It was whilst playing chess with my adult son that he said to me, “dad, you play a very passive style of chess.” It’s true, I’ve played chess for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always had what chess people would call a passive approach, rather than an active approach.
This got me thinking about leadership in cross-cultural spaces.
You see, passive chess focuses on situating one’s pieces in as developed and flexible and resilient a way as possible, ready to react to any moves or openings presented by the other side. Rather than pro-active, its reactive. Rather than aggressive, it’s responsive. You are always very aware of what the pieces opposite you are doing. And I think these are good skills for cross-cultural leadership.
Passivity or reactivity is under appreciated in Western leadership manuals. What is celebrated is initiative, forward movement, aggression. The Western leader thinks about his own strategy and vision, throws pieces forward. He does not adequately consider the contours of the culture, the whole board of history and geography and the entrenched dispositions of the status quo into which he or she is stepping. I’m not talking about chess as warfare and culture as an enemy to be defeated, I’m talking about chess as dance and culture as a reality to be respected. Active leadership in cross-cultural situations is naive. It does not show adequate respect to culture. It is internally driven. It is hasty. And it often breaks up against a well-established, centuries-old defence.
What follows are some thoughts on attributes of passive chess and how they can help us think about cross-cultural leadership.
Patience
My chess style is slow – sometimes infuriatingly so for my son. There can often be what appears to be an opening that I refuse to take. I’m not in a hurry. I think of chess as a very ancient Persian game, and the Persians were not in a hurry, so neither am I!
Cross-cultural leadership demands patience. Things do not change quickly. It’s important to take time early on to learn language, to make friends, to interrogate the culture, to watch your dance partner and learn their moves, their style. Cross-cultural leadership is reactive to cultural realities, therefore time must be taken to watch, to understand, to respect. Very often, to the question, “what should we do in this situation?” the answer ought to be, “absolutely nothing.”
Piece development
Passivity is not inactivity. The passive chess player is developing their pieces, getting them all off the baseline into useable situations, making sure the castles (rooks) are not left in the corners. And the cross-cultural leader is always working to develop people, to make sure no-one is left in the corner, to make sure that the full array of diverse resources that have been made available to them are encouraged into situations of usefulness. All chess players have blind spots or preferences – they neglect their bishops or their knights because they don’t really know how to deploy them.
Chess was invented during the Persian empire, and the Persians were masters of diversity, of appreciating the strengths of the different constituent peoples within their empire.
Cross-cultural leadership needs to be better at taking time to develop all of its diverse resources. Don’t overlook your knights, although they have unusual movement patterns. Don’t neglect your castles – it takes a great deal of work, intentionality and time to get your castles out of the corner of the board and into play, but it is work that is worthwhile in the long run. You can’t win without your castles, but it takes time to develop them. What a powerful analogy for deployment of diversity. Every church and organisation has its biases in development. Some groups are given plenty of development opportunities, other demographics are under-developed, given fewer opportunities, are unseen and undervalued.
Absorbing Pressure
Passive players absorb pressure from more aggressive opponents while they are positioning themselves. Absorbing pressure, taking pain, is part of this kind of leadership. More active Western leadership manuals encourage the solving of problems, the disbursal of pressure. If there is mess it needs tidying up. If there is an issue it needs solving. This is the problem with the complex which we call “white saviourism” – it is too linear or too single-issue. In chess, solving an immediate problem usually creates problems elsewhere on the board. Repelling one attack creates a breach somewhere else in your defences. And so absorbing pressure, resisting the quick fix, seeming inactivity is a skill to be learnt. This constitutes a significant difference from the instincts of white leadership, which always wants to work for a default position of no threats and no pressure. For many majority leaders, functioning in the presence of threat, insecurity and multiple unanswered questions is more of a normal situation. Pressure is a part of life.
Part of leadership within a cross-cultural environment is listening to diversity pain. White people need to listen to black pain. Westerners need to listen to postcolonial pain. Men need to listen to female pain. This is a listening without solving, absorbing pain without simplistic solutions. Can you absorb the pressure?
Flexibility
Passive chess is all about flexibility. Positioning one’s pieces ready to move in multiple directions. Not committing everything to one strategy. Keeping one’s options open. Undoubtedly, flexibility is requisite for any cross-cultural endeavour. I don’t know of any cross-cultural church plants which are on plan A. Many are way down the alphabet. Especially amongst the unreached, there are so many strategy-spoilers, so much unpredictability, so many hidden pitfalls. That’s why some communities are so unreached – if it were easy to reach them everyone would be doing it.
Resilience
Setting up well in passive chess helps one to absorb various attacks without it undermining one’s staying power. Pieces cover other pieces. There are multiple lines of communication between one’s various pieces on the board. In the same way, resilient cross-cultural teams require cover from multiple stakeholders. The more lines of communication there are, the more resilient the disposition. Teams that have only one external support (oversight) are more vulnerable than teams which have numerous people covering them in prayer and pastoral support and friendship. This set-up is complex. Wherever there are multiple stakeholders, voices, perspectives there is an increase in complexity, but with it an increase in resilience. An army with only one supply line is vulnerable. A project with only one income source is vulnerable. A leadership style with only one set of tools is vulnerable. In all things, a singularity is more efficient, perhaps, but less resilient.
Respect
The reason one might play chess passively is out of respect for one’s opponent. And the reason one might lead passively is out of respect to the broader cultural context, out of deference to the dispositions across the entire board, out of humility towards the multiple complex dynamics of language and history and tradition and cultural memory. If you underestimate the power of culture, you will fail. If you underestimate the presence of history, you will fail. If you show no respect to language, you will fail.
This is a plea against naiveté, against underestimating the importance of cultural learning, against hasty deployment. You can’t speak without listening. You can’t teach without learning. You can’t dance without respect for your partner. You can’t church plant without context analysis.
Opportunism
When one plays chess passively, develops pieces, absorbs pressure, positions oneself for flexibility and resilience, and understands the dispositions of one’s opponent, the time will come for opportunism. A gap will open up. An opening will present itself. An opportunity to get in behind enemy lines and go on a bit of a run will certainly come. What is takes is eyes to see. It may well be one of your least preferred pieces that has the opportunity for breakthrough – an overlooked pawn or an unmanageable knight. Opportunity will arise where you least expect it. You may be focussing on one area of the board and a gap may open up somewhere else. This is always the way of things in cross-cultural mission. This has always been God’s way. Breakthroughs always come at the margins, in an unexpected guise, at a surprising moment. Barnabas’ great gift was his ability to see the grace of God in unexpected situations – he saw the potential in Saul when everyone in Jerusalem saw a threat, he saw the grace of God in Antioch when everyone else saw a problem.
Cross-cultural opportunism is all about eyes to see, about openness to surprise, about willingness to move towards an opening that others might overlook, dismiss, discount, devalue, or fear to engage.
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