Leadership Reflections

As a blogger, I spout my opinions frequently and strongly.  I think I’m right, but you know, at times I may be wrong or at least my suggestions may not be universally applicable.  In Sunday School today we watched a sermon by Andy Stanley on “Big Faith“, the first in a series on five ways that God works to build our faith.  In the introduction he says something like, ”I may be wrong of course.  Maybe there are six ways, or a completely different list of five, or perhaps God works another way entirely, so this is just an observation of five ways it appears to me that God works.”

As you and I both know, there is no one single way to lead.  There is no single formulaic five step process to successful leadership.  There are all sorts of ways one can lead, and which way you choose may be highly dependent on circumstances, your nature, and a whole bunch of other factors.

My caveat

This blog is a series of reflections on how to provide Christian leadership.  I’ve made some strong statements and I know I say ‘should’ quite a lot.  That sounds pretty directive!  Since I write based on my experience, my circumstances, my personality and so on, I think my suggestions will work well for me, but will they for you?  You must decide that for yourself.  My goal is to get you thinking and provide you with some help along the way by sharing the very best information I can find or think of about Christian leadership.  I am sure my thoughts have widespread application (or I wouldn’t bother writing), but in the end they are just observations.  They are my contribution to Christian ministry written in response to the question I assume readers are asking: ”I wonder what a Christian leader who has time to think and write about leadership issues thinks about leading in a Christian way?”

Your caveat

You as a leader are in a similar position.  You have your opinions about issues facing your ministry’s leadership and as a leader you should be sharing them.  We lead from our convictions knowing that people want to have confidence in their leaders, but that means that we tend to lead with a high degree of certainty.  Let’s not be more certain about things than we have a right to be.  In many cases, there is more than one way to “skin the cat.”  (What an awful expression, but it expresses the thought perfectly.)  This is why it is best to lead with consensus decisions, or decisions that you make but which have been shaped by group discussion.

In closing

• Knowing that I could be wrong, or that there is more than one way to lead, is why I allow comments on this blog.  I want you to participate with me and my readers in a group discussion so we can all learn together.
• Knowing that you could be wrong or that there is more than one way to address whatever issues face you, is why you have a team to consult with and to help you lead.  Two heads are better than one and all that!

Leaders are not required to have all the answers, but to know how to develop a good answer and to make a decision.

Plans fail for lack of counsel,
   but with many advisers they succeed.
Proverbs 15:22

“It’s lonely at the top” is true only if you want it to be.  It doesn’t have to be that way, but when there is no one a leader feels comfortable discussing the really challenging issues with, it truly is lonely.  In that case, it seems inevitable that some day either a challenge or the person’s own blindness to a situation will trip the leader up.

When ministry leaders come and go in just a few years, I wonder how connected they were with other people.  Could they have had greater longevity and success by being vulnerable and discussing these issues with someone else?

If you are finding leadership a lonely experience, here are some people who can keep you company.

Staff

You should be able to discuss almost any issue with your senior staff because they are your team and they are the ones who will execute whatever plans you approve.  They are every bit as familiar with the ministry as you are and they share your vital interest in its success.  Why not bring them into your confidence?

Just because the senior leader has the executive authority and bears all the responsibility for results (to the board) doesn’t mean the person must be a lonely, solo leader.  Two of my senior staff report directly to me and I trust both of them completely and value their judgment.  Beyond them, there is a leadership team (and also staff who join us based on the topic of discussion).  Why should I rely only on my own knowledge and experience when I have so much more available to me?

