fresno, California, thereby creating the all-purpose credit card.It was a novel idea, in effect offering anyone who wanted it a general line of credit, unsecured by collateral. In the 1950s Americans were just getting used to taking out loans to buy ... products—cars, refrigerators, televisions.

But debt was still disreputable. If you could not afford something, you squirreled away money until you could buy it. Besides, it was not easy to get a loan Most banks thought that making small loans to the average family was not worth the time and effort. Except for the Bank of America. Its founder, AP Giannini, the son of an immigrant, wanted to make money available for “his people.” His bank, founded in 1904 in a converted saloon, was initially called the Bank of Italy and in 1928 renamed the Bank of America. Whereas other banks passed off consumer loans to finance companies, Bank of America embraced the role of serving the broad middle class... As a result it grew to become America's largest bank by the 1970s .

Credit cards opened up the world of credit to the masses, allowing ordinary people to take out an advance on their future earnings, as the rich had always done. It is difficult today to imagine life without credit cards. And yet they were almost unknown forty years ago. What happened over those forty years, and most especially in the last twenty-five, is in many ways more is in many ways more revolutionary than in any comparable period in modern financial history. Capitalism was transformed into democratic capitalism. (pp. 202-203, Fareed Zakaria (articulate editor of Newseek International)'s "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad ." whole chapter here)

-from my post called: Fresno: something to do with money

Credit lured Americans into spending more

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#sthash.GbBPzgHG.dpuf

Dropping the Fresno Drop

Since I live in Fresno, I have been amazed that hardly anyone in town even knows about the world-changing "Fresno Drop."

It seems that not even a 50th anniversary of the Drop, let alone the current Wall Street-Main Street news, merits a mention in local press..

..So why is it news in the Poughkeepsie Journal and beyond?

The basic story :

"America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958," writes Joseph Nocera in his fascinating book, A Piece of the Action. He is referring to the day when the Bank of America 'dropped' 60,000 credit cards in Fresno, California, thereby creating the all-purpose credit card.It was a novel idea, in effect offering anyone who wanted it a general line of credit, unsecured by collateral. In the 1950s Americans were just getting used to taking out loans to buy ... products—cars, refrigerators, televisions.

But debt was still disreputable. If you could not afford something, you squirreled away money until you could buy it. Besides, it was not easy to get a loan Most banks thought that making small loans to the average family was not worth the time and effort. Except for the Bank of America. Its founder, AP Giannini, the son of an immigrant, wanted to make money available for “his people.” His bank, founded in 1904 in a converted saloon, was initially called the Bank of Italy and in 1928 renamed the Bank of America. Whereas other banks passed off consumer loans to finance companies, Bank of America embraced the role of serving the broad middle class... As a result it grew to become America's largest bank by the 1970s .

Credit cards opened up the world of credit to the masses, allowing ordinary people to take out an advance on their future earnings, as the rich had always done. It is difficult today to imagine life without credit cards. And yet they were almost unknown forty years ago. What happened over those forty years, and most especially in the last twenty-five, is in many ways more is in many ways more revolutionary than in any comparable period in modern financial history. Capitalism was transformed into democratic capitalism. (pp. 202-203, Fareed Zakaria (articulate editor of Newseek International)'s "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad ." whole chapter here)

-from my post called: Fresno: something to do with money

Credit lured Americans into spending more

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#sthash.GbBPzgHG.dpuf

Dropping the Fresno Drop

Since I live in Fresno, I have been amazed that hardly anyone in town even knows about the world-changing "Fresno Drop."

It seems that not even a 50th anniversary of the Drop, let alone the current Wall Street-Main Street news, merits a mention in local press..

..So why is it news in the Poughkeepsie Journal and beyond?

The basic story :

"America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958," writes Joseph Nocera in his fascinating book, A Piece of the Action. He is referring to the day when the Bank of America 'dropped' 60,000 credit cards in Fresno, California, thereby creating the all-purpose credit card.It was a novel idea, in effect offering anyone who wanted it a general line of credit, unsecured by collateral. In the 1950s Americans were just getting used to taking out loans to buy ... products—cars, refrigerators, televisions.

But debt was still disreputable. If you could not afford something, you squirreled away money until you could buy it. Besides, it was not easy to get a loan Most banks thought that making small loans to the average family was not worth the time and effort. Except for the Bank of America. Its founder, AP Giannini, the son of an immigrant, wanted to make money available for “his people.” His bank, founded in 1904 in a converted saloon, was initially called the Bank of Italy and in 1928 renamed the Bank of America. Whereas other banks passed off consumer loans to finance companies, Bank of America embraced the role of serving the broad middle class... As a result it grew to become America's largest bank by the 1970s .

