When you’re the CEO — your greatest responsibility is to recognize whether your organization requires a major change in direction. Hal Gregersen, Harvard Business Review, April 2017
When do we double-down on our current direction and when do we change directions? It is a defining question for leaders, countries, organizations, families – and for each of us. And as tough as it is to answer that question, there is always a second question that is often tougher: How to navigate the challenging nature of change including resistance to change?
The past three years have brought unprecedented change. According to the World Health Organization Covid delivered 760 million confirmed cases and killed 6.8 million people around the world, in the process totally restructuring our norms for gathering and interacting. We fought and screamed over “change,” whether to close or keep schools open, masks or no, Covid’s origins and the efficacy of newly developed vaccines. When it comes to change, we often think we know the right answer, but mostly we don’t.
Follow the science – but the science keeps shifting. Tom Jefferson, Oxford epidemiologist and lead author of the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies on the efficacy of masks concluded: “There is just no evidence that they – masks – make any difference. Full stop.” In the well-traveled words of Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Yet this is not the last word. What is ‘so’ will continue to reveal itself, to change.
The death of George Floyd led so many to rethink and change our approach to racial justice. Protests occurred around the world, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion flourished. California is now considering reparations for Blacks. Yet there is also now push-back in state governments like Texas and in academia like the University of Texas and University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill that are dropping DEI hiring policies and practices.
The universe continues to change and expand. So do we. Circumstances show up that press us: status quo or change? Which change and which status quo? For example, in Ukraine, is it the most recent status quo when Ukraine operated as sovereign nation or the previous status quo when it was a part of Russia? War is a destructive and deadly way of settling unresolved conflict regarding change.
At every turn someone is either trying to change us in ways we resist – or to resist us in the change we promote. Promoter on one issue and resister on the other. Adversaries often mistakenly view their victories as permanent – the debate is over – the science is settled. But pro-life supporters did not view Roe vs. Wade as permanent. Neither will pro-choice supporters view its repeal as permanent.
Our very form of government, a republic, is designed specifically to provide an orderly way for voters and their representatives to decide where we change and where we hold on to our status quo. Yet all of our chaos and struggle seems to reflect a very limited appreciation of how the change process works.
Repeatedly leaders and stakeholders get caught up in narrow “win/lose” battles advocating for making change or resisting proposed change that feeds polarization and limits solutions. Too often we lose track of the larger problem or opportunity. We hunger for a more effective, less polarized way forward.
The Role of the Priest vs. the Role of the Prophet
Our big problem, leaders’ big problem, even God’s big problem: How to constructively address change without undue chaos and dysfunction? Richard Rohr describes two leadership roles, as old as recorded history, that can serve as forces for navigating change: the Priest and the Prophet. While associated with organized religion, their application is much broader. How might these, often conflicting roles, help us address the inevitable, never-ending, ever accelerating challenge of change? Let’s unpack Rohr’s model:
Priests: connect and hold the system together by repeating the traditions of the past: rituals, processes, practices, policies. Priests talk of unity, meaning, order and love. They are the glue that helps us stick together. Yet when priests enforce too much control in maintaining the status quo, the comfortable and the insular, the result is rigidity and staleness that is out of touch with our ever-changing world. Inevitably, it gives rise to rebellion and change.
Prophets: de-construct falseness and question the status quo. Prophets are critical of the very system priests are attempting to maintain by revealing blindness, directing necessary deconstruction, disorder and re-order. They are about letting go of the illusion, toppling false gods. They see what is wrong and who is oppressed – and are often unpopular and sometimes killed. President Obama played a major prophet role especially early in his political career in advocating for African Americans struggling for equality. President Trump emerged as a major prophet on behalf so-called “deplorables” who felt ignored and disdained by liberal elites. Prophets who rise to major leadership positions over time usually transition into Priests wielding their power to make permanent their new status quo.
