Missed your connection?

 This story is all too familiar: Pastor takes church; pastor fails to motivate congregation; pastor gets frustrated; congregation becomes ambivalent; pastor moves on; the story repeats until one day a new pastor takes over and then WOW! something wonderful happens.  The congregation gets excited, the church seems to come alive, grows and one good thing after another happens.

There is, perhaps, a very spiritual explanation for all these mini-failures.  The previous pastors were not called, maybe they weren’t listening to God, maybe they were called but not too that church. Of course there may be at least a little truth to these broad brush strokes, but as with all generalizations, getting to “reality” requires peeling back the layers and digging a little deeper.

In previous blogs we  have examined the dual components of vision:

• paint a picture of a new future
• leave some room for followers to add their part to the masterpiece

What we are talking about here are the pure mechanics of leadership. Casting of Vision being one of the 4 foundations to true leadership, however it is important to understand that the Character/Credibility combination  is so closely connected to the power of Vision Casting that they cannot be separated. 

There is an old adage that when you first take over an organization you should be careful not to make any changes in the early going.  When you do decide to act, any changes made should be incremental. The generally accepted wisdom is that “people resist change,” but that is only partly true.  Allow me to explain the adage and offer small  insight into why so many “called” people fail to make an impact after assuming the leadership role.  

 Most called people are energized by what they believe God has given them as a mission.  They arrive at their first pastoral assignment (or other organizational assignment) full of excitement and enthusiasm. The natural next step is to begin to frame the new group according to the leader’s vision, right?  Insisting on this approach will ultimately be seen as foisting that vision upon the established group, and will create natural resistance.  English novelist, Arnold Bennett commented, “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” Even if the established group believes the vision may be the correct one; awareness of the difficulty of change produces natural cautiousness.  Often, this subtle, or sometimes overt, resistance to a new vision is viewed by the fledgling leader, as resistance to God’s Himself.

What then is the answer to this dilemma?  First, remember that even a new vision is not without context.  The context is provided by the established group, and therefore the new leader must make a connection with that group for vision casting to be effective.   The only way to establish that connection is to tap into the deeply held beliefs of the established group.  Richard Daft, noted organizational researcher, points out that the beliefs of an organization will be reflected everywhere in their language, artifacts and rituals of the established culture.  While there are a broader set of beliefs that all Christians might hold, the social, cultural and intellectual beliefs are very group specific. Those beliefs are also deeply influenced by the combination of corporate history and current events

This means that the leader must learn more about the group, what they care about?; what community do they live in?; what cultural and social structures that have shaped their beliefs?    It is almost impossible for a new leader to cast effective vision for a group without that information.  The leader may hit upon it by accident, but is more likely to miss, offend and appear to be disconnected. Knowing the group is like knowing your travel itinerary. Imagine for second the futility of attempting to influence a plane that has already taken off.  You may have a ticket to Denver, but if you are in the New York terminal and the plane has left, your ticket (vision) doesn’t mean much.  You might be able to get on another plane, but that connection is lost.

When we say someone “connects” with us, we are literally saying, “they know me, they understand what makes me tick.”   If the new leader understands this, he/she finds a way to connect their personal calling with the deeply held beliefs of the group,  and is able to cast an effective vision for the future.  That vision is molded by the leader and given life and energy by the followers.  Leaders create followers, and they do so by connecting with them at a deep, almost subconscious level.  They understand their lives, what is important to them and how the new vision might play out in the role they play within the organization.

A great example of this happened in the corporate world about nine years ago.  Two executive scandals rocked CMS Energy, one of the largest energy companies in the world.  One was a round-trip trading scandal where energy futures were being bought and sold between two companies with the sole goal of inflating sales and transaction numbers.  Another, was blatant misstatements in the company’s prospectus that were overlooked by the cozy relationship with the auditing firm.  When the scandals broke almost simultaneously the resulting aftermath sent stock prices plummeting, and employee 401k’s lost half their value overnight.  The executives responsible were released with golden parachutes numbering in the millions, and the employees took the brunt of the damage.  These employees were not disloyal, but the  situation seemed to reward unethical behavior and caused serious distrust of executive staff.  The new interim CEO had a daunting task. He had been appointed by the board to take the reins of a company with disengaged employees, low stock values and wary investors.  Essentially, this was a company poised for disaster.

After taking the time to understand the situation, he held a series of town-hall style employee meetings.  There he announced the creation of ethics based policy changes.  He cast a vision for a new direction of the company based on honesty and integrity: with the market, with employees and with customers.  Employees responded to this effort with  agreement and intense effort, and the company began a turnaround which resulted in a restoration of most of its former value.  He managed to create a vision that was not based on profit or growth, because he believed by following the right path both of those things would result.  It was the deep distrust of the executive staff he addressed, and was building a vision of the future that was based on integrity. By doing so he reached out to the general populace and made the right connection.