side and wrong side. There were sharp lines about acceptable beliefs and behaviours, especially in the Church. Some were in. Some were out. No grey.
I grew up in a Protestant church right on the front lines of it all. The church hall was literally on the Protestant side of the neighbourhood, and the sanctuary was in a Catholic IRA-controlled stronghold. Our services were guarded by a dozen soldiers. Most of the neighbourhood residents were hard-working shipyard factory families. Many of the fathers were absent. Drinking and abuse were common. Young people were easily drawn into the Troubles, and some were tangled up with paramilitary forces. When I was 18, my friend Karen McKeown, an innocent and much respected member of our church, was tragically murdered on the church doorstep in an act of political violence. Her life and her death had a tremendous shaping influence on our church and on me personally.
That polarization of Us and Them was my world, but somehow my family lived in the “in-between.” They seemed to be able to see across the barriers and even bridge between them. In my house, bigotry was not allowed, and anti-Catholicism was off limits. In the midst of our fractured and working class community, I lived in a comfortable upper-middle-class home with two loving and supportive parents. We were Protestants, but one of my mother’s best friends was a Catholic, and I had a real crush on a young Catholic woman. At that time, churches had rules about things like drinking and smoking and were legalistic, and people were defined by what they did and didn’t do. But my family wasn’t imprisoned by that and seemed to find a way to accept people no matter what side of the line they fell on. We vacationed in the Republic, the south of Ireland, despite the fact it was judged by many to be feeding the enemy. In subtle ways and in direct ways, my family shaped me to be an embracing person. I grew up encouraged to live in the in-between.
At age 18, I joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and I spent four and a half years working as a police officer. For long hours, I would ride in the small space in the back of a police wagon with three other officers. Our lives, literally, depended on each other. Bessbrook station, where I was first assigned, had the unenviable reputation of being the police station that had lost the most officers to death. We were paid to enact justice, mercy and grace—and every day, we would have to make judgments on what that would look like. I quickly realized that many of those decisions were not as black and white as we had so long been told. My culture schooled me on the Protestant versus Catholic divide. But the first time I was shot at, it was in a Protestant stronghold. There may be no quicker way to lose the conviction that one side is always right and one side is always wrong than the sound of a bullet aimed in your direction.
At age 21, in the midst of my life as a police officer, I had a dramatic experience with God. I turned my back on the self-destructive patterns and partying lifestyle I had developed to deal with the stress, anxiety and trauma of my work. Then, for 18 more months, I sat in that same police wagon with the same guys. They were the same, the outside world was the same, yet I was radically changed. Living my new life as a genuine and authentic apprentice of Jesus in the back of that police wagon remains one of the greatest challenges I have faced as a Christian.
These are the stories of my roots. These are the stories that have shaped me as a person, as a Christian and as a leader. I remember as a child feeling that I never really belonged. I often felt judged because I didn’t quite fit. I was in the in-between. I was a Protestant who went to church in a Catholic part of town. I was upper middle class in a struggling neighbourhood. I was a Christian in a police truck. I grew up in a social environment that was sharp and polarized. But I never was able to understand how you could hate people so much when actually you had so much in common. Not then, and never since, have I ever been able to comfortably live in a world of Us and Them.
I am glad my life story starts in the Emerald Isle. Some of the greatest leaders in the world have their roots there. Bono, my favourite of the batch, sings at the end of the song Sunday Bloody Sunday, “No more! No more!” We don’t have to live this way. There is a better way, and we can get there. It is leadership that moves people toward a preferred future and away from an unwanted current reality. Leadership is the core practice that accompanies change. Change requires leaders, and leaders navigate change.
Up from the roots of my life, inspired by Bono’s “No more!” cry, shaped by my apprenticeship with Jesus and influenced by the words and thinking of so many others, here is how I define leadership:
Leaders are people who look at the world and say “It doesn’t have to be this way” and do something about it.
My story started in Northern Ireland, but it doesn’t end there. For the past two decades, my life has been in Canada. I work as president and CEO of Muskoka Woods, a Christian youth resort. I’ve moved across the ocean, but I still live and work in the in-between. Canadians are known the world over for being peacemakers and intermediaries, bridging the distance between conflict and calm, and modeling a peaceful society of multiculturalism and diversity. That’s the cultural ethos I am proud to live in.
I work with young people—those who are in an in-between stage of life, neither children nor mature adults. About 25,000 of them, primarily aged 7 to 25, come through Muskoka Woods each year. We train another 350 staff members to live out our mission, “inspiring youth to shape their world.” That is the group of young people I aspire to influence.
Although I am a Christian minister by training and vocation, I spend much of my time in sparking conversation with young people and other leaders who do not share my faith, creating space for connection and experiences that bring us together.
My role is to be a leader, and these in-between spaces are where I thrive. I know what it is to live in a context of conflict and judgment. But I am comfortable in the tension. I am not afraid of ambiguity and mystery. I thrive in a diverse place. I believe I am called to be a bridge builder, to bring people together, to create space. I’m wired in my spirit to see the best in people, to not judge people on what they believe and to exercise patience with people who would normally get written off. I was knit together in a context of complexity. I was formed in the in-between—and I believe that the in-between is where the greatest leverage for leadership lies.
The Muskoka Woods Leadership Studio is one of my favourite places to be—not just because of the beautiful weathered timber and the incredible design of the physical space, but also as a metaphor for leadership development. Getting to the front door and into the studio requires you to traverse a 210-foot suspension bridge that spans the gap between regular camp life and the studio.
We built the bridge because we were inspired by a medieval Welsh myth about the good king Llyr. Llyr is a man of immense proportions, as big as a mountain. His daughter, the beloved maiden Branwen, is promised in marriage to the king of Ireland. But when she moves across the sea, she is badly mistreated. When word gets back to Wales of the punishment and disgrace that have befallen her, the Welsh king Llyr is enraged. A host of ships sail to Ireland to rescue her, with Llyr wading alongside them because no ship can contain him. When the Irish see them coming, they burn the bridge over the river so that no man or ship can cross. Arriving at the river’s bank, the Welsh nobles ask their giant king for counsel. Llyr says, “A fo ben, bid bont”—“The one who will be a leader must also be a bridge.” Then Llyr lays his body across the river, and his men walk across his back to the other side.
The leader is the bridge across the in-between. The bridge between the now and the not yet, the bridge between the current reality and the preferred future, the bridge who inspires change. The bridge is my dominant metaphor for my identity as a leader. I can look across the span to see where something needs to happen and then be the bridge.
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
This book is about leadership, but perhaps not the leadership you think you know.
When I did my first course in the Master of Organizational
