I’m currently re-thinking my beliefs about the role and nature of leadership, and I thought it might be interesting to share some of those ideas here.
While I’ve learned a lot about the values and traits that make ‘good’ leaders from church and family, most of what I’ve learned about the skills and attitudes that make it all happen I’ve learned from being an adventure guide, and studying education and psychology. Sometimes these things dovetail and complement each other, and sometimes they conflict rather badly.
Of particular interest to me at the moment is the interaction between risk, responsibility, and control… and the implications for how we lead as those parameters change. As a member of a fairly liberal church, we aren’t especially ‘hands on’ with our leadership, often preferring to let things find their own way, with love and encouragement… and I think this can be justified with reference to Mathew 20:25-28. On the other hand, there are other circumstances, where we have a duty of care, or where a situation is life-threatening, where an increasingly direct approach to leadership might be mandated. Especially in reference to Mathew 18:6. The diagram below illustrates the need for an adaptive approach, and is based on theory from Kurt Lewin, and Priest and Gass (Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, 1997).
Some churches, especially larger and more traditional ones seem to find it easy to justify staying at the authoritarian end of the spectrum, even in low risk conditions… but I find this difficult to justify, both in the light of Mathew 20, and because I believe that excessive authoritarian control can stand in the way of young people and even adults moral development (Kohlberg).
The sources of leadership power and social power, and the risks involved in misuse of power, and failure to understand the servant heart of leadership are other very interesting issues, and these ideas all have interesting implications for Christians in leadership… but I’m going to have to do more reading before I can bring a theological angle to that discussion!
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It does feel like there’s a big danger any time you nominate a personal (or corporate) “leadership style” without any flexibility or adaptability with regards to context. It’s a very naive and unhelpful approach. I guess for most people, it becomes about where that tipping point is for when you choose to become the dragon-person authoritarian. Lots of that must have to do with perception of risk too: where one person sees a critical risk behind every corner (and so regularly adopts an authoritarian style), others see much fewer dangers and only resort to hard and fast at the absolute last resort.
Perhaps this is a justification for leading in teams, rather a reliance of the “risk-perception” of individuals.
Yeah, I think that’s a fair call… although teams are equally capable of producing ‘group-think’ that lacks careful analysis.
I don’t want to make too many value judgments about right and wrong uses of these approaches until I’ve read more widely, but I suspect the most important thing we can do is be open to reflective dialogue, and constructive feedback. The process of giving and receiving feedback is a delicate skill in itself, one I have a lot to learn about.
I’d be very interested to look at what leadership ‘competencies’ are foundational to effective leadership in liberal and emergent clusters, because my understanding is that they are generally much more peer leadership orientated.
Are emergent leaders willing to fight for their key values? What kind of actions do they take in defence of their ‘church’ or communities key values?
I think the most important thing is what you mentioned in your comment - that we not take for granted what we’ve been taught in the corporate business model of leadership and instead seek to be open to growth and change. In other words, we have to engage this issues without golden calves.
well… I guess the absence of comments might be an indicator that people don’t commonly assosciate leadership theory with theological discussion? Or is everyone busy?
This is my baby. Someone say something. hehe
Dunno, I think you’ve nailed it pretty tight. Personally I think the Democratic grade is more efficient and so can be helpful even if the risk is low, but obviously when the risk is low efficiency is not at such a high level of importance. Does Laissez-Faire mean there is no leader or that the “led” are invited to cooperate?
tim, this has some powerful stirring in my mind and heart going on…thanks!
peace
:o) yay! There are people out there. I was starting to wonder if I was just amusing myself… not that it would be anyone elses fault but mine if that was the case!
I think the idea of Laissez-Faire is basically that anyone with a nominal ‘position’ of power, doesn’t use that position to influence an outcome… allowing the natural flow of things to take its course.
The social processes of how egalitarian and peer orientated groups make decisions is quite interesting, and not without its problematic power struggles… but sometimes I think its a very valuable approach.
Equaly “democratic” process can be dominated by people using social power to leverage a biased outcome. The general trend, especially in more traditional churches, of preferring the opinions of men over women on important matters, is one such example.
There’s so much involved in the ethics of how and why we access social power to leverage outcomes in church and in society in general… and often so little dialogue about it. Its a little scary.
I think that we also need to be understanding that our leaders aren’t omnipresent and so sometimes like us they are human and don’t meet our often high expectations of the role they ’should fill’ and in the same way - I’m sure the feeling of inability to be such, can promote what we see as a less than ideal authoritarian stance - the tighter grip. Maybe sometimes our actions are to blame for the leaders we evolve?
Thats a very interesting idea, and I substantially agree. What might we do differently to change the kind of leaders we evolve?
I think perhaps its a self perpetuating equation: the non-leaders defer power, and avoid self actualisation, and so the leader is increasingly obliged to take power, and to actualise them.
You might find the wiki reference on “The myth of leadership” interesting.
leadership matters are missing much…
group leadership ought to develope within a human ecosystem. Please forget about the usual hierarchial models….too much Greek philosophy for me.
….if one does not Biblically lead, h/she will mislead.
