Another Leadership Quote for discussion

This book I’m reading about leading with power in non-profits (much like leadership in the church) indicates:

“it’s the leader’s role to define reality”.

What do you think that means?

Personally I think it’s a bad idea because as far as I’m concerned leaders should understand and adapt to the current reality more than trying to get their followers to accept some pie-in-the-sky fantasy presented as reality. Of course, the reality people need to deal with is constantly changing because ideas that made sense and products that were easy to sell in the past are often made obsolete by newer developments but how much control any one leader no matter how powerful and autocratic really has over defining reality is generally going to be limited.

Basically successful ideas or products usually already have a place in the environment where they eventually thrive and trying to carve out a niche for something that doesn’t fit into the current environment very well is likely to be much more trouble than it is worth. So trying to push something that is too far out-of-sync with the current reality whether new and unproven or outdated is not good leadership at all in my opinion as much as an example of misleading people in an irresponsible way (Matthew 15:14). Maybe they simply meant this as some kind of motivational hype along the lines of, “Leaders should take charge and make it happen” but the way it is worded just sounds wrong to me.

I think the role of a leader is to clarify and simplify things that pertain to the organization’s goals.

I don’t think it can be taken out of context to suggest they define reality for each individual and the individual’s reality. Just that the organization needs vision in order to move people forward in unity and efficiency, and the more shared vision there is, the greater the empowerment.

This book I’m reading about leading with power in non-profits (much like leadership in the church) indicates:

“it’s the leader’s role to define reality”.

What do you think that means?

I don’t get the vision — reality connection. A vision is NOT reality — it’s a concept and doesn’t yet exist. I see that vision creates hope, and that’s great — and I think vision is important. The closest definition I see here is the leader indicates to the people what the current situation is, the constraints, the resource problems, etcetera. the president of my company (huge, recently took the place of a major North American car manufacturer in terms of size) said the organization’s “embrace reality”. I think that might be the effect of the leader defining reality.

If this is what it means, it’s pretty simple compared to the abstract comment Napoleon made.

****************

[not to derail the thread, but Napoleon also said “God favors the side with the heaviest artillery” — I get a kick out of that one. It’s a sort of cynical version of pray as if it all depends on God and work as if it all depends on you]

This book I’m reading about leading with power in non-profits (much like leadership in the church) indicates:

“it’s the leader’s role to define reality”.

What do you think that means?

In applying the concept of assumptive reality to organizations – I would answer that the organization has a certain perspective that is part of the culture and message. This perspective is the “reality” that the leader would be tasked to create and hone. If you have managers that are counterproductive to your message then it would make sense to replace them. Your message needs to be consistent.

Applying this to the church, JS absolutely defined reality for his followers in such ways that they were willing to repeatedly uproot and move their families to pursue that reality.

Current church leaders can define reality through pruning deviant outgrowths (September 6) or by encouraging new reality visions to take hold. I have one example about encouraging new reality visions. DB Mormon recently said the following about Brad Wilcox’s talk “His Grace is Sufficient.”

I love Bro. Wilcox. His talk has now been in the ensign, the new era, and is the number one talk on BYU speeches. His talks rings true and the Brethren have picked up on it. elder Uchtdorf talked about a toddler walking in his talk “four titles” and if you compare that to Bro. Wilcox’s piano analogy you will see they are hitting on the same truth. He is the impetus for my moving into a nuanced world. Once I saw that his view of Grace rang true and contradicted what other “authorities” taught or stated, it opened me to begin considering all my assumptions and expectations and to begin enjoying stripping away culture, opinion, policy, and nonsense and to search for the diamonds of truth on each issue.

Suppose the church leaders have this new theory on grace that is espoused by an inspirational speaker. They can just leave it alone, they can talk to Bro. Wilcox and discourage him from expressing his opinion publicly on this matter, they can declare this new theory to be heresy and ex bro. Wilcox, or they can reprint the talk and even present similar ideas in talks from official leadership as they seem to have done.

Our leaders also have the ability to decree revelation and change the membership’s reality pretty quickly in this method.

Each of these actions would theoretically over the course of time alter the “reality” of the Mormon landscape.

Finally, I believe that is was Hawkgrrrl that mentioned that we have an oligarchy. This means that there is variation (to a greater or lesser degree) on the messages that are being presented at the top. For every Packer there is an Uchdorf.

My $.02