{"id":36571,"date":"2024-03-12T18:17:48","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T01:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36571"},"modified":"2024-03-12T18:27:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T01:27:03","slug":"its-a-matter-of-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/its-a-matter-of-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s a matter of trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout this semester we have been looking at leadership from the different lenses of selected authors. This week Simon Walker brings the Undefended Leader to our attention in his book Leading Out of Who You Are, Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em>. Essentially, the undefended leader is someone who leads out of who they are and not out of fear that stems from idealization: followers expecting the leader to be everything they personally struggle with, idealism: leaders that have a desire for things to be different or better, or unmet emotional needs.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s book goes into detail of these needs and the defenses that leaders use to compensate for them. For the purpose of this blog, I want to briefly list these.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Having a front and backstage style where front stage actions are those that are exposed for others to see and backstage actions that are hidden from others. [2]<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Power that may include physical, spiritual, influence, knowledge, position, and more.[3]<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Control where leaders feel they can escape a tumultuous situation by assuring order and predictability.[4]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Using the commonly known and accepted psychological term of ego, Walker explained that the purpose of the defenses is to \u00a0protect the ego. There are numerous reasons why someone might have a healthy ego or an unsecure ego. Most of these are formed while a person is growing through childhood and adolescence when personal attachments were being formed. Depending on if the environment and interactions were \u00a0secure, healthy, and encouraging life or marked with ridicule or peer rejection could mean the difference between a secure or unsecure ego.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

    While Walker mentioned a number of consequences for the defended leader, what interested me most in this book was Walker\u2019s\u00a0 conversation on the lack of trust. The lack of trust can be destructive in any relationship. In a work environment it could sabotage an entire team or even company. He used the example of an employee who had bullied many members of a team. Rather than report the bully, the team confronted him as a group and shared how his actions were hurtful. The bully saw the shame of his actions and agreed to the group\u2019s stipulations for him to remain part of them. This was accomplished by the group\u2019s willingness to trust each other and the bully to be vulnerable in their conversation with him. They took the lead to facilitate a positive change in the bully\u2019s behavior which also would trickle into their work. The trust had to go both ways. The bully also needed to trust his coworkers that they would indeed give him an opportunity to amend his actions.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

    Well known author and executive coach, Patrick Lencioni states in his book, The FIVE Dysfunctions of a TEAM<\/em>, that one of the first things a team must do to function well is to develop trust within the team. He defines this trust as a confidence among team members that their peers\u2019 intentions are good. This allows defenses and territorialism to diminish. It is the heart of a functioning and cohesive team. However, \u00a0without it teamwork is impossible.[7]<\/a> When a team is not working well together, the leader must be the first person to model trust by demonstrating a willingness to become authentically vulnerable to trust others in the group.[8]<\/a> Lencioni was astute enough to know that building trust takes time and requires the support of a leader.<\/p>\n

    Every leader must be able to ask themselves the hard question. Am I leading out of defenses or as an undefended leader? And so, I ask myself, how do I lead? I have done a lot of personal work to heal the hurts of my formative years and rewire, so to speak, my ego. Most of the time it is not difficult to leave my ego at the door at work. But the answer isn\u2019t just found in Simon Walker\u2019s or Patrick Lencioni\u2019s books. Leadership is more than learning how to be undefended. It is also about learning to self-differentiate as Edwin Friedman says.[9]<\/a> Last week our reading smacked me in the face, and I realized in our class meeting that my strong feelings about a topic in the book were very close to the surface. My ego said I knew what is best and I don’t trust the system.\u00a0 That realization caused me to stop and remember who my King is and to whom I answer. It isn\u2019t to a political system or a country or even righteousness. It is to spend time with the Lord and yield all the concerns of life to Him. It doesn\u2019t mean that standing up to injustice stops, Jesus stood up to injustice, but as the ultimate person who could self-differentiate, he was able to do so in a way that became instructive and productive. Ultimately my biggest take away from this book is that as a leader I must be willing to examine myself, my motives, reactions, actions and also the hopes and dreams for the work being done and the people doing that work. By prayerfully doing that, the pitfalls that all three authors spoke to can be minimized. This opens the doors wider for cohesive teams, productive work, and true service to those in need.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    [1]<\/a> Simon P. Walker, Leading out of Who You Are, Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em> (Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions Ltd, 2007),16-17.<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> Walker, 25.<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> Walker, 37.<\/p>\n

    [4]<\/a> Walker, 43.<\/p>\n

    [5]<\/a> Walker, 53-54.<\/p>\n

    [6]<\/a> Walker, 129.<\/p>\n

    [7]<\/a> Patrick Lencioni, The FIVE Dysfunctions of a TEAM, A Leadership Fable<\/em> (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 195<\/p>\n

    [8]<\/a> Lencioni, 201.<\/p>\n

    [9]<\/a> Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (New York: Church Publishing, 2017),<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Throughout this semester we have been looking at leadership from the different lenses of selected authors. This week Simon Walker brings the Undefended Leader to our attention in his book Leading Out of Who You Are, Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership. Essentially, the undefended leader is someone who leads out of who they are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"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":[3085],"class_list":["post-36571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03-walker-undefendedleader","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571","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\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36575,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571\/revisions\/36575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}