- Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.
-
- ie: Family life and work; marketing and sales; management and leadership; reaching unchurched vs caring for churched.
- For example: What’s more important? Some tensions should not be resolved, but rather leveraged for growth.
- If you ‘resolve’ any of those tensions, you will create new tensions.
- If you resolve any of those tensions, you create a barrier to progress. Certain tensions are a key to progress.
- Progress depends not on the resolution of those tensions but on the successful management of those tensions.
-
- To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions to manage, ask the following:
- Does this problem or tension keep resurfacing?
- Are there mature advocates for both sides?
- How to we make church safe for unbelievers and how do we develop mature believers?
- Are the two sides really interdependent?
- The role of leadership is to leverage the tension to the benefit of the organization.
- Identify the tensions to be managed in your organization.
- Create terminology (“I guess that’s a tension we’ll have to learn to manage.”)
- Inform your core. (Key players must understand this principle.)
- Continually give value to both sides.
- Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases. (Understand the up side of the opposite side, and the down side of your side.)
- Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day. (I need passionate people that will champion their side, but I need mature people that realize the larger realities and the tension that will never go away and we must manage.)
- Don’t think in terms of balance. Think in terms of rhythm. (Don’t try to be fair, balance, but in rhythm. When is the time or season to lean away from something? When is the time or season to lean in? There’s a time when we need more singing than preaching, a time when we need more preaching than singing. . . We must pay attention to the rhythm of our organization.)
- Conclusion: As a leader, one of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is differentiate between tensions your organization will always need to manage vs problems that need to be solved.
One Response to “Willow Leadership Summit: Session 7 – Andy Stanley”
LOVE hearing Andy Stanley’s insights and teaching (or in this case reading about what he said)! Good word!
~Jada