Start a new discussion thread based on a quotation from Part 3 of Discover Your True North that you find particularly powerful or significant. Discuss why this quotation is powerful or significant for you and how this can help you (or others) as a leader.
Each post must be approx. 300 words and –
(a) cite the preceding post (where applicable),
(b) cite at least two readings from the course or program, and
(c) conclude with an open-ended question raised by your own reflection.
Winning the Talent Hunt
This excerpt taken from – “Learning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others,
and Leading an Organization” (pp. 197-198) by Ron Williams.
How to Build Your Team
One way to define leadership is the art of achieving things through other people.
To make that possible, you have to learn how to recruit, train, and motivate the
most talented working team possible. Here are some ideas about how to make it
happen.
One of the most crucial challenges you’ll face as a leader is the development of
an empowered, highly motivated team—a team that is capable of achieving
extraordinary things even in the most challenging circumstances. To create such
a team, the leader must always remember that the people he works with are
even more important than the job or the organization and its problems, and
behave accordingly. Several basic skills are involved in building your team of
miracle workers. These include learning how to set expectations rather than
simply issuing demands, being able to accurately read and describe reality rather
than being imprisoned by false assumptions, and putting people first rather than
killing their zeal through indifference, as many would-be leaders do. These
fundamental leadership techniques add up to what I call people-centered
leadership. Applying them can help to transform a seemingly modest collection of
talent into a team of world beaters. Of course, a fundamental element in building
your team is recruiting and hiring the right people in the first place. Doing that
isn’t quite as simple as many leaders appear to assume.
THE VALUE OF INCLUSION: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT DEMOGRAPHICS
A leader should recruit a team that complements the leader’s own strengths—
and compensates for any weaknesses—rather than simply mirroring the leader’s
personality. Especially in times of stress and turmoil, the smart leader recognizes
the power of attracting team members whose unique perspectives may offer
fresh problem-solving approaches that the organization desperately needs. For
this reason, some of the most common ways of thinking about the recruiting and
hiring process are dangerous, even potentially fatal, to the effort to build a
powerful team. For example, many hiring managers and human resources
professionals talk about “cultural fit” as an important element in selecting new
employees. In one sense, this is correct: You want to have a clear sense of the
values that your organization seeks to embody, and you want to attract people
who generally share those values and will be proud to help you uphold them.
Thus, at Aetna, we tried to hire people who truly cared about the health-care
needs of ordinary individuals and would always aspire to making sure that our
customers and clients would be treated with respect and consideration. But all
too often, leaders use the word “fit” to describe people who are culturally and
personally similar to an organization’s current employees—the kinds of people
they are accustomed to working with and whom they might enjoy hanging out
with in the company cafeteria or on off-site retreats. This in turn tends to morph
into a search for people who come from the same background as the leaders—
who grew up in the same kind of neighborhood, went to the same kind of college,
studied the same kinds of subjects, and have the same kinds of personal tastes
and interests. When they find a job candidate who gives them this kind of warm-
and-fuzzy feeling, they say, “He really looks as though he’ll fit in here!” or “I can
definitely see her becoming a part of our team!” Conversely, people involved in
the hiring process often use vague observations like “I’m not sure he fits in to this
department” or “I don’t think she’s ready for the assignment” as a way of vetoing
a particular candidate. I don’t believe in blocking an opportunity for an otherwise
well-qualified candidate based on such data-free comments. I think a leader
should challenge remarks of this sort by asking probing questions: What exactly
do you mean? In what specific way is he unready? What particular skills do you
think are missing? Can you give me an example of what you are saying? These
sorts of questions gently force people to “get real” about the hiring process rather
than falling back on empty assertions about “fit” that often amount to nothing
more than “I kinda like her! Let’s hire her.”
More important, the search for “fit” can hurt your quest to build the most powerful,
effective team. In practice, it often means avoiding people with new perspectives,
ideas, approaches, and personal styles—which can be a big mistake. Hiring
people who are in the same mold as everyone else in the organization strongly
reduces the odds of getting the kind of innovative, out-of-the-box thinking that
makes reframing possible. In an age when change and adaptation are among the
chief imperatives for every organization, choosing people in a way that reinforces
the path of least resistance is a recipe for long-term decline. Instead, I suggest
you make a deliberate effort to choose people who are different from those you
already employ. This is about much more than just demographic diversity. Yes,
it’s valuable to build a workforce that includes people of differing ethnic, racial,
religious, and class backgrounds, as well as people of different genders and of
varying sexual orientations.
The best way to understand the needs and values of customers from every
background is to have employees from every background who speak their
language and understand their experiences. But the deepest value of diversity is
derived from cultural and intellectual inclusion, not just demographic variation.
When employees with a wide range of different sensibilities offer fresh
perspectives on the organization and its mission, it helps you tap new sources of
knowledge and creativity that will enable your organization to thrive and grow.
When you approach the recruiting challenge with this in mind, you avoid the trap
of hiring too many people in your own image. Instead, you open your doors to the
broadest possible candidate pool, and you develop the ability to recognize and
appreciate talent no matter where you find it or what it may look like on the
surface. In many cases, the most effective leadership teams involve “odd couple”
combinations of individuals who seem, at first glance, wildly different, even
incompatible—but who have complementary skills that, taken together, provide
exactly what the organization needs to succeed. At Aetna, Jack Rowe and I
formed such a team. When the headhunter for Aetna originally called Rowe to
ask if he would be interested in joining the company, he was incredulous. “Are
you kidding? I’m suing Aetna!” he replied. That was more or less true. One
symptom of the problems Aetna was having with its physician stakeholders was
several lawsuits against the company, one of which had been brought by Mount
Sinai, where Rowe was president. Recognizing the seriousness of this issue,
Aetna was determined to fix it, which was why they were recruiting their “enemy,”
not only to join but to lead the Aetna team. Rowe knew the world of medicine
inside and out. But he knew little about insurance and had never studied
management, although his role with Mount Sinai called for considerable
leadership and organizational skills. When he agreed to take on the
chairmanship of Aetna, Rowe knew he needed to complement his own talents
with a second-in-command whose aptitudes and knowledge were drastically
different from his own. Rowe recalls: I needed someone who understood
everything about the nuts and bolts of health insurance—someone capable of
taking the engine apart, spreading out all 250 parts on the floor of the garage,
and putting it back together better than before. And then, when the key was
inserted and turned, we needed to be sure the engine would start! So we started
searching for that kind of guy—a person who understood the atomic structure of
insurance right down to individual products and the markets they served. I could
help formulate a top-down vision for our industry. But I couldn’t make it real
without the help of a bottom-up guy. Rowe and I became a highly effective team.
I could take the broad ideas we developed, translate them into practical, concrete
steps, and then show people how to implement them. I had the patience and
fortitude needed to stick with the task until all the thousands of tiny
administrative, organizational, and systemic pieces were fitting together and
operating smoothly. Our complementary strengths and our mutual respect
enabled us to effectively guide the company’s turnaround.
Working with Rowe reinforced my appreciation for pursuing inclusion in hiring—
not by checking off demographic traits on a list, but by recruiting people who
differ from you rather than people you are “comfortable with.” When you cast a
wider talent net, you’re likely to hire people with a less traditional image—in
terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and other characteristics—but more
important, they will bring varied backgrounds, perspectives, insights, and gifts to
the challenges you face. The result: fresher ideas, greater creativity, and a higher
rate of successful innovation. With this kind of inclusion in mind, as president and
CEO of Aetna, I consciously recruited and promoted team members who were
nontraditional. Even before I joined Aetna, the company had many successful
female managers, and I maintained and expanded this emphasis. I also looked
for smart, talented people with unusual business backgrounds and then tried
slotting them into assignments that would give them a chance to grow in new
ways. For example, I took Kim Keck out of Aetna’s finance department and gave
her the job as my chief of staff. She had to take a crash course in the entire
structure of our corporation, which she knew little about before. But working with
me, she quickly got up to speed and used her people skills, her communication
talents, and her leadership instincts to become an amazingly effective right-hand
person for me. As I’ve mentioned, Keck has since gone on to become a CEO in
her own right.
DEMOGRAPHIC INCLUSION: IT STILL MATTERS
I’ve been emphasizing the importance of intellectual and cultural diversity when
building your organization’s team. But demographic inclusion based on concrete
traits like race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and disability is also important. Surveys
show that many Americans—especially white Americans—assume that racial
prejudice is a matter of ancient history, that programs of affirmative action have
long since equalized the opportunities available to people of all races, and that
therefore deliberate efforts to encourage encourage racial inclusion in US
businesses are, at best, unnecessary, and, at worst, divisive and harmful. These
assumptions ignore the reality that people of color are still quite rare in American
boardrooms and executive suites. They ignore, too, the fact that efforts to
integrate US society began only recently in historical terms. I mentioned earlier
that landmark laws and court rulings eliminating legal segregation occurred
during my own lifetime (and in fact have yet to be fully implemented in practice). I
am a member of the first generation of black Americans to enter historically white
institutions—colleges, universities, social organizations, and businesses—in
significant numbers. Like practically all other black Americans, I’m familiar with
the experience of being the only person of color in a conference room or lecture
hall filled with white people. I’m profoundly aware of how awkward and
disconcerting it can be to feel culturally isolated from those around you; to
encounter no natural role models or mentors when entering a new environment;
to be the subject of embarrassing questions, comments, looks, and assumptions;
and to be accepted, if at all, merely as a token representative of “my people” who
is supposed to speak for an entire race rather than simply myself.
At the time I started my business career, few black Americans held leadership
positions. Those who’d managed to climb a few rungs up the corporate ladder
were often confined to a handful of specialized departments—human resources,
community relations, “special markets” (a term often used as a euphemism for
“black customers”). These were mostly staff jobs rather than line jobs, which
meant they were viewed as cost centers rather than profit centers. Those who
held these positions had extremely limited growth opportunities and were highly
vulnerable to layoffs in times of financial stress, since they weren’t believed to be
generating profits for the corporation. The real power centers in most companies
were off-limits to blacks, so virtually no CEOs, chief financial officers, chief
marketing officers, divisional vice presidents, or factory managers were black.
The reality is that, had I been born just five or ten years earlier, none of the
opportunities that I’ve experienced would have been available. I’ve mentioned
the chance I had to go to a better public school outside of Chicago because of
my grades. During and after college, I was able to get jobs at the Federal
Reserve and in the Illinois governor’s office. These were all opportunities that
simply hadn’t existed for black Americans of previous generations. I have a
tremendous amount of appreciation for those people who dedicated their lives to
creating the social changes that opened those doors. Yet today, fifty years after
the heyday of the civil rights movement, the process of creating a society in
which all Americans have equal opportunities has barely begun.
Black executives lead only a handful of major US corporations—for example,
three in the Fortune 500. (For the record, they are Merck, headed by Kenneth
Frazier; TIAA, headed by Roger Ferguson Jr.; and Lowe’s, headed by Marvin
Ellison.) Until the retirement in May 2017 of my friend Ursula Burns, Xerox was
also on this list. Importantly, Burns was also the first black woman to serve as a
Fortune 500 CEO. The United States has done much to break down institutional
barriers between races in recent decades. But the work of creating true diversity,
and of taking full advantage of the rich variation in perspectives and life
experiences that Americans of all backgrounds offer, is far from complete. For
these reasons, as Aetna’s CEO, I put my weight behind the traditional kinds of
demographically oriented diversity programs, which helped to bring fresh talent
and new thinking to the company. I chaired Aetna’s corporate diversity council, an
unusual step for a CEO, and made sure it included many of the company’s most
important executives—the directors of purchasing and marketing and the chief IT
officer, for example. We urged Aetna’s vendors—outside companies that
provided us with services such as advertising, media, printing, accounting,
investment banking, consulting, and legal advice—to create inclusive client
services teams so people from many backgrounds could learn about our
business and provide us with their unique insights. Also, within Aetna, we created
affinity groups to address the needs of specific sectors of our workforce and to
represent their interests in the company’s councils. We had affinity groups for
black Americans, working parents, and veterans, among others. Encouraging
and supporting these groups, listening carefully to their concerns, and helping to
address their problems made it easier for Aetna to draw on the talents of a wide
array of people—all of whom had something important to contribute to our long-
term mission as a company.
I also pushed the envelope on racial awareness through an occasional personal
gesture. For example, I made a point of inviting several top Aetna executives to
the annual Golf & Tennis Challenge, a networking event hosted by Black
Enterprise magazine. I suspected these colleagues of mine—who happened to
be white—might find it interesting and eye-opening to spend a weekend as
members of a racial minority group (since the vast majority majority of attendees
at the Golf & Tennis Challenge are black). They did. A number commented about
the awkwardness they felt, the difficulty in launching conversations, and the
anxiety about saying and doing “the right thing” in an unfamiliar cultural setting.
Several years later thanked me, commenting on the greater sense of empathy
they now felt for people of color.
When you have the opportunity to help select new people to join your
organization, I urge you to consider inclusion of all kinds as part of the
recruitment and hiring process. We live in a world where people from every
background are important—as customers, suppliers, investors, and fellow
citizens. So organizations need input and contributions from people of all kinds—
and the most successful businesses are likely to be those that draw on the
widest possible pool of talent. If Silicon Valley wants to make significant progress
on this front, companies like Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook need to
make inclusion a high priority. Rather than delegating the job, their CEOs should
devote some portion of their own time and energy to leading the charge. They
need to insist on considering diverse slates of candidates for every important
position before hiring the best person. When a CEO fails to personally
emphasize and invest time in this effort, it sends a signal that the issue isn’t really
important. Demographic diversity often pays immediate, short-term benefits. I’ve
seen it happen many times.
Here’s an example. When I was at Blue Cross of California, we were once in
competition with another health-care company for a major contract with a large
corporate client. After both potential suppliers had provided written proposals with
contract terms, costs, and other details, the day came for an extensive
presentation before a group of executives who would make the final decision. I
arrived at the client’s offices with my team from Blue Cross. It included our
network manager, who was a Hispanic man; our chief actuary, an Asian-
American woman; our general manager of geography, another woman; and me,
a black man. In the waiting area outside the boardroom where the big
presentation would take place, we met our counterparts from the rival supplier.
Every member of their team was a blond, blue-eyed male between six feet and
six feet three inches tall. We shook hands and wished one another well—and of
course we couldn’t help noticing the surface differences between the two teams.
Our team from Blue Cross made the second presentation that morning. When we
walked into the room, we saw that the members of the client’s team were as
diverse as we were—there were men and women of various ages, colors, and
ethnic backgrounds waiting to hear our presentation. The team was a cross-
section of the company’s working population—and, like our team, it was also a
cross-section of twenty-first-century America. We immediately felt confident that
we could “speak the language” of everyone in that room. Blue Cross won the
contract.
CREATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE: THE LEADER SETS THE
PACE
Building your team isn’t only about choosing the right people. It’s also about
creating an organizational culture that enables your team members to give the
best of themselves to the organization. And here again, I return to the theme of
self-leadership. Unless you learn to manage your own time, energy, and focus so
that you are giving one hundred percent to the organization—or even a bit more
than that—you will never be able to get one hundred percent from your team
members. I’m generally recognized as a hard worker. It’s a habit I developed long
ago, going back to when I worked alongside my dad in the car wash. I
maintained that self-discipline during my years in high school, college, and
graduate school, as well as throughout my working career. The habit was
facilitated by the fact that I liked my work. When you are fascinated by the
challenges and problems that crop up every day on the job, then you don’t mind
devoting countless hours to them, even on evenings and weekends—just as an
avid painter, surfer, rock climber, or dancer never gets tired of the long hours they
dedicate to mastering the activity they love. I didn’t necessarily expect the people
who worked for me to put in the same kinds of hours I did. But I did expect them
to devote the time and energy needed to attain the results that the organization
needed and expected. If they couldn’t or wouldn’t, then they needed to find
another job that suited them better, and I needed to replace them with someone
who could pull their weight as a member of our team.
Over the years, I had to learn the right ways to communicate my work
expectations to my team members. I think people sometimes felt intimidated
when they saw how many hours I put in. I guess it can be a bit daunting when
your boss is at his desk before you arrive in the morning, is still there when you
leave in the evening, and sends you work-related emails throughout the weekend
—maybe even in the wee hours of Sunday night. But my intention wasn’t to
impress people or to extract the same level of dedication from them. If a team
member could accomplish everything that was required at a high level of
excellence within the hours of nine and five, more power to them! I became
concerned only when people let the clock dictate the amount of work they put in
rather than obeying the genuine demands of the job. I’ve been told that my style
of relating to my team members was also a bit intimidating. I’ve never been one
for small talk. The typical watercooler chitchat is mostly uninteresting to me. So I
tended not to participate in the usual conversations about movies, family outings,
or the performance of the local sports teams. As a result, people would get the
idea that I was all work and no play—and that I expected the same from my
colleagues. Some even assumed that I was unconcerned about them as people
—that I viewed them simply as cogs in the corporate machine, and that all I
cared about was their productivity. That’s certainly not the message I was trying
to convey.
Reflecting on this issue, I came to realize that my level of focus on the tasks we
needed to accomplish was so high that I needed to raise my level of focus on the
people I worked with as well. When I didn’t do this, the disproportion felt jarring to
those around me. So over the years, I learned to adjust my communication style
to express more accurately my concerns about the people I worked with. I
developed the habit of checking in with people about their family lives and their
personal interests—to ask how an elderly mother was doing or how a teenaged
daughter’s latest track meet went. I even learned to show a little interest in how
the New York Giants football game turned out on Sunday! (Although if the sports
talk dominated the office for more than a few minutes on Monday morning, I was
known to remind my team members that there was work to be done.)
Setting appropriate expectations for your team members involves understanding
their individual capacities. The metaphor of the Navy SEAL that I explained in an
earlier chapter can be helpful here. SEALs and regular Navy sailors are two
different kinds of people with different roles. You bring in your SEALs for crucial,
time-sensitive tasks that require maximum sustained effort for a specific period of
time. Your sailors may be equally talented, but they are steadier and more
capable of working on the same task over a long period of time. To get the most
satisfactory results for the company as well as for the individuals involved, make
sure that both you and your team members recognize the difference and know
which group they fit into best.
Sometimes, setting the right tone is a matter of clearing up misunderstandings.
When I would ask to review my team members’ vacation schedules, they
occasionally thought I was trying to keep tabs on them, or even hinting that a
week in the Caribbean might be excessive. That wasn’t my purpose at all.
Actually, I just wanted to be sure I could anticipate issues that might arise during
their absence so I could avoid interrupting their vacations with emails or phone
calls. Once I realized the confusion I was causing, I found that explaining my real
intention made a big difference in people’s reactions. Still, there were times when
I drove people hard—especially during my early years at Aetna, when the
company was in crisis and we were devising and implementing emergency
measures. Evening and weekend meetings fueled by pizza and cartons of
Chinese take-out were common. For many on my top leadership team, family
lives were disrupted, vacations were short and infrequent, and thoughts about
work and the problems we faced were constant. I know that the stress this
caused on people’s personal lives was real and sometimes quite painful. I hope
and believe that I never exerted more pressure on my team members than was
absolutely necessary to meet the genuine needs of the organization. And I hope,
too, that the rewards we shared over time—both financially and in other, less
tangible forms—made the sacrifices worthwhile. The fact that so many of the
people I worked with during those tough times at Aetna have remained
colleagues and treasured friends of mine suggests that’s the case.
In my latter years as Aetna CEO, people sometimes told me that I seemed to be
“mellowing” as a leader—that I wasn’t quite as demanding and single-minded as
when I first joined the firm. Maybe there’s a bit of truth to that. But more important
is the fact that all the hard work we put in enabled Aetna to get out of crisis mode.
Once the company was on an even keel, there was less need for evening and
weekend sessions and emergency meetings to put out the latest fires. What’s
more, as the pressure lessened, the leaders around me were able to devote
more of their time to developing the people who worked for them. As my team
members built teams of their own that could keep the business running smoothly
in their absence, it became easier for people to take weekends off and vacations.
A well-run company doesn’t require routine superhuman feats of effort to remain
successful. An organization that accomplishes great things without outrageous
work schedules is one of the rewards you get for building a smart system and
staffing it with talented people in the first place.
THE REALITIES OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Having said all this, let me be clear: Even when the business is running smoothly,
being the leader of a large, complex organization is never less than extremely
demanding. If you aspire to leadership, don’t imagine it will ever be easy. It will
be engrossing, challenging, fascinating, and at times exhilarating—but easy?
Never. Earlier in this book, I described how my friend Ursula Burns learned so
much about the life of a top corporate leader when she served as the executive
assistant to Wayland Hicks at Xerox. She traveled with him, organized and
attended his meetings, and managed his contacts with hundreds of colleagues
inside and outside the company. In Burns’s words, Hicks was “all in, all the
time”—engaged at the highest possible level every moment of the day. For
example, she recalls seeing Hicks fly coach from the United States to Japan—
working most of the way—check in to a Tokyo hotel on arrival, take a quick
shower, and immediately head out to a round of business meetings. This was a
typical performance, not an extraordinary one. Burns remembers telling her
boyfriend (now her husband), “If this is what it takes to be a top executive, I never
want to do it!” But Burns changed her mind when she went to work as the
executive assistant to Paul Allaire, then chairman and CEO of Xerox. Allaire was
every bit as engaged, energetic, and dedicated as Hicks. But he had a wider
array of outside interests that fascinated and revitalized him, and he’d managed
to develop ways to integrate them into his schedule without sacrificing his
productivity and focus. Allaire was an avid biker and motorcyclist, and he made
the time to take cross-country trips; he was also a ballet aficionado and
occasionally arranged his schedule so he could leave the office early to attend a
special performance. Watching Allaire in action made Burns realize that it might
be possible to be a super-effective corporate leader while also enjoying a
semblance of normal life. In her later roles—first as Xerox’s vice president for
global manufacturing and eventually as the company’s chairperson and CEO—
she consciously modeled her work style on Allaire’s. Make no mistake, Burns
works extremely hard. “I’m a natural loner, an introvert,” she says: There’s
nothing I like better than taking a solitary run in the park or curling up with a great
book on my sofa at home. But as a leader, I don’t usually have options like that.
I’m responsible for tens of thousands of people! They rely on me to keep them
going, to help make them successful, to keep our company afloat. So I have to
be thinking about those responsibilities constantly. Instead of enjoying a quiet
meal with a friend, I’m more likely to be attending a big dinner with dozens of
people from one of our facilities, so I can hear about their plans for a big new
project or a factory expansion. It’s interesting and important, but it’s also time-
intensive and very demanding. At times, I get cranky! But it comes with the
territory.
Like most successful executives, especially women, Burns is constantly asked by
aspiring leaders how she balances her work and her personal life. She explains
that, for anyone in the highest ranks of leadership, the idea of work-life balance is
often misunderstood. “You have to bring your entire self to the leadership role,”
Burns says. As a result, having work and life in balanced portions at any given
moment in your career is almost impossible. “You can have work-life balance
over a lifetime,” she has concluded, “but not necessarily all the time.” Burns
learned some valuable lessons about how to enjoy a happy and successful
family life from her mother, who worked as a maid and house cleaner. “My mom
worked very hard—she had to,” Burns explains. “So I learned from her that being
with your kids every minute of the day is not what good parenting is all about. I
learned to be a tactical parent—to pick and choose the most important moments
when I needed to be there for my kids, and to make the most of those.” Burns
was fortunate to have a supportive husband on whom she could lean for help
with family responsibilities. She missed a lot of her kids’ basketball games and
music recitals, but when she did, her husband was usually there. And Burns
figured out where to draw the line between life and work so that she could fulfill
her most important family obligations. “Even when my kids were young, I had to
travel constantly,” she says. “But I made a rule that, with almost no exceptions, I
would be home with them for the weekend—and believe me, I did some crazy
things to live up to that rule, even if it meant taking three flights to arrive at my
doorstep at midnight on Friday!” Burns’s experiences resonate with me.
When you’re a leader—whether in business or in any other arena, from the
nonprofit world to government to academia—you need to be prepared to sacrifice
personal needs and interests for the good of the organization. There are people
relying on you, and you can never forget that. Of course, your family and others
in your personal life rely on you, too. So while it may be impossible to achieve
work-life balance in any neat, convenient way, you owe it to yourself and to those
who love you to draw lines to protect some sacred personal space. Burns did it
with her home-for-the-weekend rule. I did it by having crucial family events built
into my schedule by the same assistant who managed my company travels, my
board meetings, my facilities tours, and all my other work activities. It was her job
to figure out on a weekly basis how to fit someone’s request for an urgent project
review in between my 2:00 p.m. television interview with a stock market reporter
and a 4:00 p.m. soccer game at my kid’s school. Having the soccer game on the
same calendar with the TV interview and an employee roundtable helped me
keep some family time “untouchable” and as important on that day as anything
else. Of course, once the soccer game ended, I’d likely be heading back to the
office for a couple of hours of additional meetings and preparation for the next
day’s gauntlet of events. But that’s the life of a leader. For many of us, the quest
for work-life balance is a continuing journey. Kay Mooney, who served as my
capable and dedicated chief of staff for three years during my tenure at Aetna,
recalls how challenging it was to adjust to the realities of working for a constantly-
in-demand CEO: I started working in Ron’s office in April. A month later, I planned
to take a day off on the Friday before Memorial Day. Ron and I were at the office
until 9:00 p.m. on Thursday. Before I left, I put my “out of office” message on my
email, indicating I would be out of the office until Tuesday. When I got home forty-
five minutes later, I checked my email and found two new emails from Ron. The
first was about a business issue he needed me to address. The second read,
“You don’t need to use that ‘out of the office’ message on your email, because as
my chief of staff, you’re never really out of the office.” Of course, Ron didn’t mean
it literally—he was fine with me taking some time away from the office. But his
point was that I could never be out of touch or unavailable, because the CEO can
never simply ignore the problems of the organization, no matter when they arise
—and as the CEO’s chief of staff, I couldn’t ignore them either. Mooney’s
conclusion: “Work-life balance has to be defined by every individual based on
what is right for you at a particular moment in your career.” She goes on to say:
As Ron’s chief of staff, the proportion between work and life for me was around
ninety-two percent to eight percent. Later, when I was asked to build Aetna’s
public exchange business in the wake of the Affordable Care Act, I still worked
very long hours, but the pressure and the demands were considerably less on a
relative basis. As the work changes and as your role evolves, so does the
balance you strike. All you can do is strive for a balance that works for you at a
given time—and adjust it as your needs and tolerance demand. Like Kay
Mooney, I had to wrestle with issues of work-life balance. I was lucky: I could
never have accomplished what I did in my business career without the support of
a committed, generous, and understanding spouse. When tough decisions had to
be made—for example, moves that would uproot us from one city to another—
Cynthia recognized the trade-offs required and discussed them frankly with me
so we could make the best decisions for our family. My advice to would-be
leaders: Understand the difficult demands that are inherent in the leadership role.
