The Seven Deadly Sins of a Visionary: Pt I by Tony Stoltzfus People have talked for years about money, sex and power is the three biggest sources of wrong behavior. All three are about control and security and selfgratification. But I m wondering in this day and age if we should add a fourth: vision. Don t get me wrong: vision is vitally important (but then, so is money!) It comes from God as part of his plan (like sex) and is essential to getting things done (as is power). As a leadership coach, I m a big advocate of having a vision for your life and walking it out. Jesus had a huge vision: to redeem the entire human race. He prioritized it, focused on it, and served that vision to the point of death. So when does vision become a hindrance and not a help? To answer that question, it s instructive to look at money, sex and power. All are from God; its just that they can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways. The place where we go wrong with money is to love it: the love of money, not money itself, is the root of all kinds of evil. Sex is neither bad nor wrong: it s just made for one man and one woman to share exclusively for a lifetime. Power comes from God, too: he gave us power to become children of God, but not power so we can lord it over or control one another. The parallel for visionaries is that vision is from God and for God; when it becomes from me and for me it s a problem. It s the displacement of our love and passion from it s true object that makes something good into a sin. A vision is meant to be an extension of God s heart a picture of how we can rally others to bring God to the world. When it starts to slide over into serving me, we get in trouble. So as a visionary, how do you keep yourself on track? One key to keeping your vision from God and for God is understanding what it looks like for a visionary leader to function in a healthy, God centered way, and what it looks like to function as a selfcentered visionary. If you have the courage to examine the difference, you ll probably also have the guts to find out how others are really impacted by your leadership, and the character to put that knowledge to good use. So here s a look at the Seven Deadly Sins of a Visionary.
Sin #1: Loving Your Vision (Self-Centeredness) Often the first step in the diversion of a visionary s affections is loving the dream itself more than we love the people we ve enlisted to make it happen or the people it will serve. Visionaries can (and often do) build entire organizations that become primarily an extension of the leader s own personal sense of call, and exist largely for the purpose of fulfilling that leader s personal destiny. That kind of vision is from me and for me instead of from God and for God. The visionary organization becomes about the leader s dreams and needs first, and about serving God and others second. To paraphrase the scripture, the love of your own vision is the root of all kinds of evil. I once heard a quote about Buddha that, He loved people in general; he just didn t love any people in particular. I ve been around visionaries who are like that. Serving in their organizations is like being a replaceable part: once you outlive your usefulness for the vision, they quickly discard you Gut Check Loving Your Vision 1. Do you say: The important thing is the vision. The organization and the people in it serve this vision, which comes from me. The organization should be designed to let me function in the role that suits me best. 2. Does your organization have an identity outside of your personal call being channeled through it? Are you discerning your organization s future as a team, or as an individual? 3. When was the last time the organization said, No to you about a visionary idea? Do they have the power to do that? 4. What is your turnover level among staff and volunteers? Have you gotten comfortable with a level of acceptable losses of people who get hurt? and move on. It s clearly about the project, not the people. Funny though: the whole idea of the project in the first place was to help people. A key symptom of getting out of balance in this area is that the workers are treated like numbers so the visionary leaves a trail of bodies behind. Some of the worst offenders in this area are visionaries who started out really putting people first, lost focus along the way, but still promote about relational values even though in practical terms they abandoned much of that value system years ago.
Sin #2: Loving the Visionary Lifestyle (Promiscuity) Visionaries are usually better dreamers than implementers. We talk about birthing a vision: some visionaries can birth 20 different visions by 20 different women, but never provide for or raise the babies (visionary endeavors) they ve brought into the world. It s easy and fun for a visionary to dream a dream, and get people excited about it, and launch a vision into being; but after a few months or years the hard work of staying focused and implementing the vision until it reaches fruition gets boring and confining. It is infinitely more exciting to start something new that's all gain and no pain so they leave the wife of their youth (the first vision) to start something new. The person s primary allegiance is not to a particular vision God has given them to steward, but to the visioning process. The sin is loving the lifestyle of a visionary (the risk, the adrenaline, the break neck pace, making something happen) more Gut Check Loving the Lifestyle 1. Do people seem jaded and slower to jump on the bandwagon than they used to be? 2. Do you tend to over promise and underdeliver? 3. When was the last visionary project that you finished really well? If you left a role or project last year, is the team you left behind thriving, or did the thing die or diminish considerably when you left? 4. Is your team moving at a humane pace that makes the lives of the those involved richer and more fulfilling, or is the pace adrenaline fueled and draining for others with less natural energy than you? than the actual service the vision provides. The object subtly shifts from serving others through pursuing a vision to doing visionary things because I love making things happen. The pattern you see in these leaders is the sin of promiscuity. Visionaries are supposed to many start things: however, with that privilege comes the responsibility to steward what you start. For a visionary, starting many visions with many teams and doing a poor job of seeing them through is simply a lack of discipline. The leader is focusing on what s most fun for him or her, and avoiding the hard parts at the expense of others. That approach ultimately backfires. The problem is what I call visionary capital. What a visionary is made to do is to get people to believe in a dream before it happens, because it will take everyone working together to actual make it come to pass. But for
that to work, people have to believe you ll deliver the goods. That s visionary capital. You get it by having a track record of follow through people are willing to jump on your next vision early because they ve seen your visions come to pass. If you start a lot of things that don t survive, people eventually become jaded and stop buying into your visionary projects. And when that happens, implementing vision grinds to a halt. The visionary feels betrayed and constricted. At this point, the temptation is to blame the people and go find a new audience. The response God is looking for is to examine yourself. Sin #3: Hoarding Resources (Greed) Finding the resources to fulfill a vision is one of the great challenges visionary leaders face. Leading toward a dream takes a lot of faith in God as provider. When faith falters, it is easy to fall into the third deadly sin: Hoarding Resources (or Greed). When a visionary is functioning out of this scarcity mindset, there are only so many resources to go around. Therefore, anything that is invested in another vision is something taken away from the leader s vision. So what happens to the visionary leader is that he or she subconsciously begins to hold tightly onto whatever resources are available. One key symptom of this mindset is when the leader or the organization only invests in those who are working for the vision. If God sends a young leader with a big dream of his own to the organization, the organization will try to co opt the person for its vision. If that Gut Check Hoarding Resources 1. Think of several leadership caliber people in your organization that are only there temporarily, or you know will move on to bigger things soon. Are you aggressively investing in their future, or are you backing off because you know they ll leave? 2. Does your organization have an Up and Out pattern of mid level leaders? 3. Do emerging leaders only really seem to come into their own in ministry after they leave your organization? doesn t work, the organization simply turns back inward and ignores the young leader, instead of stewarding the call God has given him. When this really gets ugly, the visionary leader begins to demand that people give time or energy to the vision, and if they don t, uses his power position to vilify them.
Another symptom to look for is an up and out pattern. If people seem to reach a certain point of maturity and then leave your church, that could well indicate that there s some kind of ceiling they are hitting. It may be that they ve grown to the place where it is time for them to pursue their own call, and there is no place for that in this organization. As a leader, God sends you leaders to steward, to develop them toward their Godgiven destiny. You have a vital part to play in that they often cannot fulfill their own destiny without your investment of time, sponsorship, and resources. If you get behind them and their callings, whether they contribute to your vision or not, God will look at your faithfulness and send you many more quality leaders to develop within your visionary endeavors. If you only use the leaders God sends you for your own dreams, and pay little attention to building their future, the number and quality of people God will send to you will go down. Next month, will look at the final four deadly sins of a visionary!