Free Unleashing The Power Of Rubber Bands by Nancy Ortberg Page A

dusty organizations and keeps people motivated and engaged and creative.
    I am not interested in living a life without passion. Put two people next to each other, one with passion and one without, and I’ll choose passion every time. Okay, almost every time. People are attracted to it; they want to follow it. We need passion. The term may be overused and hackneyed and predictable seemingly to the point of irrelevance, but true passion is still vital to great leadership.
    So how do we put these two together—passion and humility—in order to bring the best of both to the worlds we lead? Knowing all the good that humility can bring, while seeing with crystal clarity that it can also slip into a kind of low self-image and martyrdom that is not godly, how do we team it up with all the energy of passion, understanding that passion has the tendency to drift undetected into pride and arrogance? We must make humility and passion a both/and, not an either/or.
    If you are looking for a direct answer and/or an equationfor this, you have so bought the wrong book. Actuallyif you ever buy any book that promises to parse and spreadsheet this out for you, drop it and run. There is no clear-cut answer to this tension beyond this: We must.
    We must figure out, perhaps in different ways every day, how to stand between differing forces and, as best we can, cull out the best and winnow out the worst.
    We must have difficult conversations with others and take long, hard inward looks at our own motivations.
    We must teach and talk about the two words (and all the “two words” that create tension) to define them and use them with wisdom.
    We must release ourselves from the pressure to make decisions when the reality is that we are managing tensions.
    When the occasion calls for it, we must celebrate that we (ourselves and our teams) have, as best we can, hit it about right.
    Managing tensions isn’t about compromise or consensus. It isn’t about balance, which is too simply about finding the 50 percent middle ground and standing there. There is no tension in middle ground. Managing tensions is about finding the right place, given the particular set of circumstances and words, that gets the tension as right as we can, given that we are not perfect people. There are no perfect answers here, much like there are no perfect decisions. But that can never move us away from the tensions, only toward.
    Toward the next wave and the next wave and the next. Each one different from the one before, each one wonderful in its own way.

defining Moments
    LEADERS LIKE TO TALK about defining moments: critical timeswhen we draw a line in the sand, put a stake in the ground. Defining moments are vivid times of commitment where direction is clarified, corners are turned, hills are taken. You can’t always predict when they will occur, but it’s this very element of surprise that adds to the drama.
    We cannot live or lead without defining moments. We need them both individually and corporately. They write our history. They help us start new chapters, give us the courage to turn over new leaves, and breathe fresh wind into complacent and mediocre institutions. Defining moments are new beginnings and fresh starts.
    They are all those things and at the same time, theyare just moments. Anyone who has experienced a defining moment knows this. Some moments “take” and some don’t, but the ones that count are those that somehow have the power to produce a new way of living.
    Sometimes we mistakenly think that the power is in the defining moment itself. But the power is actually in the resolve following the moment, the momentum that emanates from it. It may be more accurate to say that the power is in the tandem of the two: the defining moment and the plan that follows. Defining moments are only as significant as the lifestyles they produce. If defining moments don’t change things, they didn’t define anything.
    During my time in Axis, I experienced two particular