Friday, October 16, 2009

Experimentation into Expression

Re-reading Art and Fear last night I was reminded about development. When an artist is younger he/she experiments with lots of different technology and ideas but as time goes by and certain approaches, styles and tools emerge more prominently than others then experimentation turns into expression.

The art of leadership is no different. When I was younger I tried a variety of approaches, searching for the right combination of values to guide me. (i.e. relational, hierarchical, choleric, sanguine, etc...) Age and repetition increasingly remind what my style is, what my strengths are, the concepts I'm most comfortable with and what I'm most effective at. Experimenting turns into expressing.

From a biblical perspective wisdom has less to do with knowledge and more to do with application of knowledge. I think expressing is the application of knowledge. So, if you're a young leader (or young anything) and you want to get better at what you do, you really only have one option: keep doing it over and over and over.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

`From a biblical perspective wisdom has less to do with knowledge and more to do with application of knowledge.'

This is a great question that opens up all kinds of possible directions. knowledge being empirical? Stochastic? I love what Socrates said about knowledge, 'True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.' Karl Popper said, `Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.' BTW, if you are looking for good book on socio-philo practical theories that are timely for where our country is today. Karl Popper's 'The Open Society' Part 1 and 2. Well thought i'd stop by and say hello and do some damage. Hope you and family doing well.

Jonathan Foster said...

good stuff. thanks man. infinite ignorance... that could be a sermon title. tell fam hi.

j