There are a couple of reasons why some leaders hold back from their staff:

• They may have a personnel issue or something that they don’t want to discuss with any staff.  Okay, but as you’ll see below, there are still other people you can discuss things with.
• You many think that not having the answers will make you appear weak.  You may be afraid of losing the staff’s confidence if you ask for their help.  If so, I think you’ve bought into the ‘heroic leader’ myth.  Business books and biographies almost always tell a story by focusing on one individual, as if their success was 100% from their own efforts and ideas.  I can recall only one book written about an heroic team, The Wisdom Of Teams.  That’s the exception.  All the other books focus on a single person because we want a hero, and heroes are supposed to be able to overcome obstacles by themselves.  But this is to put unrealistic expectations on yourself.  Roger Patterson, co-author of Leading from the Second Chair, sent me the text for his second book (not yet published) called The Theology of the Second Chair and in it he makes an interesting point.  Scripture shows that God appoints people to leadership, but these are all people with limitations well known to God.  Think about Moses and his poor speech.  God puts people around his leader who fill in for the leader’s shortcomings.  The leader is strong in what God wants them to do, and the team does the rest.
• Finally, be wary of pride.  For the sake of the ministry, accept the team’s wisdom.  James presided over the Council of Jerusalem and allowed his team to thoroughly discuss the Gentile question (Acts 15) even though he alone made the final decision.  Paul had his missionary team confirm the meaning of his Macedonian vision even though he knew what the dream meant.  It was a way of testing his interpretation.  So confide in your team.

Board

If you think you can’t talk to your staff, you can talk with your directors.  I am blessed with a board that is supportive while at the same time holding me accountable.  CCCC has a policy board, so my concerns are within my jurisdiction not theirs, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a ‘fireside chat’ with them.  We both know that they will not tell me what to do and that I am solely responsible for any decision I make, but we have had hours of fruitful discussions that have benefitted me greatly.  Just like my staff, they are dedicated to the success of the ministry, and because they hired me, they want me personally to be successful as CEO.  Why should I not have the benefit of their wisdom and experience too?

However, you might not want to talk with your board because you may feel your job is in jeopardy if you ask for input or show that you struggle with some things.  You certainly need to be a top performer, but it shouldn’t be a problem to seek counsel or to ask for prayer support.  Unfortunately we at CCCC hear about many conflicts between board and staff.  You can reduce board-staff conflict if you accept the board’s authority and if the board does good board orientation and development so directors know where the line is between board and staff.  The board should also recruit people who subscribe to the values, ethos, and strategic statements already in place and who are in basic accord with the senior staff person.  They don’t have to always agree with the leader, but they shouldn’t come on to a board already wanting to change basic elements of strategy or staffing.

Ministry Peers

I have developed relationships with ministry leaders across the country by simply visiting them in their offices, seeing them at events such as EFC’s Presidents Day, and otherwise being open to any opportunity to say “Hi” to them.  You may not have access to leaders across the country, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t know the ministry leaders in your area.  Pick up the phone, call someone and ask to have lunch with them, or ask to come and see their ministry.  You may have to juggle schedules, but sooner or later you can make a new friend who could be very helpful.

When I wanted advice on change management I called four leaders of ministries that had been through successful change, and all of them were willing to talk about their experiences and the lessons they learned.  While visiting some leaders out West a few weeks ago, conversation drifted around to a leadership topic that I’ve been wrestling with for a while and these leaders just opened up and shared their own experiences with that issue.  Leaders are willing to talk and help each other if you are willing to be vulnerable and share the issues that you are dealing with.

Sometimes you need someone else to see something that you can’t.  Moses had his Jethro who could see the quagmire that Moses had fallen into.  Wouldn’t it have been better for Moses if he had found out earlier about the problem and fixed it sooner?  He could have asked someone, maybe even Jethro, “Here’s my plan to lead the people of Israel.  Do you see any potential problems with it?”

The only thing that might hold you back from talking with your peers is pride.  Everyone wants to look successful at what they do, but the most meaningful and helpful conversations come about when the masks come off and people are real with each other.  It deepens your relationship from the relatively superficial “Hi, how are you?” stage to the much deeper level of feeling you really know the other person.

