What is good leadership? I will get to that question in a moment, but I want to begin with my bias. I came into 2011 with a pretty severe bias about leadership. I was anti-cultural in my bias, because I was certain that Christians were supposed to learn leadership from mystics, musicians and monks, not politics or economy. I confess that bias because I was sinfully proud to ignore the voices of people who have some great things to say about leadership. I now hope that I am learning to appreciate all of the voices of leadership around me, finding great joy in reading Jesuit monks and CEOs (my current leadership read is "Onward" by Starbucks ceo Howard Schultz). What I have found is that great leaders pop up in every field of human endeavor, and so one must look to every endeavor to learn. So what did I learn about good leadership this year?
Great leaders are primarily learners, I think. A friend once told me that one characteristic united all of the pastors he knew- they were all curious about everything. I believe that I share this trait with the other pastors in his life. Leaders must be learners, because organizations (especially churches) can get paralyzed if the leaders aren't learning new things and reflecting on their experiences. That is why I was so delighted when our consistory committed to spiritual formation every other meeting. Our leaders want to learn, our leaders want to grow.
We also launched into a couple-year process of the Ridder Leadership Initiative with a small group of people. And for a year, we focused on personal transformation and the practices of a disciple of Jesus. After all, great leaders are primarily learners, and learner is just another word for disciple. This group is bearing fruit in the lives of the participants, and 2012 will see some of that fruit born in our congregational life as well. It's all very exciting.
I pray that 2012 will be a year of great leadership, of learning from new experiences and listening to the voices around us.
No comments:
Post a Comment