I believe that the most pressing leadership issue for today is the failure to comprehend the changing paradigm of leadership as it relates to the emerging culture and the expectations of followers with respect to greater participation and integration in decision making, as well as, autonomy in the execution of their roles. In short, the hierarchical structure of the human pyramid has become archaic in a postmodern society. Unfortunately some of the people at the top of the pyramid haven’t received the memo yet and their organizations are suffering because of it.
William Bridges, in “Leading the De-Jobbed Organization”, observes that the leadership model of the future will require flexibility and adaptability in a culture of rapidly changing tastes and preferences. The hierarchical structure inherently inhibits this type of response. Instead, a team approach in which leadership is shared and in which teams are given the freedom to respond is preferable. In this model, says Bridges, “Leadership passes back and forth from person to person as the phases of the project succeed one another and different skills become critical”(1996, 15). He posits that it is time to break out of the “job” boxes and climb down from the pyramid to engage leadership at a foundational level and in a collegial fashion.
In postmodern society pluralism is often viewed as god and the idea that one man or woman at the peak of some self-serving pyramid as “the source” of all wisdom, direction, and doctrine is being rejected (Phillips 2001). Instead, many perspectives are honored and members of the organization insist on having their voice heard. They want to be on the team, and if the situation calls for it, to be allowed to lead the team.
This is a pressing issue, in that, the old wineskins are not receptive to the new wine and old structures are crumbling. GM and Ford, two paragons of the old system, are laying-off tens of thousands of people and closing many factories across North America. What is wrong? The structure of leadership has not been able to respond quickly enough to changing dynamics of the economy or the growing cost of petroleum or health care issues. GM and Ford continued to roll out SUV’s even as the clouds of exploding oil prices were looming on the horizon. Instead of an entrepreneurial spirit that was willing to break with the pack and chart a course for the future, they stayed the course and the course led them down the road to disaster. Somewhere, someone at the top of the pyramid was making a series of ill-advised choices and at the bottom of this pyramid workers were busy doing their jobs and doing them well while the industry they were depending on was failing (CNNMoney 2005).
There is a new leadership model that is emerging out of the old structures. Jimmy Long contrasts the “Modern” with the “Emerging” leadership paradigm. The Emerging paradigm is the cultural response to Postmodernism. It is in flux, developing and evolving in response to rapidly changing social and cultural realities. Long’s analysis is illustrated in the table below:
MODERN
Individual leader
Task
Positional authority
Perfect leader
Building Structures
Control
Destination
Aspire to leadership
EMERGING
Team leadership
Community
Earned authority
Broken leader
Developing vision
Empower
Journey
Inspire for leadership
Table 1: Modern and Emerging Leadership Styles (Long 2004, 157)
If Long is right in his analysis of the Emerging model of leadership, then the old wineskins will be bursting and both the skins and the wine will be lost. Along with factories and industries succumbing to these changes, churches and denominations are in peril as well. Unless leadership can be shared, can be decentralized and the periphery empowered to be responsive to the needs of the customer, consumer, client, congregant, or community, then implosion is inevitable simply because of our inability to comprehend the changing paradigm of leadership.
Frances Hesselbein unapologetically asserts:
The old hierarchy is dead. We must build flexible, fluid, circular management structures with high involvement and inclusion of all—structures that permit us to lead people and not to contain them (2005).
In light of this crisis, it seems to me that the most pressing issue for leadership is to begin to provide new models that are less rigid and more fluid with respect to leadership in an organization. This, of course, challenges the very core of what many have presupposed as the model and method of leadership. The heroic figure who rides in on a white horse to save the day is now a member of a posse that works together to accomplish the goals. (According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary a posse is, among other things, “1. a large group often with a common interest.") These goals are common to all in the group and each has a vested interest in seeing those goals accomplished.
What does leadership look like in this paradigm? To begin, it is a leadership that is willing and able to empower the posse, to equip the saints for the work of ministry. I suspect that this is the secret behind the success of mega-churches in America today. It is not so much the charisma or the persona of the senior pastor as much as it is the opportunity for members of these churches to get involved in semi-autonomous ministries that are given the freedom to function without being micromanaged by some hierarchical figurehead. The size of these churches necessitate this transition and the leadership genius of the pastors is simply that they were willing to provide a broad structural or missional framework within which freedom for ministry innovations were encouraged. I suspect that in many such churches there is a genuine entrepreneurial spirit with respect to initiating ministries as outreaches of the church.
Looking at the plethora of programs in these churches it is soon apparent that one man cannot control all these ministries. He or she simply provides the context for and the possibility of these ministries to exist within the larger vision of the church. The senior pastor becomes the pastor of pastors or the leader of leaders who have the freedom and the authority to initiate, improvise, innovate, and create.
What is the leader’s role in all this? It is empowering and encouraging rising leaders. It is to recognize the leadership strengths in others and to be humble enough to defer to the expertise and skill that others bring to the team. There may be one man who stands on the stage and is recognized by the outsider as the leader, but he knows and others within the organization know, that he is but one of many leaders and that the future of the organization is in raising up even more leaders.
What about the old saying, “Too many cooks in the kitchen”? This old saying may have held true for mom’s kitchen, or for a mom and pop restaurant that needed few innovations and even fewer hands in the pot, but walk into a major restaurant and we find that there are many chefs and many cooks working in a coordinated effort to get the best product that is possible to the patron in the shortest amount of time with the most pleasant service possible. Small churches where one pastor is expected to do it all will remain small churches. But growing churches will require more leadership, more involvement, more empowerment and even more autonomy among the members to become the ministers that God called them to be.
Jim Collins, in Good to Great, observed that the leaders of organizations that emerged from the middle of the pack and began to excel in their respective field, were leaders who exhibited what he calls “level 5 leadership”. These are not the brash, cocky, ambitious leaders of fiction, but are a blend of “personal humility with intense professional will (2001, 21).”
Of course, as is always the case with regard to human endeavors we find that God’s ways are indeed the best ways. Apostle Peter, a man who learned some valuable lessons about teamwork, gives us this inspired insight, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:6, NKJV).
Sources Cited
Bridges, William. “Leading the De-Jobbed Organization.” In The Leader of the Future, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Richard Beckhard, 11-18. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.
Hesselbein, Frances. “The Campaign for Leadership.” Leader to Leader Institute, no 17 (Summer 2000). http://pfdf.org/leadersbooks/L2L/summer2000/fh.html. Accessed November 30, 2005.
CNNMoney.com. “GM CEO says shakeup means slowdown.” December 12, 2005. http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/12/news/fortune500/ gm_wagoner.reut/index.htm. Accessed December 16, 2005.
Collins, Jim. Good to Great. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
Long, Jimmy. Emerging Hope. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=posse. Accessed December 15, 2005.
Phillips, Gary. “Religious Pluralism in a Postmodern World.” In The Challenge of Postmodernism, edited by David S. Dockery, 131-143. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
Friday, December 16, 2005
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