Becoming a CLO

I’m excited about today’s June FYI E-Journal and the new resources we’re sharing.  One of those resources is a video of a talk by Tod Bolsinger that we’ve (re-)titled “Chief Learning Officers: Becoming Adaptive Leaders.”

I was able to hear Tod give this message to a group of Fuller grads who have been serving in ministry post-seminary, many of them youth workers.  Tod uses the narrative of Lewis and Clark adeptly to frame Harvard theorist Ron Heifetz’s leadership model for pastoral ministry in what I found to be a helpful way.

Real change in just about any context requires new learning on the part of everyone involved. This means “adaptive” change rather than simply changing structures (think programs, processes, people—the things we usually change when we want to fix something that’s going wrong).  One of Tod’s conclusions is that we in ministry must re-vision ourselves as “CLOs”, Chief Learning Officers.  In other words, as leaders we become the first to say, “I don’t know.”  We become the first to remind others that we have more to learn together. That frees us—and the community around us—to pursue whatever new thing God wants us to learn through the opportunity at hand.

I don’t know about you, but I like the ambition of becoming a CLO.  It’s gutsy.  It’s anti-superyouthpastor.  And it rings of something Jesus cared a lot about: discipleship, becoming people who are good at learning as we follow the Master.

©2010 Fuller Youth Institute