If you’re involved in a serious relationship, talk with your partner about the
challenges ahead as honestly as you can. Don’t make promises you may not be
able to keep. And when your significant other says, “Please call me when you’re
on your way home,” don’t dial the phone until you’re actually out of the office and
in your car or on the bus or train. I’ve learned from painful experience that if you
call any sooner than that, you’re sure to be hijacked by a colleague on your way
out the office door—leaving you with an embarrassing half-hour delay to explain
to your loved one.
TREATING YOUR PEOPLE AS IF THEY REALLY MATTER
People-centered leadership can unleash amazing levels of energy and creativity
—provided everyone retains a shared focus on the needs of the organization. In
my pursuit of the goal of people-centered leadership, I tried hard to keep my
finger on the pulse of my team members. Simply paying close attention to what
was going on around me was an essential element of this process. There’s no
substitute for being a good listener. That’s not a passive skill. It includes actively
probing for the underlying emotions, fears, dreams, aspirations, and worries that
people may be expressing indirectly when they talk with you about the issues
they’re facing in life and work. Remember that, in most organizations, there’s a
subtle but real dividing wall between rank-and-file team members and the boss
who leads them. It’s true at every level of the organization, whether you’re
considering the relationship between a factory foreman and the assembly-line
workers who report to him or the relationship between a CEO and the members
of his executive team.
Team members are typically reluctant to “bother” the boss unless they have
something important to share, and in one-on-one meetings they usually
communicate using language they’ve carefully planned in advance. As the
leader, you should consider every conversation with a team member as
potentially sensitive and important. The people who work for you care a lot about
everything you say—or don’t say. They want badly to earn your approval, your
support, and your understanding. Learn to listen carefully to the unspoken
concerns that resonate through every conversation, and try to respond not only
to the literal words you hear but also to the emotional currents that underlie and
motivate them. In addition to being a good listener on an everyday basis, you
should purposefully make time for one-on-one meetings with those who rely on
your leadership.
As CEO, I met regularly with each of the ten people who reported directly to me
and also with their key direct reports—about twenty-five people in all. These
meetings weren’t usually lengthy—half an hour or so was typical—but they
included time for a brief recap of how the team member’s most important projects
were unfolding, a conversation about the biggest challenges or obstacles they
were wrestling with, and a look at the biggest goals they’d set for the months
ahead. Most important, I tried to come away with a sense of how my team
member’s personal aspirations were meshing with those of the organization and
if there was anything I could do to help ensure that the fit was as strong and
mutually nurturing as possible. Making sure these brief but meaningful
conversations were sacred on my schedule, and not postponed or canceled for
other activities, was an important part of my leadership style. When you blow off
a meeting like this, you’re indirectly communicating to your team member that
they are not really important to you. That’s a sure way to alienate them and,
eventually, lose at least a portion of what they have to offer. As my chief of staff
Kay Mooney used to say, “You’ve always got to show your people the love!” Just
being there, to talk with them and to listen deeply, is an essential first step.
TAKEAWAYS FROM CHAPTER 10
• One key to success in today’s business world is creating a diverse team of
employees from varying backgrounds. This will maximize your organization’s
ability to understand and address the problems and needs of widely differing
customers.
• Demographic diversity (in terms of race, gender, religion, and other basic
characteristics) is desirable and important. But even more important is diversity
of work background, experience, values, attitudes, and knowledge.
• Don’t fall into the trap of seeking employees who fit a predetermined cultural or
personal mold. Instead, look for people who will bring fresh ideas and new
personality traits to your organization.
• As the team leader, you set the work pace for your team. If you model
dedication to the organization in your daily behaviour, the members of your
team will usually follow suit.
• Work-life balance is often misunderstood. At any given moment, a worker must
determine their own appropriate relationship between personal time and work
time—and that relationship is ever-changing and only occasionally comfortably
balanced.
• The lives of your team members are vitally important, and as the team leader
you must never forget that. Your team members want to align their life goals with
those of the organization, and helping them achieve that will elicit their dedication
and their best efforts.
Citation
Williams, Ron. Learning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and
Leading an Organization (pp. 197-198). Greenleaf Book Group Press. Kindle Edition.
Leadership is about ideas and actions. Put simply, it is about implementing new ideas into creative
actions to achieve desired results. Doing so, however, is far from simple. We know leadership re-
quires considerable skills and abilities. It requires knowledge and insight—about one’s organization
or entity, its people, goals, strengths and market niche. Yet, something more is needed. Leadership
also requires a kind of awareness beyond the immediate, an awareness of the larger pictures—of
paradigms that direct us, beliefs that sustain us, values that guide us and principles that motivate us,
our worldviews.
This article will, first, briefly examine how the concept of worldviews is used in leadership study
and the contexts in which it arises. Second, it will critically look at worldviews, recognizing that they
are not always coherent and that our belief systems are often fragmented and incomplete. Third, it
will argue for the relevance of the concept worldview in leadership study as a way to explore vari-
ous visions of life and ways of life that may be helpful in overcoming the challenges we face today.
Fourth, it will examine how national and global issues impact worldview construction, especially
among the millennial generation. Our conclusions set some directions for leadership action in light
of worldview issues.
W O R L D V I E W S A N D
L E A D E R S H I P : T H I N K I N G
A N D A C T I N G T H E B I G G E R
P I C T U R E S
JOHN VALK, STEPHAN BELDING, ALICIA CRUMPTON,
NATHAN HARTER, AND JONATHAN REAMS
54
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Volume 5, Number 2, 2011
©2011 University of Phoenix
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI:10.1002/jls.20218
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 55
as well as the effect of dispelling earlier assumptions of
an overriding homogeneous and uniform worldview
embraced by all.
At this point the concept of worldview is often used
interchangeably with terms such as mental models, par-
adigms, organizing devices, contexts, and operating systems
(Beck & Cowan, 1996; Klenke, 2008). A worldview is
seen as serving a particular function, encompassing
deeply held beliefs about reality that shape and influ-
ence how individuals think and act. Worldviews deter-
mine priorities and reinforce one’s view of reality and
of what is true and right (Barrett, 2006; Ciulla, 2000;
Hames, 2007). Yet, where it has focused specifically on
worldviews, leadership study has confined it largely to
religious and spiritual worldviews as applied to indi-
viduals and groups or organizations (Hicks, 2003;
Lindsey, 2007). It has left numerous secular world-
views largely unexamined.
The concept of worldview does surface within lead-
ership development. It is recognized that a person’s life
context shapes how one develops—altering one’s
life context alters one’s course of development (Luthans &
Avolio, 2003). Further, each person interprets and as-
signs significance of meaning to different events, which
in turn become a lens through which we view the world
around us (Avolio, 2005). These are what Gadamer,
Weinsheimer, and Marshall (2004) called prejudices:
points of view that define our immediate horizon of un-
derstanding. Self-awareness, or learning to identify and
understand one’s own worldview, becomes a cornerstone
of leadership, for a leader’s worldview impacts an or-
ganization and those that operate within it. From the
perspective of leaders as change agents, this becomes
particularly important. Leaders assist others in creating
and making sense of their experience and in so doing
“reconstruct reality” and “recompose truths” (Drath,
2001, pp. 144, 147).
How Robust Is the Idea of
“Worldviews”?
As scholars begin to incorporate the idea of worldviews
in leadership study, some may ask whether the concept
itself is sufficiently robust at this point for leadership study.
Setting aside for the time being the particular content of a
worldview, as well as the degree of one’s commitment to a
The Concept of Worldviews in
Leadership Studies
Multiple ways of knowing and cross-cultural literacy are
goals of leadership. As such, leadership study requires
broad awareness in order to build bridges of understand-
ing. It necessitates worldview literacy and the ability to
communicate in plural and diverse settings. Essentially,
it encourages awareness of one’s own view or vision of
life as a means to better engage with others. Awareness
of diverse views or perspectives is necessary so people
can engage in common cause in a multifaceted world
(Drath, 2001).
Worldview is a concept that requires an interdiscipli-
nary, multidisciplinary, and perhaps even transdiscipli-
nary approach to fully understand its tenets and
application. It is overtly and robustly defined in certain
disciplinary areas—religious studies, philosophy, and
anthropology—but is only slowly surfacing in leader-
ship study (Crumpton, 2010). Here, it is used with lim-
ited clarity and consensus, with only some semblance
and points of agreement.
Lack of worldview definitional clarity and precision
within leadership study should not be surprising given
that leadership study has undergone significant para-
digm shifts. Leadership study emerged within the con-
text of modernity and its emphasis on objective
rationality. But it came to be influenced by postmoder-
nity and its emphasis on multiple ways of knowing,
and language and knowledge construction. Today,
much of leadership study embraces what is often re-
ferred to as glocalism, an emphasis on thinking glob-
ally and acting locally (Antonakis, Cianciolo, &
Sternberg, 2004; Burke, 2008; Northouse, 2010;
Schwandt & Szabla, 2007). Leadership study recog-
nizes that increasing cultural and racial diversity have
been brought on by globalism. Further, technology has
opened the door for alternative ways of viewing the
world and the necessity of new leadership practices
such as global or cross-cultural leadership and intercul-
tural communication (Chhokar, Brodbeck, & House,
2009; Rondinelli & Heffron, 2009). As such, the im-
portance of exploring similarities and differences be-
tween worldviews has surfaced. With it comes fostering
self-awareness (what is my worldview?) and the under-
standing of others (what is another person’s worldview?),
56 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
Knowledge of words spoken does not automatically
imply understanding; that they make sense to someone
else. Our powers of comprehension or even inference
are not infallible.
A worldview is also dynamic—it changes over time.
Jaspers characterized “the construction of worldviews
as a continuous, lifelong process stimulated by the ex-
perience of disturbance” (cited in Webb, 2009, p. 15).
What one believes and values today can be quite differ-
ent tomorrow. Measuring something that does not hold
still is difficult (Aerts et al., 2007). Kegan refers to these
as “a succession of holding environments” (cited in
Webb, 2009, p. 50). Aerts et al. (2007) maintain that
any worldview is “fragile” (p. 10). Broekaert (1999) em-
ploys the more optimistic term openness—every world-
view is open to revision or even replacement.
Worldviews are dynamic; they can evolve (Vidal, 2007).
Webb (2009) credited Jaspers with insisting that a
worldview is indefinite and fluid, a work in progress.
Woodrow Wilson (1952) wrote about leadership
as an academic administrator. But did the same thoughts
and attitudes prevail in his mind later during his years in
public office? We know certain leaders change their
views because they attest to that change and lead dif-
ferently thereafter as a result. In other situations, of
course, the change might be subtle or even unconscious.
But do changes in some of the views one holds entail a
wholesale change in the worldview one holds?
Many people today are unaware of or have doubts
about their own worldviews. Sociologists refer to this
as anomie, based on the Latin, “being without coherent
wholeness” (Webb, 2009, p. 1). Some seem not to care
whether or not they have a worldview. Noonan (1990)
alleges that U.S. President Ronald Reagan was quite
oblivious to his own worldview. Henry Adams (1999)
said much the same thing about President Ulysses
Grant. Neither man was known for being particularly
introspective. Yet each president in his own way was a
leader. Is awareness of one’s own worldview, therefore,
a precondition for leadership?
It can, nonetheless, be argued that everyone has a
worldview of some sort ( Webb, 2009). Worldviews are
socially constructed over time (Vidal, 2007). The com-
munities to which people belong—religious, social, ed-
ucational, and political—influence what they espouse
(Smith, 2003; Wacquant, 2006). Yet, just as no two
given worldview, a question remains as to whether the
very idea of discussing or incorporating “worldviews” en-
hances leadership study (Webb, 2009). An investigation
into worldviews might begin with an epistemic question
regarding the detection and examination of a worldview.
Can one infer the presence of worldviews? If so, what
can be inferred based on the evidence?
Laing (1967) concluded that the study of the experi-
ences of others will indeed be based on inferences since
no one has direct access to the minds of others. Never-
theless, in ordinary experience, people do believe there
is something there, which suggests there is something
there to interpret. People seem to have reasons for what
they do, even if those reasons turn out to be difficult to
establish. Reasons for action are linked to worldviews.
Dennett (2005) impugns folk psychology, wonder-
ing how anyone can know what somebody else might be
thinking—or whether they are thinking at all. He main-
tains that it is next to impossible to really know some-
one else’s worldview. Even if one does claim to have a
worldview, he or she may well be mistaken as to its
structure and content. He or she may also not neces-
sarily act in light of it.
Dennett’s claims notwithstanding, perhaps most ob-
vious to the notion that a person has a worldview is
what he or she might say about it. Friedrich Nietzsche
(1887/1956), among others, speculated that humans
give reasons for their behavior not because those rea-
sons did in fact lead to particular decisions, but because
of the desire to rationalize behavior after the fact. Do
people admit to a worldview to avoid the truth about a
basis for action they would prefer to disguise or dis-
avow? Might avowals of a worldview be evasions or ra-
tionalizations, disguising what really goes on in the
human mind? Nietzsche was quite suspicious of peo-
ple’s testimony. In fact, Lansky once referred to the
“doubting of surface rationalization that so dramatically
characterizes virtually all of Nietzsche’s work” (1999,
p. 179). The suspicion is that reference to one’s world-
view might be a smokescreen of self-justification,
whether conscious or unconscious. In other words, as-
suming to know someone’s worldview based solely on
what is reported about it can be problematic.
Language itself can be a barrier to effective understand-
ing of the worldviews of others (Aerts et al., 2007). This
holds even when two people speak the same language.
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 57
increasingly elaborate and complex—arguably exceeding
any one individual’s powers of explanation. Understand-
ing worldview complexity becomes another challenge for
leadership study (Aerts et al., 2007; Webb, 2009).
There may be more challenges. What role, for in-
stance, do factors such as lust, pride, or greed play in
determining worldviews? We know they can play a
formative role in leadership action, but how constitutive
are they in determining beliefs and values? Do they con-
tribute to worldview incoherence, or even worldview
schizophrenia, potentially creating discrepancies be-
tween espoused belief and concrete action? These factors
may be internal to the individual but nonetheless in-
fluence and shape external behavior.
Worldviews and Their Implications
for Leadership
It was the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won-
derland who said, “If you don’t know where you are
going, any road will get you there.” To rephrase only
slightly, if you do not know your own beliefs and values,
any will do, as will any road or virtual highway. But
thoughtful minds are more discerning. A Lutheran
“Here I stand” or a Gandhian “Be the change that you
want to see in the world” requires careful reflection in
order to achieve the world we need or want, for the
world we need or want is crucially linked to our world-
view—our beliefs and values. Leadership for action re-
quires reflection on our worldviews.
In light of the challenges posed in regard to use of
the concept of worldview in leadership study, world-
view development, or “know thyself ” as the Oracle of
Delphi decreed, is crucial for studying the past, assess-
ing the present, and planning for the future. Worldview
development, however, must also be linked to compar-
ative religionist Max Muller’s dictum, “He who knows
one, knows none”: knowledge of one’s own worldview
cannot be accomplished without some knowledge of
those of others (cited in Sharpe, 1975, p. 36).
G. K. Chesterton argued that “the most practical and
important thing about a man is his view of the universe”
(1986, p. 41). According to Parks (1991), humans have
an inherent desire to make sense of their universe: we are
meaning-makers. We need and desperately want to make
sense of our world: to compose/dwell in some conviction
people are the same, so no two worldviews are the same.
No matter how thick the spirit of homonoia or like-
mindedness, there will always be at least some variation
(Webb, 2009). Further, worldviews are not ascribed ex-
clusively to individuals; a community can also be de-
fined by a particular worldview (Aerts et al., 2007;
Webb, 2009). Thus, one can speak of a collective world-
view influencing individual worldviews and that indi-
vidual worldviews can also influence a collective
worldview.
In all of this, worldviews require interpretation. Here,
two challenges present themselves. First, any interpreta-
tion of a worldview will be filtered through the world-
view of the interpreter (Klüver, 1926). An investigator
must recognize and take into account that he or she,
too, has a worldview. That worldview serves as a lens or
framework through which the worldview of another is
interpreted and described. The existence, character, and
content of one’s own worldview do not imply anything
similar in regard to that of another person. One is ill
advised to jump too quickly from the content of one’s
own mind to inferences about the content of another.
Second, worldviews can often be fundamentally inco-
herent, inconsistent, and unclear (Aerts et al., 2007).
They may be tattered, makeshift constructs that make
some sense of daily life, but may also be little more than
evolutionary truces or temporary versions of an adopted
worldview, as Kegan (1982) inferred. Worldviews may
be partial—comprised of bits and pieces that lack ap-
parent connection. They may be filled with unresolved
contradictions and may change over time. A person’s
worldview may resemble a patchwork of evolving sub-
worldviews and not something coherent and complete,
a notion consistent with the pluralistic imagery es-
poused by James (1909/1996).
Yet, any concept is an abstraction from lived reality
and certain features will be included and others ex-
cluded. No worldview is so elaborate as the reality it at-
tempts to depict. That is impossible, and misses the
point of worldview construction ( Whitehead, 1938,
1951). Worldviews, however articulate or inarticulate,
coherent or incoherent, complete or incomplete, are ab-
stractions of the world in which we live. But worldview
development is the very act of overcoming inarticulate-
ness, incoherence, and incompleteness (McKenzie,
1991). What is constructed will invariably become
58 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
academic disciplines attempt to understand, identify,
and describe larger patterns of thinking and/or acting,
frequently employing the term worldview in the process
(Foltz, 2003; Kriger & Seng, 2005; Sire, 2004).
These larger patterns of thinking or worldviews come
with totalizing narratives: assertions or explanations of
“the way the world is” as seen from a particular perspec-
tive. But all perspectives require interpretation, for real-
ity and a particular view of it are not synonymous. No
one stands at the mountaintop. For this reason, our
worldview is necessarily a “leap of faith” about the na-
ture of reality, which requires at minimum a small meas-
ure of humility and a great deal of interpretation.
Perhaps it has been the reluctance to distinguish real-
ity from its interpretations that has led postmodernism
to reject the totalizing or meta-narratives often implied
or assumed in worldviews, arguing that these narratives,
if not the worldviews themselves, need to be decon-
structed for what they really are—struggles for power,
control, and domination. History is replete with such
worldview struggles, and the current era is no different.
Yet, it would be an oversimplification to assert that all
attempts to understand one’s own worldview or those of
others automatically translate into struggles for or pre-
sumptions of moral, religious, cultural, and economic
superiority. In leadership studies a genuine desire to un-
derstand “the other,” in order to better know the self,
might be more appropriate as we come increasingly to
recognize ourselves as citizens of a global world.
Reflection on our visions of life and our ways of life—
on what we believe and value and why, and the partic-
ular kinds of directives and actions that result from
them—is important in the academic training of lead-
ers, especially when postmodern fears of distinguishing
differences will lead to pursuits of power, attitudes of
superiority, or false notions of what is real and true.
That became apparent in issues surfacing at the 1993
World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago. Ingham
(1997) mentions that leading scientists stated, in a sur-
prising turn of events, that solutions to the world’s
biggest challenges lay not in more political action, better
technology, or increased economic initiatives. Solutions,
they argued, lay rather in guidance from some of the
world’s most respected spiritual leaders. Tapping into
the wisdom of the past, understanding its relevance
for the present, and allowing it to guide us into the
of what is ultimately true (Peterson, 2001). In the
process, we create things, ideas, stories, and experiences
that speak to some of the deepest realities of our lives.
The result is “worldview construction”—creating mean-
ing in a world that can appear confusing and meaning-
less (McKenzie, 1991; Naugle, 2002). Worldviews are
thus meaningful visions of life.
Worldviews are also ways of life. Everyone has a con-
scious or subconscious way of acting and behaving in
the world based on particular beliefs and values. These
may be known, articulated, or discerned by individu-
als or groups to greater or lesser degrees. Achieving con-
sistency and congruency in our visions and ways of life
is challenging: We all readily profess one thing and do
another. Beliefs can be loosely adhered to, incompatible,
or in tension, leading to inconsistent or contradictory
action: “talking our walk” does not always match “walk-
ing our talk” (Olsen et al., 1992; Olthuis, 1985). This
may readily reflect human weakness but does not erode
the need to be anchored in some coherent sense of the
reality we experience.
The reality that we experience does, of course,
change. As our reality changes, so does our understand-
ing of ourselves, others, and the world we inhabit. In
some cases, our worldview changes dramatically but
more often than not it is aspects of our worldview that
are expanded and deepened. Core philosophical, onto-
logical, or epistemological aspects are seldom discarded
or abandoned. Further, giving articulation to our world-
views is not easy. Often, philosophers, theologians, or
poets express what others may only feel or believe in-
tuitively. As such, they become spokespersons, leaders,
or individuals of great influence, of which Socrates,
Martin Luther King Jr., or Vaclav Havel are but a few
examples.
When we hear and read of perceptions of the world
expressed by persons of great influence, or even others,
we come to recognize that those perceptions or perspec-
tives can be considerably different. The worldview per-
spectives of a Richard Dawkins, Donald Trump, or Karl
Marx, for example, differ radically from those of a
Desmond Tutu, Chief Seattle, or the Dalai Lama: They
are simply not the same and we know it. We also see
them played out. We come to know that Capitalism,
Communism, and Confucianism differ from one
another both as visions of life and ways of life. Various
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 59
future may greatly assist us in overcoming our greatest
challenges. It has been noted, sadly, however, that the
depths of wisdom offered by many of the world’s tra-
ditional religious worldviews, each accustomed to ask-
ing life’s so-called “ultimate or existential questions,”
are accessed by only a very small percentage of leaders
today (Valk et al., 2010).
Asking these big questions in regard to business devel-
opments, political action, international relations, and
concern for the environment might well, however, lead
to some startling discussions and revelations. Incorpo-
rating worldview study into leadership study might, for
example, change our notions and understandings of
wealth and wealth creation. The capitalistic drive to gen-
erate wealth might lead from a narrow focus on maxi-
mizing profit to a broader one that includes living wages
for workers, healthy families, and sustainable environ-
ments. Engaging multiple perspectives or worldviews
can enhance dialogue as debates of intense public in-
terest play out in the public square.
It is also in engaging multiple perspectives in the pub-
lic square that we need to increase our critical aware-
ness of the different perspectives that are part of our
plural society. Fixating on “Christianity lite” or “Bud-
dhism lite” renders only dumbed-down and distorted
versions crafted for media sound bites or scoring points
in public debates. In-depth leadership study must avoid
cheapened versions, opting rather to plumb the depths
of various perspectives to extract wisdom so desperately
needed in our society today.
Critical awareness is also required to achieve balance.
Careful scrutiny is needed in discerning when, for ex-
ample, consumer capitalism’s desire to generate wealth
throughout the world digresses to little more than a
dominant strategy to increase world market share and
seek cheap labor in order to maximize profits (Wexler,
2006), or when religious worldviews focused exclusively
on the spiritual neglect the impoverished reality of their
devotees. Open dialogue and discernment involving
multiple perspectives will assist in distinguishing true
human needs and longings from those that are con-
trived, truncated, and insatiable. Discussions also should
not be confined to national boundaries or single disci-
plines: economic issues are at the same time environ-
mental, cultural, spiritual, religious, scientific, and
political.
As we deal with the challenges of the 21st century,
clearer senses of purpose and direction are required—in
essence, clearer visions linked to specific actions. Inves-
tigating the bigger pictures—worldviews of self and
others—will give guidance and direction to leaders in
new or unique ways. We live in a global world. Chal-
lenges and issues confronted by one organization, re-
gion, or nation invariably become global challenges and
issues. Just as leadership must extend beyond the narrow
confines of one’s own organization, it must also extend
beyond the narrow confines of one’s own perspective.
As well, it must dissuade giving prominent voice to
those with worldviews that dominate and distort, dis-
tain and detract, impede and restrict. Rather, opportu-
nities ought to be created for those with visions that
strive for balance, have concern for the common good,
are understanding of others, and discern paths needed
to create the world we truly need or want. This becomes
most relevant as dynamics unfold at a larger national
and international scale. Those dynamics are beginning
to shape individual and collective worldviews in ways
not previously experienced, and the changes are impact-
ing some generations more than others.
Worldviews and Generational
Change
Winston Churchill once said that “the longer you can
look back, the farther you can look forward” (Langworth,
2008, p. 577). Amidst the current global economic cri-
sis there is a need to examine and learn from the past
mistakes of the global consumer capitalist worldview in
order not to perpetuate those mistakes in the future. Ig-
noring the past and looking only to the future may be
a human tendency, but it is fraught with shortsighted-
ness. Can a people, nation, or organization truly move
forward without continually examining its presupposi-
tions and paradigms?
