
16 Oct #246 – Integrity Idea 064: Seek Horizontal Counsel
Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization. We believe some are critical (and necessary) steps in the RENEW/RE-ALIGN/RE-IMAGINE/RESTORE process. Others are just ideas to be considered if they feel like a good fit based on what leaders prayerfully discern is best for stewarding the organization toward its WHY.
Like our last Integrity Idea “Seek Vertical Counsel”, “Seek Horizontal Counsel” is not an “if it fits” idea. It is rooted in humility, and in addition to being one of the four first principles embedded in the word Integriosity, humility is the key to understanding the “HOW” of the other three “first things”–righteousness, kingdom and love–and it is a key to wisdom
Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity®–actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities. You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)
INTEGRITY IDEA: Seek Horizontal Counsel
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” is about a faithful leader actively seeking counsel from faithful advisors as well as from the people they lead.
Seeking Aligned Counsel.
Seeking and receiving wise counsel is certainly a Biblical principles and priority:
Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14)
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. (Proverbs 12:15)
Without counsel plans fail, but with advisors they succeed. (Proverbs 15:22)
In abundance of counselors there is victory. (Proverbs 24:6)
Os Hillman writes: “When we believe that we know all we need to know, we are in a dangerous place.”
A faithful leader seeking to lead with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing should actively seek counsel from other people, whether co-workers, mentors, other faithful leaders, or outside advisors. But the Bible also warns about counsel that could divert a faithful leader off the path toward business a better way in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities–away from God’s design for work and business.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. (Psalm 1:1)
But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. (Jeremiah 17:5)
We believe it is important for a faithful leader to consider carefully those whom they rely upon for counsel to ensure that they are receiving “wisdom” and “direction” from people who understand and support aligning the purpose, values and culture of the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities–people who understand choosing the way of God’s Kingdom rather than the way of the world’s kingdom.
Advisors (such as financial advisors and lawyers) who do not share the organization’s or leader’s Biblical values and priorities are unlikely to factor those values and priorities into their advice on how to proceed in a situation. Even worse, their advice will almost certainly guide the faithful leader toward the ways of the world.
While a faithful leader may not want to (or be able to) change the people surrounding them in the organization, they can be wise about the advice they receive and can seek out advice from trusted sources who understand and value the leader’s pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way.
The Need for Humility
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” is rooted in humility and requires a leader to understand who they are in relation to others and to recognize that that they do not have all the answers. Because humility is the “HOW” of righteousness, kingdom and love and the key to wisdom, “Seek Horizontal Counsel” reinforces the priorities of the Creation Mandate, Imago Dei, the Golden Rule and the commandments to love God and love your neighbor.
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” affirms the Creation Mandate by recognizing the importance to good stewardship of excellent decision-making. It affirms Imago Dei by seeing each person as created in the image of God with unique gifts of productivity and creativity. It loves people by offering two of the three ingredients Michael Stallard has identified in his book Connection Culture as the keys to creating a culture of connection and engagement–Value and Voice.
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” unleashes what we have called “horizontal wisdom” by allowing a leader to gain the perspective and insight of others with different gifts who share the leader’s commitment to faithful integrity toward Biblical flourishing.
Seeking “horizontal wisdom” also allows a faithful leader to unleash and embrace the unique contributions each person they lead has to offer, which enriches the leader, the organization and its people. When a leader believes he is smarter and more skilled than those who work for him and does not seek their insights, that leader will make decisions that do not take into account the wisdom, knowledge and experience of others in the organization.
These are the people closer to the nuts and bolts of the business–closer to customers, closer to the factory floor, closer to the distribution system, closer to customer service. They are also humans with different gifts, skills, experience and perspectives.
Stallard describes what he calls a “knowledge trap”:
Knowledge traps can arise from . . . decision makers who lack the humility to seek and consider ideas and opinions of others . . ..
If a leader lacks the humility to recognize the value of other humans in the organization and give them a “voice”, the knowledge of those humans is “trapped” with them and can’t translate into wisdom for the leader.
A leader without access to the wisdom, knowledge and experience of other people in the organization (whether because the leader does not seek it or because the leader has created a culture in which it is not considered “safe” to share it or because the leader has chosen to filter all information through “yes” people) cannot make the best decisions for the organization, which means they cannot provide the best stewardship of the organization and its people called for by the Creation Mandate.
