As someone who tends to believe that good reasons will impact decision-making more than feelings, this article summarizes 3 realities that I repeatedly stumble over. The article talks about three ways the brain is hard-wired to assess change. You must be a CC subscriber to read the whole article. But here are the three: Priming Effect. The best we have experienced in the past primes what we look to for the future. Duh! Go ahead. Try and get your congregation to plan for the future based on what the future will probably be like rather than on what the past was like. Loss aversion. "(Congregations) cling to the status quo because ... the fear of losing something trumps any expectation of new benefits." Who knew! Focusing illusion. When a decision requires dealing with difficult, unfamiliar, ambiguous, or intangible outcomes, a congregation will reframe it into easy, familiar, clear, tangible ones - and thereby avoid dealing with the real issue. For example, instead of dealing with discipleship development, lets talk about property development! Unfortunately, the article does not talk about how to help congregations effectively calm these responses so that other options can come into play - and be acted on. That is the leadership challenge that we get aid the big bucks to figure out! (And while there are no sure-fire techniques to respond to these challenges - there actually are good resources for us to learn and use.)
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:11:49 +0000
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