{"id":20394,"date":"2018-11-15T20:40:05","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T04:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=20394"},"modified":"2018-11-15T20:40:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T04:40:05","slug":"tornadoes-and-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/tornadoes-and-inspiration\/","title":{"rendered":"Tornadoes and Inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"

My work is in the middle of a tornado. Honestly, I\u2019m expecting a cow to fly by my office window at any second of the day (Twister, anyone?)[1]<\/a>. At least it feels that way. Every day is a new adventure in learning to lead and be led in the midst of trial. In fact, many of my colleagues at work are so tired of not knowing where we stand. Each day, I go in to work hoping that I find out some news, any news, even if it\u2019s bad for me and my team. Living in a constant state of anxiety and disequilibration has produced more frustration and challenge than actually being told I\u2019m out of a job. (For the record, I don\u2019t think I will loose my job, but you never know). It\u2019s within this context that I\u2019ve picked up this weeks reading, The Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, <\/strong><\/em>edited by Nohria and Khurana. I read the first chapter and knew exactly where I wanted to spend the rest of my time in this book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Part of the reason I chose this DMin program is because in my heart of hearts, I am a practitioner. Now don\u2019t get me wrong, I love the academy and higher education, but what I really love is the work<\/em> that I get to do in my higher ed context. The ability that I get to speak into students lives about the work that God is doing around the corner and around the world is both a privilege and responsibility I do not take lightly. In fact, it\u2019s because of the programs I now direct for the University, that the entire course of my life was changed. It\u2019s shaped so much of who I am and why I do the work that I do. It\u2019s shaped the foundation of my dissertation, and my field of study. In Simon Sinek\u2019s language, it\u2019s become my \u201cwhy\u201d for so many things.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe failure of leadership we should be concerned about is not just the economic collapse of the firms they led, but the moral collapse of these firms, and the attendant confusion and loss of meaning they have engendered.\u201d[3]<\/a> This has been my semester, in one simple sentence. I feel as though everyone around me has questions, on either side of any issue, about the moral collapse of my University. Whether you are an in the academy or a co-curricular educator, doubt runs deep. Recently, I went for two full weeks straight with at least one student, staff, or faculty member crying in my office. Everyone is questioning not just our financial challenges, but our potential moral collapse as an institution. So much of this semester has been a surprise to all of us, and not how we planned things to go. But I just keep reminding myself that this is not a surprise to God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In my own thoughts, I\u2019ve questioned more than once how things have gotten to this state at the University. I knew reading the section on the practice of leadership would be most helpful for me, as a practitioner, and it did not disappoint. I feel like I learned a new level of empathy for my institution\u2019s senior leaders. I was reminded that, \u201cThe CEO does not always have the best information of the technical ability to make every decision.\u201d[4]<\/a>, which became evident as we navigated our financial challenges. Furthermore, senior leadership teams are \u201cCharacterized by an overriding irony: they have everything they could need to facilitate their performance\u2026yet the generally perform less than many far-more-constrained teams.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0I feel like I’ve seen that first hand lately. Lastly, \u201cThe absence of a wider and more diverse outer circle can also undermine good and timely decisions.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0Many of the people in our senior leadership team are white males who have worked together for over 20+ years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There were so many poignant and relevant nuggets in these chapters that couldn\u2019t have been more applicable to my current University situation. I felt like every chapter I read revealed a new layer to what our Board, President, and administrative team must have been facing over the last four months. As a practitioner in the middle of this storm, I have walked away with directly applicable information for myself as well as those I lead. This weeks reading left me impressed and inspired.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Twister<\/em>, by Jan de Bont (Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures, 1996). Blu-ray Disc, 1080p HD.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action <\/em>(New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2011).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khruana, eds., Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em> (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2010), 11.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria, \u201cWhat is Leadership: The CEO\u2019s Role in Large, Complex Organizations\u201d in Handbook of Leadership Theory and <\/em>Practice, eds. Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2010), 435.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ruther Wageman and J. Richard Hackman, \u201cWhat Makes Teams of Leaders Leadable?\u201d in Nohira and Khurana, 476.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Michael Useem \u201cDecision Making as Leadership Foundation\u201d in Nohira and Khurana, 513<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My work is in the middle of a tornado. Honestly, I\u2019m expecting a cow to fly by my office window at any second of the day (Twister, anyone?)[1]. At least it feels that way. Every day is a new adventure in learning to lead and be led in the midst of trial. In fact, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1404,35,410],"class_list":["post-20394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-handbook-of-leadership-theory-and-practice","tag-leadership","tag-nohria-and-khurana","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20396,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20394\/revisions\/20396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}