According to Strauss and Howe (1991, 1997) and
Howe and Nadler (2010), we are living in a period of
“civic crisis.” The West is confronted with environmen-
tal devastation, economic downturns, social upheavals,
housing crises, civic unrest, and political polarization
in a manner not seen for some time. While most of this
turmoil is not new on the human stage, what is new
is the extent of its reach in the information age. Crises
60 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
networking occurring across cultural, national, and
worldview divides on a scale never witnessed before.
Fourth, family is again seen as the ultimate safety net,
largely out of economic necessity in light of a weaken-
ing or collapsing of public support mechanisms. Rela-
tionships of intergenerational trust are emphasized and
strengthened, with less focus on materialism and money as
primary drivers. Finally, diversification, which nets knowl-
edge and fluency in languages, cultures, and technology,
is stressed. A generalist with survival skills may have an
edge over specialists with focused skills (Strauss & Howe,
1997).
Strauss and Howe (1997) make the case that the
worldviews of Millennials are more globally focused, a
shift from the individual to the community. Social net-
working takes them outside national borders to the
global stage, where technology provides open channels
for communication and information sharing to all parts
of the world. They exhibit a common willingness to col-
laborate among all nationalities, working together to
help solve societies problems in ways that will benefit
all (Bradley, 2010; Hernandez, 2008; Howe & Strauss,
2007).
Franklin Roosevelt once remarked that the objectives
of his generation of young people had changed away
from “a plethora of riches” to one of a “sufficiency of
life”—an advancement “along a broad highway on
which thousands of your fellow men and women are
advancing with you” (Roosevelt & Hardman, 1944,
p. 243). For the Millennials, this highway is the virtual
one, the World Wide Web that has facilitated commu-
nication in real time across the globe. Its ability to reach
the far corners of our world has seen a transformation
that bodes well for the Millennials as they spread their
community-based leadership and action across our
world, in essence, as they spread their worldview.
Conclusion
There is an extensive if not diverse use of the concept of
worldview in scholarly literature. That use has also
slowly begun to emerge in the leadership literature. The
need to link this literature and get beneath the casual
uses of the concept becomes paramount. The forego-
ing begins a process of laying out the parameters neces-
sary to link worldviews and leadership in a scholarly
manner.
played out on the world stage are today visible in our
very living rooms. But according to Strauss and Howe,
they impact different generations in different ways.
They have formative influence on the worldview devel-
opment of younger generations and increasingly so.
Generational scholars have characterized the large
postwar Baby Boom generation as predominantly self-
focused—inward-looking to fulfill individual needs
(Dychtwald, 2005; Howe & Nadler, 2010; Strauss &
Howe, 1991, 1997). The Baby Boom generation has
been privileged with tremendous social mobility, eco-
nomic growth, political liberty, and individual freedom
of the last half-century. But they have also witnessed
environmental devastation, fiscal implosions, demo-
cratic disengagement, and poverty in the midst of af-
fluence (Howe & Strauss, 2000). The result is that a
younger generation now considers upward mobility, in-
creased wealth, and improved lives—a sense of genera-
tional progression—illusions of a generation past.
Further, new generations—Millennials, “13ers”—may
be required to act as “repair generations,” “fixing the
messes and cleaning up the debris of others” (Strauss &
Howe, 1997, p. 326).
The worldview of the young Millennial generation
will be more globally encompassed because we now live
in a global world. This will have a great impact on lead-
ership as a new generation takes the reins and attempts
to remain upbeat about the future of their world. Sev-
eral factors, some new and some not so new, influence
and shape their worldview formation. First, emphasis
on the virtues of honesty and integrity, on reputation
and trust building, is again important (Howe & Nadler,
2010). These virtues have been integral to traditional
religious or spiritual worldviews but have become ab-
sent in growing individualistic, secular, and consumer
worldviews (Martinsons & Ma, 2009). Second, con-
nectedness to a community comprised of worldview di-
versity rather than worldview homogeneity has become
the norm (Bartley, Ladd, & Morris, 2007). But that di-
verse community also has its eyes on government to
meet society’s basic needs. Barack Obama, the United
States’ first president of color, was proactive in bring-
ing together diverse groups for common cause (Alex-
Assensoh, 2008). Third, personal relationship building
and teamwork is paramount. While some of this comes
with an expected loss of personal freedoms, there is
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 61
Making the concept robust for leadership study re-
quires certain depth and complexity in understanding
worldviews. Constructing a deeper understanding of
worldviews requires certain mindfulness, not least
of which is the degree to which our own worldview may
filter our perceptions of others. Awareness of one’s own
perspective requires scrutiny while engaging that of an-
other.
Worldview construction is complex. One’s view of the
world is initially shaped by the immediate context out of
which one emerges—family, community, social, and cul-
tural environments. But there are also other factors at
play. As our larger world increasingly impinges upon us,
global factors also begin to shape our worldviews. This
becomes evident especially with generational differences,
where a balance of factors internal and external to our
immediate contexts begins to play a larger role.
Nonetheless, the nature of leadership reveals that great
leaders take action in the world from a clear place: they
are anchored in a particular view of the world.
Humans are meaning makers, and when leaders assist
others in making sense of the world through a clearly
articulated and coherent worldview, solid action can fol-
low. Thus, while we need to be cognizant of the diversity
of worldviews and the diversity of uses of the concept, we
also need to recognize that particular visions of life and
ways of life can be powerful and compelling. The chal-
lenge to leadership is to find ways to more explicitly map
out these worldviews, discerning those that tend to im-
pede and restrict from those that seek to enhance and
expand the world we truly need or want.
References
Adams, H. (1999). The education of Henry Adams. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Aerts, D., Apostel, L., de Moor, B., Hellemans, S., Maex, E.,
van Belle, H., & van der Veken, J. (2007). World views: From frag-
mentation to integration. Originally published in 1994 by VUB
Press. Retrieved from http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/ pub/books/
worldviews
Alex-Assensoh, Y. M. (2008). Change and the 2008 presidential
election. Politicka Misaq, XLV(5), 235–243.
Antonakis, J., Cianciolo, A. T., & Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Leader-
ship: Past, present, and future. In J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo, &
R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The nature of leadership (pp. 3–16). Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Avolio, B. J. (2005). Leadership development in balance: Made/born.
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Barrett, R. (2006). Building a values-driven organization: A whole
system approach to cultural transformation. Boston, MA: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
Bartley, S. J., Ladd, P. G., & Morris, M. L. (2007). Managing the
multigenerational workplace: Answers for managers and teams.
CUPA-HR Journal, 58(1), 28–34.
Beck, D., & Cowan, C. C. (1996). Spiral dynamics: Mastering val-
ues, leadership, and change: Exploring the new science of memetics.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Business.
Bennis, W. (2009). On becoming a leader. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Bonzo, M., & Stevens, M. (2009). After worldview: Christian higher
education in postmodern worlds. Sioux Centre, IA: Dordt College Press.
Bordas, J. (2007). Salsa, soul, and spirit: Leadership for a multi-
cultural age. San Franciso, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Bradley, A. (2010). The time has come to embrace millennial per-
spectives. American Society for Training and Development, 64 (8), 22.
Broekaert, J. (1999). World views: Elements of the Apostelian and
general approach. Foundations of Science, 3, 235–258.
Burke, W. W. (2008). Organization change: Theory and practice (2nd
ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Chesterton, G. K. (1986). The collected works of G. K. Chesterton
(Vol. 1). San Francisco, CA: Ignatius.
Chhokar, J., Brodbeck, F., & House, R. (2009). Culture and lead-
ership across the world. London, UK: Routledge.
Ciulla, J. B. (2000). The working life: The promise and betrayal of
modern work. New York, NY: Times Books.
Crumpton, A. D. (2010). An exploration of the concept of world-
view within leadership studies literature. International Leadership
Association 12th Annual Global Conference, Leadership 2.0: Time for
Action. Prague, Czech Republic.
Dennett, D. (2005). Sweet dreams: Philosophical obstacles to a sci-
ence of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DePree, M. (2004). Leadership is an art. New York, NY: Crown
Business.
Drath, W. H. (2001). The deep blue sea: Rethinking the source of
leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dychtwald, K. (2005). Ageless aging: The next era of retirement.
Futurist, 39(4), 16–21.
Foltz, R. C. (2003). Worldviews, religion, and the environment:
A global anthology. Toronto, Ontario: Wadsworth.
62 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
Lansky, M. (1999). Commentary: Perspectives on perspectivism.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 6(3):179–180.
Lindsey, M. (2007). Faith in the corridors of power. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Luthans, F., & Avolio, B. (2003). Authentic leadership develop-
ment. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.),
Positive organizational scholarship: Foundations of a new discipline
(pp. 241–261). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Marshall, P., Griffioen, S., & Mouw, R. (Eds.) (1989). Stained glass:
Worldviews and social science. Landham, MD: University Press of
America.
Martinsons, M. G., & Ma, D. (2009). Sub-cultural differences in
information ethics across China: Focus on Chinese management
generation gaps. Journal of the Association for Information Systems,
10(11), 816–833.
McKenzie, L. (1991). Adult education and worldview construction.
Malabar, FL: Krieger.
Nadesan, M. H. (1999). The discourses of corporate spiritualism
and evangelical capitalism. Management Communication Quarterly,
13(1), 3–42.
Naugle, D. (2002). Worldviews: History of a concept. Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans.
Nietzsche, F. (1887/1956). (F. Golffing, Trans.). The genealogy of
morals: An attack. New York, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
Noonan, P. (1990). What I saw at the revolution. Victoria, BC: Ivy
Books.
Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Olsen, M. E., Lodwick, D. G., & Dunlap, R. E. (1992). Viewing the
world ecologically. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Olthuis, J. (1985). On worldviews. Christian Scholars Review, 14(2),
155–165.
Parks, S. (1991). The critical years: Young adults and the search for
meaning, faith and commitment. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Peterson, G. (2001, March). Religion as orienting worldview. Zygon,
36(1), 5–19.
Reave, L. (2005). Spiritual values and practices related to leadership
effectiveness. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 655–687.
Rondinelli, D., & Heffron, J. (2009). Leadership for development:
What globalization demands of leaders fighting for change. Sterling,
VA: Kumarian Press.
Gadamer, H. G., Weinsheimer, J., & Marshall, D. G. (2004). Truth
and method (2nd rev. ed.). New York NY: Continuum.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership:
Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard Business School Press.
Hames, R. D. (2007). The five literacies of global leadership:
What authentic leaders know and you need to find out. San Francis,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hernandez, G. M. (2008). New generation of workers set to change
corporate culture. Caribbean Business, 36(43), 48–49.
Hicks, D. A. (2003). Religion and the workplace: Pluralism, spiritu-
ality, leadership. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Howe, N., & Nadler, R. (2010). Millennials in the workplace:
Human resources strategies for a new generation. Great Falls, VA: Life
Course Associates.
Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2000). Millennials rising: The next great
generation. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2007). The next twenty years: How cus-
tomer and workplace attitudes will evolve. Harvard Business Review,
85(7/8), 41–52.
Ingham, M. (1997). Mansions of the spirit: The gospel in a multi-
faith world. Toronto, Ontario: Anglican Book Centre.
James, W. (1909/1996). A pluralistic universe. Lincoln, NE: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press.
Jules, F. (1999). Native Indian leadership. Canadian Journal of Na-
tive Education, 23(1), 40–56.
Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Klenke, K. (2008). Qualitative research in the study of leadership.
Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Klüver, H. (1926, January). M. Weber’s “ideal type” in psychology.
Journal of Philosophy, 23(2), 29–35.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2002). The leadership challenge: How
to keep getting extraordinary things done in organizations. San Franciso,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kriger, M., & Seng, Y. (2005). Leadership with inner meaning:
A contingency theory of leadership based on the worldviews of five
religions. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 771–806.
Laing, R. D. (1967). The politics of experience. New York, NY:
Pantheon Books.
Langworth, R. (2008). Churchill by himself: The definitive collection
of quotations. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 5 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 63
Roosevelt, F. D., & Hardman, J. B. S. (1944). Rendezvous with des-
tiny: Addresses and opinions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York,
NY: Dryden Press.
Schwandt, D. R., & Szabla, D. B. (2007). Systems and leadership:
Coevolution or mutual evolution. In J. K. Hazy, J. A. Goldstein, &
B. B. Lichtenstein (Eds.), Complex systems leadership theory: New
perspectives from complexity science on social and organizational effec-
tiveness (pp. 35–60). Mansfield, MA: ISCE.
Sharpe, E. (1975). Comparative Religion: A History. London, UK:
Duckworth.
Sire, J. W. (2004). Naming the elephant: Worldview as a concept.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Smart, N. (1983). Worldviews: Cross-cultural explorations of human
beliefs. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Smith, C. (2003). Moral, believing animals: Human personhood and
culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Strauss, W., & Howe, N. (1991). Generations: The history of
America’s future, 1584 to 2069. New York, NY: William Morrow.
Strauss, W., & Howe, N. (1997). The fourth turning: What the
cycles of history tell us about America’s next rendezvous with destiny.
New York, NY: Broadway Books.
Valk, J. (2009, May). Religion or worldview: Enhancing dialogue in
the public square. Marburg Journal of Religion, 14(1), 1–16.
Valk, J. (2010). Worldviews of today: Teaching for dialogue and
mutual understanding. In K. Sporre & J. Mannberg (Eds.), Values,
religions and education in changing societies. Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Springer.
Valk, J., Harter, N., Jones, M., Mir, A., Ncube, L., & Reams, J.
(2010). Symposium—leadership for transformation: The impact of
worldviews. Journal of Leadership Studies, 4(3), 66–91.
Vidal, C. (2007). An enduring philosophical agenda: Worldview
construction as a philosophical method. Center Leo Apostel. Retrieved
from http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~clvidal/writings/Vidal_2007-
EPA
Wacquant, L. (2006, May). “Pierre Bourdieu.” In R. Stones (Ed.).
Key contemporary thinkers. Macmillan. Retrieved from http://
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi�10.1.1.120.148&rep�
rep1&type�pdf
Wallace, J. R. (2007). Servant leadership: A worldview perspective.
International Journal of Leadership Studies, 2(2), 114–132.
Webb, E. (2009). Worldview and mind: Religious thought and psy-
chological development. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Wexler, M. (2006). Leadership in context: Four faces of capitalism.
Williston, VT: Edward Elgar.
Wheatley, M. (1999). Leadership and the new science: Discovering
order in a chaotic world. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Whitehead, A. N. (1938). Modes of thought. New York, NY: Free Press.
Whitehead, A. N. (1951). The philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead
(P. Schilpp, Ed.). Chicago, IL: Open Court.
Wilson, W. (1952). Leaders of men (T. H. Vail Motter, Ed.). Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
John Valk is associate professor of worldview studies at
Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada.
He received his doctorate from the University of Toronto. John
can be reached at valk@unb.ca
Stephan Belding teaches at the Universities of Phoenix and
Marylhurst. He has an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
He is currently working on his doctorate at Capella Univer-
sity. Stephan can be reached at belding@email.phoenix.edu
Alicia Crumpton is the director of the Center for Global Stud-
ies and teaches Leadership Studies at Johnson University. She
received her doctorate from Gonzaga University. Alicia can be
reached at ACrumpton@johnsonu.edu
Nathan Harter is professor of Leadership and American Stud-
ies at Christopher Newport University. He received his juris
doctor (JD) at Indiana University School of Law. Nathan
can be reached at nathan.harter@cnu.edu.
Jonathan Reams (Ph.D.) is associate professor in the De-
partment of Education at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology. Jonathan can be reached at Jonathan@
Reams.com
1
Beyond the False Choice
Two questions haunt every human life and every human
community. The first: What are we meant to be? The
second: Why are we so far from what we’re meant to be?
Human beings have an indelible sense that our life has a
purpose—and a dogged sense that we have not fulfilled our
purpose. Something has gone wrong on the way to becoming
what we were meant to be, individually and together.
The first question exposes the gap in our own self-
understanding, our half-formed sense that we are meant to
be more than we know. How can we have such a deep sense
of purpose but find ourselves unable to easily name or
grasp that purpose? Yet this is the human condition.
The second question exposes the gap between our aspira-
tions and our accomplishments, between our hopes and our
reality, between our reach and our grasp. If the first question
gives voice to our greatest hopes, the second brings to the
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True
Flourishing
Account: s6511865
10 St rong a n d We a k
surface our deepest regrets. Having both great hopes and
great regrets is also, alas, the human condition.
In this book I offer a way of answering both of these
questions. It’s simple enough to explain in a minute or
two of conversation, or in a page or two of a book—it’s
coming up in just a few pages, and you’ll grasp its essence
almost immediately. You’ll see it in action in your friend-
ships, your workplace, your family and your favorite TV
show or movie—you’ll find it in the pages of Scripture
and in the most mundane moments of day-to-day life.
You’ll see it in the most horrifying contexts of injustice
and exploitation, and in the most inspiring moments of
compassion and reconciliation.
Many simple ideas are simplistic—they filter out too
much of reality to be truly useful. This one is not, be-
cause it is a particular kind of simple idea, the kind we
call a paradox. It holds together two simple truths in a
simple relationship, but it generates fruitful tension,
complexity and possibility. I’ve come to call it the
paradox of flourishing.
“Flourishing” is a way of answering the first great question,
What are we meant to be? We are meant to flourish—not just
to survive, but to thrive; not just to exist, but to explore and
expand. “Gloria Dei vivens homo,” Irenaeus wrote. A loose—
but by no means inaccurate—translation of those words has
become popular: “The glory of God is a human being fully
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 11
alive.” To flourish is to be fully alive, and when we read or
hear those words something in us wakes up, sits up a bit
straighter, leans ever so slightly forward. To be fully alive
would connect us not just to our own proper human purpose
but to the very heights and depths of divine glory. To live
fully, in these transitory lives on this fragile earth, in such a
way that we somehow participate in the glory of God—that
would be flourishing. And that is what we are meant to do.
Every paradox requires that we embrace two things that
seem like opposites. The paradox of flourishing is that true
flourishing requires two things that at first do not seem to
go together at all. But in fact, if you do not have both, you
do not have flourishing, and you do not create it for others.
Here’s the paradox: flourishing comes from being both
strong and weak.
Flourishing requires us to embrace both authority and
vulnerability, both
capacity and frailty—
even, at least in this
broken world, both
life and death.
The answer to the second great question—Why are we
so far from what we’re meant to be?—is that we have for-
gotten this basic paradox of flourishing, which is the secret
of being fully alive. Actually, we haven’t just forgotten it, as
if we had misplaced it absentmindedly. We’ve suppressed
Flourishing comes from
being both strong and weak.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s651186
5
1 2 St rong a n d We a k
it. We’ve hidden it. We’ve fled from it. Because we fear it.
I used to think that what we feared was vulnerability—
the “weak” part of the paradox. But in the course of
writing this book and talking with many others about the
paradox of flourishing, I’ve realized that we fear authority
too. The truth is that we are afraid of both sides of the
paradox of flourishing—and we especially fear to combine
them in the only way that really leads to real life, for our-
selves and others.
This book is about how to embrace the life for which we
were made—life that embraces the paradox of flourishing,
that pursues greater authority and greater vulnerability at
the same time.
But most of all, this book is about a picture, the simplest
and best way I know to explore the paradox of flourishing.
It’s really just a sketch, the kind of thing you can draw on a
napkin, but it will give us plenty to think about for the rest
of this book (see figure 1.1).
It’s one of my favorite things: a 2×2 chart.
The Power of the 2×2
There’s nothing I find quite as satisfying as a 2×2 chart at
the right time. The 2×2 helps us grasp the nature of paradox.
When used properly, the 2×2 can take two ideas we thought
were opposed to one another and show how they com-
plement one another.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 1
3
The world is littered with false choices. The leadership
writers Jim Collins and Scott Porras talk about “the tyranny
of the OR and the genius of the AND.” Should products be
low cost or high quality? Whom do managers serve, their
investors or their employees? The most transformative
companies manage both. Are we the products of our
nature or our nurture? They are not opposites—they have
to go together.
The Christian world has its own versions: Is the mission of
the church evangelism and proclamation or is it justice and
demonstration? Are we supposed to be conservative or radical,
contemplative or active, set apart from the world or engaged
in the world? Or take the topic that almost generated the first
IV I
III II
WITHDRAWING SUFFERING
EXPLOITING
FLOURISHING
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Figure 1.1
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
1 4 St rong a n d We a k
great biblical 2×2 chart. Is the life of the Christian about faith
or works? (“Show me your faith apart from your works, and I
will show you a 2×2 chart of my faith and works”—James 2:18,
my take on the original Greek!) Then you’ll be ready for the
ultimate question: Was Jesus of Nazareth human or divine?
Was he Son of Man or Son of God?
In all these cases, what we need is not a linear “or” but
a two-dimensional “and” that presses us to see the sur-
prising connections between two things we thought we
had to choose between—and perhaps even to discover that
having the fullness of one requires that we have the fullness
of the other.
One of the best examples comes from studies of effective
parenting—the kind of parenting that produces children
who display self-confidence and self-control. Which is
better, to be a strict, demanding parent who sets firm
boundaries, or a responsive, engaging parent who interacts
with their children with warmth and compassion? If you
were a parent, where on this spectrum would you want to
be (see figure 1.2)?
Put the question this way and most parents will lean one
FIRMNESS
WARMTH
Figure 1.2
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 15
way or the other. Some will quote Proverbs—“spare the rod,
spoil the child”—and opt for firmness (see Proverbs 13:24).
Others will quote Paul—“Fathers, do not provoke your
children to anger”—and opt for warmth (see Ephesians 6:4,
Colossians 3:21).
Both are right.
Firmness and warmth, it turns out, are not actually op-
posites. They can go together—in fact, they must go to-
gether for children to flourish. Their relationship is much
better shown with a 2×2 (see figure 1.3).
Map firmness and warmth this way, and you quickly dis-
cover that either one, without the other, is poor parenting.
Firmness without warmth—authoritarian parenting—leads
FI
RM
NE
SS
WARMTH
Figure 1.3
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
16 St rong a n d We a k
eventually to rebellion. Warmth without firmness—in-
dulgent parenting—leads eventually to spoiled, entitled brats.
In fact, there aren’t just two ways to be a bad parent—
there are three! The worst of all is parenting that is neither
warm nor firm—absent parenting (see figure 1.4).
There is a difference, it turns out, between being nice
and being kind. “Nice” parenting drifts down to the bottom
right, settling for easy, warm feelings without ever setting
high expectations. Kind parenting manages to be clear and
firm while also tender and affectionate. Psychologists call
it authoritative parenting rather than authoritarian. The
best parenting, in our 2×2, is up and to the right.
There are a few more insights hidden in this simple diagram.
ABSENT INDULGENT
AUTHORITARIAN KIND
IV I
III II
FI
RM
NE
SS
WARMTH
Figure 1.
4
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 17
I’ve numbered the quadrants using Roman numerals I to IV,
starting with the ideal quadrant up and to the right and con-
tinuing around clockwise—in the same order and direction
we’ll consider them for the next four chapters. Consider the
line from the top left to the bottom right, from quadrant IV
(Authoritarian) to quadrant II (Indulgent), from firmness
without warmth to warmth without firmness.
Remember our one-dimensional line with warmth on
the left and firmness on the right? In practice, if that is your
mental model of parenting, you’ll end up becoming either
authoritarian (firmness without warmth) or indulgent
(warmth without firmness). The IV-II line describes the
line of false choice—the world we often think we live in (see
figure 1.5). It describes our default way of thinking about
IV I
III II
FALSE CHOICE
Figure 1.5Cop
yr
ig
ht
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
18 St rong a n d We a k
how the world works—at least when we are limited to a
linear model.
Because neither authoritarian nor indulgent parenting
produces healthy results, they tend to generate and rein-
force one another. Grow up in an authoritarian home, and
you may well react by being an overly indulgent parent.
Grow up with indulgence, and you may well overcorrect
toward strictness when your own children come along.
Much of the dysfunction of our lives comes from oscil-
lating along the line of the false choice, never seeing that
there might be another way.
One other observation: There is one quadrant that really
is the worst of all. It’s quadrant III (Absent), the quadrant
of withdrawal and disengagement. Authoritarian parents
may not meet their children’s need for affection, but at least
they provide structure. Indulgent parents may not provide
structure, but at least they create an environment of ac-
ceptance and affirmation. But absent parents leave two
voids in their children’s lives, not just one. There’s some-
thing about the Absent quadrant that is uniquely dam-
aging—the total opposite of the Kind quadrant.
You could sum it up this way: We tend to think that our
lives have to be lived along the line of false choice, the IV-II
line. But actually the deepest question of our lives is how
to move further and further away from quadrant III
(Absent) and more and more fully into quadrant I (Kind).
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 19
The III-I axis is the one that matters the most—the one that
leads from a life that is not worth living to the life that really
is life. And that, in a nutshell, is what this book is about.
The Paradox of Jesus
No human being ever embodied flourishing more than
Jesus of Nazareth. No human life (let alone death) ever un-
leashed more flourishing for others. And precisely for this
reason, no other life brings the paradox of flourishing so
clearly into focus. In the life of Jesus we see two distinct
patterns that can seem impossible to reconcile.