Martin, your comment seems remarkably incomplete… you appear to be critising a systematic approach without providing a clear alternative.
Since most of us attend secular schools, and work in secular environments, we speak the dialect of secular leadership. This doesn’t mean that we don’t lead in a biblical fashion, it merely means that we discuss leadership in the language of our culture, and of our time.
My personal experience leaves me confident that many many leadership process that claim to be based on biblical principles turn out to be abusive in some way.
The culture in which the bible was written would have had a strong and diverse dialogue about approaches to leadership, but since we don’t speak aramaic, greek or hebrew, it is imperative that a contemporary dialogue on leadership takes place, and in contemporary language.
For these reasons, your suggestion that we should simply forget ‘the usual heirarchical models’ on the basis of an unexplained personal aversion to the ideas of the Greeks, seems poorly founded, and poorly explained. Perhaps you can make your critique clearer? I’m certainly open to a well reasoned dialogue.
Thanks for your comment
Tim
Tim, regarding your comment of:
“My personal experience leaves me confident that many many leadership process that claim to be based on biblical principles turn out to be abusive in some way.” ….you are quite correct.
Many (if not all) utilize a hierarchical model.
Interpretation (via cultural legibility) provides hordes of information.
You and I may not be that far apart…
Martin.
Okay, thats fair, I’d certainly be interested to hear what you propose as a functional alternative.
I’m certainly not a fan of anything that equates to ‘power over’ people, but the reality is that some people wind up with more social power than others, even if its simply a question of height or attractiveness. There is no functional way to avoid the dynamic of social power, so instead we have to learn to grapple with it in an ethical way.
If I speak up and defend someone’s right to be heard, I have established myself in a position of influence. It would be easy to allow that influence to become power over both the person I spoke up for, and the person I spoke up against.
How do people of faith proactively defended and support those who cannot defend and support themselves, without establishing themselves as having power over them?
Whether you name a heirarchy, or pretend it isn’t there, power dynamics define, and confine human interaction. We can never dispense with heirarchy, all we will ever achieve by that is the squashing of honest dialogue about ethical use of power.
For that reason I would rather openly discuss power heirarchies as I observe them, and how they can be made as ethical, and functional as possible, than to try and engage in some utopian fantasy where equality of value and worth results in equality of power and influence: It never happens.
That those with power can be generous, kind, and egalitarian, I beleive. That we will ever all hold equal power in all things, in this life, I do not.
Greetings Tim,
I had an opportunity to review your comments as per:
“If I speak up and defend someone’s right
to be heard, I have established myself in a
position of influence. It would be easy to
allow that influence to become power over
both the person I spoke up for, and the
person I spoke up against. -Tim
What is your basis for having a “right to be heard”? -Martin
“How do people of faith proactively defended
and support those who cannot defend and
support themselves, without establishing
themselves as having power over them?” -Tim
Perhaps “people of faith” ought not to be involved in securing power over others. “People of faith” ought to be involved in leadership, but not in the current and very prominent format of hierarchical power. Hierarchical power is a falsehood/legend/myth in facilitating worthwhile leadership. Hierarchical seems to dichotomize life in many ways. -Martin
“Whether you name a heirarchy, or pretend it
isn’t there, power dynamics define, and
confine human interaction. We can never
dispense with heirarchy, all we will ever
achieve by that is the squashing of honest
dialogue about ethical use of power.” -Tim
Yes, you can dispense with hierarchy….rather, you must dispense with hierarchy and initiate the understanding and the communicating and the implementation of a human ecological network. -Martin
“For that reason I would rather openly
discuss power heirarchies as I observe them,
and how they can be made as ethical, and
functional as possible, than to try and
engage in some utopian fantasy where
equality of value and worth results in
equality of power and influence: It never
happens.” -Tim
Yes, you can openly discuss power hierarchies as you observe them. Hierarchies can not be made “funtional as possible”….(this sounds existentially weak). Are we to… “engage in some utopian fantasy where equality of value and worth”? All of this negotiational energy is to produce “results in equality of power and influence”? I don’t think so….I don’t believe so.-Martin
“That those with power can be generous,
kind, and egalitarian, I beleive. That we
will ever all hold equal power in all
things, in this life, I do not.” -Tim
I believe you need to define the term “power”.
I believe you need to define the term “leadership”.
You say, “Those with power can be generous, kind and egalitarian.” I say, “those without power can be blind.”
To live is not a matter of having power. For every person, life needs be a combined activity of submission and leadership.
Question: What is your life about?
Martin
Martin, its all very well to demand that I define everything, but so far you have only demonstrated your ability to pull things apart, not to construct anything.
Your questions are interesting and inspire reflection, but they lead to one perspective: yours. If you re-read my original post, I think you’ll find my discussion of a spectrum of approaches to leadership indicates that I believe there are a variety of different acceptable definitions of leadership, and if you’d like to know what I mean by “power” I think I used the term “social power”… which you can probably look up in any social psychology textbook, but basically equates to ‘influence’.
Perhaps I could ask a question: what do you mean by the words “heirarchical power” and what do you propose as an alternative?