Credit cards opened up the world of credit to the masses, allowing ordinary people to take out an advance on their future earnings, as the rich had always done. It is difficult today to imagine life without credit cards. And yet they were almost unknown forty years ago. What happened over those forty years, and most especially in the last twenty-five, is in many ways more is in many ways more revolutionary than in any comparable period in modern financial history. Capitalism was transformed into democratic capitalism. (pp. 202-203, Fareed Zakaria (articulate editor of Newseek International)'s "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad ." whole chapter here)

-from my post called: Fresno: something to do with money

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#sthash.GbBPzgHG.dpuf

Dropping the Fresno Drop

Since I live in Fresno, I have been amazed that hardly anyone in town even knows about the world-changing "Fresno Drop."

It seems that not even a 50th anniversary of the Drop, let alone the current Wall Street-Main Street news, merits a mention in local press..

..So why is it news in the Poughkeepsie Journal and beyond?

The basic story :

"America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958," writes Joseph Nocera in his fascinating book, A Piece of the Action. He is referring to the day when the Bank of America 'dropped' 60,000 credit cards in Fresno, California, thereby creating the all-purpose credit card.It was a novel idea, in effect offering anyone who wanted it a general line of credit, unsecured by collateral. In the 1950s Americans were just getting used to taking out loans to buy ... products—cars, refrigerators, televisions.

But debt was still disreputable. If you could not afford something, you squirreled away money until you could buy it. Besides, it was not easy to get a loan Most banks thought that making small loans to the average family was not worth the time and effort. Except for the Bank of America. Its founder, AP Giannini, the son of an immigrant, wanted to make money available for “his people.” His bank, founded in 1904 in a converted saloon, was initially called the Bank of Italy and in 1928 renamed the Bank of America. Whereas other banks passed off consumer loans to finance companies, Bank of America embraced the role of serving the broad middle class... As a result it grew to become America's largest bank by the 1970s .

Credit cards opened up the world of credit to the masses, allowing ordinary people to take out an advance on their future earnings, as the rich had always done. It is difficult today to imagine life without credit cards. And yet they were almost unknown forty years ago. What happened over those forty years, and most especially in the last twenty-five, is in many ways more is in many ways more revolutionary than in any comparable period in modern financial history. Capitalism was transformed into democratic capitalism. (pp. 202-203, Fareed Zakaria (articulate editor of Newseek International)'s "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad ." whole chapter here)

-from my post called: Fresno: something to do with money

- See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#sthash.GbBPzgHG.dpuf

"America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958," writes Joseph Nocera in his fascinating book, A Piece of the Action. He is referring to the day when the Bank of America 'dropped' 60,000 credit cards in Fresno, California, thereby creating the all-purpose credit card.It was a novel idea, in effect offering anyone who wanted it a general line of credit, unsecured by collateral. In the 1950s Americans were just getting used to taking out loans to buy ... products—cars, refrigerators, televisions.

But debt was still disreputable. If you could not afford something, you squirreled away money until you could buy it. Besides, it was not easy to get a loan Most banks thought that making small loans to the average family was not worth the time and effort. Except for the Bank of America. Its founder, AP Giannini, the son of an immigrant, wanted to make money available for “his people.” His bank, founded in 1904 in a converted saloon, was initially called the Bank of Italy and in 1928 renamed the Bank of America. Whereas other banks passed off consumer loans to finance companies, Bank of America embraced the role of serving the broad middle class... As a result it grew to become America's largest bank by the 1970s .

Credit cards opened up the world of credit to the masses, allowing ordinary people to take out an advance on their future earnings, as the rich had always done. It is difficult today to imagine life without credit cards. And yet they were almost unknown forty years ago. What happened over those forty years, and most especially in the last twenty-five, is in many ways more is in many ways more revolutionary than in any comparable period in modern financial history. Capitalism was transformed into democratic capitalism. (pp. 202-203, Fareed Zakaria (articulate editor of Newseek International)'s "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad ." whole chapter here)

-from my post called: Fresno: something to do with money - See more at: http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#sthash.GbBPzgHG.dpuf

 Questions
1. What is the difference between technical leadership and adaptive leadership and why is it important to know the difference?

Technical leadership is about using t
he skills and procedures that we are aware of to solve current problems and is typically accomplished by those in authority. Adaptive leadership is having the guts and heart to learn new ways to bring needed deep transformation of culture in an organization or people and is generally done by the people with the problem (14,15). “Adaptive change stimulates resistance because it challenges people’s habits, beliefs and values (30). The reason that it is important to know the difference between these kinds of leadership is because “the single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify – in politics, community life, business or the non-profit sector – is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems (14).

