I was reading a brief post from John Ortberg on FDR and delegation and how leaders cannot afford to delegate hope. There’s a lot of wisdom and need for leaders to delegate and empower others without controlling and interfering. However, when it comes to morale and climate, leaders who defer to others or default on their responsibility to instill hope among the community are pretty much signing their termination papers.He does make a distinction however between optimism and hope (referring to the distinction by Reinhold Niebuhr). One of my favorite things (sarcasm here) is hearing from leaders how “the best days are ahead of us” when there is total carnage all over the place and no tangible reason to believe that anything is going to be different. Optimism given in these moments is naive, pie in the sky thinking aimed at alleviating the leader’s own anxiety. Hope is about rolling up the sleeves together in light of the very real truth that God is at work to bring about new and redeemed realities. Such a reality makes the enduring of suffering and pain worthwhile. Any vision of the future that overshoots the current realities of pain and suffering is merely naive optimism. To quote the prophets Beavis & Butthead, this kind of vision is just “words, words, words, words….” (I think that just dropped the intellectual quotient of this blog by about 100%)Hope is hope because it factors in both the truth of the moment along with the truth of a future that is in the hand of God.Here’s the link to the post if you want to read it:http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/02/john_ortberg_on.html