On the one hand, consider the bookends of his life on
earth. He was born an infant, utterly dependent like every
other human being. He ended his life on a Roman cross,
was buried and descended to the dead. One of Christian-
ity’s oldest texts puts it this way:
Though he was in the form of God,
[he] did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2 0 St rong a n d We a k
On the other hand, there were Jesus’ three years of flour-
ishing public ministry, the culture-making effects of which
resound through history and throughout the world—the
most consequential life ever lived. Christians believe that
this very Son of Man and Son of God now sits at the right
hand of the Father, truly the world’s Lord, and sends his
Spirit of power to equip us to live his life in the world. To
quote the very next line of that same ancient text: “Therefore
God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is
above every name” (Philippians 2:9). Indeed, Jesus himself
told his first followers that they would do even greater
things than he himself had done (John 14:12).
But how can these two callings—to humility and to
boldness, to death and to life, to submission to the worst
the world can do and to reigning
with Christ over the world—
possibly coexist? What do they
mean for those of us who have
some scope of choice and
action—those of us who have
been granted privilege and
power? What do they mean for
those who live at the cruelest
edges of the world, in settings
of implacable injustice and oppression? Is there really any
Christlike way to exercise leadership within our broken
How can these two
callings—to humility and
to boldness, to death and
to life, to submission to
the worst the world can
do and to reigning with
Christ over the world—
possibly coexist?
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 21
human institutions all the way up to (or down to) the
church itself? What would be the specific practices we
could adopt to live in ways that bear the true image and
bring lasting flourishing?
We need a way to hold these two seemingly opposing
facets of Jesus’ life, and our calling, together—a way to
navigate this complexity without being overwhelmed.
Which means we need a 2×2 chart, of course.
The Dimensions of Power
I’m sure you see it coming already—the two dimensions of
Jesus’ life, his vulnerability in dependence and death on the
one hand, his authority in his earthly ministry and his
heavenly exaltation on the other hand, can easily start to
seem like linear alternatives. Exaltation or humiliation?
Ascension or crucifixion? Miracles of healing, deliverance
and even resurrection, or, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” The empty tomb or the cross? The only way
to hold them together is a 2×2 (see figure 1.6).
Some of us will instinctively identify with, or aspire to,
the “vulnerability” dimension. Perhaps that is the reality of
our lives—it is, eventually, the reality of every mortal life.
It may be the reality of the community or family into which
we were born, making us keenly aware of the limits of our
power and the precariousness of our circumstances. Or we
may aspire to identify with vulnerable people and places.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2 2 St rong a n d We a k
From those places and with those people, we look at Jesus
and see vulnerability. Jesus identified with the vulnerable
in his birth, life and death. Whether we identify with vul-
nerability or aspire to it, Jesus is there.
On the other hand, others of us identify with, or aspire
to, authority. We have been told we can make a difference
in the world; we’ve been given opportunities for creativity
and leadership. Other people respond positively when we
suggest a course of action. Maybe we’ve invested sub-
stantial amounts of our time and money (maybe our
parents’ money) in gaining authority in the form of training
and certificates and degrees. We look at Jesus and see au-
thority—as early as age twelve in the temple, engaging
FLOURISHING
IV I
III II
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Figure 1.6
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 23
powerfully with the scribes; standing up in his hometown
synagogue and boldly proclaiming himself as the ful-
fillment of the prophet’s vision; confounding Pilate and the
Jewish leaders even when he was in chains; breathing on
his disciples after his resurrection and giving them his
Spirit, telling them they were now commissioned to go out
into the whole world with his authority. Whether we
identify with authority or aspire to it, Jesus is there.
When we identify with one dimension or another, it’s
easy to become impatient with people who emphasize the
other one. I worked in a campus ministry on an Ivy League
campus where we emphasized the Christian call to
“downward mobility,” to use one’s privilege and power as an
opportunity to serve the materially and spiritually poor.
One day an African American student confronted me.
“When I came to college,” he said with some frustration,
“my entire community held a prayer service and laid hands
on me to commission me to go to Harvard. And now you
want me to tell them that I’m just coming back to the hood
to work for a nonprofit ministry?” His community had
commissioned him for authority—power and position in
parts of the culture where they had historically been absent
or underrepresented. Who was I to tell him not to stay on
that path?
What I was missing, at that point in my life, was a 2×2
conception of authority and vulnerability—the possibility
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2 4 St rong a n d We a k
that the journey of Christian discipleship, and true power,
would involve not just a progression toward one or the
other, but toward both at the same time. Such a conception
would not simply authorize my student to leave his vulner-
ability behind and pursue privilege and power, but it also
did not authorize me to ignore his (and his community’s)
legitimate pursuit of flourishing and the authority that
flourishing requires.
This book is my long overdue answer to that student.
First we will examine the four possible combinations of au-
thority and vulnerability on that 2×2 diagram. Properly
combined, authority and vulnerability lead to flourishing
(chapter 2). But when either one is absent—or even worse,
when both are missing—we find distortions of human
beings, organizations and institutions. We find suffering,
withdrawing and exploiting (chapters 3, 4 and 5)—which in
their most virulent forms become poverty, apathy and
tyranny. They don’t always appear to be that bad—poverty
can look like mild disempowerment, apathy can look ap-
pealingly like safety, tyranny often seems like mastery. In
another layer of complexity, it will turn out that all of us
inevitably spend time in each of these three quadrants, and
God’s grace is real and available in them all. But none of
them is the fullness of what we are made for, the life that is
really life.
So how do we move up and to the right on this 2×2 chart?
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Beyond the False Choice 25
Surprisingly, rather than simply moving pleasantly into
ever greater authority and ever greater vulnerability, we
have to take two fearsome journeys, both of which seem
like detours that lead away from the prime quadrant. The
first is the journey to hidden vulnerability (chapter 6), the
willingness to bear burdens and expose ourselves to risks
that no one else can fully see or understand. The second is
descending to the dead (chapter 7), the choice to visit the
most broken corners of the world and our own heart. Only
once we have made these two fateful journeys will we be
the kind of people who can be entrusted with true power,
the power that moves up and to the right (chapter 8) and
brings others who have been trapped in tyranny, apathy
and poverty along with us.
In the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, the re-
nowned public health physician Paul Farmer tells his bi-
ographer, Tracy Kidder, “People call me a saint and I think,
I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great
thing to be.”
I think Farmer is entirely right that a saint would be a
great thing to be. The saints are, ultimately, the people we
recognize as fully alive—the people who flourished and
brought flourishing to others, the ones in whom the glory
of God was most fully seen. There really is no other goal
higher for us than to become people who are so full of au-
thority and vulnerability that we perfectly reflect what
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2 6 St rong a n d We a k
human beings were meant to be and disclose the reality of
the Creator in the midst of creation. “Life holds only one
tragedy,” the French Catholic Léon Bloy wrote, “not to have
been a saint.”
But becoming a saint is about quite a bit more than
“working harder”—or perhaps better put, it’s about a great
deal less. If you have some inkling, like Farmer, that a saint
would be a great thing to be, and if you also have some
inkling that you never could work hard enough to actually
become one, you’re on the path to true flourishing.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2
Flourishing
Flourishing is something both we and our neighbors seek
and want. Flourishing captures Jesus’ statement of his own
life’s purpose in John 10:10, “I came that they may have life,
and have it abundantly.” It echoes Paul’s words to Timothy
as that young man sought to pastor the wealthy in his
WITHDRAWING SUFFERING
EXPLOITING FLOURISHING
IV I
III II
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
2 8 St rong a n d We a k
congregation, urging him to lead them toward “the life
that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:19). To be fully, abundantly,
gloriously alive—this would be flourishing. What could
we desire more?
But there is a danger here, and Paul understood it. To say
that there is a “life that really is life” implies that there is a life
that is not really life. You can be mistaken. You can miss it.
You could possibly live your whole life without ever knowing
what real life is. And Paul implies that the people most at risk
for missing “the life that really is life” are the rich.
Since nearly every reader of this book possesses wealth
that would have been unimaginable to Paul and Timothy,
resources out of reach of most of the billions with whom
we share the planet, Paul’s warning should ring in our ears.
If there is a life that is not really life, there is surely a flour-
ishing that is not really flourishing. So perhaps we should
remind ourselves what flourishing is not.
Flourishing is not the life we see portrayed in the com-
mercial messages that have saturated the imagination of
every resident of the mediated world—the unselfcon-
sciously multicultural millennial tribes, the blissfully happy
families with their responsible-yet-still-cool parents and
cheeky-but-still-lovable kids, the youthful retirees on the
weathered porch, all glowing in the warmth of the photog-
raphers’ golden hour.
Flourishing is not health as we normally understand it.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 29
There are people with profound physical and mental dis-
abilities who flourish and make flourishing possible for
others, while there are gyms full of people hitting their per-
sonal bests who are nonetheless not flourishing.
Flourishing is not the same thing as growth—the ubiq-
uitous Southern weed we call kudzu grows, all right, but a
roadside overgrown with kudzu is not flourishing.
Flourishing is not affluence. There can be flourishing
among the materially poor, and there can be a debilitating
spiritual sickness among the affluent.
Flourishing is not gentrification. There are flourishing
communities that never appear on lists of the hippest
neighborhoods, and a Whole Foods or a sudden influx of
people carrying yoga mats is no guarantee of a flourishing
neighborhood.
How do we know that flourishing is none of these things?
Because the most influential human being in history was a
Judean carpenter and rabbi who did not live in a gentrified
neighborhood (although, to be fair, he did tell at least one
person to pick up his mat). He was never noted for his
physical appearance (in fact, he had “nothing in his ap-
pearance that we should desire him,” see Isaiah 53:2). His
circle of followers first expanded then dwindled as his
mission reached its culmination—from curious crowds of
thousands to a few steadfast and heartbroken women
standing by his cross.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
30 St rong a n d We a k
He lived the most exemplary human life possible, but it
was not a life that looks like our affluence-addled picture
of flourishing.
Define flourishing carelessly—define it hastily, instinc-
tively, from a position of temporary power or privilege—
and you will end up missing the real thing, or the real One.
You will miss Jesus—and you will also miss Angela.
Angela
Like all my sister Melinda’s children, Angela, her third of
four, was born in a plastic inflatable tub in the middle of
their living room, attended by a midwife and surrounded
by family—a scene that will give you some sense of my con-
fident, resilient and countercultural sister. (My wife Cath-
erine and I have preferred to experience the miracle of new
life in, shall we say, more controlled environments.)
But the moment that Angela arrived in the world, the
midwife’s patient and cheerful coaching shifted suddenly
to decisive urgency. I will never forget picking up the phone,
three hundred miles away, and hearing my father’s an-
guished voice as he struggled to say the words, “There’s
something wrong with the baby.” By that time Melinda, her
husband, Dave, the midwife and Angela were already
speeding toward the regional hospital, half an hour’s drive
over mountain roads from their home.
There was indeed something wrong—one basic thing
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 31
wrong, it turned out, that led to many other things wrong.
Angela, doctors determined after days of tests, had three
copies of her thirteenth chromosome, a condition called
trisomy 13. (The far more common condition called Down
Syndrome involves an extra copy of the twenty-first chro-
mosome—trisomy 21.) Some babies are born with a milder
“mosaic” version of this condition that only affects some
cells. In Angela’s case, every cell had this debilitating extra
set of instructions.
Many children with trisomy 13 die before birth; half of
those born alive die within the first week. Trisomy 13 af-
fects almost everything, for the worse, in a human body—
from the unfused plates in Angela’s skull that first alerted
the midwife to her need for urgent medical attention, to
the curled-in toes on her feet. It is so rare that even at the
tertiary-care facility where she was cared for, most doctors
had only heard of the condition, never seen it. When they
did see it, their words were grim.
My brother-in-law still has the notebook where he tried
to keep track of what the endless parade of specialists said
in those first few frantic days. Early on he wrote down the
phrase, “Incompatible with life.” Yet eleven years later,
Angela was still alive.
She could not meaningfully see or hear; she could not
walk; she could not feed or bathe herself. She knew nothing
of language. We could only guess what she knew or under-
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
3 2 St rong a n d We a k
stood of her mother, her father, her grandparents, brother
and sisters. Early on she would respond to voice and touch;
in recent years, even as she had grown physically, she had for
long seasons receded further into an already distant and un-
knowable world.
Which leads to this question: Is Angela flourishing?
The Flourishing of the Vulnerable
If your definition of flourishing is the life held out for us by
mass-affluent consumer culture, the obvious answer is that
Angela is not flourishing—never has and never will. She
cannot purchase her satisfactions; she cannot impress her
peers; she cannot even “express herself ” in the ways we
think are so important for our own fulfillment.
But perhaps the question actually has things backwards.
When Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he told a
parable that turned that question on its head, ending with
the question, “[Who] was a neighbor to the man who fell
into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:29, 36).
If we were to similarly turn the question of flourishing
around, maybe we would be asking, “Who is helping
Angela flourish?” We might be asking, “Who is flourishing
because of Angela?” And even, “How can we become the
kind of people among whom Angela flourishes and who
flourish with Angela in our midst?”
Flourishing is not actually the property of an individual
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 33
at all, no matter how able or disabled. It describes a com-
munity. The real question of flourishing is for the com-
munity that surrounds Angela—her parents and siblings,
her extended family, the skilled practitioners of medicine
and education and nutrition who care for her, and in a
wider sense the society and nation of which she is a citizen.
The real test of every human community is how it cares for
the most vulnerable, those like Angela who cannot sustain
even a simulation of independence and autonomy. The
question is not whether Angela alone is flourishing or not—
the question is whether her presence in our midst leads us
to flourishing together.
Then the question goes one step further. Is Angela helping
us flourish? Is she the occasion of our becoming more fully
what we were created to be, more engaged with the world
in its variety and com-
plexity, more deeply em-
bedded in relationship and
mutual dependence, more
truly free?
The surprising answer is
that precisely because of
Angela’s great vulnerabil-
ities, because of the immense challenges that accompanied
her into the world, a kind of flourishing is possible that
would not otherwise exist. For ten years and counting,
The question is not whether
Angela alone is flourishing or
not—the question is whether
her presence in our midst leads
us to flourishing together.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
3 4 St rong a n d We a k
untold people have had the opportunity to serve Angela
and her family with authority and with vulnerability. The
medical teams who have cared for her from the earliest
days have had to bring all their authority as physicians and
caregivers to bear on her many vulnerabilities. But because
her condition is so complex and all-encompassing, mere
medical authority is by no means sufficient—everyone in-
volved with Angela must also take risks, be willing to learn
and discover that they were mistaken, be willing to open
themselves to the reality that even the most effective
medical care will only provide partial healing.
The only kind of power that can sustain Angela’s life has
to be up and to the right in our 2×2 diagram. Authority
without vulnerability will not suffice. Neither will vulner-
ability without authority. The two together are what is
needed. And these two together, I have come to believe, are
the very heart of what it is to be human and to live for God
and others.
If there is someone in your own life who has contributed
in dramatic ways to your own flourishing—a parent, a
teacher, a mentor, a friend—they almost certainly acted
with authority in your life and exposed themselves to vul-
nerability as well.
If you have ever been part of a community that experi-
enced some real measure of flourishing (a business, a
church, a neighborhood, a sports team, a musical ensemble,
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 35
a class)—some group of people who experienced a deep
health and growth, among whom the vulnerable were wel-
comed and the strong were vulnerable—I suspect you’ll
find that among the characteristics of that community
were high authority and high vulnerability. It’s the way we
were meant to live.
True Authority
Think of authority this way: the capacity for meaningful
action. When you have authority, what you do, or do not
do, makes a meaningful difference in the world around you.
Teachers and nurses have authority in the classroom and
the hospital; plumbers have authority with pipes and land-
scapers have it with plants; pilots have authority with air-
planes and librarians have it with books. When you have
authority, you can ask, command, or even merely imply
that something should be done, and it will be done. Not all
authority, though, is about the ability to command or
control. Sometimes it means knowing, or being known, in
ways that set you free. An electrical engineer can read a
circuit diagram that would stump the rest of us, under-
stand how it works and see how to make it work better. If
you have risen through the ranks of a business, you can
walk into meetings and those present will already know
your name, your character, your track record. You will be
able to act in ways that you cannot act among strangers.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
36 St rong a n d We a k
Authority requires that our action be meaningful, not
just willy-nilly activity. I can idly pluck the strings on a
guitar, but because I have never learned the guitar, my
plucking has no real musical meaning or value. No one may
be stopping me from picking up the instrument and
plucking the strings, but I still do not really have the au-
thority to play the guitar.
What makes action meaningful? Above all, meaningful
action participates in a story. It has a past and a future.
Meaningful action does not just come from nowhere, and
it does not just vanish in an instant—it takes place in the
midst of a story that matters.
Authority, at least for human beings, is always limited.
The president of the United States has a great deal of ex-
ecutive authority within that nation, but none at all when
visiting another country; and of course that capacity for
meaningful action is conferred only for four years at a time,
eight years at the most. Authority is limited not just in
space and time, but to particular domains—the CFO of a
firm has broad authority over the firm’s accounting con-
trols, but not generally over its advertising decisions, and
he or she has no authority over the accounting practices of
another firm.
Perhaps most importantly of all, true authority is always
given. The capacity for meaningful action is not something
we possess on our own. It is something others confer on us.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 37
Without being given countless gifts—of language, of
nurture, of love—by those who cared for us in our infancy
and childhood, none of us would have the capacity to act
meaningfully in the world. Without being continually af-
firmed and upheld in our capacity to act, none of us would
be able to exercise whatever authority we have—as teachers,
parents, pastors, presidents or coaches. Sociologists distin-
guish between “ascribed” authority and “achieved” au-
thority—the kind that comes from a title or an inheritance
versus the kind that comes from a history of successful
action—but both come from outside ourselves. Authority,
like flourishing, is a shared reality, not a private possession.
More Authority Than Any Other Creature
Human beings have far more authority than any other
creature. Other creatures act, certainly, and even act with
lasting effects, sometimes reshaping their environment in
significant ways (as a beaver does when building a dam).
But they do so in limited ways and always in a particular
ecological niche. Human beings, on the other hand, have
found ways to flourish and act meaningfully in nearly every
ecosystem on the planet, from the steppes of Siberia to
tropical rainforests—even, in modern times, to the con-
tinent of Antarctica. The first readers of the biblical
command to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it” (Genesis 1:28) can only have had the faintest
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
38 St rong a n d We a k
inkling of how truly human beings have been able to fulfill
that call—and, as well, how terribly we have been able to
abuse it.
Likewise, no other creature, at least in any way we can
tell, acts meaningfully in the ways that human beings do—
that is, acts as part of a grand and complex story about the
world’s origins and destiny and their place in it. There are
other creatures on the continent of Antarctica, but none of
them are pondering the history and destiny of our planet
and cosmos in the way that the scientists are doing as they
conduct experiments there. (Indeed, the fact that human
beings will voluntarily travel to a land of constant subzero
temperatures and no daylight for three months a year, just
to study the world, is an extraordinary testimony to our
desire for meaning.)
No other species has such a clear sense of responsibility
for other species—what Christian theology calls dominion,
the capacity and responsibility to act on behalf of the flour-
ishing of the rest of creation. The psalmist of Psalm 8,
having considered the vastness of the cosmos and human
beings’ smallness in the midst of it, then proclaims,
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of
your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 39
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
(Psalm 8:5-8)
This authority, uniquely ours as the image bearers of
God, is a gift in every way. It does not come from our own
autonomous selves—it is given by Another. And it is good.
The sorrow of the whole human story is not that we have
authority, it is the way we have misused and neglected au-
thority. Our drive for authority—our sense of frustration
when we are denied it or our sense of grief when we lose
it—comes from its fundamental goodness.
So authority is meant to characterize every image bearer—
even the most vulnerable. As infants, long before we could
provide for ourselves in any way, we learned that we were
capable of meaningful action. We emerged from the womb
and instinctively sought to recognize a human face. We
learned that others would give meaning to our cries.
Even my niece Angela has authority in this sense. Cer-
tainly her authority is limited—but as we have already seen,
that is actually true for every human being. Like everyone’s
authority, Angela’s capacity for meaningful action comes
from the community around her. When she cries out with
frustration, hunger or discomfort, others around her in-
terpret those sounds and respond. They incorporate her
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4 0 St rong a n d We a k
actions, as unconscious and limited as they are, into a story,
a shared reality with a past and a future. Angela’s capacity
for meaningful action is a gift, to be sure—one she cannot
earn or sustain on her own. But that does not make it less
real—that makes it true authority.
And Angela certainly has the other quality that makes us
uniquely human, uniquely capable of bearing the divine
image. The other thing that is essential for the exercise of
true power is our vulnerability.
Two Kinds of Vulnerability
The way I will use the word vulnerability in this book is a
bit different from its usage in America today, where it is
often limited to personal and emotional transparency. We
live in an age of oversharing. Ordinary people and celeb-
rities disclose all kinds of seemingly shameful or incrimi-
nating details of their lives. Indeed, some people who have
become celebrities simply through the sheer volume and
extravagance of their self-disclosure are praised for their
“vulnerability.”
But this is not really what I mean by the vulnerability
that leads to flourishing. Instead, think of it this way: ex-
posure to meaningful risk. Sometimes emotional trans-
parency is indeed a meaningful risk—but not always. For
one thing, what was truly vulnerable and brave in one gen-
eration can become a key to success in another. When you
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 41
can acquire fame, wealth and significant cultural power by
frequently appearing on screen physically naked, na-
kedness can become less about the exposure that human
beings fear and more about the “exposure” that every
would-be celebrity needs—a currency of power, not of loss.
The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk,
which is the possibility of loss—the chance that when we
act, we will lose something we value. Risk, like life, is always
about probabilities, never about certainties. To risk is to
open ourselves up to
the chance that some-
thing will go wrong,
that something will
be taken from us—
without knowing for sure whether that loss will come to
pass or not.
To be vulnerable is to be exposed to the possibility of
loss—and not just loss of things or possessions, but loss of
our own sense of self. Vulnerable at root means woundable—
and any wound deeper than the most superficial scratch
injures and limits not just our bodies but our very sense of
self. Wounded, we are forced to become careful, tender,
tentative in the way we move in the world, if we can still
move on our own at all. To be vulnerable is to open oneself
up to the possibility—though not the certainty—that the
result of our action in the world will be a wound, something
The vulnerability that leads to
flourishing requires risk.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4 2 St rong a n d We a k
lost, potentially never to be gained again.
Here again we need the word meaningful to do its work.
We are not talking about willy-nilly risk, putting ourselves
in harm’s way for no good reason. Nor are we talking about
risking things we don’t care whether we keep or lose,
playing poker with chips that never have to be cashed in.
True vulnerability involves risking something of real and
even irreplaceable value. And like authority, true vulnera-
bility involves a story—a history that shapes why we are
choosing to risk and a future that makes the risk worth-
while but also holds the potential of loss coming to pass.
When we expose ourselves to meaningful risk, we become
vulnerable in the sense I will use the word in this book.
So emotional transparency can be meaningful risk—or it
can be calculated manipulation. An already powerful person
can use what seems like emotional honesty, even tears, to win
followers, avoid confrontation or sidestep accountability. If
you are in a setting where emotional transparency will almost
certainly win you a hearing or undermine others’ criticisms,
to be emotionally transparent may indeed be the right thing
to do. It may even be part of the proper exercise of your au-
thority, a meaningful action that will contribute to your com-
munity’s story. But it is not necessarily vulnerable.
Naked Creatures
The very first word of Patrick Lencioni’s “business fable”
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 43
Getting Naked is vulnerability. His fable tells the story of
a small but unusually successful consulting firm that is
swallowed up by a larger and more conventional company.
The secret of the smaller firm’s success, it turns out, is
vulnerability. Lencioni applies the vivid phrase “getting
naked” to actions consultants can take in front of their
clients that directly challenge three fears: fear of losing
the business, fear of being embarrassed and fear of feeling
inferior. It’s a compact catalogue of the sources of au-
thority in the consulting world: profit, prestige and a
reputation for being smarter than anyone else. Even
though Lencioni agrees that consultants need to be prof-
itable, be well regarded and bring unusual insight to the
table, his fictional narrator Jack discovers that achieving
those goals actually requires putting them at risk—
“getting naked” by exposing oneself to the possibility of
losing them all. Jack learns to make honest but difficult
observations about his clients’ businesses—and perhaps
more difficult, to be willing to ask “dumb questions” that
reveal his own limits or ignorance.
Nakedness is a funny thing. Of all the creatures in the
world, only human beings can be naked. By adulthood,
every other creature naturally possesses whatever fur,
scales or hide are necessary to protect it from its envi-
ronment. No other creature—even naked mole rats or Mr.
Bigglesworth, the hairless feline sidekick of Mike Myers’s
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4 4 St rong a n d We a k
movie villain Dr. Evil—shows any sign, in its natural state,
of feeling incomplete in the way that human beings consis-
tently do. Only human beings live our whole lives able to
return to a state that renders us uniquely vulnerable, not
just to nature but to one another.
The unsettling truth is that just as human beings have
more authority than any other creature, we also have more
vulnerability than any other creature. We are not just born
naked, we are born dependent, exposed in every conceivable
way to the possibility of loss. For far longer than even our
closest evolutionary relatives, after we are born we are de-
pendent on others to nourish us, clean us and protect us. For
many years we remain immature—unable to fully assert our
authority competently in the world. (With the extension of
adolescence in the modern world, that timespan keeps
growing—Joseph and Mary presumably made their trip to
Bethlehem when she was a teenager, but it’s not until age
twenty-five that you can freely rent a car from most com-
panies in the United States and not until age twenty-six that
parents must remove children from their health insurance
plan. The length of time you can live in your parents’
basement is continually being renegotiated upward as well!)