CONTINUUM: People
The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums. There is nothing magic about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values and a Re-Imagined Culture. The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.
Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” is on the People Continuum. It is primarily about a faithful leader seeking the information, knowledge and wisdom of faithful advisors and of people with whom they work. Of course, it can involve practices that facilitate counsel, and it can be a practice encouraged organizationally, but it is about one person seeing the unique gifting and contribution of another person.
COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert
The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations–from Highly Covert to Highly Overt–that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.
Most Integrity Ideas will have one place on the scale. Some can vary depending on how they are implemented. “Seek Horizontal Counsel” is Highly Covert (an action that would be taken by a secular company), because it helps a leader make the best decisions and it encourages a culture of connection in which people are engaged.
Like many Integrity Ideas that ate Highly Covert, “Seek Horizontal Counsel” can be moved toward the Overt end of the Continuum by explaining its Biblical foundations or tying it to a business a better way culture aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities toward Biblical flourishing.
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners
When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community and Kingdom.
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” principally serves Employees, Customers/Clients, and Owners. Employees are valued and given a voice. Customers/Clients are better served because decisions take into account the information, knowledge and wisdom of people in the organization closest to the Customers/Clients, and Owners are served by faithful leaders making more informed and better decisions.
When we believe that we know all we need to know, we are in a dangerous place. (Os Hillman)
IMPLEMENTATION
Implementing “Seek Horizonal Counsel” has two dimensions.
• The first is putting in place practices to ensure that the faithful leader is benefitting from the wisdom, knowledge and experience of other in the organization.
• The second is ensuring that the leader is receiving counsel from people who share the organization’s and the leader’s Biblical values and priorities and who understand and support the organization’s pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.
“Seek Horizontal Wisdom” reinforces an organizational culture that prioritizes excellence, human dignity, relationships and flourishing.
But “Seek Horizontal Wisdom” can present a challenge to leaders of organizations, because it is rooted in humility, and humility is contrary to what our secular culture (and even our faith as usual culture) elevates and rewards. The incredible challenge of being humbly counter-cultural as a leader has been recognized by many commentators. Here are two:
Jim Collins: Good-to-great transformations don’t happen without Level 5 leaders at the helm. They just don’t. Our discovery of Level 5 leadership is counterintuitive. Indeed, it is countercultural. People generally assume that transforming companies from good to great requires larger-than-life leaders—big personalities like Iacocca, Dunlap, Welch, and Gault, who make headlines and become celebrities. My preliminary hypothesis is that there are two categories of people: those who don’t have the Level 5 seed within them and those who do. The first category consists of people who could never in a million years bring themselves to subjugate their own needs to the greater ambition of something larger and more lasting than themselves.
James Hunter: To the extent that Christians exercise leadership, then, they face an unavoidable paradox between pursuing faithful presence and the social consequences of achievement; between leadership and an elitism that all too often comes with it. The paradox is that all Christians are called to a life of humility, of placing others’ interests ahead of their own, of attending to the needs of “the least among us.” Yet leadership inevitably puts all in relative positions of influence and advantage. There is no way around this paradox and it is especially acute the more social influence one has.
Ensuring a Flow of Wisdom, Knowledge and Experience
In post #198 (Integrity Idea 035: Tear Down Those Walls), we looked in-depth at taking steps to identify and dismantle the barriers to information and wisdom “flow” that can exist within an organization. We distinguished between “wisdom” walls and “information” walls.
• We used the term “wisdom wall” to describe a situation in which a leader cuts themselves off from the wisdom that resides above and below the leader in the organization. We identified “I’m the Smartest” wisdom walls and “Just Tell Me What I Want To Hear” wisdom walls.
• We used the term “information wall” to describe a situation in which a person or group in an organization fails to share the information with others who could do their jobs better if they had the information. We identified “I Wasn’t Taught To Share” information walls, “I Don’t Like You” information walls, “I Don’t Want To Share” information walls and “I Want To Control It All” information walls.
You can look back at that post for more details. What is important for “Seek Horizontal Counsel” is that a faithful leaders need to make an honest assessment of the walls they have created to prevent wise counsel as well as the walls created by others that have the effect of blocking information flow to the leader.
In post #198 (Integrity Idea 035: Tear Down Those Walls), we offered several specific suggestions and practices to help dismantle any walls and open up opportunities for horizontal counsel, and we encourage you to look back at that post.
