Show-and-Tell in the Sandbox
Introduction
Show-and-Tell needs guidelines. Even the concept of “showing” must have some parameters or you can cross over lines that are both offensive, immoral, and possibly illegal. To “tell” is the challenge in today’s social media, world access through the internet, and hundreds of cable stations that bombard us 24/7. In a society that is longing for transparency and openness, how far is too far?
The paradox is the call for openness in the midst of being P.C. (politically correct). Transparency and openness are acceptable as long as they fall into an ever shifting value of “norm” that is deemed correct. The question is who determines the “norm” and the “correct”?
Charlene Li in her work, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, helped me with this by clarifying the need for the proper usage of words to describe being open. She states, “Let’s dive deeper into what exactly transparency means. Rather than actually using the word, ‘transparency’, which implies complete openness and candor, I prefer to describe this skill as making information and processes, ‘visible’.”[1]
Summary
Li gives us four points to the culture and world of sharing that we live in:
“1. More People Online. Not only is the number of people going online growing, but the time they spend and the kinds of things they do online are both also multiplying. According to the internetworldstats.com, 1.7 billion people globally are active on the Internet.
2. The Widespread Use of Social Sites. Similarly, social networking site usage has jumped, growing from 27 percent of global online users to 63 percent of all users ages eighteen to fifty-four globally.
3. The Rise of Sharing. More than anything else, the past few years have been dominated by the rise of a culture of sharing.”[2]
We live in a world that the information highway is on hyper speed. This information overload has challenged businesses, organizations, and churches to be what Li calls “open”. She believes that a “new generation of workers is coming of age that believes ‘sharing-ness’ is next to – or more important than – godliness. Moreover, the demand to be more open about how an organization makes decisions and operates is coming from people both inside and outside the organization.”[3]
This desire for “openness” has the potential to create chaos if not understood and engaged with healthy. Li states that, “You can find one type of decision making among executive ranks and another type being used at the team level. There are four major types of decision making in organizations today: centralized, democratic, consensus, and distributed.”[4]
With the hiring of younger staff, what was once considered protocol in decision making, is now under question. The openness and visibility of information does not allow an elite, centralized group to make decisions because younger staff can access information at a higher rate than ever before. Li’s analogy of the four major types of decision making was illuminating, even in 
church life.
Li presents an engagement pyramid that “shows how people – both customers and employees – are engaging with your company, brand, product, or even a broad topic. They pyramid is made up of five levels, with each level representing a higher degree of engagement behavior.”[5] It is one thing to deluge large amounts of information to people and it is quite another to have information that “sticks” because people are engaged.
Analysis
At Christ Life, the church that I am the senior pastor, we have had discussions on how do we address our social media usage. Who can say what and from what format can they speak? Personally or for the church body? How open can they be with their “opinions” from politics to present day moral challenges on social media?
On staff we have the “King of Facebook”, as he is commonly referred to, who has immediate response rate and proper wording for the inquisitive seeker. He monitors the “quacks” and their “quaky comments”. The only parameter or guard rail has been trust by a loyal and trustworthy employee.
Li helped me with her “sandbox” analogy. She said that, “One way to think about openness is to use a playground sandbox metaphor. On the one hand, there are clearly defined boundaries to the sandbox, and within those boundaries, it’s a safe place to play. On the other hand, the sandbox still has rules: no throwing sand at other players, no taking someone’s truck unless you have permission.”[6]
We have not established a formidable “visible” principle for “show-and-tell” with our social media. I am hoping that all of us are playing in the sandbox fairly because we are articulating the values, vision, and mission of the church. Technology and the social expression is moving quite fast and it is an effective of ministry. I just hope we respect all players in the sandbox as we continue to “show-and-tell” the Christ Life at Christ Life Church.
[1] Charlene Li, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 193.
[2] Ibid., 5-6.
[3] Ibid., 23.
[4] Ibid., 37.
[5] Ibid., 58.
[6] Ibid., 107.
11 responses to “Show-and-Tell in the Sandbox”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Phil,
Great perspective. You stated, “I am hoping that all of us are playing in the sandbox fairly because we are articulating the values, vision, and mission of the church.” It’s so unfortunate when we ignore the mission of Christ and start to promote our organizational values, vision, and mission in the sandbox, which sometimes minimize our effectiveness. I was just speaking to a few pastors yesterday about how our county has more than 1 million unchurched and yet we find it hard to “play fair in the sandbox.” This was a great post because our sanctuaries cannot accommodate all the harvest or have all the answers, yet we can’t play fair for the sake of our mission as a church.
Garfield
Garfield:
It seems that the “Jesus Mission” has been negated by the “success mission”. When social media is used to prop up people, not Jesus, I believe the players have moved out of the sandbox.
Refocusing the mission, values, and culture is paramount to giving us reasonable information and “visibility” of what needs to be said.
Phil
Hi Phil. Good summary. What is the job description for the your King of Facebook?
He is our “Creative Arts Pastor”.
Phil
Phil,
I appreciate your highlighting of the “transparency” and “visible” terminology. I also love the sandbox metaphor. I guess that shows what intellectual giants we are.
Would you please give me a sentence about your view or understanding of a “culture of sharing?”
Marc:
The access to information is overwhelming. If we do not embrace a “cultural of sharing” we can be perceived as uninformed or disconnected. The choice is on us what we “share” and the “visibility” that we allow.
Phil
Phil,
Only you, who lives in the eternal sand box, could write this post. What happens when that sand storm that you posted just a couple of weeks ago comes along?
I think something that is now becoming a common thread for this time in leadership is that the language we use must have a parameter around it and sometimes we have to take old words and redefine them.
What words do you use in Phoenix at your church that you have defined so they know exactly what you are talking about?
Kevin
Kevin:
“OUCH” you got me. The “sandbox storm” collaborates with “visibility” – how much do you tell and to whom do you allow to have access the information is the key.
We use several words consistently at Christ Life: transparency and integrity. These two words are “values” that we have moved from cute words/phrases to actual reality and working conditions.
Phil
Phil,
According to the assessment of page 180-181, what kind of leader are you?
Pablo
Pablo:
Optimistic and Collaborative.
Phi
Me too! Even though on the low end (: (optimistic: 3.3 and collaborative 3.0).