{"id":35163,"date":"2024-01-23T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35163"},"modified":"2024-01-23T18:22:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T02:22:25","slug":"busting-a-childhood-myth-and-breaking-through-leadership-barriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/busting-a-childhood-myth-and-breaking-through-leadership-barriers\/","title":{"rendered":"Busting a Childhood Myth and Breaking Through Leadership Barriers"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a child, I was told by several teachers and other adults that, \u201cCuriosity killed the cat.\u201d Memorize. Practice. Regurgitate when tested. Asking questions meant that you were not grasping the subject, or worse stupid. So, I kept quiet. This was drilled into me as a child and a mindset I carried with me into university. But as I reflect, I can see how this mindset hurt me. I took a required calculus course in my first year of science at university. I needed calculus to advance but could never quite grasp it. As a result, I failed the first time and squeaked by the second time I took it, still not able to grasp it. I never asked one question in class or sought out a professor for help. While many of my friends seemed perfectly at home in a math classroom, calculus felt like a foreign world to me. I made up my mind after that first course that it just wasn\u2019t for me, I couldn\u2019t do it and chose a different path. However, according to educator, Robert Coven, curiosity doesn\u2019t kill the proverbial cat. Asking questions and a healthy dose of curiosity are just what a learner needs to achieve learning breakthroughs as they grasp important foundational concepts. Once these foundational concepts are grasped, learners can build a mental framework that enables them to understand and apply the subject in a much more integrated way.[1]<\/a> Childhood myth, busted!<\/p>\n

Jan Meyer and Ray Land refer to these foundational concepts as threshold concepts. A threshold concept is a foundational idea that acts as a learning gateway for students, opening new ways of thinking. These concepts give students access to knowledge previously thought to be unreachable and fragmented. The threshold concept is often disturbing because the student will be forced to unlearn previously held knowledge or beliefs. However, the threshold concept has a transformative effect because it disrupts a person’s way of approaching a subject and then creates new, better, and more accurate ways of thinking leading to greater proficiency. Once a student grasps these threshold concepts, they can also better integrate the knowledge to create a more cohesive framework, rather than a fragmented understanding of a topic. [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

As I consider the field of church leader development, in which I am working, I know that many pastors are either plateaued in their development and, as a result, some are considering resigning out of frustration. I am drawn to wonder about threshold concepts in leadership and if many of these leaders would benefit from grasping threshold concepts in the field of leadership. A hasty Google search didn\u2019t reveal much.<\/p>\n

As I reflect, then, on my journey I realize that I had a significant threshold moment after about 20 years of leading in a local church. That threshold moment occurred in a classroom with Dr. Paul Magnus when I began to grasp the concepts and practical application of collaborative and strengths-based leadership. Through a flipped classroom approach, Dr. Magnus, had us investigate the power of the group in solving the greatest challenges of the organization to develop a co-created and co-owned plan. I was not being spoon-fed great leadership content but drawn into a learning process, through inquiry, as we interacted with content. My first class with Dr. Magnus changed my view of leadership entirely. It messed with me, but it also freed me up. Before this, I believed that I needed to be the expert and that I was responsible for creating a compelling vision, creating a great strategy, aligning resources, managing a staff, and solving complex problems along the way. I knew the weight was too burdensome. I walked away from the classroom that week, still unskilled in collaborative practices but knowing that I could lead differently and more effectively. I called it my leadership lightbulb moment.<\/p>\n

This threshold concept led me to complete a master\u2019s degree, utilizing my learning to help lead a congregation through a very difficult crisis that stretched out over 4 years, to accept a new role in leader development, and enroll in this doctoral program. After that lightbulb moment, my understanding and practice of leadership grew exponentially and continued to develop more cohesively. Before this breakthrough, I would go to conferences or take courses and I would get great ideas that I would implement for a time. This led to frustration and for a while, I decided that I wouldn\u2019t attend another leadership conference. I didn\u2019t have a cohesive framework for all the knowledge I had gathered. Even though I knew I needed more development, I was stalled out and didn\u2019t know how to grow as a leader. There is nothing worse than feeling plateaued as a leader. I was unwittingly repeating my calculus experience from my university days, but now the stakes were much higher. However, cultivating my curiosity led to a learning breakthrough as I grasped a significant and very timely leadership threshold concept.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, my greatest gift to the 500+ licensed workers in our district of churches will be the gift of creating environments that stimulate curiosity about leadership rather than cookie-cutter answers for their leadership. Perhaps, the best way to do this is in my context is through a simple and scalable peer coaching approach that interacts with identified threshold concepts. In Mining for Gold<\/em>, Tom Camacho wrote, “In Coaching Leadership, we don’t solve leader’s issues for them or tell them what they need to do next. If we do our part well, leaders feel they are in charge and they choose the path that is best for them.”[3]<\/a> Finally, I\u2019d also want our leaders to know that their leadership frustration shouldn\u2019t lead them to resign. Rather, I\u2019d want them to be led to become curious about what they don\u2019t yet know. Then, remain curious until they discover the threshold concept that leads to a breakthrough for them because breakthrough results in greater freedom, health, and effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Stay curious, friends.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Breaking Through: Threshold Concepts as a Key to Understanding | Robert Coven | TEDxCaryAcademy<\/em>, 2018, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GCPYSKSFky4.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land, eds., Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge<\/em>, 1. publ (London: Routledge, 2006), 28.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Tom Camacho, Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching<\/em>, First published (Nottingham: IVP, 2019), 63.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a child, I was told by several teachers and other adults that, \u201cCuriosity killed the cat.\u201d Memorize. Practice. Regurgitate when tested. Asking questions meant that you were not grasping the subject, or worse stupid. So, I kept quiet. This was drilled into me as a child and a mindset I carried with me into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"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":[3010,2378,2007],"class_list":["post-35163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-meyer-land","tag-coven","tag-dlgp","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35163","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\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35164,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35163\/revisions\/35164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}