Ensuring Aligned Counsel
We believe that ensuring a faithful leader is receiving counsel from people who share the organization’s and the leader’s Biblical values and priorities and who understand and support the organization’s pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing is even more challenging than dismantling wisdom and information walls.
It is so difficult because the pursuit of faithful integrity toward Biblical flourishing is so countercultural. John Maxwell writes about “integrity”:
Integrity is antithetical to the spirit of our age.
If mere “integrity” is countercultural, consider how that disconnect is magnified by the addition of the word “faithful”. Very recently in post #243 (Integrity is Not Enough), we discussed what it means to take “integrity” up to a level of what we call “faithful integrity”. Faithful integrity offends the kingdom of the world.
We believe finding “horizontal counsel” from financial advisors, accountants, business consultants and lawyers whose advice will take into account the pursuit of alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities takes effort, to say the least. They are not the advisors most organizational leaders have on speed dial.
You may remember from earlier posts that some faith and work organizations concluded, based on surveys of workers, that only 5-9% of the workers who self-identified as Evangelical Christians had a Biblical understanding of work as a sacred activity and a calling. How many of those are the people from whom a faithful leader will “Seek Horizontal Counsel”?
Faithful integrity is also counter to the culture of faith as usual. Many good-intentioned leaders genuinely seeking to integrate their Biblical faith and their work have unwittingly been detoured onto Side Roads by faith as usual Placebos. They may be faith/work authors, conference speakers, or members of cohorts and roundtables.
But they may be the wrong counselors for a faithful leader trying to “Seek Horizontal Counsel” and pursue faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing. They may be the wrong counselors because their counsel is likely be to follow them down the same Side Roads on which they are detoured.
A faithful leader seeking “horizontal counsel” from other leaders of Biblical faith–whether through books, talks, conferences, cohorts or round-tables–in their pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way must be vigilant to avoid being drawn toward faith as usual.
PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): I started Integrous precisely because I sensed a need in the faith/work movement for faithful “horizontal counsel”–a trusted guide to provide integrity advice and legal counsel to a faithful leader as they pursued the integration of their Biblical faith with their leadership of an organization God had given them to steward. It was intended for the leader who understand the limitations of content, conferences, coaches and cohorts and wanted an experienced advisor and trusted counselor walk with them–offering truth, guidance and practical advice–as they pursued God’s purpose for business and work. This is what I wrote back in post #001 (Integriosity–The Foundation):
We believe there are many leaders who are guided by the Bible in their personal lives and sincerely want to live an integrated faith life at work. They have heard about “faith/work integration” in a sermon or conference or book and genuinely want to pursue God’s purpose for their work and for the people and organizations they lead.
Sadly, many are confused or frustrated or even intimidated. Some have given up. Others think they are doing it, but they are actually missing the mark. These problems frequently are the result of hearing a misguided message, an incomplete message or a purely theological message (and then wondering how it practically applies “back at the office”). Many fall into what has been called the “knowing-doing gap”.
There is an answer–we call it Integriosity®. . . . Integriosity is a new word, but these are not new ideas. It is going back to Biblical basics and then rolling up our sleeves to see how to actually implement them “back at the office” in a way that humanizes people, beautifies the world and glorifies God. It is seeking an “ancient path” referenced in Jeremiah 6:16.
ESSENCE: Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.
INTEGRITY IDEA: Seek Horizontal Counsel
“Seek Horizontal Counsel” is about a faithful leader actively seeking counsel from faithful advisors as well as from the people they lead. It is rooted in humility and requires a leader to understand who they are in relation to others and to recognize that that they do not have all the answers. “Seek Horizontal Counsel” affirms Imago Dei by seeing each person as created in the image of God with unique gifts of productivity and creativity. It unleashes what we have called “horizontal wisdom” by allowing a leader to gain the perspective and insight of others with different gifts who share the leader’s commitment to faithful integrity toward Biblical flourishing. Seeking “horizontal wisdom” also allows a faithful leader to unleash and embrace the unique contributions each person they lead has to offer, which enriches the leader, the organization and its people. A leader without access to the wisdom, knowledge and experience of other people in the organization cannot make the best decisions for the organization, which means they cannot provide the best stewardship of the organization and its people. “Seek Horizontal Wisdom” reinforces an organizational culture that prioritizes excellence, human dignity, relationships and flourishing.
COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): People
COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert
STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners
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Photo credit: Original image by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash
(photo cropped)
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