Your Spouse

I am richly blessed with a spouse who also has a business degree, is an accountant, and who has chaired some boards.  She understands leadership, strategy and all the other issues I deal with.  She is an invaluable support to me and offers great perspectives.  But even without her background, she would still be a tremendous support because:

• as my spouse, she is 100% committed to my success because both of us are bound together  in marriage, so my welfare is her welfare and she wants the best for me.  In this spirit, your spouse is not afraid to ask the tough questions, and will provide a clear-headed perspective.
• she doesn’t have to know business or governance to ask the right questions.  ”Have you prayed about this?” is one of those perennial favourites of hers!!!  Your spouse doesn’t need to have the answers, just the right probing questions to stimulate your thinking.

God

I’ve left God to last not because he is the least important but to end on the note that you must be talking with God because the ministry you lead is his, not yours.  This reminds me of a video that we show in the Stewardship I course – God’s Pie.  A person divvies up a pie with pieces for people representing his house, his cars, etc., but gives God nothing.  As he eats his own piece of pie while God watches, with an empty plate, the guy representing his German car says, “Dude!  He brrrrought ze pie!”

Well, dude, the ministry you lead is his, so consult with him about what you should do with it.  The key to Christian leadership is to recognize that you are a follower before you are a leader.  If you find yourself talking about leadership and then admitting as an afterthought that, “Well, of course, the Bible says that God is the ultimate leader of this ministry,” then God’s leadership looks pretty perfunctory.  His leadership needs to be fresh and vital every day.  If you only know the idea of God’s leadership rather than the experience of God’s leadership, I suggest you check out the spiritual disciplines and practices that are at the core of being led by God.  Take a spiritual formation course at a seminary or Bible college or pick up a good book such as Space for God: The Study and Practice of Spirituality and Prayer or Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God’s Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal.  While you should go to God first, he is also the final resort after all human wisdom and advice has failed.

Conclusion

I hope you see by now that there are a lot of people around who could support you in ministry.  There is no reason to feel lonely and unable to talk to anyone.  Take the initiative and go see someone right away.  And if you have anything to contribute to this discussion, I’d love to hear from you.

How many consultants does it take to change a lightbulb?  No one knows, because they never get past the feasibility study.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with consultants and can share with you some suggestions as to when to use them and when to avoid them.  The term ‘consultant’ captures a wide range of services, a wide range of paradigms that influence their output, and like lawyers and accountants they can be solo practitioners or members of a global firm.

Types of consultants

It is helpful to distinguish between the various types:

• Pure consulting is limited to investigation of a topic or issue, reporting and perhaps recommendation.  However, many consultants do much more by performing work that ranges from interviewing customers for market research or doing ongoing work such as HR or IT as part of an outsourcing strategy.
• Every consultant has a paradigm or model on which they base their work.  You need to understand what their model is to be sure you buy into it.  Based on the assignment, the consultant should be able to tell you which model(s) they will use to develop their recommendations.  Many large consulting firms are famous for developing particular models (such as the Boston Consulting Group’s Growth-Share Matrix), so you know these models will loom large in their approach to your issue.  Ask consultants which books have influenced them.  If you’ve done any preparatory research on the issue (if you haven’t done it, do it now!), you should be familiar with the various approaches and issues and will likely have an opinion as to which approach fits best with your situation.  At the very least, you will know the questions to ask.
• Whether you go with a large firm or an independent consultant depends on your needs and, most of all, your budget.  A large firm will likely cost more, but you get the advantage of a consultant with access to a large knowledge bank and associates who can provide specialized expertise if needed.  An independent consultant may be less expensive and less committed to a particular model, and therefore be more versatile.  For most charities, cost will be the deciding factor in favour of smaller firms or solo practitioners.  Just be sure you agree with their basic approach.

To use or not to use?

Some leaders use consultants a lot and others won’t have anything to do with them.  Professional advisors have told me that Americans use consultants with great enthusiasm and Canadians tend to accept them as a necessary evil.  I’ve heard horror stories of consultants really messing things up badly and I’ve also heard of consultants who helped a group achieve a significant breakthrough.

