5 Frequently Overlooked Leadership Development Principles
As soon as I entered the building, I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. The sound coming from the room in the school where our church meets was not pleasant. The guest worship leader that I had invited, the one interested in our part-time worship leader position, did not have (in my estimation) a serviceable voice to lead! The look I saw on the helpless two other band members dutifully supporting him during practice confirmed this. We were just minutes away from the start of our Sunday Gathering. I was seriously distraught. What should I do?
What you would do in this situation likely reveals what you believe about developing leaders. What I’ve learned comes from 30 years of leading in church contexts and three primary sources: applying the gospel to my own heart, working with excellent leaders, and making lots of mistakes. With this in mind, here are five principles to consider when developing leaders that might not always appear in leadership books and conferences.
Apply the gospel to yourself
Leading is all about growing in our identity in Christ all the time. I was mad at myself for failing to vet that worship leader better. But in that moment, I needed to apply the gospel to my heart before rushing into a decision. Was my image of being a good leader more important to me than actually being a good leader? Would I allow how I felt about myself in that moment to govern what I did? If you learn to apply the gospel to your own heart, you will see that leading others is primarily about helping them do the same.
Identify leaders by building leadership
One of our greatest temptations as ministry leaders is to plug holes with leaders instead of building leadership in people. How do you build leadership? Create avenues of leadership that allow inexperienced people to lead. For example, instead of rushing to make someone a Community Group leader, allow them to lead the group meeting once or twice and see how they do. Sunday Services, leadership meetings, ministry outreaches, small groups, retreats, prayer meetings, etc. are all good playgrounds where you can create space for people to grow as leaders without rushing to make people official leaders.
Giving people real leadership opportunities and allowing them to “fail” will test your theology and your faith. It’s uncomfortable at times. But you’ll be able to create an environment where you can more easily identify potential leaders.
Coach leaders
Once you have leaders, coach them! It doesn’t matter how gifted a leader is, everyone needs coaching. Plan to connect with your leaders regularly. With some leaders that might be weekly, with others once a quarter. But you should have an agenda: to help them become better leaders as they apply the gospel to their heart.
Use a written coaching tool with every leader you are developing. This might seem impersonal to you, and maybe even unnecessary for some roles, but do it anyway. This honors whatever role or responsibility they have in leadership. For example, create a one-page document together that includes the purpose of their role, the main responsibilities they are focusing on, one area of personal development, and maybe one area of “professional” development that relates to their role. Every time you talk, use the doc. Ask them how they are doing, pray with them, and help them stay on track and get unstuck if necessary.
Create a leadership culture rich in feedback
I honestly think that creating a feedback-rich culture will do more for developing your leaders and maturing your congregation than anything else you can do! Create formal and informal ways to assess your leaders including yourself. The informal stuff should be done regularly as you build leadership (see above). On the formal side, once a year, use a tool like a survey to give each other feedback. Do this in the middle of your ministry year to allow leaders to apply what they learn from their feedback. Create around ten questions that would take respondents 15 minutes or so to complete. Include both objective (scale 1-5) and subjective (comments) elements that relate specifically to a person’s role and some general ones related to their character. Send the survey to the five people with whom each person works the closest.
At first, this will seem incredibly uncomfortable, but over time the feedback gets better and better as we model humility and teachability to those we lead. We learn together that our identities are not in our performance, but in our Savior. Yet at the same time, we seek to be excellent in our roles for his glory.
Use everyday ministry to develop leaders
What did we do with this guest worship leader? We could have gotten caught up solely in the pressing decision of the moment – to let him lead or not lead worship. But here is how we applied some of the above principles to our situation.
I didn’t blame him. I was the one who hired him!
I pulled aside our pastoral resident on guitar that day to seek his input. He suggested we let him lead to avoid an upsetting and distracting moment for him and for us. That sounded wise to me and we survived the worship set without much incident.
I apologized to the other worship team member who was put in the awkward situation of trying to harmonize with him.
We gave this young man our loving and grace-filled feedback and suggested that he pursue a different ministry path.
That last statement might sound harsh! Did we really suggest that? Yes. This young man loves Jesus and has talent and passion for ministry. He deserved our love and respect in the form of grace and truth. He responded in a godly manner by thanking us for our honest feedback. This made me wonder if anyone up to this point had loved him in this way. For those few moments we had with him, I believe we helped him take the next step of faith. But in doing so, I know God helped us become better leaders. Because we are committed to developing leaders, and that begins with us.
