Leadership Development: Part 4, Supervise

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This final week we are looking at Supervise. Many people will interpret the word 'supervise' to refer to telling other what to do. But if we are truly developing leaders, and not just workers, then another type of supervision must be put in place. Leaders have the capacity to make their own decisions, set their own goals, and execute them. So if the person you have been working on in the previous three stages of this developmental process of Recruit, Train, Delegate is a leader, you need something consistent with who a leader is in this, the final stage, of Supervision.

The way to supervise leaders, I've found, is to exercise my coaching abilities and help them to discover and find their own way through difficulties. Leaders need a coaching form of supervision. I've blogged about coaching quite a bit in this blog, because that is a key area of learning for me in the last several years.

If you want to Supervise your high-powered leaders in your church, you will need to learn how to coach them. (Please do a search on this blog for other articles about 'coaching'. Also we have many free coaching resources here.)

The end result of good coaching, is a stronger leader. If you tell, instead of coaching, what you end up doing is weakening this leader whom you have been working on for so long, and helping them to develop as a leader. Telling them what to do makes them dependent upon you. Once they've done the one task you told them to do, then they have to come running back to you like a lapdog saying, 'OK, I've done that; now what do I do next?' You don't want that. You want people who have their own dreams and goals for a particular ministry, who have enough initiative to make it happen and even invite others to make it happen.

Coaching maintains this internal drive within a leader, not by telling them what to do, but by asking, and coaxing it out of them as to what their dreams and goals are. Then coaching simply consists of helping them to develop action plans to achieve THEIR goals, not YOUR goals. That's a big difference. And that is effective supervision.

So leadership development is a critical need in churches today. Many church leaders just hope and pray that God would send them leaders. But those who know how to raise up leaders through the Recruit, Train, Delegate, and Supervise process, will be able to 'grow their own' in the name of Jesus and for His kingdom. And that makes church leadership really satisfying.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 3, Delegate

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This week we are talking about the Delegate portion of the leadership development process.

So far we have looked at the first two parts of the leadership development process, which were to Recruit & to Train. Once you have discovered someone who has leadership gifts, and have begun the process of training them, the point comes where they must actually be empowered to do the job; and that is called Delegation.

Delegation is not as easy at it looks. If your goal is to actually develop leaders, and not just lighten your work load, then delegation actually takes some planning and follow-through to do it well. You want the process of raising up leaders in your church to be successful, and you want those up-and-coming leaders to enjoy the experience of leadership development.

There are some common mistakes that many leaders make when they are attempting to delegate a ministry responsibility to someone. If the goal is to develop leaders, then here are Four Mistakes to Avoid When Delegating:

Mistake #1 - Dump & Delete
D & D means that once you hand off a ministry responsibility to someone, you pretty much wash your hands of it, and forget it. You don't want to be bothered by the responsibility anymore, and so you "dump" it onto someone, and then you "delete" it from your brain. As far as you are concerned it is gone for good.

This happens when a leader is short-sighted about what s/he is actually trying to do. If you are just trying to lighten your work load, then Dump and Delete does the trick. But if your goal is to help another Christian brother or sister in your church, to grow and develop as a leader, then D&D is totally unacceptable.

You will need to follow-up and check-in with this person to see how they are progressing. You will want to coach them through any problems and help them to feel successful.

Mistake #2 - Micro-Managing
This is the opposite of the Dump & Delete problem. Micro-managing occurs when the pastor or leader just cannot really let a responsibility go. They don't trust anyone else to do the job quite as good as they do. Their favorite phrase is 'if you want something done well, you have to do it yourself.' Micro-managers are constantly stepping in and tinkering with somebody else's ministry in an effort to 'help them out'.

The problem with micro-managing if you are truly interested in leadership development, is that your up-and-coming leader never has a chance to really learn how to lead by themselves. This robs them of self-confidence and undermines the leadership development process in their lives.

The solution is a willingness to trust people. Pray like crazy to God, and then trust the person as they serve. Check in, and keep an eye on things, but resist the urge to guide every detail. There are many ways to get the job done. Let your new leader discover their own.

Mistake #3 - Reverse Delegation
Reverse delegation occurs when your new leader encounters a problem that they don't feel they can handle alone. So they come back to you as their trainer and describe the problem to you and then ask for help from you. If you at that point say something like, "Here let me help you with that", then they have just handed their job back to you. You gave it to them when you initially delegated the responsibility, and now that they have a problem, they have, in essence, come back to you and handed it back to you and said, 'Here, fix it." That is reverse delegation.

Rather, what you should do when they encounter their first tough problem, is to practice some of your coaching skills (which I have written about quite a bit in this blog). You would respond by asking them to brainstorm some possible solutions to solve this problem. Then after they list a number of potential steps which could be taken, you ask them which one of those they want to try first. After they have selected one, you encourage them, bless them and pray for them, and then let them solve their problem. It is, after all, theirs to solve and not yours since you have delegated the ministry to them.

That is, if you did truly delegate the ministry to them. Which brings us to our fourth and final delegation mistake:

Mistake #4 - Responsibility without Authority
This occurs when someone is given the task and job to accomplish a ministry, but no true authority to make it happen. For example, they are not given financial control of the project; they must come back to someone else anytime they want to spend any money on the project or ministry. Or any significant decisions must be run through some other committee which is not even directly involved in the ministry they are trying to run.