When should you use a consultant?  I googled this question and found lots and lots of advice…from consultants trying to sell their services!  Hardly unbiased advice.  I didn’t find a single buyer of consulting services who wrote about it from their perspective.

I did however find a really great book, Extract Value from Consultants: How to Hire, Control, and Fire Them, written by two consultants that reads like an exposé from the inside.  Since both have worked for global consulting firms, I gues that’s what it is!  They detail all the tricks of the trade that consultants use to hook a client and then squeeze them for more cash as the work progresses.  Then they tell you how to reverse the tables, fight back and extract value from them.  If you use consultants, read it!

How to decide

We’ve used several consultants over the years at CCCC, so I’m open to using them, but I am very judicious as to when.  As a buyer of consulting services, here are my thoughts about when they are appropriate:

• A consultant might be handy if you and your staff are stumped about a problem and you need a breakthrough.  They can draw on what they have learned from numerous clients, they have a fresh perspective, and they have no commitments to the status quo.
• Generally you would hire staff for core competency areas or where there is a long term need.  Consultants are useful for non-core areas that you do not have in-house expertise for, and a consultant-contractor could be useful for boosting your staff levels on a short term basis.
• Consultants provide an independent, objective assessment of a situation and can confirm or disprove your assumptions.  They can illuminate any blind spots you might have.  On the upside, I hired a consultant who is an expert on Canadian associations.  We wanted to know how CCCC is doing from an association perspective and this person had done detailed analysis of more than one hundred associations.  He brought a perspective that we could never have ourselves.  He said, based on performance metrics, that we are a top-performing association.  That’s good to know.  We don’t have problems that need fixing, just opportunities to exploit.  We know where to focus.  On the downside, especially for ‘quick looks,’ consultants might only get a superficial understanding of your operations and environment.  I’ve seen reports that are simplistic because the authors simply didn’t get a deep understanding of the nuances and contexts.
• Outsiders can say things you want said but don’t want to say yourself.  They don’t have to live with the consequences!
• If you face a steep, long or expensive learning curve, you can use a consultant who has done it before and who has spread the cost of the learning curve over multiple clients.  Just be sure that there is a transfer of knowledge so that when you engage a consultant your own staff learns something.  Don’t simply accept their recommendations.  Ask how they arrived at the recommendation.  Those are the processes you want to learn.
• The work might be something your team could do, but there are higher priorities taking the team’s time.  The work needs to be done, but you just don’t have the time.

Your leadership responsibility

As a leader, you are always responsible for your decisions.  You can’t delegate decisions to a consultant.  It is always up to you to make a decision.  Check how they came to make their recommendation and be sure it is based on reasonable assumptions and complete data.  Watch out for ”me too” recommendations.  If the consultant is simply following what everyone else is doing, then that is all that you will be doing too.  That’s no way to get ahead!  All you’ll do is catch up to the crowd.  You’ll also have to check their recommendations for feasability.  It’s easy to make expensive recommendations when it will be paid for by someone else.

I think the main message is that consultants are not a magic bullet.  Don’t count on them fixing everything that you haven’t been able to fix.  A consultant simply provides another viewpoint, another option.  They are not always right.  The real value of a consultant is the new idea or perspective they are able to contribute from their specialized knowledge and experience.  They can broaden your horizons and make you aware of new possiblities beyond what you are capable of thinking of.  You just have to take what they suggest and assess it for yourself to see if it really fits your ministry.

Now, I’d like to learn from you.  Any ideas to add?  Please comment.

To be a successful ministry, you must ask tough questions about your ministry’s performance. Andy Harrington, Executive Director at Greater Vancouver Youth For Christ (GVYFC), did just that.  His analysis is a model literature review and performance analysis, and best of all, he’s willing to share his report with you.

