{"id":21228,"date":"2019-02-07T07:40:32","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T15:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=21228"},"modified":"2019-02-07T07:40:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T15:40:32","slug":"transformational-leadership-half-empty-or-half-full","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/transformational-leadership-half-empty-or-half-full\/","title":{"rendered":"Transformational Leadership – Half Empty or Half Full?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I experienced reading whiplash this week. Last week I am laughing it up with Meyer\u2019s Culture Map<\/em> and this week I was sobered and mildly depressed by Tourish\u2019s The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership. <\/em>I believe he meets his goal \u2018to challenge its fundamental premises in a significant way and scrutinize its contradictions.\u2019[1]<\/a>It is remarkable to me that someone has spent most of his career studying the dangers of something for which I have only heard lauded. It was like drinking a tall, cool glass of transformational leadership half-emptiness when all I have known is half-fullness. Shocking, to say the least.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And yet for all my surprise, I am not wholly unaware of the dangers of visionary, charismatic leadership though I\u2019ve never read of the pitfalls and abuses before in such a scathing and academic fashion. I have lived through the dark side myself as a follower and perpetuated some of them as a leader so it is a challenge to be succinct and impersonal.<\/p>\n

Part of my early formation was with an extremely charismatic youth pastor that took a great deal of interest in me. He believed I was \u2018the one\u2019 and told me so \u2013 the one that would usher revival into our city and he would use to grow our youth ministry. We did experience some glory days and saw our youth ministry grown from 20 to over 500 in the mid 1990s. I was at the forefront of this move of God and he was easily the loudest voice in my life. He did, however, eventually become disillusioned with me. I did something stupid, not immoral, but stupid, as a 16 year old. He laid into me and threatened my position in our booming youth group. I was devastated. He ended up apologizing but things were never quite the same after that. I couldn\u2019t pray long enough at the altar to keep my status, although I tried. Some of my friends’ attendance to our gathering slacked. I somehow understood that I was only as good as the number friends I brought with me each week. Activism runs deep.<\/p>\n

By the end of high school, we were still close but he was disenchanted. My classmates and teachers voted for me to give the graduation prayer and opening statements. But his retort to a mutual friend was that I \u2018chose popularity over the presence of God\u2019. After I rejected his offer to lead the new Master\u2019s Commission program (a discipleship and church internship program) and went to the Philippines instead, we reached a new low. He didn\u2019t veil his disapproval and disappointment of me. I did not fulfill my end of the bargain of being ‘the one’ and he moved on.<\/p>\n

This accounting provides insight in to my personal research interest and the deep conviction that God is not a \u2018user\u2019. As His creation, should this theological truth not extend then to us? The people of God are also not \u2018users\u2019. We do not exploit others in order to gain \u2013 no matter how worthy the goal. And that when we do so even for ‘Kingdom’ purposes, something fundamental and intrinsic is violated.<\/p>\n

May we not allow \u2018spirituality to become another control mechanism for getting individuals to work harder in their paid jobs, often at the expense of avenues toward meaningful and fulfilled lives such as family and voluntarism\u2019[2]<\/a>.\u00a0I know purpose and work are God-given but when it violates the most primary meaning-making of life (which I would posit is relationship), it is dangerous. We must continue to struggle to find ways to work with others that echo and uphold each other\u2019s worth and value, not deteriorate it.<\/p>\n

I know it to be true that there is no darkness in God. His motives are pure and unadulterated in a way we cannot fathom. Our human experience makes it difficult to imagine or wrap our minds around it but it is true. Only God can all at the same time – love us thoroughly; desire true intimacy with us; and know how to partner with our precious, short lives to bring His Kingdom come to earth. May we understand this ever so deeply in order to perpetuate more light and less dark. And may we ‘never question the truth of what we fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders’. Amen.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a>Tourish, Dennis.\u00a0The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective<\/em>. Hove: Routledge, 2013, 199.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>Ibid., 70.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>Buechner, Frederick, and George Connor. Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner<\/i>. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007, 24.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I experienced reading whiplash this week. Last week I am laughing it up with Meyer\u2019s Culture Map and this week I was sobered and mildly depressed by Tourish\u2019s The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership. I believe he meets his goal \u2018to challenge its fundamental premises in a significant way and scrutinize its contradictions.\u2019[1]It is remarkable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"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":[1439],"class_list":["post-21228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tourish","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21228","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\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21228"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21232,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21228\/revisions\/21232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}