This situation occurs very often in paid staff situations in which a staff member is hired to do a job, but then must report to a committee of volunteers for approval for most ministry actions of significance. Although the staff member is involved in the ministry every day of the week, s/he must get approval for key actions from a group of people who only attend a committee meeting once a month, and then never give a thought to the ministry in-between time.

So, in the process of training up leaders, there are four parts involved: Recruit, Train, Delegate and Supervise. Delegation is an art that requires sensitivity to the needs of the person who is getting trained. It is one part of a big goal to ask God to help raise up more leaders in your church who can serve the church, and God, well.

Next week we will look at the final part of the leadership development process, which is supervision.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 2, Train

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

This week we are talking about the Train portion of the leadership development process.

Many people will automatically equate this with a lot of intellectual content. While that is a necessary part of leadership training, it is not the most important part. Adults, however, learn best by doing. So the focus for adult leadership training, rather than having a classroom, teaching sort of feel to it, needs to be more focused around "Apprentice Systems".

So what are the elements of successful Apprentice Systems:

1. Coaching -- this involves not 'telling' but 'asking'; Where do they feel the need to grow? What do they want to do to learn the leadership skills necessary?, etc. Coaching involves asking powerful questions to help others grow and develop. You can check out other blogs on coaching on this site by entering "coaching" in the search dialogue box in the upper left. I've written quite a few blogs on coaching.

2. ShowHow Training -- this involves the training method explained in 2 Timothy 2:2: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." That is, Paul who was writing this verse to Timothy said, "I taught you; now you teach others, who can teach others." This is called ShowHow training. It goes like this:
Step 1 -- I do it & you watch;
Step 2 -- You do it & I watch;
Step 3 -- You do it & someone else watches

3. Ministry Descriptions for everything
Pastors tend to underestimate the amount of uncertainty and nervousness which the average layperson feels when encountering a new ministry job. For most people, who have not served much in the ministry before (and if you are training leaders, you will be having an increasing number of just those sort of people), they need some specific guidance on what is expected for certain key ministry jobs. That is why you need Ministry Descriptions for everything. HighPowerResources.com has a great template for writing Ministry Descriptions. It's in the Coaching Resources section here.

4. Internal Farm Systems
A ministry culture needs to be developed which has the expectation of "each one teach one"; that each ministry is training leaders for their own ministry. A number of ministries do it this way: they form a leadership team of three people: Chair, Vice-chair, and Past-chair. After the Chair of the ministry has served for a year, they move to the Past-Chair role, so that they are still available to help the Vice-Chair, who has now moved up to the Chair role. Then a new person is added to the Vice-Chair role, and they have a year to watch before they are expected to lead (Show-How Training). And even when they become Chair, they know that the former Chair is always there in case they need help. It's a good systems and results in real strength and longevity for ministry leaders.

5. Ministry Placement Interviews
We use a system at Crossroads with a team we call the "Ministry Way Team". (It ties in to our metaphor for discipleship: Main Street, Community Circle, Ministry Way.) The team serves up spiritual gift inventories, both individually and in our SHAPE class to help people discover their calling. Then a spiritual gifts interviewer meets with them and helps them to discover the best place to use their gifts in ministry. They are armed with Ministry Descriptions, listing the spiritual gifts needed (See sample here), and open positions and contact information. It works.

Training is the second part of the four-part Leadership Development process of Recruit, Train, Delegate, and Supervise.

Next week we will cover Delegate.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Leadership Development: Part 1, Recruit

HI All,

Leadership Development is a four-part process which includes: Recruit, Train, Delegate, & Supervise.

It is critical for churches to practice leadership development because the future of their church depends upon the capacity to add quality, spirit-filled leaders to positions of influence throughout the church.

The first part of this process is to Recruit.
I do not use the word "recruit" in the typical fashion envisioned of begging people to "fill empty slots" until they give in. Rather, I think of it in terms of Calling. This is all about calling; discovering God's calling in people's lives. The best indication of someone's calling from God is their spiritual gifts.

The Recruit portion of leadership development must be tied in to helping people to discover, understand, and use their spiritual gifts. When you find someone with spiritual gifts that can be used for leadership, you can begin the process of helping them to unwrap those gifts for the glory of God and the growth of the church. Spiritual gifts which would help in this regard are: Leadership (obviously), but also Teaching, Administration (which means 'organizing people for ministry'), and also some aspects of Exhortation & Encouragement. If someone has gifts related to Service or Helps, they may be great servants in the church, and willing to work very hard, but are probably not suited for leadership roles, which require more initiative than perhaps someone with Helps may have.

So Recruiting involves helping people to discover their gifts, and then to understand them. Some people don't know where or how or if they should use their gifts. I had one potential leader in a church, who was very, very good with up front ministry roles, tell me that he felt guilty because he liked to be in charge and be in front and talking to people. I told him there is no reason for him to feel guilty because he is simply relishing in his God-given capacity to lead people. So people have to understand the gifts which God has placed in them.

And then after discovering and understanding, they have to actually use them. This is where your role as pastoral leader comes in. You need to help the people with leadership gifts to be placed into roles where they can be used. If you don't use their gifts in the church, they will naturally gravitate to situations where they can express and use their gifts, whether in the church or not. So help them to use their God-given gifts to make a difference for eternity by leading key ministries in the church.

Recruit is the first part of the four-part process of leadership development. Recruiting is all about Calling. Your job is to help people to Discover, Understand, and Use their spiritual gifts for the glory of God and the growth of the church.

Next week we will discuss the second part of leadership development, which is Train.

Until then, for the Kingdom of God,

Dr. Bill