{"id":41615,"date":"2025-04-10T21:25:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T04:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41615"},"modified":"2025-04-10T21:25:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T04:25:55","slug":"leadership-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leadership-is-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership is HARD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">And some <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">days<\/span> <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">weeks<\/span> <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">months<\/span> seasons it\u2019s harder than others.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I first picked up Glanzer\u2019s <em>The Sound of Leadership<\/em>, I read it inspectionally and thought, \u201cGreat! A quick and easy read!\u201d<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> What I encountered, though, was a helpful tool intersecting not just in a challenging season but in a week full of unique experiences\u2026 some of them pointed and painful reminders that leadership is hard sometimes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rather than simply applying a quick and easy read, I found myself asking what the sound of leadership looks (err, sounds) like in the midst of a cacophony of disparate conversations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A noisy senior leader transition that sometimes feels devoid of kingdom notes.<\/li>\n<li>Hopeful community leadership conversations with people who might never say or <em>want<\/em> to say they are Kingdom-minded but nevertheless are \u201cdancing\u201d to Kingdom music in how they chase after justice\u2014especially for those feeling crushed in an environment of fear, hate, and uncertainty.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Interactions with local government officials as we explore what the health needs of our community are, wondering together how to meet them in a system allergic to risk.<\/li>\n<li>Celebrations with church families that are experiencing so much transformation as they choose the way of Jesus, they don\u2019t know what to do with it all.<\/li>\n<li>Heartbreaking discoveries of past practices in my organization that are, at best, unhealthy but more likely toxic to the point of lasting injury.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">These weren\u2019t just the competing or conflicting voices of stakeholders but seemed like entirely different worlds that I was trying to inhabit or intersect with, sometimes jumping from one right into another.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> On the surface, <em>I<\/em>was the only shared element that could be found occupying all of these seemingly discrete worlds. So, what <em>does<\/em> the sound of leadership sound like there?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">I\u2019m not completely sure I yet have an answer, and at the risk of torturing poor Dr. Glanzer\u2019s metaphor to death, I can\u2019t help but wonder if these different worlds aren\u2019t worlds at all, but <em>notes<\/em>. Notes that at first seem dissonant, cacophonous, even, but where there is an invitation to find the harmony and discern how to embrace or embody them as part of one whole.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> This isn\u2019t to say I\u2019ve been living a fractured existence (at least I don\u2019t think so), but I find myself wondering out loud what it looks like to move from simple awareness of what is discordant and function as an active agent who helps bring about something euphonious.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">To live into that wholeness will require a fresh awareness of the limitations and biases of my own thinking and a willingness to intersect with the biases and limitations of the thinking of others.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> It will mean being fully present and synthesizing competing truths into the direction of flourishing.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> It may mean bringing those different worlds or notes together and working diligently to invite the full presence of others so that <em>dissonance<\/em>doesn\u2019t become <em>dis-integration<\/em>.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a> It will also involve risk and inviting others into risk if for no other reason than this kind of integration requires us to trade outrage for authenticity and reflection over performance while choosing to trust.<a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">There\u2019s no space we occupy that isn\u2019t, at some level, desperate for fresh imagination. Glanzer\u2019s book, punctuating other readings from this semester, reminds me that while leadership is hard work, it is also creative work\u2014imaginative, artful, and capable of bringing beauty into broken places. <a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a> That gives me hope and energy to keep pressing on and pressing in.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. <em>How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading<\/em>. Revised and Updated, Kindle. (New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2011), 17.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Glanzer, Jules. <em>The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tine Your Life and Influence<\/em>. (Plano: Invite Press), 58.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Glanzer, Jules. <em>The Sound of Leadership, <\/em>13.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Glazner, Jules. <em>The Sound of Leadership<\/em>, 71-78.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Duffy, Bobby. <em>Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding<\/em>. New York: Basic Books, 2019; Kahneman, Daniel. <em>Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Walker, Simon P. <em>Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership (The Undefeated Leader Trilogy, bk 1)<\/em>. Carlisle: Piquant Editions Limited, 2007.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Friedman, Edwin H. <em>A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em>. 10th Anniversary Edition. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Haid, Jonathan and Eric Schmidt. \u201cAI Is About to Make Social Media Much More Toxicm\u201d <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, May 5, 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2023\/05\/generative-ai-social-media-integration-dangers-disinformation-addiction\/673940\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2023\/05\/generative-ai-social-media-integration-dangers-disinformation-addiction\/673940\/<\/a>; Haidt, Jonathan and Tobias Rose-Stockwell. \u201cThe Dark Psychology of Social Networks: Why it feels like everything is going haywire,\u201d <em>The Atlantic, <\/em>December 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2019\/12\/social-media-democracy\/600763\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2019\/12\/social-media-democracy\/600763\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/\/E2CAA021-3A92-44D2-ACA6-779086A28F98#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> Sweet, Leonard, foreword to <em>The Sound of Leadership: Kingdom Notes to Fine Tune Your Life and Influence<\/em> by Jules Glazner (Plano: Invite Press), xvii-xviii.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And some days weeks months seasons it\u2019s harder than others. When I first picked up Glanzer\u2019s The Sound of Leadership, I read it inspectionally and thought, \u201cGreat! A quick and easy read!\u201d[1] What I encountered, though, was a helpful tool intersecting not just in a challenging season but in a week full of unique experiences\u2026 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"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":[1],"tags":[2844,3397],"class_list":["post-41615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glanzer","tag-dlgp04","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41615","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\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41616,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41615\/revisions\/41616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}