This is the essential human condition: greater authority
and greater vulnerability than any other creature under
heaven. Indeed, as the scholar Walter Brueggemann
pointed out many years ago, the way the original man in
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 45
Genesis 2 recognizes the original woman as his suitable
partner, after seeing so many other creatures that would
never suffice, is with this outburst of poetry: “This at last is
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).
Bones—hard, rigid, strong. Flesh—soft, pliable, vulnerable.
We image bearers are bone and flesh—strength and
weakness, authority and vulnerability, together.
The same psalmist who celebrated human dominion
over the creatures also was capable of looking up into the
heavens and grasping what they meant for the significance,
or insignificance, of our small and transitory lives: “When
I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, / the
moon and the stars that you have established; / what are
human beings that you are mindful of them, / mortals that
you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4). Only a human being can
fully grasp the meaning of that canopy of stars, of the in-
finitude of the Creator’s life before and after our small
lives—so only a human being can be so completely ex-
posed to meaningful risk.
I have come to believe that the image of God is not just
evident in our authority over creation—it is also evident in
our vulnerability in the midst of creation. The psalm speaks
of authority and vulnerability in the same breath—because
this is what it means to bear the image of God.
When the true image bearer came, the “image of the in-
visible God” (Colossians 1:15), he came with unparalleled
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4 6 St rong a n d We a k
authority—more capacity for meaningful action than any
other person who has lived. His actions all took their place
within the story of Israel, the greatest of all shared histories,
and they decisively changed the path of history and created
a new and different shared future. And yet he, too, was born
naked, as dependent and therefore vulnerable as any human
being; and though the Western artistic tradition has placed
loincloths over the uncomfortable truth of crucifixion, he
died naked as well. He died exposed to the possibility of loss,
not just of human life but of his very identity as the divine
Son with whom the Father was well pleased. He was laid in
the dust of death, the final and full expression of loss. And
in all of this, he was not just Very Man but Very God.
What Love Longs to Be
As I was writing this chapter the makers of the GoPro line
of cameras had their latest viral video hit. A helicopter
drops the skier Cody Townsend at the top of a seemingly
impossible, nearly vertical crevasse between two rock walls
at the top of a snow-covered mountain. Thanks to the
head-mounted camera, we follow him off the edge,
plunging down through the narrow canyon and out, safely,
just barely, onto the gentler slopes below.
It is terrifying. (One person who shared it online said
that as he watched, he “tightened every orifice in sym-
pathy.”) It is also mesmerizing and exhilarating.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Flourishing 47
What makes this ninety-second video so compelling and
compulsively shareable? It’s the combination of authority
and vulnerability—Townsend’s complete command of the
sport of skiing plus his willingness to stretch that compe-
tence to its absolute limit, to the point where there was the
real possibility of loss. A video that showed authority
without vulnerability might be impressive, but it would ul-
timately be boring; a video that showed gratuitous risk-
taking without commensurate authority might well be
good for a few laughs in the genre of “stupid human tricks,”
but it would not provoke astonishment, admiration and
awe. What we truly admire in human beings is not authority
alone or vulnerability alone—we
seek both together.
When authority and vulnerability are combined, you
find true flourishing. Not just the flourishing of the gifted
or affluent, but the needy and
limited as well. For my niece
Angela to flourish, others will
have to act meaningfully and
place her own actions in a
meaningful story. Indeed, if An-
gela’s condition could be solved
with a simple, technical medical
procedure, perhaps all it would take to restore her health
would be someone with medical authority. But her con-
dition is too comprehensively challenging for that—it will
What we truly admire in
human beings is not
authority alone or
vulnerability alone—we
seek both together.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4 8 St rong a n d We a k
never be “solved.” So Angela’s flourishing also depends on
others being willing to put something meaningful at risk—
the doctors charting an uncertain and difficult medical
treatment, the caregivers who bear the difficulties and in-
dignities of providing for a broken human body, and above
all her parents choosing to love sacrificially, day after day,
in the face of a most uncertain future.
In the end, this is what love longs to be: capable of mean-
ingful action in the life of the beloved, so committed to the
beloved that everything meaningful is at risk. If we want
flourishing, this is what we will have to learn.
What we will have to unlearn, and be saved from, are our
failures of authority, vulnerability or both—and that is the
territory we now must explore.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
3
Suffering
When did the topic of justice become important to you?”
Gideon Strauss posed that question to two dozen
people crammed into our living room one fall evening
in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Some of us were there be-
cause we knew Gideon’s remarkable personal story—
WITHDRAWING SUFFERING
EXPLOITING FLOURISHING
IV I
III II
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
50 St rong a n d We a k
growing up Afrikaner in the last years of apartheid
South Africa, becoming deeply involved in that coun-
try’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Com-
mission. Others were interested in his work with the
Center for Public Justice, an innovative think tank in
Washington, DC.
From my eleven-year-old daughter—perched on her
mother’s lap for lack of chairs—to the gray-haired couple
from a nearby suburb, all of us took turns answering
Gideon’s question. A few minutes earlier you could have
mistaken this gathering for a polite dinner party of rea-
sonably diverse, prosperous professionals. But as we went
around the circle, as so often happens, the answers went
deeper and deeper, longer and longer.
Almost every answer to Gideon’s question involved a
story of violence.
In this room of seemingly secure citizens of the United
States, there was hardly anyone who had not encountered
some kind of forceful violation of dignity that had shaken
their world, bruised their innocence and kindled a passion
for justice. That word justice, potentially so abstract and
distant, was in fact acutely personal. But for me one answer
came even closer to home.
Abby, an Asian American physician a few years younger
than me, had been invited by mutual friends. When her
turn came to answer Gideon’s question, she began, “When
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 51
I was a girl my family moved to a suburb of Boston, Mas-
sachusetts, called Needham.”
Needham! My family, too, had moved to Needham when
I was thirteen years old. I came of age there, and it will
always be home for me, though my parents moved away
years ago. Abby was from my hometown. I barely restrained
a delighted outburst as she continued her story.
“There was a convenience store named The Little Peach
in Needham.”
Yes, there was—down the street from the high school,
right across from the Methodist church where I came to a
living faith. My friends and I stopped at The Little Peach
countless afternoons in my high school years. I enjoyed a
pleasant wave of nostalgia (and a distinct memory of the
taste of Orange Crush soda) as Abby went on.
“One day my dad needed to use the copy machine there,
and he brought me along. I must have been seven or eight
years old.” I quickly estimated the years—that would have
been my sophomore or junior year in high school.
“My father was born in China, and his English was poor.
He had trouble figuring out how to get the copy machine
to work. But he couldn’t explain his problem to the owner
of the store. The owner became furious with my father. He
started mocking my dad’s Chinese accent. Then he grabbed
my father’s papers, ripped them up and tossed them on the
floor, and told us to get out of his store.”
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
5 2 St rong a n d We a k
Abby paused. “I had always known my father as strong,
kind and smart. I had never seen him humiliated like that
in front of me. He was so ashamed—I was so ashamed. I
didn’t know what racism was before that day and what it
could do to someone—but after that, I knew.”
Vulnerability Without Authority
I never knew.
All those years, full of the joyous energy of adolescence,
my friends and I—all of us “white” without ever giving it
one moment’s thought—had spilled out the doors of that
little convenience store, sodas in hand. To us, racism was
something that happened long before and far away, not
under our noses, not at the copy machine I used a dozen
times or more, not at the counter of The Little Peach.
For me, Needham was always about flourishing—the
place where I came of age, discovered talents and ability,
learned to pray and fell in love, was granted authority and
discovered vulnerability. For Abby, it was the place where
the violence of the world burst into the open, where her
own father saw his authority ripped into pieces and thrown
to the floor, his identity mocked and his weakness ex-
ploited. The place where an eight-year-old girl started a
journey that would lead her, one day, to a circle of people,
bruised by violence, seeking justice.
That afternoon in The Little Peach, eight-year-old Abby
That afternoon in The Little Peach,
eight-year-old Abby discovered
what it is like to live with
vulnerability without authority.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 53
discovered what it is like to live with vulnerability without
authority. Authority, the capacity for meaningful action,
has many sources. It
comes from facility in a
language—but immi-
grants trade their native
tongue for one they learn
with difficulty, if at all. It
comes from citizenship
in a nation and all the rights that come with citizenship—
but many immigrants arrive with only provisional status,
at best, in the new land. It comes from membership in an
extended family, the deep knowledge of people and place
that is only acquired over generations—immigrants give all
that up the moment they step on the ship or plane that
takes them away from their home. Immigration is such a
drastic step that few would take it except in cases where
the vulnerability of staying home, whether economic, po-
litical or cultural, is even greater than the vulnerability of
trying to make a life and a living in a new home.
Abby’s parents had taken that step. And one of the most
admirable things about the United States is how much au-
thority they had in fact been able to acquire, in the form of
economic and educational opportunities, by the time they
arrived in Needham. But on that afternoon, Abby was
rudely awakened to all the ways her parents lived with
Abby paused. “I had always known my father as strong,
kind and smart. I had never seen him humiliated like that
in front of me. He was so ashamed—I was so ashamed. I
didn’t know what racism was before that day and what it
could do to someone—but after that, I knew.”
Vulnerability Without Authority
I never knew.
All those years, full of the joyous energy of adolescence,
my friends and I—all of us “white” without ever giving it
one moment’s thought—had spilled out the doors of that
little convenience store, sodas in hand. To us, racism was
something that happened long before and far away, not
under our noses, not at the copy machine I used a dozen
times or more, not at the counter of The Little Peach.
For me, Needham was always about flourishing—the
place where I came of age, discovered talents and ability,
learned to pray and fell in love, was granted authority and
discovered vulnerability. For Abby, it was the place where
the violence of the world burst into the open, where her
own father saw his authority ripped into pieces and thrown
to the floor, his identity mocked and his weakness ex-
ploited. The place where an eight-year-old girl started a
journey that would lead her, one day, to a circle of people,
bruised by violence, seeking justice.
That afternoon in The Little Peach, eight-year-old Abby
That afternoon in The Little Peach,
eight-year-old Abby discovered
what it is like to live with
vulnerability without authority.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
5 4 St rong a n d We a k
vulnerabilities she had not seen—how authority could be
snatched out of her father’s hand and ground spitefully
underfoot. She had discovered the reality of life in the
corner called Suffering.
Discovering Suffering
None of us make it very far in life without spending time
in this corner. Suffering can be the result of injustice and
evil, but it touches even the most sheltered lives.
My friends and I in Needham knew little of the worst of
the world, but suffering found us all the same. My friend
Paul, head over heels in love with a girl named Janet, was
summoned to the back of the library stacks junior year,
where Janet told him she had tried to commit suicide the
previous weekend. She was breaking up with him, she said,
so he wouldn’t have to deal with her depression. I knew
nothing of this until six years later, when it spilled out in a
conversation one summer day back from college, and Paul
wept as uncontrollably as if it had happened yesterday. That
same summer, one of my best friend’s parents divorced,
and I suddenly replayed my memories of their home in
high school and realized that all those years his family had
lived with toxic bitterness, as corrosive as any acid to the
hope and confidence of their children.
I will never forget the first funeral I attended for someone
my age, in the church across the street from The Little
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 55
Peach. Matt had been practicing with the freshman football
team when he noticed unusual bruises from the gentlest of
collisions. Four months later, he died from leukemia, and
my friends and I sat in the overflow crowd in the vestibule
of the church as we watched his parents walk in to the
service. In his grief, his father looked to me like the
strongest man in the world carrying the heaviest weight in
the world on his shoulders. Out of nowhere, suffering had
found him, and us.
All this happened to me, and around me, in one of the
most protected corners of the world, in one of the most
affluent places on the planet. (Even decades later, the
wounds are deep enough that I have changed names and
identifying details in this chapter out of respect for friends’
privacy.) Wherever you come of age, suffering will come
into your life earlier than you expected, in the form of risks
you cannot manage and pain you cannot avoid, a room
with no exit.
Ultimately, suffering—vulnerability without authority—
is the last word of every human life, no matter how privi-
leged or powerful. We will end our days, one way or an-
other, radically vulnerable to others, only able to hope that
they will honor our diminishment and departure with care
and dignity. The authority we carefully store up for our-
selves will evaporate slowly or quickly, over the span of
decades—or over brunch.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
56 St rong a n d We a k
Eric and Kate
Before I really talk with Eric and Kate for the first time, I
can already make a rough guess of their status and occupa-
tions. Eric is athletic, handsome, in a suit with an open
collar; Kate is dressed with the effortless panache that
takes a great deal of effort. It’s not hard to picture her on
the paths along Boston’s Charles River with the other
early-morning runners (a more apt name for her Lycra-
clad tribe than “joggers”). He works in finance; she works
in marketing—they both live on Beacon Hill, Boston’s
neighborhood for young professionals with good jobs,
good friends and good prospects.
They began dating, I find out, shortly before Eric started
going to church. Eric is effusive in his newly discovered
faith—Kate is more reserved. And yet you sense her
opening up to the possibility that a loving God knows her
and is seeking her, along with a growing wonder at the
openness and generosity she has discovered among the fol-
lowers of Jesus.
On Easter Sunday, a few months after we meet, Eric and
Kate attend church and go out for brunch with friends. In the
middle of the meal, Kate’s head droops, and then her whole
body goes limp. An ambulance rushes Kate, unresponsive, to
the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital. By
the time I get Eric’s anguished email to a few Christian friends
later that night, she is in the neurological intensive care unit.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 57
On Monday morning, and every morning for the next
week, I visit to support Eric and to pray with him as Kate’s
chest rises and falls with the mechanical rhythm of the
life-support equipment. Her face is expressionless, pale,
soft as with sleep. The hospital’s chief of neurology takes
over Kate’s case and spends hours with the family and with
attending physicians, interns and nurses at Kate’s side.
They have arrived at a diagnosis: a rare and undetected
genetic condition has made Kate vulnerable, all her life, to
a massive stroke. It could have happened years ago; it
could have waited years longer. On Easter Monday, there
is still some hope Kate might recover, at least partially.
Over the coming days that hope dwindles. She will never
open her eyes again. Late one afternoon, with her family
around her, the doctors remove the equipment from her
body and she is gone.
I attend the funeral in one of Boston’s most affluent
suburbs—not very different from my own home of Needham.
The impeccably dressed mourners arrive in late-model
SUVs, and I am reminded of how highly New England’s elite
value their control—control over slippery roads, over ap-
pearances, over emotions, over relationships. Kate’s room-
mates give bewildered eulogies, grasping for profundity out
of friendships born largely of carefree partying and the small
trials of college life. The faith that she had just begun to ex-
plore hovers over a service that is hollow with grief.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
58 St rong a n d We a k
At the graveside I am surprised to see the hospital’s chief
of neurology. He is perhaps sixty years old—he has cared
for countless patients, has risen to the very top of his pro-
fession at one of the most prestigious medical centers in
the world, and yet here he is at this young woman’s grave,
his face streaked with tears. He is shorter than I remem-
bered from the hospital. He reaches up to embrace Eric
and says, “I’m so sorry we couldn’t save her.”
The Paths to Suffering
Of the four quadrants, Suffering is the one we least want to
visit. And yet it is the only one I can be absolutely sure
every reader of this book
has experienced. You may or
may not feel you have ever
tasted the flourishing that
comes from simultaneously
experiencing great authority
and great vulnerability; you
may or may not have ever
lingered in the withdrawal of having neither authority nor
vulnerability; perhaps you have never had the opportunity
to taste the tantalizing promise of authority without vul-
nerability. But without a doubt you have experienced vul-
nerability without authority, risk without options.
We suffer in the hospital waiting room, knowing that the
Of the four quadrants,
Suffering is the one we least
want to visit. And yet it is the
only one I can be absolutely
sure every reader of this
book has experienced.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 59
child or parent or friend who just was taken into surgery
has taken everything we cherish in life with them—but also
knowing that we can do nothing, beyond faithful waiting
and prayer, to affect the outcome.
We suffer in romance, being on the receiving end of one
of the worst and most cowardly inventions of the modern
age, the breakup by text message. (Now that is vulnerability
without authority!)
We even suffer in ambition, having sent off an appli-
cation for a job or a place at university, all the documen-
tation we could muster of our authority—but then having
to wait weeks or months for a decision.
Indeed, sometimes suffering is simply the painful payoff
of risking love in a broken world. This is the burden of Eric
at Kate’s grave, but it is also the burden of the chief of neu-
rology at Mass General Hospital, with all his professional
success and skill; it’s the burden of the widower closing his
wife’s casket after fifty years of marriage; on a smaller but
still very real scale, it is the burden of my friend grieving
his breakup with Janet six years later.
But there is another path to suffering, one that has
nothing to do with the risks that come with true flour-
ishing. The other path is injustice—the spiritual and
physical violence done by those who seek authority without
vulnerability. Abby’s father had done nothing to earn the
violent contempt of the proprietor of The Little Peach, but
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
6 0 St rong a n d We a k
that man’s distorted use of his petty power did damage all
the same—far more damage, surely, than any satisfaction
he gained from his display of superiority. One bleak day I
sat with my friend Jeremy the day after his divorce was fi-
nalized. His ex-wife had opted out of marriage with its de-
mands for growth and transparency. It is surpassingly un-
likely that she will end up happier in the long run, but the
damage has been done in their lives and the life of the
young daughter she left behind.
The most painful path to the quadrant called Suffering
is the human choice, at the very origins of the species, to
pursue Exploiting—to seek authority without vulnerability,
godlike power without God-like character. We are vul-
nerable without authority because our first parents sought
authority without vulnerability—and because their fallen
children seek it still.
Generations of Suffering
Any experience of vulnerability without authority is painful,
but the deepest and most intractable examples of suffering
are communal and multigenerational. They involve whole
peoples who find themselves stuck in suffering, whole
communities with a shared painful history and a dismal
expected future.
This is not just a matter of financial deprivation. Even if
you are personally materially poor, if your community—
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 61
your family of origin, your ethnic group, your nation—has
some measure of authority and can resist the worst of
human vulnerabilities, you are at a much lower risk of true
poverty. You are connected with others who can restore
some measure of flourishing in your life.
Conversely, even if you are personally materially well-off,
if your community is mired in suffering—if your parents,
people and nation have
known little for generations
but enforced helplessness
due to tragedy and injustice—
then you are not free from
the oppressive reality of suf-
fering. And this kind of suf-
fering is far deeper, and far less tractable, than the suffering
all of us experience as individuals—because simply escaping
it as an individual does nothing to change the fundamental
systems of vulnerability without authority.
Sandra grew up in Ventura County in southern Cali-
fornia, and she carries herself with the confidence that
seems to be the birthright of children of those safe, sunny,
endless suburbs, the confidence that carried her to uni-
versity and into a professional career. Meeting her for the
first time, I make a host of assumptions—almost all of
which turn out to be wrong.
I assume that like so many young Americans, she can
The deepest and most
intractable examples of
suffering are communal
and multigenerational.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
62 St rong a n d We a k
largely chart her own course in life, choosing her college
major and career—when in fact, every one of these deci-
sions has been discussed and debated and decided by her
whole extended family.
I assume she grew up knowing she would go to college.
In fact, no one in Sandra’s family had ever gone to college.
For most of her childhood it was a distant and hazy dream.
I assume her parents worked hard to pay for her edu-
cation—but in fact, Sandra’s parents worked hard her
whole life at several jobs each, not to save money but to pay
for basic daily expenses.
I assume she grew up in a loving, stable home, which is
half true. Her family was generous and warm, but stability
was far beyond their grasp—because although Sandra was
born in the United States, her parents were not. They have
spent her whole life in the United States without legal
status. Early in her teens, translating from the Spanish that
is their only fully comfortable language to the English that
she speaks like the American native she is, she fully grasped
the reality: any hour, any day—at a routine traffic stop or
when a white Immigration & Customs Enforcement ve-
hicle would pull up at the places where they held down
their informal, under-the-table jobs—they could in an in-
stant be taken away from her, back to the land they left
before she was born.
Her family is part of the vast and complicated story of
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 63
undocumented immigration to the United States—a story
of brave and hard-working people leaving homes of little
opportunity and perilous violence to take back- and spirit-
breaking work in American factories and fields. During
Sandra’s years in junior high school, a movement began to
force the issue of these long-term, tax-paying residents
and workers. Sandra and her friends skipped school to
march in the peaceful procession through downtown Los
Angeles. For them, American-born citizens, the worst that
could happen would be a night in jail. For many of the im-
migrant workers in the march—their uncles, aunts,
parents and neighbors—speaking up for basic recognition
and fair treatment could have been the last act of their
lives in America.
As Sandra tells this story, you can still glimpse the scared
and perplexed thirteen-year-old she once was. She de-
scribes her yearning for her eighteenth birthday, the day
she could apply for family-based green cards for her own
parents. She cannot speak without emotion about the day
those green cards arrived two years later. Sandra no longer
lives with that radical vulnerability, knowing her parents
could disappear to a country she has never visited. Or
maybe, since all of us live with the vulnerabilities of our
teenage years long after those years are gone, she lives with
that vulnerability every day.
Every one of us is a neighbor to communities in suf-
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
64 St rong a n d We a k
fering. This can literally be true—the pleasant town where
I live borders a postindustrial city with one of the highest
murder rates in my state. Nearly every reader of this book
will live within an hour’s drive of a place similarly en-
trenched in vulnerability without authority—and we all
live a short plane flight away from even more extreme ex-
amples. Within our businesses and our workplaces, our
hospitals and our colleges, in even the healthiest places,
there are pockets of persistent and seemingly intractable
poverty, material and spiritual.
You might object. Not all workplaces, you might say.
What about those darlings of the media, the social media
startups of the last decade where every employee is a mil-
lionaire, the companies with stratospheric valuations,
onsite masseurs and free vegan cuisine in the cafeteria, the
firms full of authority and healthy risk-taking?
But in fact these firms also are neighbors to and inter-
twined with an economic ecosystem that leaves whole
communities in suffering. In October 2014 Wired mag-
azine reported on the dirty work every social media
company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of
exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable
quantities around the world and around the clock by boors
(and increasingly by bots). This is not simply material that
might offend those of gentle or puritanical sensibilities, but
truly unthinkable representations of real and fictional vio-
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 65
lence, abuse of women and men, children and animals, and
countless other horrors conjured up by the human mind.
Someone has to prevent the average user from encoun-
tering these horrors or else all of our news feeds would be
regularly infiltrated by retch-inducing images and text. But
this means that a human being has to review every degrading
image. And that someone is usually a resident of a distant
country, employed by an outsourcing firm—at the time of
Wired’s article, largely in the Philippines, thanks to its cheap
labor supply and reasonably close ties to Western culture.
Philippine young adults do this work because there is no better
work to do, and they do it until they are utterly undone by it.
This is the reality of the globalized Internet world, in
which the depredations of a few, the pornographers and
exploiters who seek power without vulnerability (Ex-
ploiting), are foisted on those with no alternative (Suf-
fering) in order to allow the privileged to live in ignorant
comfort (Withdrawing). It’s a world in which poverty of
spirit is bought at near-poverty wages. The flourishing of a
few powerful companies—and we who use their services—
is a mirage made possible only if you avert your eyes from
the vulnerability they outsource to others.
Building Authority
The existence and persistence of the quadrant called Suf-
fering is the real test of power—a test that all of us with
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
6 6 St rong a n d We a k
power have failed. The consequences of our failure to
fully bear the divine image fall most heavily on those who
live in this quadrant with no prospect of escape—the in-
dividuals and communities who exist in a state of con-
tinual vulnerability.
Making things worse, some well-meaning attempts to
intervene in situations of suffering can actually increase
vulnerability and undermine authority. As Gary Haugen
and Victor Boutros point out in their compelling book
The Locust Effect, half a century’s worth of financial in-
vestment in the materially poor world has had surpris-
ingly little effect. Introducing material resources alone
into a system of exploitation—treating the symptoms of
Suffering without addressing the disease of Exploiting
and Withdrawing—actually can increase the vulnera-
bility of the poor. Even at the smallest scale, a family
given a few farm animals by a well-intentioned devel-
opment program can begin to attract the hungry gaze of
people willing to do them violence. At the largest scale,
global development funds in the hundreds of millions of
dollars become powerful incentives to corruption at the
highest levels of government.
Too often, our efforts to intervene in suffering end up
only reinforcing poverty. It is almost never enough to
reduce vulnerability—even though that is what most of us
seek to do in our own lives. We must also restore proper
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 67
authority to individual persons and to whole communities.
There is nothing wrong with reducing meaningless risk in
people’s lives—their vulnerability to hunger or disease. But
the best interventions in situations of persistent poverty
increase authority as well.
How do we move people stuck in the quadrant called
Suffering toward the authority for which they were made?
The only truly sustainable response is to help build lasting
authority. In 2007 I had the opportunity to visit a district
in India where bonded labor—modern-day child slavery—
had been endemic. But with the help of the Christian hu-
manitarian organization World Vision, these small, mate-
rially poor communities had begun to see extraordinary
change. A few of World Vision’s interventions in that situ-
ation were focused on pressing, immediate relief of vulner-
ability (programs to provide basic food, clean water and
shelter), but most were aimed at increasing meaningful
authority: savings programs for women (financial savings,
especially in communities of great poverty, are an im-
portant source of capacity for meaningful action), training
and support for local law enforcement (encouraging the
kind of legitimate authority that could restrain exploitative
moneylenders), and, most memorably for me, the “chil-
dren’s panchayat,” a village council just for children, where
they could practice the responsibility for the community
that would be theirs when they came of age.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
6 8 St rong a n d We a k
What I found in that community is what can be found in
so many communities marked by suffering: when the
gospel begins to transform individuals and communities, it
does not simply relieve the most immediate needs. Indeed,
many of those needs may remain unmet in any material
sense. And yet the gospel restores hope and dignity, mean-
ingful action and meaningful risk. At a distance, you might
suppose that systemic injustice and multigenerational vul-
nerability would leave nothing but misery in their wake.
