Alternatively: People We Lead on Vacation.¹

When you’re first learning to drive it’s terrifying. Every turn, every stop, every lane merge requires all the focus you have, and it should! You’re operating a very large vehicle at a pretty high speed. 

Now I find that half the time I drive home from preschool drop-off, I pull into the driveway before I’ve even consciously registered that I’m driving. Do you know the feeling? You are sitting in your car, you have no reason to believe you fell asleep or ran every red light or anything, you were just lost in thought, and now you’re home. You find yourself impressed, and a little disoriented, by your own subconscious’s ability to take the wheel. 

All of that backseat driving is made possible by well-worn neural pathways. Your brain is still driving the car, just not a part of the brain you have as much access to. One of the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the human brain is its plasticity. Neural pathways are formed by repetition, and the more any neural pathway is repeated the more automatic it becomes. As it becomes automatic, we conserve mental energy, calories, and focus by moving those pathways from conscious to subconscious thought, freeing up our conscious brains for different activities. 

This is great in a lot of ways – we can plan our day while we drive, we can reflect on our experiences while walking with a friend, we can read and write while just focusing on the meaning, the task itself having become so automatic. 

But it has its downsides. Like when we first learn to drive, when we step into an activity or way of being in the world that is outside of those pre-grooved neural pathways, it becomes scarier and scarier. Particularly as we get older and more established, we spend more time utilizing those established neural highways, which makes building new ones more challenging. When we are used to our mental roads being well-paved, the wilderness looks that much wilder. That’s why people often find it easier to try new things when they are in new places or around new people. When you are broken out of your grooves, the untrodden paths feel more accessible. 

People try salsa dancing on vacation, they eat new foods, they stay out late, they wear different clothes. When people are with a new partner, they try new restaurants, or new activities. Even professionally, when we change roles or jobs, we easily adapt to way more change that we would probably tolerate in a more settled role. 

Do we think this is true at the organizational level as well? If so, what does it mean for leading well, especially through change? 

If we think our organizations are stuck in certain unconscious habits (and we’re interested in changing them), what can we do to switch their brains back into full gear, and prime them exploring new options? 

Here’s some ideas we’ve seen work:

1. Play. Games are a game-changer. Play is, by definition, a space created that allows people to bend and break the rules of their daily lives. By using games, silliness, and fun, you can intentionally create a space that is playful and low-stakes, and you can invite an intentional rule-breaking that allows innovative thinking to happen. 
2. Physical Environment. We can’t take our whole church council to Barbados to learn merengue, but you can disrupt the physical environment in ways that make brains come back online. That might look like a field trip to the immigrant church down the street, or pulling all the furniture out of the room, or making your team meet in the food bank your church pays for. 
3. Modeling. The most powerful way to get your community unstuck is to show them what unstuckness could look like. They will likely not immediately take to it, but if you can consistently and non-anxiously demonstrate the joy, grace, and hope that can come with believing in totally new ways of being, then you are inviting them into trying the same. 

All of this pulls together into one of the most counterintuitive and strange things we tell clients to do: do something, anything, just to prove you can. If you are in a profoundly stuck context, one that is deeply invested in those neural pathways that continue to produce results they aren’t happy with, then progress, change, something new, even for only its own sake, isn’t such a bad idea. 

Getting the wheels moving in a new direction, getting sharp, nimble, and grounded in the resources your community has available, is a critical step into discerning long-term vision and calling. While we would all hope that every single project is roaring success that overwhelms all possible expectations for it, the reality is that a project that meets some of the goals, and shows a community that a new thing, however imperfect, can happen, and can even be *good* matters more than getting it perfect the first time. 

So this week, don’t be afraid of disrupting your leaders a little bit with play, with physical space, and with modeling. Offer them the invitation to innovate for their own sake, and watch the endless new possibilities appear in a path that was once just wilderness, knowing that God is calling there too. 

1. This is a pretty solid pun, but it relies on the people who read this blog being familiar with pop romance fiction writer Emily Henry’s work, and I just don’t think that’s a fair assumption. ↩︎