Eleven years ago Andy wrote a thesis to complete his MA in Evangelism Studes and the purpose of the thesis was to find the best methods for evangelism for GVYFC.  The situation and results that he describes at the ministry are quite out of date today, so please keep that in mind.  After completing the thesis, he used it to refresh and renew the ministry at GVYFC and the results have been great.  By taking a hard look at their practices and results his team built a much more fruitful ministry!

You can download Harrington’s thesis and use it to stimulate ideas for how you could review your own ministry.  While the content will be helpful to anyone with a youth ministry, the process he used is applicable to any ministry.  Here’s what he’s done so well in this 90 page thesis:

• He documented the program rationale that governed the design of their many programs.  I don’t think that had been done before so he had to look at what they were doing and then reverse-engineer the theoretical foundation that justified their programs.  That meant he had to create both a theory of change and a logic model.  Although he doesn’t use those terms or build a diagram, he does document them in narrative form.  I wrote about how to do this at a the program level, so this is a good example at the organizational level.  You should have a theory of change and logic model at both the organizational and program levels.
• Andy does a great literature review to ensure he is right up-to-date on the latest thinking in youth evangelism.  He researched general shifts in culture, particularly from modern to post-modern world-views, and the agents that are driving youth culture.  Again, I wrote about doing literature reviews at the program level, and Andy has shown how to do for the organization.  You should do both.
• He addresses the issue of how to define success for their ministry and then found a way to measure it.  I’ll be writing about this topic later in the CCCC strategic review that is currently underway.
• After doing all the analysis, Andy then addresses the “So what?” question and develops several strategies that will take GVYFC to a new level of effectiveness.  He suggests that YFC and other movements adopt a new embodied apologetic, rather than relying on a programmatic approach. This apologetic incorporates five factors; the cultural desire among young people for authentic relationship, their openness to spirituality, the importance of story, the concept of journeying together and the formation of community.

Thank you Andy for sharing your thesis!  May we all learn how to look hard at our own ministries and enjoy benefits similar to what you have experienced.

Having selected a program to evaluate and defined the program’s rationale, we turn to the literature review.  A well done literature review will identify issues to research and generate new knowledge and insights that should lead to a cutting-edge program. Here’s how to do one well.

How a literature review helps

A literature review will:

• broaden your thinking by providing context for the issue.  It’s possible to be so consumed with the immediate work at hand that you miss the big picture.  A lit review will correct that.  An inner-city mission might be founded to feed the hungry.  As they read about hunger they will find that it is very much related to poverty and poverty is related to several issues, including mental health and joblessness.  So the mission might add counselling and job skills training to its services.  But causes related to individuals are just part of the problem because there are systemic reasons why poverty exists.  So the inner-city mission may engage in advocacy work, seeking legislative change or systemic change that will help minimize poverty.  A literature review will help you think BIG BROAD thoughts!
• take you deeper into the nuances of the issue.  It will help you think DEEP thoughts.  While writing my dissertation about church-agency relations, I started with the understanding that the divisive issue between them was one of control.  Most of the authors framed their discussions this way, and yet as I did the literature review and dug below the surface of their arguments, I realized control wasn’t the issue – responsible relationship was.  The solution to the problem could not be resolved if the debate centred on control, but it is easily resolved once we address the underlying goal that was shared by every one of the authors.  This is the subject of my book The Church At Work: A manual for church-agency relationships that will be coming out by the end of the year.  Exploring the breadth and depth of your mission will stimulate all sorts of creative ideas.
  
• reveal the points of controversy and the resulting key choices you need to make.  Let’s say you are a Bible study ministry producing educational materials.  A literature review will show that adults and children learn differently and that there are various theories of learning that compete with each other.  There are methods of studying the Bible that compete with each other too.  There is even controversy over which version of the Bible is the best one to use for study.  There are many choices to be made in each of these topic areas and by understanding the points of controversy or divergence, you can make an intelligent decision for what your ministry will do and you’ll know why it is the best choice.
• will keep you up-to-date in your field.  Missiology, for example, has changed enormously in the last fifty years, and even the last ten years.  If you are a sending agency and are still using a missions model developed in the 1950s or 1960s, you are badly out of date.  Missiologists have changed their thinking on relationships between sending and receiving countries and created a new paradigm for global mission.  Not only has the theory changed, but so have the practices.  A lit review will help you be a leading edge ministry.

