{"id":39092,"date":"2024-10-24T21:03:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T04:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=39092"},"modified":"2024-10-24T21:03:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T04:03:22","slug":"leveling-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leveling-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Leveling Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Sunday, we are finishing our series \u201cTales From the Scrypt\u2026ures\u201d. Get it? It\u2019s a play off the old television series \u201cTales from the Crypt.\u201d It\u2019s spooky season, so we are diving into Bible stories that are a bit eerie and usually avoided on a Sunday morning. The one I\u2019ll be unpacking this Sunday is about the Levite\u2019s concubine in Judges 19-21, and, believe it or not, Edgar and Peter Schein\u2019s Humble Leadership<\/em> has been helpful while wading through this horrific story all week in my preparation. It helps balance out all the heaviness and tragedy of this narrative.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the story of a Levite who cuts his concubine into 12 pieces. He then sends them to the tribes of Israel to showcase the moral depravity in Gibeah after she is abused all night and left for dead. The problem is the Levite, and all of Israel for that matter, is just as morally depraved as the people of Gibeah. As you read through these three chapters, it\u2019s extremely disturbing. Reading it again turned my stomach a few times. People at this time were indifferent, prideful, undiscerning, cruel, selfish, deceptive, violent, impulsive, and tribal to a fault.<\/p>\n

Judges 21:25, the last verse in the book, states:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201c<\/sup><\/strong>In those days, Israel had no king<\/u>; everyone did as they saw fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Edgar and Peter Schein\u2019s levels model, Israel would have been a level -10 in relationships. As I stated before, the nation had declined into a cold, inhospitable, prideful, undiscerning, and selfish place.<\/p>\n

Leadership matters. Through leaders, God brings change to a nation in major moral decay. God\u2019s Spirit begins moving in Samual to raise up kings as an answer to wicked problems in Israel. The kings were not perfect either, but it was a significant level-up for the nation, at least for a while.<\/p>\n

Humble Leadership<\/em> is about a new regime and leadership style for the 21st<\/sup> century, and I believe it, too, is desperately needed. Schein\u2019s humble leadership model is about moving away from hierarchical structures and fear-based motivations, using employees as a means to an end, and viewing people as a role rather than a human. Humble leadership is about moving toward teams built on closer relationships, trust, vulnerability, collaboration, and openness. \u00a0Schein paves the way for leaders to graduate from level 1, which is very transactional and \u201cprofessional,\u201d to level 2, 2.5, and even 3 in some cases. It is about moving to \"\"<\/a>greater intimacy. Of course, they caveat this with appropriateness within the organization, but \u201cpersonization\u201d,[i]<\/a> as they call it, is necessary for transformational<\/em> leadership, which is in step with much of what Anabel Beerel presents in \u201cRethinking Leadership\u201d. [ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Change is NOT easy. Although \u201cleveling up\u201d sounds nice in theory, it always comes with difficulties. Even though Schein is addressing larger organizations, I think what he says here is true in so many situations, \u201cHumble Leadership in the large and mature organizations is clearly the most challenging because what is new and better will inevitably be compared with the technical and social conventions that made the organization successful in the first place. Long-time members of the organization especially might be hesitant to work for change when existing systems had always been considered \u2018good enough\u2019.\u201d [iii]<\/a>. Sometimes an organization, family, or nation, like Israel in the final chapters of Judges, is so busted that people are desperate for change. However, it\u2019s easy to have the \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke don\u2019t fix it\u201d mentality. The struggle with this attitude is that it does <\/em>work for some (usually the higher-ups), but it\u2019s broke and not working for others, which is why Humble Leadership is important but challenging. It gives more people influence, credit, and input, which can hit others’ egos. We also don\u2019t know if these \u201cnew innovative ideas\u201d will work, so there is a legitimate fear of failure, loss, and being wrong.<\/p>\n

Fear seems to be the root problem in the first place. According to the Humble Leadership model, prioritizing performance, numbers, and the bottom line may be what is feeding transactional relationships. Of course, these things are important since businesses, churches, and organizations have real employees with actual salaries, benefits, and families, but that can\u2019t be the ultimate motivating factor. Leading from fear and anxiety, whether that is fear of loss, fear of failure, anxiety of rejection, etc., never usually works out well in the long run and creates a cold, tense, and shallow work environment. \u00a0I love that we are discovering that organizations that lead with compassion, empathy, relationships, openness, warmth, and vulnerability can still hit their KPIs and succeed in even more meaningful areas.<\/p>\n

I have to end with a great quote from The Humble Church<\/em> by Dr. Martyn Percy,<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cHumility is often grounded in knowing that you cannot know everything, and so are prepared to receive from and be taught by others. Instead of hoping you have all the answers, the humble person knows they are incomplete and is unafraid of learning and responding authentically to new questions. The Word made flesh shows the way. Christ, in being all-loving and loving-to-all, is able to live within the constraints of humanity because love itself is receptive. It is dialogue, not just monologue; it is reception, not just projection; it listens, learns, and changes and does not presume to hide behind the power of propaganda. Truth and love, when embodied, will find a home in humility, but not in hubris.\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> Schein, Edgar H., and Peter A. Schein, Humble Leadership, Second Edition: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust<\/em>, Second Edition. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2023,<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> Beerel, Annabel C. Rethinking Leadership: A Critique of Contemporary Theories<\/em>. 1 Edition. New York: Routledge, 2021.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Schein, Humble Leadership<\/em>, 71.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Percy, Martyn, The Humble Church: Becoming the Body of Christ<\/em>, London: Hymns Ancient & Modern, 2021, 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Sunday, we are finishing our series \u201cTales From the Scrypt\u2026ures\u201d. Get it? It\u2019s a play off the old television series \u201cTales from the Crypt.\u201d It\u2019s spooky season, so we are diving into Bible stories that are a bit eerie and usually avoided on a Sunday morning. The one I\u2019ll be unpacking this Sunday is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[2310],"tags":[2489,3314,3320],"class_list":["post-39092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-humbleleadership","tag-scheinandschein","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092","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\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39094,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092\/revisions\/39094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}