27th
Leading from realism
I distinctly remember a workshop I attended in 1995. Speaker Jim Wideman (still very actively mentoring ministry leaders here) taught me the valuable lesson to “think bigger.” I am not sure what he called it, but in essence, he told the audience that one of the reasons your ministry is not larger/better/more effective than it was last year is because you’ve set up an infrastructure, systems and processes that can barely support a ministry of your current size/quality/impact… if you really want to be better/bigger start making changes now that will be in place for the inevitable day in the future. This has been an invaluable lesson. (Thanks, Jim!)
However, as a visioneering leader, sometimes we make the mistake not preparing for that next level, but actually thinking that we’ve already arrived at a certain place in our vision for the future. It’s true that we have to imagine and “act-as-if” we’re in the place we want to be, eventually, but often times that means that we leave realism for idealism. This type of thinking that “we have arrived,” kills future progress!
When we are filled with vision, with minimizing and with positivity, we are tempted to fool ourselves (and those we lead) into thinking that we’ve already arrived at a place in the future, when that place is actually still quite a ways away. We are so positive that we’ll get there if we stay on the current trajectory, that we lose sight of the goal because we think we’re already there.
Realism and brutal honesty gets you to your vision a lot faster. When we are realistic about where we are today, it will help us to see where we need to go more easily, more clearly.
And it’s more fun and more motivating! If you tell your team that you’re flying at 29,000 feet and you plan to take them to 30,000 feet… well, I’m not sure how motivating that is. If you can accurately determine that (however great your organization is running) you’re at a 15,000 foot level, it’s motivating to hear that we’re heading up to 30,000 feet!
Be realistic, be brutally honest, be expectant!
