Matthew’s Questions to Madison: What have you learned about yourself and your culture (strengths and gaps) as you have engaged those in other cultures?

I’m fully Canadian (with proud German roots), and a millennial. I have been raised to behave a certain way with certain cultural expectations because of the country I live in and the generation I was born into.

But I don’t strive to stay stuck in those identifying factors – I want to learn from other generations and other cultures.

I have had the incredible opportunity to travel to Asia a couple times, live in Europe for a while, and tour around North America. Of all the places I’ve traveled, the places that are less like my culture have been my favourite. I was more intrigued with going to China and Thailand than I was England and Austria because they were vastly different from the world I was raised in.

In my short 23 years, I’ve learned things about myself, my culture, and my generation compared to other cultures and other generations. Want to hear a few of them? I may be off on some of them, but understanding culture and generation is something I will always be curious to learn about.

Let’s look at culture first:

1) North America is an overindulgent culture

This was something I kind of knew, but it didn’t hit home until living in Germany. The biggest complaint from the Germans was that the North Americans wouldn’t eat everything on their plate. We were known for taking too much food and throwing most of it out – when I changed my lens to theirs, I totally saw what they saw. And it’s goes beyond food. Do I dare mention Boxing Day, or Black Friday?

2) Independence has pros and cons

Compared to many Eastern countries, we are an independent culture. We live for ourselves more than for other people. This has served us well in terms of avoiding family shame – we don’t often feel the pressures of family and community expectations, since we share more of the message of ‘do you’. This has hurt us though too. I love communal cultures and their emphasis on the family unit and living in community. We’re a much lonelier culture because we aren’t ‘forced’ in community.

3) We communicate very differently

The best way I’ve heard it described is that Western thinking is linear and Eastern thinking is circular. Westerners communicate exactly what they think; Easterners want you to read behind what they’re saying. I worked with someone who was a circular communicator, and the entire time she talked, I would think to myself, “What is she really trying to communicate to me? Common Madi, read the air!” And it never worked. One way of communicating is not better than another, but it can cause miscommunication if we aren’t aware of the differences.

4) We live for affirmation

Another thing I learned in Germany was that North Americans do a whole lot of affirming. We affirm everything – including the things we don’t actually like. This drove the Germans up the wall! I appreciate the affirmative culture for the fact that we do want to encourage and lift one another up, but it’s a down fall when you can’t actually believe what someone says. Again, I don’t think this is a good or bad thing, but just a thing.

Let’s switch over to some of the differences I’ve observed between the millennial culture and the baby boomer culture.

1) Millenials are more interested in diversity

Research has come out that millenials are on the lookout for diversity – we appreciate it when we see it. In all honesty, we’re tired of gray-haired white men dominating the world. But I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone about it. She said, “Millennials may actually be more interested in the perception of diversity, rather than diversity itself.” Technically, everyone in the room could look the same but have very different perspectives, or everyone in the room could look different and yet have the same ideas. This has me thinking more about my own perceptions.

2) There’s less of a focus on family

Westerners compared to Easterners have less of a focus on family; millenials compared to baby boomers have less of a focus on family. Students leave home for school at a young age, get settled in a career, and call home less and less as time goes on. The focus on career and the focus on community is much higher than on family.

3) Millenials are bored sitting in one place for too long

Have you heard the term “wanderlust”? It’s a fad phrase in the millennial world. We’re all about travel and experiencing new things. We’re curious. It’s also about not sitting at the same desk for a long time – this can mean less of an emphasis on having a physical office space, or it can mean we have less grit and switch jobs often.

4) The desire for relationships is strong

In the church world, new research is out that millennials are more interested in relationships than production. Baby boomers, if you are leaders in church (paid or unpaid), take note of this. We want you to talk to us and have us over for dinner more than we want the fancy lights on stage. Take note though, we don’t always know how to do this well since we’ve grown up in an online culture. But we want it, and we may need the help of the baby boomers. Beyond the church, I’ve noticed that my generation has taken up more of an interest in local shopping rather than big box stores. I don’t know how much this translates across the entire generation, but it would make sense – we want relationships, and you get more of that at local places.