But draw closer to even the greatest suffering and you find
people of extraordinary resilience and spiritual power. One
of them, for me, is named Isabel.
A Path Appears
Every session of the weekend conference on faith and work,
held at an energetic and growing church in Santa Barbara,
California, was to begin with an interview between Kyle,
the pastor hosting the event, and a member of the congre-
gation talking about their work. The very first story we
heard is what I will always remember about that weekend.
Isabel, poised and impeccably dressed, joined Kyle on
the stage. She gave a brief summary of her story in profi-
cient, Spanish-inflected English—born in the city of Viña
del Mar in Chile, trained and credentialed there as a family
counselor. A few years before she had immigrated to the
United States with her American husband, awaiting the
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 69
birth of their son. They settled in Santa Barbara to be near
family members. But Isabel discovered that her profes-
sional credentials from Chile were not recognized in the
United States, and her husband struggled to find steady
work. Still, Isabel said gratefully, she had eventually been
able to find full-time work.
“And what is that work?” prompted Kyle.
“I clean houses,” Isabel said. The Santa Barbara hills are
full of spacious homes, and nearly every one employs a
Hispanic woman as a cleaner. That was the work that Isabel
had found—and could speak about in theological terms.
“How do you see your work reflecting God’s work?” Kyle
asked.
“If you look in the book of Genesis, in the beginning, the
world is in darkness,” Isabel said. “There is no order. God is
a God of order—he orders every single life, changes every
life from darkness to light in Jesus. And that is my moti-
vation as I work. Everything I do is from God, not from
man. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, and we are to
do the same: be a servant with love. If I am cleaning a
toilet—well, that is something that needs to be done to
order the world and to wash the feet of others. There is no
sadness about that; it’s a joy. The greatest example of ser-
vanthood in my life is the Holy Spirit, because he guides
me. I listen to his voice, and I say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
Just to make sure you understand the significance of this
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
70 St rong a n d We a k
near-verbatim transcript from her interview: in a few sen-
tences, Isabel had just given us a trinitarian vision of the
work of house cleaning.
“Do you encounter bro-
kenness in the work you
do?” Kyle asked.
“Of course,” Isabel re-
plied. “It’s sad to see people
who have everything beau-
tiful, everything perfect. They contract with you so their
world can continue perfect and clean. But you realize their
life is empty. So I have to be light for them. Every single
home I go to, I pray for that family, that they can find him.
If he will use me, amen. If not, amen—he will send
somebody else.”
When Isabel is not working or caring for her own family,
she is volunteering with a center called Immigrant Hope
that serves other women from Latin America, most of
whom also clean houses. Isabel teaches courses that help
them prepare for drivers license exams and the tests re-
quired for citizenship in the United States. “The Lord Jesus
is teaching me that we are all immigrants,” she told me,
“and our real home is with him. So we should be showing
others his love and mercy, and how much he loves those
whose lives are broken. By addressing very practical needs,
we show them the one who makes everything new.”
In a few sentences, Isabel had
just given us a trinitarian vision
of the work of house cleaning.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Suffering 71
I called Isabel to ask her permission to quote from that
interview in this book. She asked for time to pray about it,
then asked if we could speak by phone a few days later. It
turned out that Isabel had not primarily been praying about
whether she should give permission for her story to be in
this book—God had apparently settled that question quickly,
and it was fine. Instead, she had been praying for me, by
name, and God had given her specific words to speak to me,
specific instructions for my own prayer life and a set of
verses from the New Testament letter 1 Peter to guide me.
Printed on a piece of paper, they sit on my desk as I write.
Isabel has authority, something you discover the moment
you meet her. She speaks and acts meaningfully in every-
thing she does. Her authority does not come primarily
from her circumstances—those reflect the vulnerability of
the countless immigrants who, their deeper gifts so often
unrecognized and unused, serve in jobs that few Amer-
icans will take at all, let alone take gladly. There is much in
Isabel’s life and story, both spoken and left unsaid between
the lines of her testimony, that speaks of the vulnerability
without authority that comes to so many in a broken world.
But her story has been transformed by another story—
her life’s action has been made meaningful by being caught
up in the story of the gospel. She has moved from quadrant
II to quadrant I, from Suffering to Flourishing—and she is
bringing others with her.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
7 2 St rong a n d We a k
This can be true for us as well. No one escapes this
quadrant of human experience. As we will see in the final
chapters of this book, we actually will be called to seek out
suffering, to go to its depths, if we truly want to bring flour-
ishing to the world. But when we journey to the heart of
suffering, whether by circumstance or by choice, we are
only going where Another has gone before us. When we
find our place in that story and in that journey, our vulner-
ability, too, becomes the path to flourishing.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
4
Withdrawing
As a father, I discovered what exactly the Gospel of Luke
had meant by “swaddling clothes.” My newborn son loved
nothing so much as to be tightly wrapped in a blanket,
arms and legs neatly tucked into a package, and held. Un-
swaddled, he would fuss and squirm; properly swaddled,
WITHDRAWING SUFFERING
EXPLOITING FLOURISHING
IV I
III II
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
74 St rong a n d We a k
he became both calm and alert, able to take in the world
around him without anxiety. The swaddling clothes bound
him but also comforted him. It is worth pondering that the
Savior of the world, too, was swaddled in his own infancy—
protected from both action and risk.
Within a few weeks, of course, my son outgrew his swad-
dling blankets and his desire for them. (And not all babies
take to swaddling, as his sister made fiercely clear when she
came along a few years later.) But for the first years of his
life, it was my deepest desire as a parent to protect him
from too much of either authority or vulnerability. We
moved tantalizing but fragile objects out of his reach; we
swooped in to pick him up when he wandered too far on
the sidewalk or the playground; we scanned every room for
sources of risk. A healthy childhood is one where both ca-
pacity for action and exposure to meaningful risk are
meted out in measured doses, gradually increasing as the
child matures.
So if Suffering is the quadrant none of us have been able
to avoid, the quadrant of Withdrawing is where we all
began—and at the beginning it was called Safety.
No authority and no vulnerability—or at least no
awareness of either one. Unborn, we had no capacity for
meaningful action, and we were blissfully unconscious of
meaningful risk. We had not yet discovered the world with
its history, future, possibilities and dangers. Just as well,
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 75
because we were unformed and unready for them. If we
had been too exposed to either authority or vulnerability
at that most tender stage of human life, we would not be
alive today.
Such safety is a fleeting thing. Far too many childhoods
are compromised by the early introduction of too much
vulnerability and too much authority. This very day there
are children picking through smoldering heaps of garbage
in the ports of Africa and Asia where our discarded elec-
tronics go for recycling, making tiny sums of money to
support their families while exposing their lungs to toxic
fumes and their hands and feet to jagged metal and glass.
Others are being handed lethal weapons and trained in
killing before they have developed the moral compunc-
tions of adulthood; still others are exposed to the degraded
passions of desperate men. Few parents would wish this
kind of crash course in the cruelty of the world on their
children, but many parents themselves live deep in the
quadrant called Suffering. There is no vulnerability deeper,
no lack of authority more crushing, than the inability to
protect your own child from harm. Millions of parents on
this planet know that reality all too well.
One night as I tucked my daughter into her bed, safe
beneath her down comforter and properly lavished with
kisses and hugs, and prayed for her safety, I unexpectedly
sensed the unmistakable voice of Another addressing me
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
76 St rong a n d We a k
in return. “I hear your prayers,” this voice seemed to say
kindly but sternly. “But I also hear the prayers every night
of parents who can offer their children no protection.” It
was not a rebuke; it was an invitation to understand exactly
how much anguish is brought before “the Father from
whom all fatherhood takes its name.” And perhaps it was a
reminder that there is another way to fail your children: too
much swaddling.
The Only Thing Money Can Buy
For almost all of human history, parents’ nightly prayers for
their children’s protection were offered in the face of urgent
and unavoidable vulnerability. Only in these last decades,
in privileged corners of the world, has any child been
tucked into bed with such utter security as my own children
have known. Perhaps parents have always been tempted to
swaddle their children for too long, protecting them from
as much of the world as they can—but only recently have
we been able to actually succeed.
We have a saying in our family: The only thing money
can buy is bubble wrap. Affluence cannot ultimately
remove the vulnerability that is our human condition and
our true human calling,
but it can swaddle you in
so many layers of insu-
lation that you will never
The only thing money can
buy is bubble wrap.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 77
be able to fully feel it—or to freely move. It can keep you
swaddled far beyond your tender years, well into an
adulthood of risk-averse entitlement.
If you settle down in this corner, even your ambitions
will become carefully circumscribed, following well-
marked paths to good compensation and social respecta-
bility. The slippery pole of ascent to an Ivy League edu-
cation may be fiercely contested—a friend who works in
college admissions jokes that “helicopter parents” have
now been replaced by “bulldozer parents,” who clear every
obstacle from their children’s paths, and “drone parents,”
who hover invisibly overhead and then swoop in with over-
whelming force when their progeny is endangered. But the
competition is so fierce precisely because the prize is so
predictable: a golden ticket to career paths that are care-
fully staked out in advance to maximize reward and min-
imize risk. If you look at life this way, there is nowhere so
safe as Harvard Yard. If you aim for real flourishing, there
is nowhere more dangerous.
The greatest challenge of success is the freedom it gives
you to opt out of real risk and real authority. Entrepreneurs
who take on substantial authority in the face of real risk,
and have the fortune to be rewarded for that venture into
the quadrant called Flourishing, can cash out of the game,
turning the fruits of their success into so much stored
wealth that they can retreat from risk—and authority—
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
78 St rong a n d We a k
altogether. The more that you know, or sense, that your
success was as much a product of luck and timing as of skill
and character, the less likely you will be to ever dare to risk
that much again.
The Eternal Cruise
We have to begin in Safety in order to flourish, but to cling
to it in adulthood is folly. When I think about this quadrant,
and the strange allure it holds for us later in life, I think
about one of the leisure fantasies of the modern world:
taking a cruise. Not a crossing, mind you, the epic journey
from the Old World to the
New across the Atlantic
that some of my ancestors
undertook, a one-way trip
with a destination and
something different and
difficult waiting at the other end. And not even the kind of
cruises, like those up into the glacier bays of Alaska or the
f jords of Norway, that allow you to come close to natural
wonders impossible to apprehend any other way—the kind
that leave you feeling awed, humbled, properly small and
full of praise. I’m thinking of the cruises without destina-
tions that circle around the tourist-friendly ports of tropical
islands, cruises where the real desire and delight is to be on
the ship itself.
We have to begin in Safety
in order to flourish, but to cling
to it in adulthood is folly.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 79
As you can guess, I am firmly in the non-cruising part
of humanity—the part that chortles at David Foster Wal-
lace’s epic essay about such a cruise, “A Supposedly Fun
Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” and hopes never to do it in
the first place. But I can appreciate why my cruising ac-
quaintances think that a cruise, with its languid days and
nights, its bountiful buffets, its complete disengagement
from terrestrial life, is a marvelous vacation. After all, a
cruise is about as pure a return to the quadrant III of
childhood as you could ask for. Food is abundant, de-
mands on your time are minimal, the sun is bright. You
have absolutely no authority—even if the captain invites
you to visit the bridge, you will be forcibly restrained if
you attempt to take command of the ship—and, for all
practical purposes, no vulnerability either. (We will set
aside the handful of cruises from hell where the engines
give out, the ship starts turning in slow wide gyres in the
Gulf of Mexico and the passengers spell out “HELP” with
their bodies on the Lido deck—as well as the surprisingly
frequent cruises where some virus colonizes the kitchen
and half the crew and passengers become ill, or those
where the steady rolling of the ship leaves you bedridden
for days. As you can see, I’m just not that much of a fan
of cruises.)
This is all fine—as vacation. It is delicious for a few days
or perhaps even a week.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
8 0 St rong a n d We a k
But what if your whole life were a cruise? Year after year
of others deciding where you will go, what’s for dinner, an-
ticipating your needs and protecting you from any real
harm? That would be less than human. Indeed, it would be
something quite like hell. The magnificent Pixar film
WALL-E depicts exactly such a cruise gone wrong, set in a
not-so-distant future in which all of humanity has fled the
mess their own greed created. The first passengers are told
it will be a brief excursion, but instead it goes on for cen-
turies with no hope of return, and each generation be-
comes less capable and more dependent on the robots who
take over their image-bearing calling.
Like all Pixar films, WALL-E is about what it is to be fully
human. With his insatiable curiosity, his delight in both
order and abundance, and his willingness to fall in love
with a lovely and lethal robot far more advanced than
himself, the little trash-collecting robot is the truly flour-
ishing character in the midst of Earth’s garbage and the
spaceliner Axiom’s decadence.
But for all of WALL-E’s charm, he turns out to be a
supporting character. Once we meet the ship’s captain,
who has been reduced to pudgy inactivity deep in the
corner of Safety and Withdrawing, the real conflict un-
folds. The captain represents all of us human beings in
all of our infantilized incapacity. His awakening to the
delights of an almost-forgotten Earth and the call of
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 81
stewardship—and his decision to wrest command of the
ship from autopilot—is the laugh-and-shout-out-loud
climax of the movie (hilariously accompanied by the
strains of Also sprach Zarathustra). We cheer for the
captain because he is claiming his authority and em-
bracing meaningful risk—exiting Withdrawing in hopes
of a return to Flourishing.
We are not meant to be eternal cruise-ship passengers.
We are meant for more than leisure. This is true for our own
sakes, but it is also true because, like the diminished human
beings aboard the Axiom, we are still responsible for a world
gone wrong. The deepest reason for the call out of With-
drawing is not our own
health, though this quadrant
is none too healthy or satis-
fying a place to live. It is far
more about the neighbors
and the created order we
have neglected, who have
no option to board a cruise away from vulnerability, who
live, in some cases quite literally, among the trash our af-
fluence has discarded. To disengage from the profound
needs of those caught in suffering is to reject the call to bear
the image of God. We all began in the protection of par-
adise, but attempting to make that safety our final state will
in fact consign us to hell.
We are not meant to be
eternal cruise-ship passengers.
We are meant for more
than leisure.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
82 St rong a n d We a k
Simulated Authority
There is, however, a subtler version of withdrawing than
the pure vacancy of a cruise. Most of us would in fact find
ourselves bored to tears after a few weeks of perpetual va-
cation—our thirst for flourishing is too strong to com-
pletely abandon the call to authority and vulnerability. But
the technological culture has another, stronger trick up its
sleeve—not total disengagement, but powerful and re-
warding simulations of engagement. The real temptation
for most of us is not complete apathy but activities that
simulate meaningful action and meaningful risk without
actually asking much of us or transforming much in us.
So if you really want to see what withdrawing looks like
in affluent, technological America, you don’t have to visit
a port of call. You just have to turn on the PlayStation in
your living room.
Just like cruises and
other forms of vacation,
games have an impor tant
place in a healthy life.
For children, games are a
primary way of prac-
ticing the authority and vulnerability that will be their
calling in adult life. For adults, games’ simplicity and rule-
based rewards are a welcome break from the open-ended,
complicated demands of maturity.
If you really want to see what
withdrawing looks like in affluent,
technological America, you just
have to turn on the PlayStation
in your living room.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 83
But just as a cruise starts to degrade from heaven to hell
if it becomes your daily life, games, especially technologi-
cally enhanced ones, are a dangerous place to live. Very few
of us can afford a perpetual cruise. But we can afford video
games—they are priced at the sweet spot of consumer dis-
cretionary demand. We would have to rearrange our whole
lives to spend our remaining years on cruises. Video games,
however, gladly take up residence at the center of our
homes. Most of us would start to get fidgety after a few
days onboard a ship. Video games are a far more satisfying
version of withdrawing—because while you are engrossed
in them, you feel totally convinced that you are flourishing.
Games confer authority. But video games (and most
screen-based forms of recreation) confer authority more
quickly and more completely than any real-world game
does. To become the quarterback for the pickup game in
my neighbor’s backyard would require me to demonstrate
some level of mastery of the game of football to other
human beings. Even being a backyard quarterback is
probably beyond the reach of my puny arms, but to become
a quarterback in the NFL requires nearly superhuman
abilities and discipline.
To become an “NFL quarterback” in the video game
Madden Football, however, requires little more than
choosing an avatar and pressing a button. Suddenly you are
vested with all of the authority, and much of the ability, of
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
8 4 St rong a n d We a k
your chosen celebrity player. Of course there is a learning
curve in Madden Football—if there were not, it would
quickly become repetitive and boring. Your onscreen self
will drop passes, get sacked and make poor decisions. But
with a little dedication, almost anyone can become a ca-
pable Madden Football quarterback. The learning curve is
far shallower in the video game than in the real game—if it
were not, almost no one would find it rewarding to play.
The game also gives you an experience of vulnerability—
exposure to meaningful risk—but even more than the
ersatz authority you gain with technology’s help, this vul-
nerability is well and truly a mirage. Play enough Madden
Football and you really will acquire certain kinds of skills,
thin though they may be—that is, you will gain some real
authority in understanding and playing the game of football.
But no matter how much you play, you will never get a
concussion, you will never be cut from the team, and you
will lose nothing of value in the “real world” outside the
game (except, of course, whatever real capacities you could
have developed in the time you spent becoming an expert
at Madden Football). The authority may be largely simu-
lated, but the vulnerability is entirely an illusion.
This is the power of video games—the reason they are
far more absorbing than TV, with its one-way, passive con-
sumption, and a bigger industry than movies after just a
few decades in existence ($93 billion worldwide in 2013
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 85
compared to the movie industry’s $88 billion). They give us
accessible simulations of flourishing life, the life which we
all crave—the life of action and risk, the life of adventure
and conquest, even (in some games) the life of romance
and the satisfactions of community.
But they are only simulations. There is a marked asym-
metry between the skill you acquire in the world of space,
time and flesh-and-blood bodies, and the skill you acquire
in the virtual world of screens and controllers. Skill from
the real world translates well, generally, into the virtual
world. If you are skilled at the actual embodied game of
(American) football, you will likely be good at the video
game Madden Football. If you are an accomplished race-
car driver, you can probably quickly master Forza Motor-
sport 5. But the skills do not transfer, or transfer only min-
imally, in the other direction. Being good at Madden
Football will have very little effect in your neighbor’s
backyard, let alone on the turf at Soldier Field.
Ironically, the reason video games develop so little real
skill is that they are too rewarding. Real authority is a te-
dious business. Developing the depth of competence re-
quired to play an in-
strument, pilot an
aircraft or transplant a
human organ requires
thousands of hours of
Ironically, the reason video
games develop so little real skill
is that they are too rewarding.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
8 6 St rong a n d We a k
unstimulating, unstinting practice that gives us little im-
mediate sense of authority.
And yet this kind of patient development, which is
itself a form of vulnerability, is the only path to real au-
thority. In video games, every warrior has qualified for
the Special Forces; every basketball player has a 30-inch
vertical leap. Not to mention that wielding lethal violence
leaves no emotional scars, just a pleasant sense of victory—
and the bodies on the screen stay perpetually young and
vital. The more you give yourself over to simulations, the
more true authority and true vulnerability recede from
your life. Video games give us a shortcut to the godlike
figures we wish ourselves to be but are too inconstant to
actually become.
Friction-Free Activism
If this simulated flourishing were restricted to the world of
leisure—cruises and games—at least we would know that
it was not the real world. But the reward structure of video
games—the simulated authority and vulnerability of virtual
reality—is increasingly colonizing our interactions with
the most serious matters of the real world as well. Like
technologically mediated entertainment, the technology of
social media is becoming more “gamified” by the year as
developers learn how to tap into the deep human hunger
for simulations of authority and vulnerability. In social
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 87
media, you can engage in nearly friction-free experiences
of activism, expressing enthusiasm, solidarity or outrage
(all powerful sensations of authority) for your chosen cause
with the click of a few buttons.
Like all media (including books like this one!), social
media are largely what we make of them—escapist or trans-
forming depending on what we expect from them and how
we use them. In far-flung places in the world, an emerging
generation has used media like Twitter to coordinate im-
pressive examples of meaningful action combined with
extraordinary risk—the 2014 protests in Hong Kong and
the outcry in the United States about police practices and
race being recent examples as I write this book.
But these two uses of social media have two key features
in common. First, they were largely used by people living
deep in Suffering—exposed to meaningful risk without
being granted meaningful capacity for action by their so-
cieties. Second, they led to embodied, in-the-flesh experi-
ences of action in community. When media are tools that
help those who have lacked the capacity for action take
action, and bring them together to bear risk together rather
than be paralyzed in Suffering, they can lead to real change.
But when the residents of the comfortable affluence of
Withdrawing use media to simulate engagement, to give
ourselves a sense of making a personal investment when in
fact our activity risks nothing and forms nothing new in
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
8 8 St rong a n d We a k
our characters, then “virtual activism” is in fact a way of
doubling down on withdrawing, holding on to one’s invul-
nerability and incapacity while creating a sensation of in-
volvement. Only when technology serves a genuine, em-
bodied, risky move toward flourishing is it something other
than an opiate for the mass elite—the drug that leaves us
mired in our apathy and our neighbors in their need.
The Safety Generation
Before the current era, almost no one could stay in With-
drawing beyond the early years of childhood. The world
was too harsh and human cultures too demanding of real
maturity. Society could not afford to tolerate those who
shirked the authority and vulnerability that were necessary
to eke out flourishing from the world. Consider the eight-
year-old child sent to the barn to milk a cow. She has al-
ready been granted real flourishing—the authority of do-
minion over a creature, responsible for its flourishing and
benefiting from its abundance, along with the vulnerability
of being a small human being next to a massive bovine. It
is a kind of flourishing that a child milking a cow in Mine-
craft (accomplished, I’m told, by right clicking while
“holding” a bucket) will never know.
But today we have to constantly choose to move up and
to the right. If there is one temptation that seems to me
endemic to the emerging generation of young adults, it is
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 89
to choose Withdrawing—to retreat from authority and vul-
nerability alike. At a worship service one evening in the
spring of 2014, I presented these four quadrants—espe-
cially the three where all of us spend far too much of our
lives—to several hundred college students. We invited stu-
dents to come forward for prayer, to be liberated for the
abundant and flourishing life we were made for. We were
astonished and moved as more than one hundred students
came forward for personal prayer. It was one of the mani-
festations of the power and presence of God that you
cannot orchestrate but can only receive, and we stayed
long into the night praying alongside these friends.
The next day, the college chaplain and the team of coun-
selors who had offered prayer gathered to debrief the pre-
vious night’s event. I was curious about which quadrant
most of the prayer requests had come from. Were students
wrestling with experiences of persistent vulnerability
without authority? Or the temptation to grasp authority
without vulnerability? Or the retreat from both? Over-
whelmingly, every prayer leader reported, it was With-
drawing. The domain of inaction, of fear of exposure, of
safety. One young man approached me for prayer and con-
fided that in each of his four closest friendships, he was
experiencing overwhelming temptation to minimize risk,
avoid real engagement and abandon them.
Amidst safety the world has never before known, the
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
9 0 St rong a n d We a k
greatest spiritual struggle many of us face is to be willing
to take off our bubble wrap.
The Path from Withdrawing
The good news about escaping the Withdrawing quadrant
is that pretty much any move, toward either authority or
vulnerability, is a step in the right direction. Perhaps the
two best beginning moves, for those of us swaddled in af-
fluence and intoxicated by our technology, are into the
natural world—the world of stars, snow and rain, trees and
deserts—and into the relational world—the world of real
bodies with heartbeats, hands and faces.
Turn off your devices and go for a walk or a run, not just
on days when the weather is pleasant but on days when the
wind is fierce, the rain is falling or the humidity is high. Shiver
or sweat, feel fatigue in your limbs, hear the sounds of the
city or the countryside unfiltered by headphones. Choose to
go to places—the ocean, the mountains, or a broad, wide
field—where you will feel small
rather than grand.
Dare to walk across campus
or across town without looking
at a screen.
Decide to introduce yourself
to one new person each day—just
to learn their name and give them
yours, with no further agenda.
Choose to go to places—
the ocean, the mountains,
or a broad, wide field—
where you will feel small
rather than grand.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Withdrawing 91
Brew coffee or tea, sit with a friend and ask them ques-
tions—questions just one step riskier than the last time you
talked. As you listen, observe the flickers of sadness or
hope that cross their face. Try to imagine what it must be
like to live their story, suffer their losses, dream their
dreams. Pray with them and dare to put into words their
heart’s desires, and dare to ask God to grant them.
The next time you travel, decide not to be a tourist, who
uses material wealth to purchase experiences of vicarious
significance—being in places that make us feel grand and
worth noticing. Instead, travel like a pilgrim, who travels to
encounter people who have been sanctified by suffering.
Seek out people who live on the cruel edges of the world.
Accompany them in person, at least for short seasons, in
their authority and vulnerability. Share what you have with
them in sufficient measure that your generosity feels vul-
nerable, emptying your bank account to the point that you
instinctively start to pray for daily bread.
Our affluence has left us unready for the tragedy and
danger of the world. But what we cannot see when we are
caught in Withdrawing is that there is something far better
ahead, pleasures which we must be made strong enough to
bear. We will only discover them if someone unwraps us
and calls us forth. And the great glad news of the gospel is
that someone has.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
5
Exploiting
As I write these words, the world’s most apparently suc-
cessful tyrant is a man named Kim Jong Un.
