In my last blog, I asked
and answered the question of whether a Bishop can make a difference. My answer
comes from my 9 years working directly with Bishop Claude Payne. He made a difference and I am convinced
Bishops do matter, but I am less optimistic about what they are actually doing
now and whether they have a sense of urgency about our present situation. I will leave that for you to decide.
Here I want to talk about
six things that I learned from working with this outstanding leader and person
about leadership.
First, People need time to talk themselves into a good
decision!
Bishop Payne understood
that no matter how good a diocesan solution to a problem or recommendation is,
leaders on the local level need time to think it over. Often at the end of a meeting with a Vestry,
they would ask me what the Diocese wanted them to do. I would pause and then say something like
this, “You have heard our recommendations, but you will need time to talk about
this among yourselves. I am going to get
in my car and drive home. When you are
ready to talk further, I will come back to support you. We went from a diocese often in open conflict
with local leaders to one trusted. And
people almost always talked themselves into the right decision or an even
better one.
Second, no matter what is happening on the local level
or how intense or dysfunctional the community is, the one thing we must not do
as diocesan leaders is react!
Calm and measured
leadership, especially in a crisis or a conflict, sends a clear message that
reason will persist. In a crisis or
polarized situation, the strongest voices get the air time, but the better leaders
are often shouted down. By not reacting,
we set a tone for good leaders to be safe and come forward. Once when I was struggling with a major issue
in my parish in Seattle, I met for coffee with a Priest/therapist friend of
mine. After dumping for some time, he
interrupted me with, “Can I ask you a question Kevin? Is this the worse problem you have ever had
to deal with as a Priest?” I sat there
stunned and then said, “Hell no!” Then
he went on, “So why are you so obsessed with this?” I immediately felt my inner engine slow down,
then my frustration began to ebb. At the
end of our time together, I thanked him and bought the coffee. It was the cheapest counseling session that I
ever had.
Third, to be an effective a leader, you must be
willing to be consistent and this often means quite frankly being redundant.
Here Bishop Payne’s
personality helped. As an ESTJ on the
Meyers-Briggs scale, he didn’t mind repeating himself. Most of us NF and NT types do mind. For example, we preach a sermon to our
congregations on Vision and then just move on assuming everyone got it. Bishop Payne kept sharing the Diocese of
Texas Vision until our leaders started repeating it. Then he kept repeating it.
Another example is that clergy and lay leaders
decide on a year of Stewardship or Evangelism and just about the time that our
members begin to get it, we move on to the next thing. For ten years, Bishop Payne started every
annual Clergy Conference with a review of our Mission and our core values with
examples of how these got lived out. I’ve
learned in addition that many clergy bail on a subject just before it was about
to take root.
Fourth, Bishop Payne was adamant that “A vision
without a strategic plan is just a dream.” One of his often repeated
phrases was “It is true that the devil is in the details, but so are the
Angels!” We learned to attend to the
details. For example, when we engaged in
revitalization of a congregation, we helped them get the right leader and work
out their local vision. Then we helped
them put together the resources and steps they would need to move toward that
vision; in other words a strategic plan.
Fifth, Bishop Payne knew how to create buy in by local
and diocesan leadership.
Shortly after he became
diocesan, he gathered the members of all the boards, commissions, endowment trustees
of the Diocese in one place. He shared
the vision and the core values. Then he
told them, “What I need from you is for you to show me how your group can
contribute to this vision and core values in cooperation with our other
ministries? In one meeting, he ended the
turf holding, posturing, and competition that prevailed among our different
entities. Later, when I went to the
Cathedral in Dallas, I did the same.
Finally, I would mention that Bishop Payne modeled for
me that the commitment to be a leader meant a commitment to be a lifelong
learner.
Imagine what it was like
to go to work at 48 years old with a 63 year old leader who constantly went to
conferences, explored new ideas, read the latest on leadership and took what he
learned and absorbed it into himself, his skills and leadership. When he ran across helpful but challenging
ideas, he would bring it to his staff.
One day he started our staff meeting with this question. What has become taboo for our team, what can’t
we talk about here? There followed a
difficult but creative conversation. The
result was that we all kept growing and learning.
When we offered the Clear
Vision Conferences for five years to share what we and three other dioceses had
learned and our best practices, we would end with an evaluation. One question we asked these diocesan leaders
and staff was this. What have you most
learned from this time together? Often
they would answer, “If we had Bishop Payne for our Bishop then our work would
be so much more meaningful and productive.”
Bishop Payne’s response when he read these was “they missed the point. The problem isn’t that they have the wrong
person to be their Bishop. The problem
is that they aren’t willing to become the kind of leaders who can caste a
vision, have a plan, and pay the price of leading change.”
Some learned. I
was always left asking myself could I?
Can you?