Those are a few thoughts from my limited experience and understanding, but it’s a topic I will always engage in – so if you think I’m off on my thinking, let’s chat (after all, I’m part of the generation that’s all about relationships).

Madison’s Question to Matthew: Being in leadership means taking risks. What risks have completely failed? How did you reconcile that? How may have it created new opportunities? Where did you see the growth from that experience?

As someone who has led at various levels and in numerous capacities, the idea of risk is something that is almost always energizing for me. I love the idea of moving into new territory, trying to do new things or trying to do existing things in new ways. It is fun to think something through the best that you can, knowing that you will never have all of the information necessary, and then to step forward – I liken it to building a bridge as you are walking on it, building just far enough ahead for the next step.

All that being said, the idea of failure in the midst of leading still makes my heart skip a beat. There are times when, in the midst of leading a new initiative, you can’t see far enough ahead and you are not sure of the next step. Or the previous step you took just didn’t work out as you thought and you have this sense of free falling without any means of stopping – it is out of control. As I thought about this question, I realized that there have been several ways that I have seen or experienced failure.

1) Overconfidence in my abilities – When leading out, I can typically see the entire conclusion of the initiative in my mind, completely finished and operating smoothly – not all the steps to get there, just the finished product. I then embark on the journey of making it a reality only to realize sometimes, part way through, that my skillset is not adequate enough to make it all happen and that I don’t have the right people around me to fill in my gaps. This causes sleepless nights.

2) Overconfidence in others – I can recall situations where I have embarked on an initiative with someone that I believed could deliver their part of a new project. However, in reality, they didn’t have the skills that I thought they had, or they didn’t have the grit to follow through. (At times, looking back, I should have seen it, but I convinced myself that they could pull through.) These are always difficult circumstances as they may have believed that they can do their piece and were not personally aware of their gaps. At times they have been friends and this has led to awkward conversations.

3) People’s overconfidence with me – this one is strange to think about yet their have been times when someone has believed in me so much that I “drank the kool aid” and believed in their belief in me and didn’t pause long enough to determine if this truly was my area of strength. These have caused much stress as I didn’t want to let them down yet I knew part way in that this was not going to be easy.

4) Overconfidence in my vision of the future – I can at times become so convinced in what the future could look like that I become blind to the many aspects that would cause it to fail. This will most often occur after a number of successes that has increased my confidence in my thinking. Perhaps it is pride that has set in, a belief that I am in the zone and nothing can get in the way of my perceived clarity of thinking.

All that being said, I prefer to see every failure as a way to learn and grow. And often, this is the case. However, angst for me arises when those around me during these times of failure do not want to allow learning to happen. There are always some people who seem to be looking to say “I told you so” and believe that it is their purpose in life to take you down (this is my perception at times, although in reality I don’t believe it is typically true, at least I choose to believe it is not the case.) At my core, I really don’t want to disappoint anyone and knowing that a leadership decision I made frustrated someone or caused them to lose confidence in me is disheartening.

To lead is to risk, and to risk is to choose to fail. Not all risks will lead to success. Sometimes you’ll achieve partial success, sometimes none at all. To lead is to accept that you will be misunderstood when things don’t go as you declared at the start. If you are not willing to accept this reality, then you shouldn’t take on positions of leadership. You can manage, you can administrate, you can guide – you just shouldn’t lead.

So what have I learned through the failures that I have encountered?

First, I have learned what I am good at, what I am adequate at, and what I am very poor at. Reflecting on past failures has caused me to “stick to my knitting” more and more.

Second, I have come to appreciate the unique skills that others bring that will allow my leading to have a greater chance of success. I have become much more willing to listen to the other voices and their perspectives – this often saves me anxiety as things are implemented. I especially am willing to listen to those people who have been with me through various leadership risks as we have come to respect each other over the years.

Third, there is a big difference between seeing and creating a vision for the future, and leading people into that future. I have enjoyed conversations with many visionary people, those who can see the beauty of what could be. Yet I have also seen many of those same people be unable to take people to that future because of an inability to lead well. I believe that holistic leadership is both vision of a better future as well as an ability to influence others to go there with you and use their abilities in the process.

Writing this blog has caused a fair amount of reflection on my leadership going back to High School. It has been an interesting journey – one the I know has not yet ended. More failure still to come.

For the Kingdom.