The Great Dismantling of Leadership as We Know It

Vision by Chaos

There is a grand collapsing of power & authority happening in our day. How then might one lead or point the way? Here are some thoughts...

May we reject "authority in position" in favor of "authority in relationship."

Authority is bestowed in the moment of communal need & simultaneously acknowledgement.

To lead I must be with “the other” thus I am never “over” but “among.”

I lead by standing close and being present. I listen and wait. Thus, my gifts, my knowledge, my judgment and wisdom are made real at the beckoning call of the community.

I lead when I am subordinate.

I lead when I am a peer.

I lead when I am a superior.

These are all made concrete only through example. Not being an example but simply being. Assuming I am an example inverts my gifts causing me to lead primarily out of my shadow.

I assume I know because I have been elected or chosen to know.

Assumption is a second order presence. Rather than be in the moment, in my body, I take my energy up into my head causing me to see an abstraction as a real thing. I am talking with my "idea" of my friend who is right in front of me. I am not talking with him but at him. This abstraction is a way or type of knowing but not the best way of seeing or feeling. It takes me out of “the others “ presence and tends towards making me “name” them once and for all. I need not be there to be there. I know there. I know them or at least I think I do. They are held in my head, not in my heart or soul. But in fact, there is never "there once and for all." Here is where there was a moment ago.

The point in this abstraction by the way?

To lead is to acknowledge the fluid nature of human presence and honor the collaborative emergence of “the right word fitly spoken.” To truly listen to another’s voice is to offer a response and watch the dance begin. You can not dance in your head. You must do it with your body. So too do we lead with our bodies and our minds.

I can never be merely given true authority. This is not to say there are not leaders and that they are not acknowledged and honored. It is to say that leadership cannot ultimately come through a hierarchical system as a real bestowing. There is no soul in an organization or its structures that can arbitrarily bestow leadership once and for all upon a person. Systems and hierarchies are small ciphers of truth at best and weak and sieve like at worst.

I do not provide answers as a leader. More like an air traffic controller, I do not fly the airplane but provide safe paths for flight and coordinate the interactions once in flight. Thus, my role is often invisible to the outer world.

When I lead I am like an orchestra conductor. I do not tell others what to play or what to do but assist them in "hearing what is." I am listening along with the players and inwardly paying attention to the "silence" within the music. I am not commanding others as much as being a presence of obedience. I find myself in the losing. I facilitate the music as it plays the people.

I am a scribe of a collaborative improvisational story being written on the fly. This narrative is much like an operating system but rather than lead by linear categorizing and pontification I proffer my own inner confusion as the reason to pay attention. I submit myself to the inner seeking of the group and support a new way of seeing some may call “vision by chaos.”

I am not a CEO, nor CFO, but a poet, prophet, and story teller. Leading is more about listening to the needs of others and walking along the path of faith with them rather than in front or behind.

I hunger for order but know that arbitrary efficiency is more of a corporate and technological metaphor that needs hierarchies to manifest its intended goals of profit. I feel at home in more organic models of leadership where much like nature we may have hundreds of leaders leading along side of each other in differing capacities. We are not a corporation but a family.

As a man, I distance myself from alpha male energy or the heroic Greek model of leader & see my own desire for being more goal directed or competent as a possible ruse for self expansion. I am not a professional human.

My leadership is not a confidence in my skills or insight but an admission of my lack. It is my obedience to the call that beckons me thus much like Frodo I say, “I will carry the Ring to Mordor…though I do not know the way.” This life is fellowship of the ring for sure.

I see the Wizard of Oz in my heart and allow my fraudulent self to be discovered so as not to hurt the Dorothy’s of this world. I honor Dorothy and humbly submit myself to her bewildered, vulnerable yet seeking self. It is her transparency that allows me to trust her. May we tear down the curtains in our hearts.

God has not called me to be a Bible analyst. Nor is my voice to be slick and amplified. Life is not a machine so I need not see people as objects that need my technical expertise. Those with which I live and love need not be a conquest. At no time need I be a warrior salesman who launches, markets, or sells the truth. I cannot use my brothers as rungs of a ladder to achieve my personal goals. My credentials are not carte blanche to see my career as more important than my life or the life of others.

I do not see myself as a solver of other's problems thus freeing me up to not to have to “fix” others. Nor am I an apologist that will use my skills with words or phrases to position my view with power and presumption. I commit my tongue to the service of the community.

I am an adopted son of the most high God. Therefore I cannot banish anyone from the community through threats or mocking. My ability to speak or command an audience when misused not only confuses and harms others but forces me to take myself out of community through arrogant exclusion. I distance my myself from others in hopes they will move towards me out of woundedness. In fact, it is I who has distanced me from myself, others & the Father.

I am not sure what I know. There is so much of which I am unaware that confidence in my knowing is dangerous to the community. This is not to say I don’t have perspectives, opinions, or beliefs, It is to say that my collaboration and improvisational offering is not the answer but my human voice in the emerging story of salvation. Answers are not what we are seeking but the presence of God.
I am not an island. To the degree I play a solo act is the degree to which I create a place where only one can stand. There is no place where only one can stand. That is a myth.
Like Dorothy I gather my friends who are equally as needy as I and believe that the common quest may offer some healing.

I will lead by offering my deepest and most revealing questions. Rather than seek solutions I invite dialogue. Community or the Church for that matter is not a tool to change the world but to be the identifiable location of God’s work of redemption and the presence of the future Kingdom.

By fostering dialogue I serve the men by deepening and widening the sense of our mutual experience. I allow myself to be invisible and go beneath and below through service to discovering the meanings & rhythms of our hearts and community.

Rather than offer advice I share a poem. Rather than demand my painting be the one and only painting I allow myself to occasionally be the frame.

I am not an entrepreneur who sees the community as a resource but an artist who fosters our imaginations so as to cultivate an environment where people might hear & understand their own story in the stories of others.

No leader owns a community although they may have been primary in the creation of the infrastructure. Community needs structure but the value is in the participants.

No one can create community on demand for it is self creating thing. It is also maintained by the community which is why leaders cannot arbitrarily demand obeisance. Emerging leaders are more like gardeners than architects.

Leaders build on flexible and stretchable terrain rather than build a foundational that is static and demands no one move or change its structural foundations.

Leaders help shape community not create it.

Leaders facilitate connection rather than demand arbitrary alliances.