2. What are the different faces of danger a leader might face and how can they best respond to those dangers?

There are many different faces of danger that an adaptive leader might face, though they are variations of four primary forms. Seduction, marginalization, diversion and outright attack are all ways that people seek to resist the adaptive leaders work in seeing the painful changes that need to take place. Here are some skills needed to respond to the resistance and dangers of adaptive leadership:

• Get on the Balcony – this involves moving back and forth from the balcony (a place to engage in self-reflection to gain perspective) and the dance floor (the place of action).
• Think Politically – relating to people in a way to lead through adaptive change. This involves developing allies, keeping the opposition (those most negatively effected by change) close, and gaining trust with those who are uncommitted to the change.
• Orchestrate the Conflict – it’s about cultivating an environment where passionate disagreement is permissible while keeping control of the temperature; remembering that the job of the adaptive leader is to orchestrate the conflict, not become it (122).
• Give the Work Back – you “stay alive in leadership by reducing the extent to which you become the target of people’s frustrations” (139). It’s thinking constantly about intervening in a timely and responsible way, by allowing the right people to take responsibility.
• Hold Steady – in the midst of the pressure and heat that comes with the implementation of adaptive change, one needs to hold their poise by taking the heat, letting the issues ripen and keeping a focus on the issues.

3. What are some important ways to keep heart when facing the difficulties and stress of leadership?

• Manage Your Hungers – of power and control, affirmation and importance, and intimacy and delight.
• Anchor Yourself – by distinguishing role from self, keeping confidants and not confusing them with allies, and seeking sanctuary.
• What’s On the Line – asking the question: Why lead? And remembering that leadership is a labor of love for others.
• Sacred Heart – keeping an innocent, curious and compassionate heart through the hurts and scars of leading by finding ways to refresh your body and spirit.

Summary and Synthesis
It is clear that Heifetz and Linsky are aware of the dangers that adaptive leaders face and they give us both encouragement and practical wisdom in reducing the risk of being taken out of the game either because of the manipulation of others or by the lack of soul care ourselves. This book is for those who have the guts to lead in ways to see genuine transformation take place. I plan to feed on the wisdom of this book for sometime, so that I might stay alive through the battle as well as pass on the lessons I’m learning in the process. This is a must read and re-read for those who want to see meaningful change take place in a culture from the inside out.  link
--

eadership

 From Mandy Smith's The Vulnerable Pastor, pp. 122-124:

Being a woman can feel like weakness.  When you are a woman, your  own body teaches you your limits. From the time you're small, there is always someone bigger, with a stronger body and a deeper voice. And as you grow, you learn how little control you have over your own body, from a sometimes painful, often embarrassing inconvenience that will visit you every month to the strange season of having a person growing inside of you for 9 months. When the little bundle makes its appearance, your body goes from creator of life to sustainer of life. All kinds of new systems kick into gear. It's a miraculous process but one completely beyond your control. As you go from mother to grandmother, your body begins to change again, throwing you into a state of confusion as the steady cycles you have grown accustomed to become syncopated and erratic and then finally stop altogether.

If being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

Inhabiting this ever-changing form forces you to acknowledge (even celebrate) your limits and to sense your responsibility to and reliance upon the broader community.

 So if being a woman teaches humility and collaboration, isn't it a strength to be a woman?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an artist can feel like weakness.  If you're an artist, you are spurred on by an unending search for truth and beauty. You can have your breath stolen by the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing and be unfit for anything else but crying or singing or writing about it for the rest of the day. And once you've found that tiny sign of hope, you must make sense of it. And so you make things to process and express it, trying to capture all the feeling and meaning for others through the limited media of notes and words and paint. You step into a creative process that is sometimes cruel and raw, a little too close for comfort. Then, with shaking hands, you put that outpouring of your soul into a public form and hope that someone understands.

If creative people know how to find truth and beauty, even when it's hidden in brokenn

 ess, if they're comfortable with mystery, failure, and vulnerability, isn't it a strength to be an artist?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

 

Being an outsider can feel like weakness. Being on the outside means always having that vague sense that you didn't get the inside joke. You feel like a child again as you have to learn things that are obvious and basic to everyone else. But over time you compensate. You learn not only to speak but to listen in other languages. You become self-aware as those things which were once transparent about yourself (back when everyone around you was the same as you) are suddenly glaringly visible. For the first time you feel the weight of the lens of your own culture, your own assumptions, and eventually, you learn how to switch glasses.

If being displaced helps us relate to the ways God's people have always been the sojourners, isn't it meaningful to be displaced?

If outsiders know how to be flexible and self-aware, to communicate in a relevant way in many contexts, isn't it a strength to be an outsider?

In the church, these are leadership skills.

Being an introvert can feel like weakness. Thinking of the perfect answer a day after the question makes you feel dumb, even though your belated but perfectly-worded response is more insightful than the one given by the quick-thinker in the room. Needing to recover from extended periods with people draws labels like "anti-social," even though you may have great social skills. Longing for depth and complexity and silence makes you feel like a precious egg-head in a world hungry for sound bites and noise.

If introverts know how to listen, and are unafraid of silence, depth, and authenticity, isn't it a strength to be an introvert?

(link from a pre-book article by Mandy)

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