Along with a small band of elite leaders, Kim rules the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—better known to
the rest of the world as North Korea—with absolute
WITHDRAWING SUFFERING
EXPLOITING FLOURISHING
IV I
III II
AU
TH
OR
IT
Y
VULNERABILITY
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Exploiting 93
authority. Like his father and grandfather, he has ruthlessly
eliminated anyone who might pose a threat to his power,
including ordering the execution of elder members of his
own family. Causing even the most minor disturbance to
the leader’s authority or his sense of national pride—say,
turning in an insufficiently pleasing design for a new
airport—is a death warrant for officials high or low.
If we believe the reports of former chefs and, improbably
enough, movie directors employed by the Kim family, Kim
Jong Un has enjoyed a life of extraordinary privilege and
comfort. But in spite of the relentlessly upbeat reports that
emerge from the state-controlled news agency, this abun-
dance never spreads beyond a tiny circle. Most of Kim’s
subjects live in profound poverty, and every one of his
country’s citizens lives with well-justified fear.
Kim Jong Un lives up and to the left, in quadrant IV,
Exploiting. But the people he leads live deep in quadrant II.
Tyranny and suffering, exploiting and poverty, always are
found together. Indeed, you know you are encountering a
situation of injustice when a few people in a system enjoy
authority without vulnerability at the price of most people
in that system suffering vulnerability without authority.
Tyrants and dictators live at the most extreme edge of
exploitation, with their people living at the most extreme
edge of suffering. But Exploiting is found anywhere
people seek to maximize power while eliminating risk.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
94 St rong a n d We a k
And it turns out to be the most seductive and dangerous
quadrant of all.
Risk and Reward
We human beings, as one ingeniously devised experiment
after another has demonstrated, are considerably more
motivated by the fear of loss than the possibility of gain. If
I give you fifty dollars, then give you the choice of simply
walking away with that fifty dollars or wagering it in a bet
where you have a chance of making five hundred dollars,
you are far more likely to choose the safe fifty than take the
bet. Just a few moments ago, you had nothing—but once
we have something, we want to keep it.
This tendency toward “loss aversion” is not universal—
some of us will take on much more risk than others—but
overall it is consistent and powerful enough to affect whole
industries, economies and nations. The completely rational
actor of economics, that fictional creature sometimes
called homo economicus, would balance risk against reward
in strictly mathematical fashion—but we homo sapiens
weigh risk and reward using very different scales.
And this explains something interesting about our 2×2
grid. Flourishing, I’ve been arguing, requires both authority
and vulnerability in equal measure. The true life for which
we were made will require us both to act and to risk. But
we do not pursue these two good things with the same
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Exploiting 95
wholeheartedness—or even the same halfheartedness.
Most of us are far more willing to move up than we are to
move to the right—indeed, we are more likely to spend
significant amounts of energy moving away from the right
than toward the right at all.
It’s loss aversion in action. Authority corresponds to the
ability to add something to the world—the possibility of
gain. Vulnerability corresponds to the possibility—though
only the possibility—of loss. In our daily choices, both con-
scious and unconscious, the possibility of loss counts far
more than the possibility of gain. That is why so many of us
end up moving to the left, away from vulnerability.
That is why, to many of us, authority without risk sounds
like a much better deal. Perhaps the only real difference
between us and Kim Jong Un is that for him, by an accident
of birth, that dream of living up and to the left came ter-
ribly true.
Your Brain on Drugs
Take a social situation every human being has to deal with
at some point: walking into a room full of people we do not
know. For most of us, that is a meaningful risk. (For a few
ultra-extroverts, it’s sheer delight—a hundred friends you
haven’t met yet! You know who you are. The rest of us know
who you are, too, and we both envy you and think you are
truly bizarre.) After the first blissful days of our earliest
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
9 6 St rong a n d We a k
childhood, we learned, usually the hard way, that there is
vulnerability in crowds.
Think about the vulnerability of the first days and
months of your adult life, your first season away from
home, perhaps on a university campus, and the simulta-
neous excitement and trepidation of your first big on-
campus party—full of seemingly happy, confident, at-
tractive peers.
What if I could hand something to the eighteen-year-old
version of you walking into that party—something you
could hold in your hand, something that would increase
your authority and decrease your vulnerability? Something
that as you held it—and sipped it—gradually eased your
discomfort and enhanced your excitement? It wouldn’t be
strictly legal, in the United States at least—but it would be
very appealing indeed.
At the moment that you begin to use alcohol to manage
your vulnerability in a social situation, you are heading up
and to the left. At first, and up to a point, it will work
wonders. A few drinks will take the edge off the sense of
risk and exposure you felt when you walked in. They will
give you a heightened sense of power and possibility. You
will be living the intoxicating life of a minor god.
But over time, as with all addictions (and all idols), the
effect begins to wear off. A higher and higher dose is
needed for the same effect. And gradually, the thing that
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Exploiting 97
once delivered authority without vulnerability begins to
expose you to risk and rob you of authority. In the long run,
unless you are delivered by a miracle of grace, you will find
that the very thing that promised authority without vulner-
ability has betrayed you, handing you over to the depths of
suffering—vulnerability without authority.
Our daily lives are filled with these small choices—small
at first, but over time, becoming a deep dependence on
strategies that preserve our sense of action while mini-
mizing our sense of risk. The church once enumerated
seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy
and pride. Most of them are ways of pursuing authority
without vulnerability. Sex without commitment (lust),
food without moderation (gluttony), goods without limit
(greed), anger without compassion (wrath), and above all
the pursuit of autonomous, godlike power (pride)—all
these are forms of what Scripture calls, most comprehen-
sively, idolatry, the use of created things to pursue godlike
power without risk or limit. (Sloth, of course, is the deadly
sin that corresponds to Withdrawing, the safety of risking
nothing in the world; and envy may be the besetting sin of
Suffering, the jealousy and bitterness of those who can see
only their own vulnerability and others’ authority.) All
these are just variations on the promises that accompanied
the very first idol, the fruit proffered by the serpent in the
Garden: “You will be like God”—unlimited authority—
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
9 8 St rong a n d We a k
and, “You will not die”—none of that vulnerable creaturely
dependence.
Perhaps the most characteristic idol of our time is online
pornography because it fuses two of the most powerful
idols of our time: sex and technology. Available at a click are
vicarious experiences of sexual knowledge and conquest—
authority that begins with the ability to see others in naked
and vulnerable states, and escalates, in “harder” forms of
porn, to more extravagant and ultimately demonic forms of
domination. But these experiences of godlike knowledge
and control are almost always consumed from a position of
complete invulnerability, in isolation and secrecy.
The irony is stunning: the twentieth-century sexual rev-
olution’s promise of “freedom” has given way to a twenty-
first-century epidemic of attenuated, mediated sexual es-
capism. Even most secular observers now admit that
pornography undermines the capacity of men and women
to maintain healthy levels of sexual desire for their actual
partners, let alone experience the true authority and vul-
nerability of embodied encounter. Who could have pre-
dicted such an outcome? Anyone could have predicted
it—anyone who understood the power of idols to promise
freedom and deliver slavery, to offer authority and deliver
vulnerability, to whisper fantasies of power but end up with
us completely in their grip.
While some of us, by the sheer grace of God, manage to
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
Exploiting 99
escape the lure of the most powerful idols, not one of us
does not have some habit, some recurring pattern of
thought, substance or device that we turn to when we are
feeling vulnerable—something that assuages our vulnera-
bility and elevates our sense of capacity to act. They offer
us, in a word, control—for the very essence of control is
authority without vulnerability, the ability to act without
the possibility of loss. Control is the dream of the risk- and
loss-averse, the promise of every idol and the quest of
every person who has tasted vulnerability and vowed never
to be exposed in that way again.
But control is an illusion. In
fact, all of the quadrant called
Exploiting is an illusion. There
is, in the long run, no such thing
as true authority without true
vulnerability. Our idols inevitably fail us, generally sooner
rather than later. And as they begin to fail, we begin to
grasp ever more violently for the control we thought they
promised and we deserved. This is why the end result of life
in this quadrant is exploitation—ripping from the world,
and especially from those too weak to resist, the good
things our idols promised but are failing to deliver.
As a few people pursue and even for a season grasp the
idol of control and exploitation, the community around
them falls into the poverty that exploitation always brings.
Control is the dream
of the risk- and loss-averse,
the promise of every idol.
Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
10 0 St rong a n d We a k
Phil and Leslie
My friends Phil and Leslie are driving home one night after
a full day of work as campus ministers at the University of
California, Berkeley. They stop for a few groceries, turn the
corner onto the avenue where they live, and see the flashing
blue and red lights of a police car behind them. Do we have
a taillight out? Phil wonders.
Within minutes, six police cars have appeared, lights
flashing and sirens wailing. Later Phil would write about
what happened:
A voice from a loudspeaker told me to roll down my
window. The voice told me to open my car door,
keeping my hands visible at all times. Take four steps
away from the car, keeping your hands clearly visible,
I was told. The instructions went on: Face the car.
Bend down on both knees. Put your hands on the
ground. Lie face down. Turn your face to the right.
Lying on the ground, Phil is handcuffed and placed in
one police car. Leslie is subjected to the same procedure.
Now they are in separate police cars, watching as police
search their vehicle (turning up groceries and Bible study
materials, and nothing more). Someone has been robbed
at gunpoint a couple of blocks away, an officer tells Phil,
and he and Leslie “match the description” of the robbers.
The officer ignores Phil’s offer to produce the time-stamped
receipt from the grocery store that could clear them of Co
py
ri
gh
t
©
2
01
6.
I
VP
B
oo
ks
.
Al
l
ri
gh
ts
r
es
er
ve
d.
M
ay
n
ot
b
e
re
pr
od
uc
ed
i
n
an
y
fo
rm
w
it
ho
ut
p
er
mi
ss
io
n
fr
om
t
he
p
ub
li
sh
er
,
ex
ce
pt
f
ai
r
us
es
p
er
mi
tt
ed
u
nd
er
U
.S
.
or
a
pp
li
ca
bl
e
co
py
ri
gh
t
la
w.
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 1/11/2021 11:34 AM via TRINITY WESTERN UNIV
AN: 1160528 ; Crouch, Andy.; Strong and Weak : Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
Account: s6511865
BL
AN
CH
AR
D
BO
OK
S I
N
BR
IEF
LEADING AT A
HIGHER LEVEL
Blanchard on Leadership
and Creating High
Performing Organizations
Third Edition
© Copyright 2019
The Ken Blanchard Companies
.
All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
V021119
BLANCHARD
BOOKS IN BRIEF
Blanchard Books in Brief 5
CONTENTS
Synopsis ………………………………………………………………………………… 6
What Is Leadership? …………………………………………………………….. 9
SECTION I Set Your Sights on the Right Target and
Vision ……………………………………………………………. 11
Is Your Organization High Performing? …………………………….. 13
The Power of Vision …………………………………………………………….. 17
SECTION II Treat Your
People Right
…………………………….19
Empowerment Is the Key ……………………………………………………. 21
SLII®: The Integrating Concept ………………………………………….. 23
Self Leadership: The Power Behind Empowerment …………. 25
One-on-One Leadership ……………………………………………………. 29
Building Trust ………………………………………………………………………. 31
Team Leadership ………………………………………………………………… 35
Organizational Leadership …………………………………………………..37
Leading Change …………………………………………………………………… 41
Coaching: A Key Competency for
Leadership Development …………………………………………………… 43
Mentoring: The Key to Life Planning …………………………………. 45
Collaboration: Fuel for High Performance ………………………….47
SECTION III Treat Your
Customers Right
…………………… 49
Serving Customers at a Higher Level …………………………………. 51
SECTION IV Have the Right
Kind of Leadership
………… 55
Servant Leadership ………………………………………………………………57
Determining Your Leadership Point of View …………………….. 59
6 Leading at a Higher Level
SYNOPSIS
Leadership guru Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute
Manager® and cofounder of The Ken Blanchard Companies®,
has spent more than 40 years helping good leaders and
organizations become great and stay great. Now, in this fully
updated third edition of Leading at a Higher Level, Blanchard
and his colleagues have brought together everything they’ve
learned about outstanding leadership. This brief summarizes
the four aspects of higher level leadership, showing readers
how to:
• Go beyond the short term and zero in on the right target
and vision
• Empower people and unleash their incredible potential
• Deliver legendary customer service and earn raving fans
• Ground your leadership in humility and focus on the
greater good
In addition, this brief summarizes material from the new
chapters in the updated edition:
• Building Trust: Creating a High Trust Environment
• Collaboration: Fuel for High Performance
• Mentoring: The Key to Life Planning
• Organizational Leadership: Leading Organizations at a
Higher Level
Blanchard Books in Brief 7
This brief is based on material created by the founding
associates of The Ken Blanchard Companies: Ken Blanchard,
Marjorie Blanchard, Don Carew, Eunice Parisi-Carew, Fred
Finch, Laurence Hawkins, Drea Zigarmi, and Pat Zigarmi. It also
includes the thinking of Scott Blanchard, Madeleine Blanchard,
Randy Conley, Kathy Cuff, Garry Demarest, Claire Diaz-
Ortiz, Chris Edmonds, Susan Fowler, Bob Glaser, Lael Good,
Vicki Halsey, Judd Hoekstra, Fay Kandarian, Linda Miller, Alan
Randolph, Jane Ripley, and Jesse Stoner. Together they present
more than 40 years of breakthrough leadership insights.
8 Leading at a Higher Level
LEADING AT A HIGHER LEVEL
by Ken Blanchard and the Founding
Associates and Consulting Partners of
The Ken Blanchard Companies
Blanchard Books in Brief 9
What Is Leadership?
For years we defined leadership as an influence process. We
believed that anytime you tried to influence the thoughts
and actions of others toward goal accomplishment, you were
engaging in leadership. In recent years, we have taken the
emphasis away from goal accomplishment and have redefined
leadership as the capacity to influence others by unleashing their
power and potential to impact the greater good.
When the definition of leadership focuses on goal
accomplishment, one can think that leadership is only about
results. Yet goal accomplishment is not enough. The key phrase
in the second definition is “the greater good”—what is best for
all involved. Leadership should not be done purely for personal
gain or goal accomplishment; it should have a much higher
purpose than that.
When you are leading at a higher level, you have a both/and
philosophy. The development of people is of equal importance
to performance. As a result, the focus in leading at a higher level
is on long-term results and human satisfaction.
Leading at a higher level can be defined as the process of achieving
worthwhile results while acting with respect, care, and fairness
for the well-being of all involved. When that occurs, self-serving
leadership is not possible. It’s only when you realize that it’s not
about you that you begin to lead at a higher level.
Blanchard Books in Brief 11
SECTION I
Set Your Sights
on the Right
Target and Vision
Blanchard Books in Brief 13
Is Your Organization
High Performing?
Those who want to lead at a higher level need to understand
what a high performing organization looks like and what is
necessary to create one. They need to aim for the right target.
The Right Target: The Quadruple
Bottom Line
In high performing organizations, everyone’s energy is focused
on not just one bottom line, but four bottom lines — being the
provider of choice, the employer of choice, the investment of
choice, and the corporate citizen of choice. The quadruple
bottom line is the right target and can make the difference
between mediocrity and greatness. The leaders in high
performing organizations know that their bottom line depends
on their people, their customers, their stakeholders, and the
citizens and communities affected by their actions.
1. Provider of Choice: To keep your customers today, you
can’t be content just to satisfy them; you must create
raving fans. Raving fans are customers who are so
excited about the way you treat them that they want to
tell everyone about you.
2. Employer of Choice: Today’s workers seek opportunities
where they feel like their contributions are valued and
rewarded.
14 Leading at a Higher Level
3. Investment of Choice: All companies require funding
sources, through stock purchases, loans, grants or
contracts. To be willing to invest, people must believe in
the company’s viability and performance over time.
4. Corporate Citizen of Choice: In an increasingly
connected world of rising populations and shrinking
resources, organizations must balance the needs of
their stakeholders with the environment and treat those
affected by their actions ethically and respectfully.
The HPO SCORES Model
High performing organizations (HPOs) are enterprises that,
over time, continue to produce outstanding results, achieving
the highest level of human satisfaction and commitment to
success.
SCORES is an acronym that represents the six elements evident
in every HPO. An HPO scores—hits the target consistently—
because it demonstrates strength in each of these six elements:
S = Shared Information and Communication
Information needed to make informed decisions must be readily
available to people and openly communicated.
C = Compelling Vision
When everyone supports a compelling organizational vision—
one that includes a purpose, a picture of the future, and values—
it creates a deliberate, highly focused culture that drives the
desired business results.
O = Ongoing Learning
HPOs are constantly focusing on improving capabilities through
learning systems, building knowledge capital, and transferring
learning throughout the organization.
Blanchard Books in Brief 15
R = Relentless Focus on Customer Results
HPOs understand who their customers are and measure
their results accordingly. People throughout the organization
passionately hold and maintain the highest standards for quality
and service from their customers’ perspectives.
E = Energizing Systems and Structures
The systems, structures, and processes in HPOs are aligned to
support the organization’s vision, strategic direction, and goals.
S = Shared Power and High Involvement
In HPOs, power and decision making are shared and
distributed throughout the organization, not guarded at the
top of the hierarchy.
Leadership Is the Engine
If becoming a high performing organization is a destination,
leadership is the engine. While the HPO SCORES model
describes the characteristics of a high performing organization,
leadership is what moves the organization in that direction.
Blanchard Books in Brief 17
The Power of Vision
When leaders who are leading at a higher level understand
the role of the quadruple bottom line as the right target—to
be the provider of choice, employer of choice, investment of
choice, and corporate citizen of choice—they are ready to focus
everyone’s energy on a compelling vision.
A compelling vision creates a strong culture in which the energy
of everyone in the organization is aligned. This results in trust,
customer satisfaction, an energized and committed workforce,
and profitability.
Vision and Leadership
Vision always comes back to leadership. People look to their
formal leaders for vision and direction. While leaders should
involve people in shaping direction, the ultimate responsibility
for the visionary/direction aspect of leadership remains with
the leaders and cannot be delegated to others. This is where
the traditional hierarchical pyramid is effective.
CUSTOMERS
Supervisory
Management
Customer
Contact People
Middle
Management
Top
Management
RESPONSIBLE
RESPONSIVE
18 Leading at a Higher Level
CUSTOMERS
Customer
Contact People
Supervisory
Management
Middle
Management
Top
Management
RESPONSIBLE
RESPONSIVE
Once a vision is agreed upon, the leader’s role moves to
implementation to ensure that people respond to the vision.
Now the traditional hierarchical pyramid turns upside-down as
the leader supports people in accomplishing the vision.
The leader supports by removing barriers; by ensuring that
policies, practices, and systems make it easier for everyone to
act on the vision; and by holding themselves, their peers, and
their people accountable for acting consistently with the vision.
This way the leader assures that everyone is serving the vision,
not the leader.
Blanchard Books in Brief 19
SECTION II
Treat Your
People Right
Blanchard Books in Brief 21
Empowerment
Is the Key
How do the best-run companies in the world beat out the
competition day in and day out? They treat their customers
right. They do that by having a workforce that is excited about
their vision and motivated to serve customers at a higher level.
So how do you create this motivated workforce? The key is
empowerment.
Empowerment means letting people bring their brains to work
and allowing them to use their knowledge, experience and
motivation to create a healthy quadruple bottom line. Leaders
of the best-run companies know that empowering people
creates positive results that are just not possible when all the
authority moves up the hierarchy and managers shoulder all
the responsibility for success.
Researcher Edward Lawler found that when people are given
more control and responsibility, their companies achieve a
greater return on sales than companies that do not involve their
people. Scholar Thomas Malone believes that empowerment
is essential for companies that hope to succeed in the new
knowledge-based economy.
22 Leading at a Higher Level
The Three Keys to Empowerment
To guide the transition to a culture of empowerment, leaders
must use three keys:
1. Sharing Information. One of the best ways to build a
sense of trust and responsibility in people is by sharing
information. Giving team members the information they
need enables them to make good business decisions.
High performing organizations continually look for
ways to incorporate knowledge into new ways of doing
business. Michael Brown, former chief financial officer
of Microsoft, says, “The only way to compete today is
make your intellectual capital obsolete before anyone
else does.”
2. Declaring the Boundaries. In a hierarchical culture,
boundaries are really like barbed-wire fences. They are
designed to control people by keeping them in certain
places and out of other places. In an empowered culture,
boundaries are more like rubber bands that can expand
to allow people to take on more responsibility as they
grow and develop.
3. Replacing the Old Hierarchy with Self-Directed
Individuals and Teams. As people learn to create
autonomy by using newly shared information and
boundaries, they must move away from dependence on
the hierarchy. Self-directed individuals and Next Level
teams—highly skilled, interactive groups with strong
self-managing skills—replace the clarity and support of
the hierarchy.
Blanchard Books in Brief 23
SLII®:
The Integrating
Concept
If empowerment is the key to treating people the right way
and motivating them to treat your customers right, having a
strategy to shift the emphasis from leader as boss and evaluator
to leader as partner and cheerleader is imperative. But what,
exactly, is the right leadership style?
Is the direct report new and inexperienced about the task at
hand? Then more guidance and direction are called for. Is the
direct report experienced and skilled? That person requires
less hands-on supervision. All of us are at different levels of
development depending on the task we are working on at a
particular time. To bring out the best in others, leadership must
match the development level of the person being led. Giving
people too much or too little direction has a negative impact on
their development.
SLII® is based on the belief that people can and want to
develop, and there is no best leadership style to encourage that
development. You should tailor leadership style to the situation.
Leadership Styles
There are four basic leadership styles in SLII® leadership:
directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. These
correspond with the four basic development levels: Enthusiastic
24 Leading at a Higher Level
Beginner, Disillusioned Learner, Capable but Cautious Performer
and Self-Reliant Achiever.
Enthusiastic Beginners need a directing style, Disillusioned
Learners need a coaching style, Capable but Cautious
Performers need a supporting style and Self-Reliant Achievers
need a delegating style.
Development level varies from goal to goal or task to task. An
individual can be at one level of development on one goal or
task and be at a different level of development on another goal
or task.
The Three Skills of an SLII® Leader
To become effective as a SLII® leader, you must master these
three skills:
1. Goal Setting. All good performance starts with clear
goals. Clarifying goals involves making sure that people
understand two things: first, what they are being asked
to do—their areas of accountability—and second,
what good performance looks like—the performance
standards by which they will be evaluated.
2. Diagnosis. You must diagnose the development level of
your direct reports on each of their goals and tasks by
looking at two factors—competence and commitment.
Competence is the sum of knowledge and skills an
individual brings to a goal or task. Commitment has to
do with a person’s motivation and confidence about a
goal or task.
3. Matching. You must match your leadership style to the
development level of the person you are leading. Over
supervising or under supervising—that is, giving people
too much or too little direction—has a negative impact
on people’s development.
Blanchard Books in Brief 25
Self Leadership:
The Power
Behind Empowerment
Managers must learn to let go of command-and-control
leadership styles, because soon they will have no choice.
In the 1980s, a manager typically supervised five people—
in other words, the span of control was one manager to five
direct reports. Today, companies have more mean-and-
lean organizational structures, where spans of control have
increased considerably. Now it is common to find one manager
for 25 to 75 direct reports. Add to that the emergence of virtual
organizations—where managers are being asked to supervise
people they seldom, if ever, meet face to face—and we have an
entirely different work landscape emerging.
The truth is that most bosses today can no longer play the
traditional role of telling people what, when, and how to do
everything. More than ever before, the success of organizational
initiatives depends on the proactive behavior of empowered
individuals.
Creating an Engaged Workforce
Just as leaders must move from a command-and-control
relationship to a partnering relationship with their people, so
too must those who are being led move from “waiting to be
told” to taking the initiative to lead themselves.
26 Leading at a Higher Level
People need to be trained in self leadership. Organizations on
the leading edge have learned that developing self leaders is a
powerful way to positively impact the quadruple bottom line.
For example, Bandag Manufacturing experienced the value of
self leadership after a major equipment breakdown. Rather than
laying off the affected work force, the company opted to train
them in self leadership. A funny thing happened. Direct reports
began holding their managers accountable and asking them to
demonstrate their leadership capabilities. They were asking
managers for direction and support and urging them to clarify
goals and expectations. Suddenly, managers were studying up
on rusty skills and working harder.
When the plant’s ramp-up time was compared to the
company’s other eight plants that had experienced similar
breakdowns in the past, the California plant reached pre-
breakdown production levels faster than any in history. The
manufacturer studied other measures as well and concluded
that the determining factor in the plant’s successful rebound
was primarily the proactive behavior of the workers, who were
fully engaged and armed with the skill of self leadership.
The Three Skills of a Self Leader
Self leaders must be actively developed by teaching people
skills and mental attitudes that foster empowerment. Here are
the three skills of self leadership:
1. Challenge Assumed Constraints. An assumed constraint
is a belief, based on past experience, that limits current
and future experiences. Self leadership teaches that the
constraints are not the problem; the problem is that we
think these things are the only sources of power available
to us.
Blanchard Books in Brief 27
2. Activate Points of Power. The five points of power are
position power, personal power, task power, knowledge
power, and relationship power. The sole advantage of
power is the ability to do more good. To increase that
ability, develop your weak points of power or gather
people around you who have points of power you don’t
have.
3. Be Proactive. Self leaders take the initiative to get the
direction and support they require to achieve their
goals. Direct reports can use self leadership to diagnose
their own development level on a particular goal or task
and take the initiative to get from their managers the
leadership style they need to succeed.
Blanchard Books in Brief 29
One-on-One Leadership
At its best, leadership is a partnership that involves mutual trust
between two people who work together to achieve common
goals. Both leader and follower influence each other. Leadership
shifts between them, depending on the task and who has the
competence and commitment to deal with it. Both parties play
a role in determining how things get done.
