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Back in those days - Leadership in the Unification Movement

After about 50 years of existence, the organization that Sun Myung Moon started in Korea has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon. Development is generally driven by the external environment, by the leadership and by the membership.

So whatever the movement has become today, the leadership has an essential part in it.

It must be said that every description of an entity as diverse as the unification movement necessarily needs to simplify, abstract and focus on essential patterns. The following is an attempt to do that. Readers are encouraged to provide their differing viewpoints.
 

The leadership styles in the movement that come to mind first are the coercive and pacesetting styles. A reason for this might be that they are remembered most strongly, because of their bad effect on the working environment.

Also, the pacesetting style can be related to Sun Myung Moon’s expectation that a leader has to set the standard, the leader should break new grounds first, should be an example, should not preach what he doesn’t do. That essentially applies to all styles – the leader always must be an example that people can respect.

However, the strongest reason for the narrow range of styles exhibited by unification movement leadership is the narrow range of options what members could actually do once they joined, back in those days. That range included fundraising and witnessing activities, the latter mainly consisted of street witnessing.

Even though I encountered all styles in the movement, this narrow range of activities actually restricts the need for creativity and flexibility. Some activities may even require only implementation of instructions handed down by the hierarchy and thus almost no leadership at all.
 

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the old man

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