One question that often gets asked about leadership is
whether leaders are born with some sort of leadership gene, or are they made by
teaching and experience?
Since I am in the business of teaching leaders, you can
probably guess my bias, but the question allows me to introduce my experience
with developing leaders, especially clergy leaders. This blog will then serve as an introduction
to a series of blogs on things that I learned about leadership.
Do We Have Lots of
Bad Leaders in the Ministry?
When I went on the staff of the Diocese of Texas, Bishop
Payne had just been elected coadjutor.
Our offices were adjacent and this gave us a good amount of time to
discuss congregations and clergy leadership in the Diocese. We found that we were being asked an
evocative question by many of our clergy and lay leaders; “What are you going
to do with all those ineffective and troublesome clergy you have in the
diocese?” About three years into Bishop
Payne’s tenure, I had worked with enough diocesan clergy that I had a
much different perspective. This held up
for all my time on the staff in Texas, and it continued to be my experience in working
with clergy leaders since that time.
First, let me say this.
We did have problem clergy.
However, they were very few in number.
They had poor leadership ability and they often generated conflict in
their congregations by both their style of leadership and their
personality. They were the source of
much of that question we were being asked. They were few in number, but they
generated a lot of attention from parish and diocesan leadership and thus
created the impression that there were “lots of them” out there. They, of course, had to be dealt with one at
a time as the next crisis arose, and there was always a next crisis.
Training and the
Three Types of Leaders
What I found interesting is that I could divide the
clergy in this large diocese into three distinctive groups. Here is how I came to see them.
The Instinctive
Leaders
We had about 10% of our leaders that I would describe as
Instinctive Leaders. They had
instinctive and intuitive leadership skills and mostly these worked well for
them. They were not much interested in
what we taught or shared about leadership.
This was because most of them believed they already knew how to
lead. Now note that I am not denigrating
these folks. Some were very talented and
I often tried to have them teach or share with our other clergy. When I did the problem I encountered was that
many times what they thought that they had done as a leader had little
to do with what they actually did, or it was so instinctive, they could not
really describe the how and why. They
were essentially saying “do what I did in this situation and you will be a
leader too.” Unfortunately for some of
these instinctual leaders when their natural instincts didn’t work, they did
not know how to adjust. They just kept
plugging along with what they had always done before. A very few hit a wall hard enough that it
opened them up to learning new behaviors, but mainly we found it best to let
this 10% just run with what they knew.
The Majority of Leaders
Most of our clergy leaders, I would say about 70 to 80%
were teachable. It was this group that I worked with over my 9 years
there. They had some skills, wanted to
lead, and were willing to learn especially when what we presented helped
them. We weren’t teaching them a single
style of leadership. What we tried to
help them understand was the kind of leader their personality and experience
tended to make them. Personality
profiles are helpful in this and so was the DISC profile. I believe the Meyers-Briggs info is best for
intrapsychic understanding and the DISC was best for organizational or
outward understanding.
So, I liked leaders who had self-awareness about this
information. Then the issue became how
to maximize their assets. I am a strong
proponent of the Situational Leadership Grid and often use this tool to help
leaders come to understand both their preferred style and what a group might
need from them at any given time. For 9
years we gave these leaders sound theory and practice, and watched so many of
them grow and do wonderful and effective work in congregations.
The Agent Leader
I also found that there were clergy who were unteachable
on the other end of the scale from instinctive folks. These clergy did not function well in most
any leadership role. We started sending
these for evaluation at the Clergy Career Development Center in Fort
Worth. They were often anxious that they
would be told they shouldn’t be priest, but this never happened. What did happen for most was that they came
to understand that they worked best in a structured environment that provided strong
and clear organization roles for them.
Several of these went into chaplaincy in medical institutions and
schools. They were happy to take
communion to the sick or lead a school devotional service. I call them Agent Leaders because they loved
carrying out many of the tasks of priesthood, but had trouble handling the
leadership role demanded of them in the open ended and precarious world of
parish ministry. Sometimes these
folks ended up on the staff of larger congregations, but again their job
carried definite structural boundaries.
One could hardly doubt their dedication and spirituality, and once
finding the right environment, they flourished.
Why Seminaries Cannot Teach Leadership
What I did come to understand clearly during that time
was that most of us come out of a seminary environment where the model of
leadership is that of “knowledge leader.”
This is what our professors were, well most of them. They honestly believed that the task of clergy
is to deliver scripture, theology, church history or whatever and our knowledge
will win trust, impress our laity, and have them willing to follow us as their
“ordained” leader. Most of us learned
quickly that this model just does not translate into the community of the
Church and our parishes. We often learned
this painfully. Sometimes the pain of
this initial learning causes clergy to withdraw and lose confidence in the
abilities and potential they do have. They
get stuck. This is why dysfunctional
congregations make such a poor context for young clergy to learn and grow. All
the learnings are negative.
I know what you are thinking. Then why don’t we teach folks leadership in
Seminary? My answer may make some of you
mad, but I have come to understand that one learns leadership in the field and
by attempting to lead. We learn it by
taking initiative and learning from experience.
Good leadership theory helps, but leading is learned in a community
because leadership is both relational and behavioral. It is not an office or title, and it is
certainly not something as simple as “the ten characteristics of a great
leader.”
I say it this way.
Developing leaders is the work of the Church. It cannot be delegated to seminaries.
I am not saying that seminary education isn’t important. I believe strongly that to be an effective
parish priest requires learning in these areas.
Effective Leaders
So what kind of clergy leadership do I find helpful? I like Leaders who think and pray through
what needs to be done while interacting with the key lay leaders of their
churches. Then they take initiative, and have the ability to stop periodically
and ask a profound question, “Is what is happening, what I intended.” Then they ask, “How do I need to adjust or
enhance my leadership to be more effective?
Leadership is not about good or bad leadership. Leadership is about effectiveness.
What kind of leadership is often ineffective? Those leaders who do everything instinctually
and with little self-awareness are sometimes great in the right situation. However, some times they are dangerous. I’ve found some who have a sense of
entitlement and this can be very damaging to their congregations and ultimately
to themselves. Ineffective also are those
leaders who are so introspective (I did not say introverted, the majority of
clergy are introverts) that they are unable to act. They are much too
analytical or self-critical to be able to take initiative and stay with it long
enough to have it work. A good leader
cannot ever have all the facts, nor can one wait to “feel” good about making a
decision because most important decisions have some inherent risk in them.
My advice?
If you are called to ordained leadership
accept that with this comes a commitment to life-long learning. Along the way you will also find that having
good mentors and honest colleagues will help you become the leader God and your
people need you to be.