One-on-one leadership is about creating such side-by-side
leadership relationships. It is a process for increasing the
quality and quantity of conversations between managers and
direct reports. These alignment conversations not only help
people perform better, but they also help everyone involved feel
better about themselves and each other.
One-on-One Leadership and the Performance
Management System
When one-on-one leadership is done well, it becomes an
integral part of an effective performance management system.
This system consists of three parts:
1. Performance Planning. After everyone is clear on
the organizational vision and direction, it’s during
performance planning that leaders agree with their
direct reports about the goals and objectives they
should be focusing on. At this stage the traditional
hierarchal pyramid is effective, as the leader provides
vision and direction.
30 Leading at a Higher Level
2. Performance Coaching. Next, the hierarchal pyramid
is turned upside-down as leaders support people in
accomplishing the goals, doing everything they can
to help direct reports be successful. At this stage,
managers work for their people, praising progress and
redirecting less than optimal performance.
3. Performance Review. This is where a manager and
direct report sit down and assess the direct report’s
performance over time. When one-on-one weekly
meetings are scheduled, open and honest discussions
about the direct report’s performance and concerns
take place on an ongoing basis, creating mutual
understanding and agreement.
Blanchard Books in Brief 31
Building Trust
Trust is the foundation of all healthy relationships, so it comes
as no surprise that a leader’s ability to build trust is the key to
effective one-on-one partnerships, teams, and organizations.
Studies show that productivity, income, profits, and retention
are positively or negatively impacted depending on the level of
trust in the work environment. Blanchard’s research confirms
that employees will leave an organization where trust is
lacking. In a study of more than 1,000 leaders, 59 percent of
respondents indicated they had left an organization due to
trust issues, citing lack of communication and dishonesty as
key contributing factors.
The Benefits of Trust
When people believe they are working for trustworthy
leaders, they are willing to invest in making a difference in an
organization. They feel more connected and invest more of
themselves in their work. High trust levels lead to a greater
sense of self-responsibility, deeper interpersonal insight, and
more collective action toward achieving common goals.
The Four Elements of Trust
Because trust means different things to different people,
decision makers must first find a common language of trust—
qualities they agree are consistent with trustworthiness. The
ABCD Trust Model™ * identifies four qualities leaders can
use to define and discuss trust with the people they lead.
*Now called Blanchard’s Building Trust Model.
32 Leading at a Higher Level
Able is about demonstrating competence. Do the leaders know
how to get the job done? Are they able to produce results?
Believable means acting with integrity. In practical terms, this
means creating and following fair processes. Believability is
also about acting in a consistent, values-driven manner that
reassures people they can rely on their leaders.
Connected is about demonstrating care and concern for other
people. Connectedness is supported by good communication
skills. Leaders need to openly share information about the
organization and about themselves.
Dependable is about honoring commitments by following
through on what the leaders say they are going to do.
Creating a High Trust Environment
Using the ABCD Trust Model™ as a guideline, leaders can create
high-trust environments that foster involvement and energy by
taking four steps:
1. Know the behaviors that support the ABCDs of trust.
2. Assess the current trust level.
3. Diagnose areas that need work.
4. Have a conversation to restore trust.
Repairing Damaged Trust
When a breach of trust is so severe that the relationship is
strained to the breaking point—or breaks completely—we
call this damaged trust. If a situation is so explosive—or the
stakes are so perilous—that a conversation could cause further
damage, you probably need to engage the services of a qualified
mediator or therapist. If you think the risks are manageable,
you can use the following five-step process to begin rebuilding
the relationship and restoring trust.
Blanchard Books in Brief 33
Step One: Acknowledge and Assure
As you acknowledge the problem, assure the other party that
your intention is to restore trust between the two of you
and that you are willing to take the time and effort to get the
relationship back on track.
Step Two: Admit
Own up to your actions and take responsibility for whatever
harm was caused. Admitting your part in the situation is a
crucial step that should not be overlooked. Refusing to admit
your mistakes undermines your believability.
Step Three: Apologize
Even if you don’t feel you were entirely at fault, apologize
for your part in the situation. Avoid making excuses, shifting
blame, or using qualifying statements, as these will undermine
your apology.
Step Four: Assess
Invite feedback from the other party about how they see the
situation. Together, assess which elements of the ABCD Trust
Model™ were violated. The purpose of this step is not to point
fingers, but rather to identify problem behaviors so they can be
avoided in the future.
Step Five: Agree
The final step in rebuilding damaged trust is to work together to
create an action plan. Mutually identify the positive behaviors
you’ll use going forward. Clarify your shared goals for the
relationship and make requests about what you’d like to see
both more and less of in the future.
34 Leading at a Higher Level
Blanchard Books in Brief 35
Team Leadership
As the business world becomes increasingly competitive, the
issues it faces are increasingly complex. Organizations can
no longer depend on hierarchical structures and a few peak
performers to maintain a competitive advantage.
Leading with teams is the best approach in today’s business
environment. Working effectively, a team can make better
decisions, solve more complex problems, and do more to
enhance creativity and build skills than individuals working
alone.
Building highly effective teams, like building great organizations,
begins with a picture of what you are aiming for—a target. The
journey to a high performance team begins with understanding
its characteristics. By benchmarking your team in each of the
following four areas, you can identify where you need to focus
for team development:
1. Align for Results: Clarify team purpose, define goals,
define roles, and agree on behavioral norms.
2. Perform Under Pressure: Embrace and address conflict,
invite self expression, encourage candor, and listen with
curiosity.
3. Develop Team Cohesion: Work collaboratively, promote
accountability, build trusting relationships, and
appreciate each other’s contributions.
36 Leading at a Higher Level
4. Sustain High Performance: Demonstrate unity,
share leadership, adapt to change, and accept greater
challenges.
The Power of Teams
When faced with pressure or complexity, leaders must
acknowledge that it is often the actions and skills of many,
as opposed to those of one person, that make a complicated
procedure successful. Today’s complex work can no longer be
left to a lone hero’s expertise; we need high performance teams
working together to achieve results.
When teams function well, miracles can happen. A thrilling
and inspiring example of a high performance team is the 1980
United States Olympic hockey team. Twenty young men—many
of whom had never played together before—came from colleges
all over the country. Six months later they won the Olympic
gold medal, defeating the best teams in the world—including
the Soviet Union, a team that had been playing together for
years.
Or think about the Hudson River plane crash in 2009, when
Captain Sullenberger, First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, and the rest of
the flight crew worked together to land the plane safely under
dire circumstances, saving all the lives aboard.
Whether it’s a medical team of surgeons, anesthetists, and
nurses all working together and using their individual specialties
as a team to save lives—or a team of tech wizards collaborating
on a new software that changes the world we live in—humans
can achieve great things when they work effectively as teams.
Blanchard Books in Brief 37
Organizational Leadership
Just as team leadership is more complicated than one-on-one
leadership, leading an entire organization is more complicated
than leading a single team. As is true with building a high
performing team, building a high performing organization is a
journey. The quality of a leader’s influence at the organizational
level is built upon the perspective, trust, and community the
leader attains while mastering self, one-on-one, and team
leadership. An effective leader’s influence on an organization
can create a culture that brings together people and systems in
a harmonious whole.
SLII® applies whether you are leading yourself, another
individual, a team, or an organization. In the self and one-
on-one contexts, the leader diagnoses the competence and
commitment of a direct report on a specific task. In the team
context, a leader diagnoses the team’s productivity and morale.
In the organizational context, the focus is on diagnosing results
and relationships.
Results can be defined as the amount and quality of the work
accomplished in relation to the organization’s purpose and
goals.
Relationships can be defined as the quality of interactions people
have with the organization, their leaders, their coworkers, their
customers, and the environment.
38 Leading at a Higher Level
If an organization is to become high performing, results and
relationships both must be high. Great relationships with no
performance might be fun, but they will not create a long-
lasting organization. On the other hand, an organization with
great results and poor relationships will also be short-lived.
Without good relationships, the organization will begin to
lose its best people, and the results will decline. The bottom
line is that both results and relationships are required for high
performing organizations.
Organizational Development Stages
There are four stages of organizational development:
1. Start-Up – Low results/high relationships
2. Improving – Improving results/declining relationships
3. Developing – Increasing results/variable relationships
4. High Performing – High results/high relationships
When we combine the four SLII® leadership styles—directing,
coaching, supporting, and delegating—with the four stages of
organizational development—start-up, improving, developing,
and high performing—we have a framework for matching each
stage with an appropriate leadership style.
At the start-up stage, a directing style is appropriate. At
the improving stage, a coaching style is appropriate. At the
developing stage, a supporting style is appropriate. At the high
performing stage, a delegating style is appropriate.
We’ve seen too many situations where new CEOs—wanting to
make a quick impact—enter organizations and immediately go
to their favorite leadership style rather than to the one that
is needed. This can cause the organization to move backward
rather than forward in the quality of results and relationships.
This can happen in any organization, whether it’s a business,
government, or nonprofit. Applying the appropriate leadership
style at each stage will ensure that the organization progresses
to or maintains high performance.
Blanchard Books in Brief 41
Leading Change
Constant change is a way of life in organizations today. How do
managers and leaders cope with the barrage of changes that
confront them daily as they attempt to keep their organizations
adaptive and viable?
Leaders often feel trapped in a lose-lose situation when they
try to launch a change effort. On one hand, they risk unleashing
all kinds of pent-up negative feels in people. On the other hand,
if they don’t drive change, their organizations will be displaced
by those that are committed to innovation.
To lead a successful change, leaders must listen in on the
conversations in the organization and surface and resolve
people’s concerns about the change. They must strategize to
lead change in a way that leverages everyone’s creativity and
commitment.
Five Change Leadership Strategies
The following five change leadership strategies and their
outcomes describe an effective process for leading change.
Strategy 1: Expand Involvement and Influence
(Outcome: Buy-In)
By involving people in decision making about the change,
leaders significantly increase the probability that the change
will be successfully implemented. People are less likely to
resist the change when they have been involved in creating the
change.
42 Leading at a Higher Level
Strategy 2: Explain Why the Change Is Needed
(Outcome: Compelling Case for Change)
This strategy addresses information concerns. When leaders
present and explain a rational reason for the change, the
outcome is a compelling case that helps people understand the
change being proposed, the rationale for the change, and the
reason the status quo is no longer a viable option.
Strategy 3: Collaborate on Implementation
(Outcome: The Right Resources and Infrastructure)
When leaders engage others in planning and piloting the
change, they encourage collaboration in identifying the right
resources and building the infrastructure needed to support
the change.
Strategy 4: Make the Change Sustainable
(Outcome: Sustainable Results)
Rather than simply announcing the change, leaders must make
the change sustainable by providing people with the new
skills, tools, and resources required to support the change.
By modeling the behavior they expect of others, measuring
performance, and praising progress, leaders create conditions
for accountability and good results.
Strategy 5: Explore Possibilities
(Outcome: Options)
Possibilities and options should be explored before a specific
change is decided upon. By involving others in exploring
possibilities, you immediately lower information concerns
when a new change is announced, because people are “in the
loop” about deciding what needs to change.
Blanchard Books in Brief 43
Coaching: A Key Competency
for Leadership Development
The development of new leaders is becoming an important
focus for executives and senior managers. More and more,
coaching is being recognized as one of the key competencies
that effectively develops future leaders.
After working with thousands of people in organizations, we
have found that many managers and leaders spend most of their
time dealing with performance challenges. With the leadership
shortage ahead, it is important to shift from managing
performance to focusing on development.
Five Applications of Coaching
When we talk about coaching in this context, we are expanding
our definition beyond the coaching leadership style described
in SLII®. Coaching in the broader sense has five common
applications:
1. Performance coaching is used when individuals
need help returning their performance to acceptable
standards.
2. Development coaching is used when high performing
individuals are ready to become more fully rounded in
their current role.
44 Leading at a Higher Level
3. Career coaching is employed when individuals are
ready to plan their next career moves.
4. Coaching to support learning occurs when managers
or direct reports need support, encouragement, and
accountability to sustain recent training and turn
insights into action.
5. Creating an internal coaching culture is what happens
when leaders recognize the value of coaching and use it
to develop others.
Companies that use these coaching applications will have a
significant competitive advantage in developing and retaining
scarce talent.
Blanchard Books in Brief 45
Mentoring:
The Key to Life Planning
Like coaching, mentoring is a one-to-one process. But the
relationship between an individual and a coach has specific
objectives and goals focused on developing potential, improving
relationships, and enhancing performance. Mentoring, on the
other hand, is a mutually beneficial relationship that has big-
picture objectives and goals. As the subtitle of this chapter
suggests, mentoring is about more than goal accomplishment;
it’s about life planning.
The MENTOR Model: Elements of a Successful
Mentoring Partnership
The MENTOR Model provides six guidelines for an effective
mentoring relationship. Following these steps will keep your
mentoring partnership on track.
Mission: Take time to craft a mutually agreed-upon mission
statement for the mentorship. What do each of you intend to
get out of your partnership? A mentoring mission is a picture of
how things will be if everything goes as planned.
Engagement: Agree on ways to engage that work for your
personalities and schedules. Particularly at the beginning of
your mentorship, make a commitment to regular meetings, even
if they are virtual. By deciding how often you will communicate
with each other and by what means, you will be building the
structure that will make your mentoring partnership a reality.
46 Leading at a Higher Level
Networking: Both mentor and mentee will bring a network of
connections to each other. These connections will become a
pipeline to new knowledge, skills, and opportunities. However,
care must be taken so that you are not being reckless with each
other’s connections.
Trust: It takes time to establish the deep communication and
give-and-take that happens in a mature mentoring relationship.
Trust can be destroyed in an instant, so address any mistakes
and communication breakdowns right away. By telling the truth,
staying connected, and being dependable, you can build the
kind of trusting relationship that leads to significant personal
and professional growth.
Opportunity: For both mentor and mentee, the relationship
will open up opportunities—events, learning experiences,
connections, and career options. Digital media makes potential
networks bigger than ever, allowing for more opportunities for
partners.
Review and Renew: Mentoring relationships don’t necessarily
last indefinitely. Once your mission is established, a regular
review—perhaps annually or biannually—will help you keep the
relationship on track and let you know when the mission for
your mentorship has been accomplished. You can renew the
relationship and create a new mission, or you can bring the
mentorship to a close.
Many companies have discovered that formal mentoring
programs are one of the best ways to groom new hires to
become successful while preserving the critical corporate
knowledge of long-time employees.
Blanchard Books in Brief 47
Collaboration: Fuel for
High Performance
Collaboration creates high performing teams and organizations.
And with today’s diverse, globalized workforce, it’s crucial.
Organizations that embrace a collaborative culture benefit
internally from increased sales, improved innovation, and
better business processes. The external benefits can include
new products and services and a smoother running business
that delivers higher client satisfaction and increased revenues
and profitability. Additional, less tangible benefits include
knowledge sharing and competence building of employees and
contractors.
Many people think of collaboration as being the same as
coordination, cooperation, or teamwork. However, these words
are not interchangeable.
Collaboration involves bringing resources from various
areas together to create something better or to solve a
complex problem. These resources may come from different
departments, teams, or locations and may even include people
from other organizations.
This kind of collaboration can save lives. For example, during the
wildfires of 2003 in San Diego, the efforts of police, firefighters,
and first responders were fragmented due to unaligned
communication systems. In 2003, as firefighters flocked to the
county from all over the west, some had only 800-megahertz
radios rather than the traditional VHF radios—meaning they
48 Leading at a Higher Level
couldn’t talk to each other. By 2007, when the Cedar Fire hit,
the agencies had learned to collaborate: all the police, fire, and
emergency responder agencies were equipped with VHF radios.
Collaboration can happen even between organizations that
traditionally might be thought of as competitors. For example,
in 2011 the Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical Company
partnered to construct a wetland for water recycling that was
beneficial for both nature and Dow’s bottom line.
Attitude can color our willingness and ability to be collaborative.
For this reason it’s important to examine your intentions,
beliefs, and actions to develop collaborative competence.
Blanchard Books in Brief 49
SECTION III
Treat Your
Customers Right
Blanchard Books in Brief 51
Serving Customers
at a Higher Level
The third step in leading at a higher level is to treat your
customers right. While everybody seems to know that,
organizations with exceptional service are rare. When an
organization delivers with such excellence and consistency
that its service reputation becomes a competitive edge, that’s
Legendary Service.
Creating Legendary Service
Legendary Service begins with leaders who believe that
outstanding service is a top priority. We call them service
champions—inspirational leaders who create passion and
momentum in others to better serve their customers. These
leaders follow up their inspiring words with actions, creating
systems and processes that support their belief that service is
vitally important.
Exceptional service starts with leaders serving their people at
the highest level so that people on the front line can in turn
serve their customers at the highest level. Creating Legendary
Service is everyone’s job—not just the people standing at the
cash register or dealing directly with customers.
52 Leading at a Higher Level
Legendary Service consists of four basic elements:
C Committed to customers: Creating an environment that focuses on serving customers—both internal and
external—at the highest level.
A Attentiveness: Listening in a way that allows you to know your customers and their preferences.
R Responsiveness: Demonstrating a genuine willingness to serve others by paying attention to and acting on
their needs.
E Empowerment: Sharing information and tools to help people meet customer needs or exceed customer
expectations.
Together, these elements spell CARE, which is fitting, because
great customer service hits people at an emotional level and
creates a connection.
Decide, Discover, and Deliver
There are three secrets to treating your customers right and
turning them into raving fans:
Decide What You Want Your Customer Experience to Be. If
you want Legendary Service, you don’t just announce it. You
must plan for it. You must decide what you want to do. What
kind of experience do you want your customers to have as they
interact with every aspect of your organization? Understanding
what your customers really want when they come to you helps
you determine what you should offer them.
A good example of how this works is Domo Gas, a full-service
gasoline chain in Western Canada, cofounded by Sheldon
Bowles. Back in the 1970s, when everybody was going to self-
service gasoline stations, Bowles knew that if people had a
choice, they would never go to a gas station.
Blanchard Books in Brief 53
But people have to get gas, and they want to get in and out as
quickly as possible. The customer service vision that Bowles and
his cofounders imagined was an Indianapolis 500 pit stop. They
dressed all their attendants in red jumpsuits. When a customer
drove into one of Bowles’ stations, two or three people ran out
of the hut and raced toward the car. As quickly as possible, they
looked under the hood, cleaned the windshield and pumped
the gas.
Discover What Your Customers Want. After you decide what you
want to have happen, it’s important to discover any suggestions
your customers may have that will improve their experience
with your organization. What would make their experience
with you better? Ask them!
Deliver Your Ideal Customer Service Experience. Now you
must help people deliver the ideal customer service experience,
plus a little bit more. Once your desired customer experience
is set and people are committed to it, the traditional pyramid
hierarchy must be turned upside-down, so that the leaders
are at the bottom and the frontline people—who are closest
to the customers—are at the top. Now frontline people are
responsible—able to respond to their customers. Leaders must
now be responsive to frontline people, empowering them to
deliver Legendary Service.
Blanchard Books in Brief 55
SECTION IV
Have the Right
Kind of Leadership
Blanchard Books in Brief 57
Servant Leadership
When people lead at a higher level, they make the world a
better place because their goals are focused on the greater
good. Making the world a better place requires a special kind of
leader: a servant leader.
Robert Greenleaf first coined the term “servant leadership” in
1970 and published widely on the concept for the next 20 years.
Yet it is an old concept. Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., and Nelson Mandela are examples of leaders who have
practiced this philosophy.
What Is Servant Leadership?
Leadership has two parts: vision and implementation. In the
visionary role, leaders help define the direction. It’s their
responsibility to communicate what the organization stands
for and wants to accomplish. The visionary role is the leadership
aspect of servant leadership.
Once people are clear on where they are going, the leader’s role
shifts to a service mindset for the task of implementation. How
do you make the vision happen? By turning the pyramid upside-
down and helping people achieve their goals. Implementation is
where the servant aspect of servant leadership comes into play.
In a yearlong study to discover what kind of leadership has
the greatest impact on performance, Scott Blanchard and
Drea Zigarmi found that while the leadership part of servant
58 Leading at a Higher Level
leadership (strategic leadership) is important, the servant part
of servant leadership (operational leadership) has a greater
impact on organizational vitality.
When managers focus only on organizational indicators of
vitality—such as profit—they have their eyes on the scoreboard,
not the ball. Profit, a key aspect of organizational vitality, is a
by-product of serving the customer, which can be achieved
only by serving the employee.
Servant leadership is not just another management technique.
It is a way of life for those with servant hearts. In organizations
run by servant leaders, servant leadership becomes a mandate,
not a choice, and the by-products are better leadership, better
service, a higher performing organization, and more success
and significance.
Blanchard Books in Brief 59
Determining Your
Leadership Point of View
Research shows that effective leaders have a clear, teachable
leadership point of view and are willing to teach it to others,
particularly the people they work with.
Writing your leadership point of view invites you to think deeply
about your leadership legacy and how you want to be seen and
remembered as a leader. The reflection itself may not change
your day-to-day interactions with those you lead, but it will
shift your intentions. It will help you find what Bill George calls
your True North, and it can serve as a compass that leaders can
use to align their actions with their values. In determining your
leadership point of view, you are asked to do three things:
Identify key people and events that have shaped and
influenced your leadership point of view. Who mentored you?
Taught you? Inspired you? What did you admire or not admire
about each of these people? What did you learn from them?
What have been the turning points in your life? What did you
learn from these experiences?
Describe your leadership values. What core beliefs do you feel
strongly about? Make a list of values—truth, learning, creativity,
success, loyalty, etc.—and identify your three to five most
important values.
60 Leading at a Higher Level
Share your expectations for yourself and others. These
expectations should flow naturally from the people and
key events that have influenced you and your values. Your
expectations really are the essence of your leadership point
of view. Letting people know what they can expect from you
underscores the idea that good leadership is a partnership. And
letting others know what you expect from them gives people a
picture of how they can be successful under your leadership.
The world needs more leaders who are leading at a higher level.
Our dream is that someday everyone will work with leaders who
are leading at a higher level—a day when self-serving leaders
are history, and leaders who serve others are the rule, not the
exception.
YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
BECOMING A GREAT LEADER
Learn how to set the right target and vision and make
sure people know the values that will guide your
leadership journey to success.
To order books at a bulk discount call 1 800.431.1381
Available on Amazon.com for individual orders.
CONTINUE YOUR
LEADERSHIP JOURNEY
At Blanchard®, we know that great managers are the key to great
businesses. We provide world-class management and leadership
training to ensure your company’s managers are efficient,
productive, and committed to the success of your organization.
CONTACT US
kenblanchard.com
Americas +1 760.489.5005
Europe, Middle East, Africa +44 (0) 1483 456300
Asia Pacific +65 6775 1030
Sample Forum Post
(using the three-part Student-Directed Inquiry approach)
“Self-awareness, or learning to identify and understand one’s own worldview, becomes a cornerstone of
leadership” (Valk et al., p. 55).
Sire (2009) maintains, “that for any of us to be fully conscious intellectually we should not only be able
to detect the worldviews of others but beware of our own” (p. 12). Understanding who we are and what
shapes our perceptions and ideals lends itself to a deeper level of self-awareness. As an emerging leader
I recognize the importance of understanding and being respectful of others views. Every person adheres
to some sort of worldview; and how we think and act affects others.
In my worldview using Sire’s definition, “living” is the personal journey of our lives. How do we choose
to live and what shapes and guides our realities, perceptions, and biases. To “move” implies I must
continue to grow and evolve alongside our changing world, and be open to new ideas and perspectives
in order to guide others with an open mind. In understanding “have our being” (Sire, 2009, p. 20), I feel
we must innately understand who we are, what our strengths and weaknesses are, and how do we draw
upon them in our desire to teach, influence, and lead others.
At the core of our worldviews are our moral values and these values determine how we interpret
situations. Our understandings are usually consistent with how we already view the world, which leads
to how we act or respond. Valk et al (2011) emphasize that “great leaders must take action in the world
from a clear place (p. 61). This is important because “when leaders assist others in making sense of the
world through a clearly articulated and coherent worldview, solid action can follow (p. 61).
With that in mind, what are some of the specific reflection practices a leader can engage in to really
unearth how congruent their behavior is with their worldview?
References:
Sire, J. W. (2009). The universe next door: A basic worldview catalog. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press.
Valk, J., Belding, S., Crumpton, A., Harter, H., & Ream, J. (2011). Worldviews and leadership: Thinking
and acting the bigger picture. Journal of Leadership Studies, 5(2), 54-62.
Commented [DA1]: The post begins with an opening
quote that is directly related to the discussion in the post.
Commented [DA2]: These three paragraphs are a
discussion of the questions asked in the instructor’s opening
post: What does it mean to “live and move and have your
being” as it relates to your worldview? And How will your
own worldview inform your leadership approach in a way
that enhances your sphere of influence in a diverse world?
Note the response cites at least two readings from the
course (in APA format, of course )
Commented [DA3]: Lastly, the post concludes with an
open-ended question that was raised by this student’s
reflection.
A good critical thinking question will invite complex
responses. This is your opportunity to really interact with
those big, hairy, audacious questions you might have. I like
to call these “wicked questions”.
Your questions should be more related to theory and less
personal in terms of direction. For example, “What
worldview framework are you working within?” is more
personal. Whereas, “How can a leader lead their team
effectively when each person has a different, and
sometimes conflicting or competing, worldview? Is very
much related to theory and invites a complex, critical
thinking response.
Commented [DA4]: Your references should be listed at
the bottom of your post.
Remember to draw on theory and material from throughout
the program. You have a wonderful set of leadership
resources from your previous courses!