What to do a literature review on

Review your theory of change and logic model to find researchable topics.  The topics might not be explicitly listed, but look at each box and ask, “What topics are related to this box?”  Based on my previous post about the program review of our annual conference, some possible researchable topics for our program review include:

• conferences: trends, promotion, logistics, why people attend, business models etc.
• adult learning theory and converting learning into doing
• networking

How to find the literature

• Books often have the most thorough treatments of a topic.  Look especially for recent books based on primary research.  For help in selecting books, read this post.   Don’t forget to go to the library to see what you can borrow before buying a bunch of books.
• Online websites, blogs and journals are where you will likely find the most up-to-date material.  If you are referred to journals that only have excerpts, or if you have to pay for the information, check if your your local university, college or seminary subscribes to the journal.  If not, you can likely do the search from within the library and see the results because they have already paid for access to databases of journals and you can read them or print them out at the library.
• Ask people to recommend sources for you.  If they are in the same field as you, they can usually recommend either a title or an author.
• You can stop looking for additional literature when you find that all of the citations and references are to articles and books you’ve already seen, or when you find the material has become repetitious.

How to analyze the literature

First of all, the purpose of this literature review is to design better programs and services.  For a real life excellent example of how to do the lit review, see Andy Harrington’s example which I highlight here.  Since you are not doing an academic literature review, the only issue to resolve is whether or not the information is useful to your ministry.  How you analyze the literature depends on whether you are reading about application and execution (to tweak a program) or about ideas and theories (to test the design of the program).

If you are looking for application and execution ideas, you simply make a list of the ones you find in the lit review that you want to consider.  For example, a list of technologies that can enhance a conference experience.  If you are researching at the theoretical or idea level, then you have some additional work to do to get below the surface of differing opinions:

• What are the premises on which the various opinions are based?  Are they valid?  Do they apply to your situation?  Especially in the social and political spheres, you have to ask if the premises and conclusions are theologically acceptable.
• What are the authors’ goals and values?  Can you reconcile their various views?  Can some be discarded because they conflict with your goals and values?  Sometimes their goals and values are explicit and sometimes not, in which case you have to try to infer them.  In my dissertation research on church-agency relations I discovered that some authors were primarily concerned that individuals be able to use their gifts while others were more concerned about showing unity to the public.  Some had a Christological focus while others had a Trinitarian focus.  Some used very strong language heavy on the ‘control’ aspect yet when they gave examples of what the relationship should be, the examples were much more moderate in tone.  I was able to reconcile the positions of authors who at first appeared to be diametrically opposed to each other.  The result was a new model of church-agency relations that all of the authors should be able to live with.  In fact, one of the authors I critiqued read my work and said he agreed with the end result even as he disagreed on how I got there!
• Finally, look at the recommended action steps or the model they propose.  Have they made a convincing argument to support their recommendations?  Do they make sense to you?

 The outcomes of a literature review

• A literature review should make you aware of what the choices are for how your program is designed and delivered.  Based on this, the program review would then assess if the current design would benefit from a change.
• It may determine questions you should ask as you do the program evaluation.
• It should help you identify hidden assumptions you have made, which you can then test to see if they are valid.
• It might suggest that some further research is needed in a particular area.
• It could provide a shopping list of enhancements to the current program or a list of ideas for new programs and services.

Conducting a literature review will help ensure that, as you progress through the program evaluation, you are well-informed and up-to-date on the subject you are evaluating and it will help you focus on the areas that need more scrutiny.