I met my husband in Chicago.\u00a0 We both worked in residence life at North Park University and were in Seminary together.\u00a0 I love big cities, the chaos, the unpredictability, and the order, especially Chicago, where everything is in a grid.\u00a0 When we started dating, as all dating people do, you take an interest in their interests.\u00a0 He loves Jazz.\u00a0 I thought I loved jazz too, but all it took was a few dates at jazz clubs, and then I realized I hated it.\u00a0 Before you get mad at me, I don\u2019t hate all Jazz, just improvisational jazz.\u00a0 My husband (boyfriend), at the time figured out why.\u00a0 He knows I love to dance, LOVE it, and I tend to thrive on spontaneity, so at first, he was confused, but then he understood: I thrive on Chaos within order.\u00a0 I felt seen by him.\u00a0 I indeed like rules and boundaries (within reason), and I love the freedom to scribble within the lines any way I want, with sometimes scribbling outside of the lines.\u00a0 So, although jazz has rules and order, I wouldn’t say I like how I couldn\u2019t predict where it went in the improvisation. (True story: just as I finished this paragraph, my husband mentioned that we were going on a date this Saturday and said, \u201cMaybe a jazz club?\u201d\u00a0 Do you think married people become algorithms together? Creepy.<\/p>\n
As Margaret Wheatley notes in her leadership books, rules and order are found in chaos, as she considers leadership lessons in science. \u201cBut of course, this god of science can only fail us. Chaos can\u2019t be controlled; the unpredictable can\u2019t be predicted. Instead, we are being called to encounter life as it is: uncontrollable, unpredictable, messy, surprising, erratic.\u201d[1]<\/a> \u00a0Wheatley\u2019s book Leadership and the New Science <\/em>is intensely intelligent and somewhat intimidating.\u00a0 Wheatley expertly intertwines science and how our world and nature are seemingly chaotic but finds beautiful symmetry in the science of nature.\u00a0 She then takes this science and pulls lessons on leadership from this science. \u201cOne primary lesson I have learned from fractals is that a world ordered by patterns does not\u00a0 explain itself through traditional measures.\u201d [2]<\/a><\/p>\n This brings to mind snowflakes and how each is, ideally, beautifully formed, unique, and masterfully crafted.\u00a0 In leadership and life, what we look for is meaning.\u00a0 That is the spiritual work each of our human souls is searching for.\u00a0 Snowflakes altogether are just a blanket of white stuff that is beautiful and potentially dangerous. However, you catch one flake on your hand, and there is something you will never see again; it does not replicate; it has its structure and meaning.\u00a0 \u201cBut by far the most powerful force of attraction in organizations and in our individual lives is meaning<\/em>. Our greatest motivation in life, writes Viktor Frankl in his stunning presentation of logotherapy, \u2018is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning\u2026\u2019\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0As leaders, helping those we lead understand what they mean to our organizations and their unique fingerprint on the organization.\u00a0 We all want to be seen and valued for who we are and who God made us to be and to know there is an investment by our leaders to help us be our best selves.<\/p>\n We all want to be our best selves.\u00a0 We read self-help books, get life coaching, spiritual direction or counseling, work out, meditate, and practice mindfulness, yet when we avoid our shadow, we miss the work. \u201cWe tend to think that if we want to change our behavior, all we have to do is put our minds to it.\u201d[4]<\/a> I have enjoyed most of the leadership books we\u2019ve read in this program, but I have felt a touch of the feminine power of leadership in the books that come across as artsy, creative, or out of the box.\u00a0 Finding Our Way <\/em>and Leadership and the New Science <\/em>by Margaret Wheatley takes a creative look at leadership, primarily through Nature.\u00a0 Spellbound<\/em>by Daniel Lieberman also lands in alternative ways of understanding leadership.\u00a0 Even if I don\u2019t understand everything, reading a woman\u2019s perspective on how science and nature speak to us as leaders is refreshing.\u00a0 Brilliant.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cLife is uncertain. Instead of holding on to any one thing or form, we expect it to change. Good things, bad things- they come and go in this ever-changing world we live in.\u201d [5]<\/a> Life is uncertain; I may still hate Jazz, I may squirm and be uncomfortable when the musician goes off on a rift, but what I do know is that I love my husband, and he loves Jazz and that makes it beautiful.<\/p>\n \n [1]<\/a> \u00a0Wheatley, Margaret J. Finding Our Way; Leadership For an Uncertain Times. <\/em>(San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishing, 2005) Pg 125.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Wheatley, Margaret J. Leadership and the New Science; Discovering Order In A Chaotic World. <\/em>(San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishing, 2006) Pg 124.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Wheatley, Margaret J. Leadership and the New Science; Discovering Order In A Chaotic World. <\/em>(San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishing, 2006) pg. 132.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Lieberman, Daniel Z. Spellbound <\/em>(Dallas, BenBella Books, Inc. 2022),Pg 4.<\/p>\n