In Eddie Gibbs’ book Leadership Next, there’s a list where on page 57 he quotes Halan Cleveland’s eight attitudes indispensable to managing complexity (from Cleveland’s Nobody in Charge, San Francisco”: Jossey-Bass, 2002, p.119).

– Lively intellectual curiosity; an interest in everything, because everything is related to everything else and what we are doing

– Genuine interest in what others think and why they think that way – means being at peace with yourself for a start

– Feeling of special responsibility for envisioning a future that’s different from a straight-line projection of the present. Trends are not destiny.

– A hunch that most risks are there not to be avoided but to be taken.

– A mindset that crises are normal, tensions can be promising and complexity is fun.

– A realization that paranoia and self-pity and reserved for people who don’t want to be leaders

– A sense of personal responsibility for the general outcome of your efforts

– ‘Unwarranted optimism’ – the conviction that there must be some more upbeat outcome than would result from adding up all the available expert advice.

*****

A comment or two:

I heard the preacher (myself!) at Camberwell Baptist Church say on Sunday morning: ‘Three things you can say about all the biblical leaders: they were all risk-takers, they all failed at something (in human terms) and they all spent a disproportionate amount of their lives in deserts…’

In our work with pastors, the following might need to be amended:

‘Unwarranted optimism’ – the conviction that there must be some more upbeat outcome than would result from adding up all the available expert advice.’

Sometimes there isn’t a warrant for optimism: the situation might have some terminal components in it and unwarranted optimism might result in a disaster/crash.

As John Macquarrie writes in a couple of his books: biblical hope (God is with us in the bad times and the good times) is not the same as optimism (things will be OK: they mightn’t be OK)

Rowland Croucher
July 2010