When I was 15 years old my Grandad and I got into an old manual transmission pickup truck and drove to a very steep hill where, without warning, he pulled the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, and told me to get into the driver\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n
He was determined to teach me how to drive. And this was my very first lesson.<\/p>\n
My heartrate went through the roof as I tried to clutch-brake-gas<\/em> my way beyond the engine stalling out, rough lurching, and crying out to God that I didn\u2019t roll down the hill backwards and kill us both.<\/p>\n Somehow, we made it back home, and I not only remember that moment to this day, but I very quickly gained the experience required to drive a stick-shift.<\/p>\n Throughout my Grandad\u2019s life, we laughed together about his questionable teaching techniques, but Eve Pool in her book Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em> led me to consider that this may have been an excellent way to learn to drive. Pool\u2019s thesis is that critical incidents, or learning under extreme stress, can help us learn faster and acquire memories that last (39).<\/p>\n As I reflect on my leadership journey, I realize that most of how I have learned to lead has been by being thrown into the deep end of the pool and figuring out how to swim.<\/p>\n There is much I could say about potential drawbacks and even abuse of this method, but I must admit that a great many of these \u201cdeep end\u201d moments have cemented leadership courage, character, and confidence in me: Because I knew I could swim, or drive, or lead, I no longer struggled with whether I could<\/em><\/strong> do so, and focused instead on doing it better<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n So, if threshold moments are essential for learning, and growing into confidence, maybe there is a way to speed those moments up (or at least provide a clearer road map).<\/p>\n Pool admits this is a primary reason for the book \u201cMost leaders I know would like to feel more confident. Indeed, the reason I have written this book is to give you a route map for that journey.\u201d (47). So, a core of the first part of Leadersmithing<\/em> is about building that confidence by live-practicing 17 specific critical incidents (what she calls \u2018archetypal leadership activities\u2019 such as managing ambiguity, or owning mistakes, or dealing with poor performance) (11) as a training tool to help leaders create neurological \u2018templates\u2019 they can rely on when facing common leadership challenges.<\/p>\n A second element of the \u2018theory part\u2019 of this book deals with character, which Pool states is even more important than confidence. \u201cWhile confidence can be faked, character is real\u201d (47). She believes, rightly, I think, that \u201cstrengthening your character will future proof your craft\u201d (55). I appreciated the focus on character and on \u201ceulogy virtues vs. resume virtues\u201d (53) in a book that is admittedly bent towards unpacking the daily grind tasks of a leader (which shows up in spades in the second \u201cpractical section\u201d of the book).<\/p>\n After reading Leadersmithing<\/em> while I found many avenues for ongoing learning, I want to highlight one observation, and one question:<\/p>\n First, the observation: Pool states that leadership is a word that loses meaning when it becomes more about the title than the function (3). I\u2019ve seen this in the church with the word Elder: When an Elder is primarily a title someone has, not a function they serve, church leadership catches the disease I\u2019ve heard called \u2018titleitus\u2019. Whether pastors or elders or deacons, we probably ought to see those roles as verbs over nouns, so churches are not infected with entitlement or with spiritual leaders who are no longer leading (and in some cases, no longer spiritual).<\/p>\n Second, a question, which is related to my NPO: I wonder, as I did when reading about threshold concepts, whether equipping and empowering rising leaders in the church needs to include intentional highly challenging moments, or critical incidents, that help a developing leader more quickly understand that they \u201ccan do it\u201d? Could events like that help them recognize \u201cplus set en vous\u201d<\/em> (there is more in you than you think)? (50).<\/p>\n I\u2019m not talking about a callous disregard of learners or abusive tactics, but I do wonder if careful and intentional \u2018throwing a person in the deep end\u2019 could help a young leader emerge with more confidence, more quickly.<\/p>\n Maybe learning to drive, or lead, when scared to death of crashing, with a trusted master mentor sitting in the passenger seat next to you, is a great way to grow into the leader you can be.<\/p>\n #Poole, #DLGP02<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was 15 years old my Grandad and I got into an old manual transmission pickup truck and drove to a very steep hill where, without warning, he pulled the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, and told me to get into the driver\u2019s seat. He was determined to teach me how to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"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":[2489,2090],"class_list":["post-31053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-poole","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053","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\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31054,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053\/revisions\/31054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}