In today’s topsy-turvy world aided by the megaphone of social media, we see a dramatic rise in false prophets on all sides that gain attention by promoting evermore extreme change. These loud and rapid speakers overwhelm the shrinking pool of thoughtful listeners. As David Brooks has noted, it leaves us with political parties that are ‘ruled by radicals.’ The governors of our four most populated states make his point. Abbott of Texas and DeSantis of Florida stake out extreme right-wing positions, while Hochul of New York and Newsom of California take extreme left-wing positions on issues such as abortion, gender, race, the homeless, immigration and environment. Prophets, absent the moderating voice of a priest, accelerate our movement to chaos and dis-integration. Either open warfare or hopeless gridlock occur when neither side will be influenced by the other. The center is very much straining to hold.
It leads to what David French has referenced as the horseshoe theory: as left and right grow more extreme and oppositional in content they grow more alike in their actions. When it comes to the partisan reflex — the defense of “my people” and “my institutions” — extreme partisans behave very much like their polar opposites. And the media is the great amplifier. A recent study confirms what we know: Hyper partisan politicians garnered four times the media coverage as Congress’s most bipartisan dealmakers. The New York Times covered Marjorie Taylor Greene 84 times, Fox devoted 13 stories to Rep. Rashida Tlaib. The author concludes: “These news outlets are holding up the boogeyman on the other side, they’re throwing meat to a base.’”
When Priest and Prophets Learn to Honor Each Other
And that’s the problem: Priests and Prophets each seeing themselves as the total answer, rather than a part of a larger answer. In order to succeed and sustain, priests and prophets desperately need each other – conflict and all. As much as these two roles may clash, they are doomed without each other. As Rohr describes, when they learn to dance – to lead and follow – the system constantly refines itself, corrects, rebalances in a way that can change without destroying itself. Sustainable change comes when the status quo and the change learn to dance with each other.
The dance of Priests and Prophets begins with the ability of each side to do their job while honoring the other role. The word honor is a word that has fallen from favor in recent times. Honoring the other side won’t get you many Twitter followers these days and it sure doesn’t evoke emotional support from your tribe – rather it is most likely to get you de-authorized. Envisioning the Priest and the Prophet, not as enemies, but as highly valuable dance partners in affecting sustainable change means prioritizing solutions over personal power.
Our Role as Priest and Prophet
In our own way, we each play the role of both priest and prophet from time to time – think Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln. So, each of us has to decide each day when we are to be a priest, championing the status quo, and when to be a prophet, championing change – at work, in family, community, politics and faith communities. And, how we will listen for and respond to the Priests and Prophets that show up in our lives. In the words of Father Gregory Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries:
“The folks who create the dis-ease within us, cause us to recoil and flee, to become defensive, the very people we disparage for disagreeing with us and who are on the polar opposite spectrum of our political or theological beliefs—turns out, these are our teachers and our salvation.”
Where do I need more opposing Prophets or Priests in my organization, family, my life? Not because they are necessarily right but because they are a source for greater understanding of the bigger picture and possibilities I am to consider and weigh. Trying to accommodate diverse and even opposing stakeholders produces tension and stress. But that is the role of leadership, to get the very best hybrid solution from some combination of the status quo and change. CEO Tom Monahan calls it Constructive Dissatisfaction of competing interests: “I have three groups of stakeholders — shareholder, customers, employees. If I fully satisfy any one of three, I would be bankrupt. My job is to keep them all constructively dissatisfied, to make the enterprise successful and deliver to all.”
Whether we are proposing change or defending the status quo, if we could sincerely honor – not just tolerate – but truly honor the role of the opposition, the other – be it Priest or Prophet, then perhaps we could learn to dance our way to more sustainable, orderly change. Father Boyle concludes: “It’s not so much about seeking the other but to find yourself in the other.”
Robert’s latest book, “This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith,” is now in paperback. A “recovering CEO,” he has authored 200 published articles and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The CEO Magazine. His website: www.robertehall.com