The undefended Leader

The painting is another copy of Sieger Koeder's, the catholic priest-painter. As you can tell I like his pictures. This time it is Jesus washing the feet of his disciple. The ultimate example of Servant leadership. I particularly like the idea of Jesus face reflected in the water of the bowl he is using. The story has inpsired many to go and do likewise....

The Undefended Life

I have been reading Simon Walkers book: ‘The Undefended Life: Recovering God’s Freedom to Live Beyond Fear’ (2011) whilst on holiday. Leant to me by a colleague, so I needed to finish it before I get back. I have ordered the trilogy from Amazon but they did not arrive on time. I’ll read them later: ‘Leading Out of Who You Are’ (2007); ‘Leading with Nothing to Lose’ (2007) and ‘Leading with Everything to Give’ (2009)

Simon Walker has developed the Personal ecology profile, based on his brief introduction to the theory of `Human Ecology’ (2009)

The Undefended Life book I’m reading, deals with the theology behind his undefended leader trilogy. He draws on people like Jurgen Moltmann: ‘The Crucified God’ (1974) and ‘Trinity and Kingdom’ (1981) and Paul Fiddes: ‘Creative suffering of God’ (1988) and ‘Participating in God’ (2000)

I like the 4 characteristics of the undefended life he has developed (p 101)

(i) ability to live life as Gift;

“Love is what we are born with, fear is what we learned here” (Anon)

(ii) living in the present moment;

Wherever you are, be all there (Jim Elliott)

(iii) relinquishing control but taking responsibility;

Maturity is the freedom to live an undefended life (Melanie Kline)

(iv) taking risks

‘If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark’ (St John of the cross)

You can follow more through the web presences

www.theleadershipcommunity.org

www.undefended.org.uk

I found myself agreeing strongly with lots of what he has written, so I quote a great chunk of one particular passage on leadership (page 100). It captures some very helpful insights into the type of servant leadership Jesus epitomised when he washed his disciples feet:

Leadership itself is an act of followership. There is no such thing as leadership in the sense of executive agency and decision-making that we often take it to mean. The leader is not in the business of taking decisions about the things that happen. Rather she should be in the business of responding to the leading of God’s Spirit.

The only kind of leadership possible is described in John 5:19, where the Son describes his following of the movements of the divine Father. The chief quality of the leader, then, should not be the capacity to make decisions or be visionary, but rather to listen and be attentive.

It is startling that we often seek to train our leaders to be better communicators (by which we mean ‘speakers’) believing that leadership is some act of persuasion. In fact, we should be looking for individuals who have cultivated a stillness of spirit such that they can attend to the movements of God. We should look for leaders who are sensitive to the tone of the room, to the unconscious voices in the discussion. We should be elevating women and men who have an awareness of the spiritual dimension to life, that runs in parallel to this world.

I am not in the slightest bit interested in following men and women who can depict some grand vision, or who have a confidence about ‘the way we should be doing things’. I want to follow and learn from the men and women who struggle with the pain in the world and who are generous, kind, self-effacing, seeking to learn, fragile, patient, still and free, those who have known failure and not been crushed. I want to follow the one who can laugh at him- or herself and who does not try to achieve mighty things.

As someone once said: ‘The immature man seeks to die heroically for a cause; the mature seeks to live humbly for one’

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As an alternative to the WWJD wrist-band (what would Jesus do), I have often thought it should read DWYSTFD – which sounds like a place in Wales! ‘Doing what you see the Father doing’, which is, after all, just what Jesus did:

The son can only do what he sees the father doing because whatever the Father does the son does also. For the Father loves the son and shows him all that he does (John 5:19)

its a small world

'It's a small world '

How often do you hear that when you meet someone and discover you know someone who knows someone you know. Well I am reading 2 books at present to learn more about Web2:0 social networking, which explore this phenomena: 

Clay Shirky   ‘Here Comes Everybody: the power of organising without organisations’  (Alan Lane/Penguin 2008)

Malcolm Gladwell   ‘The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference’  (Abacus 2000)

jonny baker has written an excellent series of 4 blogs about Shirkey's book  'Here Comes Everyone' particularly small world theory  -  what's become known as 6 degrees of separation 

1  sharing, co-operation and collective action
2 
I participate therefore I am

3  it's a small world

4  the network of christ: here comes everybody

Its all about participation  

Shirkey talks about a simple three-fold process:  

sharing - co-operation - collective action

sharing creates the fewest demands and you can see it happening via flickr (photos), digg (stories), blogs and the number of small niche communities with common interest or concern. co-operation requires a bit more co-ordination especially if there is to be some collaborative production involving decision making. something like wikipedia manages this sort of participation really well. then collective action is definitely a harder step. it needs a strong enough shared vision which binds a group together and people will put effort in for. shirky says this is much more rare.

Margaret Wheatley  

in  ‘Leadership and new science’ 

talks about a 4 fold process: 

• naming some practice - a passion/vision that someone has 
• connecting with other - finding others with the same vision
• nourishing a network - connecting together an synergising 
• illuminating - highlighting what is happening though sharing the story widely.

This ‘life cycle’ happen all the time through networks and they 'change the world', but they are invisible to old ways of doing things.  

     Jonny tells a story as an example  

i was thinking about the truth isn't sexy campaign and have written something about it recently thinking about how networks work (it will be in the next CMS magazine Yes). this is a short version... it began with an idea (or a rage against injustice more like). a friend of mine si had a concern about sex trafficking following visits to bars where girls were visibly being picked up. the first phase of the process was sharing. chatting with a few friends he got connected with a few other people who were involved in care for sex workers or political campaigning. a few e-mails, google searches and coffees later, he begin to build up a picture of the scene and the various economic, immigration, political and cultural factors at play. crucially he also connected with some others - the second phase collaboration - who caught the vision for doing something and a small team was formed with aimie & shannon picking up the baton. the team quickly found themselves part of an informal network of brilliant people working on their own projects but also collaborating together. an idea began to form – no-one seemed to be working at the customer demand end of things, with men who pay for sex. via a few networked connections, a design agency got involved and a beer mat and poster campaign was born called The Truth Isn’t Sexy - the third phase collective action. 200,000 beermats have been distributed in city centre pubs and NUS bars along with other events and media and cross party MP’s have praised the truth isn’t sexy in the house of commons with the minister in charge of this area now publicly stating the importance of addressing demand - the main political objective. the group are going to self publish an activist's handbook for others wanting to take collective action on something...
the campaign cost virtually nothing apart from printing costs. It wasn’t spearheaded by an organisation. volunteers made it happen as networks of people shared the idea, co-operated and joined in collective action. this network of people is not a club you can join – it was much more organic and invisible. It wasn’t something that was led – at least not in any traditional sense – though the people involved had a high level of skill at getting people connected and participating. the technological tools that are available in the world of digital media, all free if you have a computer – e-mail, web sites, blogs, social networking sites and so on - were absolutely crucial to the process. this process is so simple that you can miss it! It’s particularly easy to miss if you are looking for success with an organisational or old paradigm pair of glasses - measurable outcomes in organisational strategy achieved by professionals supported by systems of hierarchy and control

there is more on this in the latest CMS YES Magazine 'Mission in a Post-modern world' in an article by  jonny baker