Tag: Culture

Multiculturalism

August 29, 2024 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

To say we live in a multicultural society is a gross understatement. We cannot think about what we are going to do if it happens.

If we are not knowledgeable about or preparing to address it, we are way behind.

How we can best approach leading within a multicultural context?

1. Stop procrastinating and gain a better understanding of multiculturalism.

2. Get immersed in developing relationships across cultural boundaries.

3. Remember, we are participating in a small part of what God has done and continues to do.

Who knows but we are here for such a time as this. The subject is essential for the present and future understanding of leadership.

Sanity or Insanity

August 22, 2024 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Perhaps you are familiar with the idea of insanity: “doing the same things in the same way and expecting different results.”

As amazing as it may sound, we often practice a level of insanity when approaching our leadership, we want to do the same things the way we have always done them, yet expect different results.

Our culture has changed. Demographics have changed. We have changed, whether we want to admit it or not.

What we need is a little sanity. By definition, the idea of sanity speaks of reasonable and rational behavior. Now there are two powerful words for leaders to learn.

Sanity or insanity: That is the question.

Culture

November 21, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Culture was originally connected to cultivating, or gardening.

Among many technical definitions, basically, culture is the way things are done around here.

Our world is a multi-cultural place, even sporting cultures within cultures: work cultures, educational cultures, religious cultures, age and gender specific cultures, etc.

Leaders can work to understand the culture, but changing the culture is far from easy, if not impossible. The idea has been presented that leaders must create new cultures to draw people into a new way of thinking, believing, or behaving.

Jesus followed this approach to a first century culture, leaving us to consider how we will lead in a twenty-first century culture.

A Sense of Urgency

October 6, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

John Kotter’s book, Leading Change, describes eight steps to ultimately anchor change within organizational culture.

The first step is to “establish a sense of urgency.” Without it, the possibility of change diminishes.

Often times, awareness of a problem or crises does not go unnoticed, but an overwhelming problem of complacency prevents action producing correction.

The church faces a leadership crisis. We find that some deny the reality of the situation, while others tend to ignore it altogether.

Who will lead from the next generation? What plans are in place to train future leaders for the church?

Unless we realize the urgency of the situation, nothing changes and the result will leave the church without leaders.

Trustworthy Character

May 19, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Our culture has a great propensity to act one way, yet at the core be something completely different.

We refer to this as hypocrisy. We need to understand, however, that our culture has worked on this long enough it is now accepted and normal.

Hypocrisy tends to destroy every opportunity to influence others.

The core of our leadership needs to be characterized by integrity, justice, and truth.

These three characteristics highlight a leader worthy of God’s trust and the trust of those who follow. The result points to powerful influence.

Cultural Leadership

May 15, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Certainly, culture has an influence on leadership and leadership has an influence on culture.

From a spiritual point of view, leaders cannot allow the culture to dictate the direction of God’s people, but leaders must shape the culture.

How can leaders shape the culture today?

Leaders must understand culture.
Leaders must recognize needs within culture.
Leaders must provide an example for cultural context.
Leaders must lead into a different culture.

Just a step in the right direction will help shape the changes needed in culture to direct a greater focus toward Jesus.

Flexibility

May 11, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Travel increases the awareness of flexibility. Cultures vary from one country to the next. At the same time, each culture establishes their own practices and finds a rhythm that flows through the people who participate in the daily activities of life.

While leadership is complicated enough, add the cultural factors among the various backgrounds and relationships of people who make up the church, and complexity reaches a new level.

Leaders need flexibility. I do not mean compromising truth, but leadership focuses on the needs of those who follow.

Flexibility becomes critical to the twists and turns that factor into leading a multi-cultural people.

Empathy

May 2, 2023 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

We often fail to recognize that most of what we see in life is biased by who we are: how we were raised, the environment, culture, and hundreds of other areas, rather than reality.

Interestingly enough, how we see things becomes reality to us. Because this is true, we become entrenched in our beliefs to the point of dogma.

No one is exempt, but we need to understand the importance of patience and love when attempting to help others grow.

Leadership requires us to have empathy, the ability to understand and enter another person’s feelings. The more we do so, the greater our influence.

Measuring Success

November 21, 2022 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

Various cultures around the world view or define success differently than other cultures. Oddly enough, even within the same culture, success is often defined differently.

Exploring the way God defines success is a bit more challenging, yet far more important to consider.

The most common factor defining success is quantitative. An increase by a specific number determines the measure of success achieved.

If we examine the Bible, we will find that the success is measured by those who followed the word of the Lord.

When it comes to defining success, as God defines it, a good place to start is 1 Samuel 15:22-23.

Think Before Speaking

October 17, 2022 bobturner Daily Leadership, saltJournal 0 Comments

The challenge of any generation is living in a culture that gives little thought to the impact of words. The old acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) identifies far more about the heart than we might want to acknowledge.

How can we learn to improve the words we use? One particular family set up a coin jar where each time they yelled, it cost money.

Imagine the impact if inappropriate language, words spoken in anger/frustration, or spoken in haste took money out of our wallet that we could not get back. Maybe we would learn to think before we speak.

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