"PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS" Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "Instinct, Not Ideas: IN A WORLD OF PARTIAL INFORMATION, FORMATION IS ESSENTIAL" for Monday, 15 August 2016 
Instincts, Not Ideas: IN A WORLD OF PARTIAL INFORMATION, FORMATION IS ESSENTIALAs a leader, you will rarely have all the information you want.
You will set budgets not knowing how the market will perform over the next few years, unable to predict endowment income. You will hire faculty and plan course catalogs not knowing whether nonresidential theological coursework will remain popular with students or permissible to denominations. You will launch capital campaigns and begin building projects not knowing whether either is the right next step into the future. You will ordain people not knowing how they will behave when sent to a parish for the first time. You will preach and teach and serve not knowing how broken people will receive your words, your witness, your ministry.
Rarely will you know all that you want to know when you want to know it. So the question becomes: what to do, knowing this?
For some leaders, this truth is almost paralyzing, leading to endless vacillation or procrastination. These leaders are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they make no decision at all -- which itself ultimately becomes a decision, translating into missed opportunities, injured relationships, damaged reputations and weakened organizations.
For other leaders, this reality can fuel a kind of unmoored recklessness, with no internal coherence among decisions made or actions taken. While the self-justifying rationale offered for each decision is the same -- "I'm just doing the best I can with what I know now" -- it can lead to an undermining and alarming unpredictability, to programs or initiatives that are inconsistent with the mission of an institution, to bewilderment and frustration on the part of co-workers and colleagues, to confusion within boards and misunderstandings on the part of external constituents.
Yet in the face of incomplete information, there is a middle way between paralysis and recklessness. It is a way of faithfulness, a way of acting with courage in the world despite our limitations.
Read more from Nathan E. Kirkpatrick »
Faith & Leadership
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP
Nathan Kirkpatrick: Instincts, not ideas
Bigstock/Orla
By attending to God through ongoing formation, practice and discernment, leaders can effectively navigate a world in which decisions must be made without complete information, writes a managing director at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
As a leader, you will rarely have all the information you want.
You will set budgets not knowing how the market will perform over the next few years, unable to predict endowment income. You will hire faculty and plan course catalogs not knowing whether nonresidential theological coursework will remain popular with students or permissible to denominations. You will launch capital campaigns and begin building projects not knowing whether either is the right next step into the future. You will ordain people not knowing how they will behave when sent to a parish for the first time. You will preach and teach and serve not knowing how broken people will receive your words, your witness, your ministry.
Rarely will you know all that you want to know when you want to know it. So the question becomes: what to do, knowing this?
For some leaders, this truth is almost paralyzing, leading to endless vacillation or procrastination. These leaders are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they make no decision at all -- which itself ultimately becomes a decision, translating into missed opportunities, injured relationships, damaged reputations and weakened organizations.
For other leaders, this reality can fuel a kind of unmoored recklessness, with no internal coherence among decisions made or actions taken. While the self-justifying rationale offered for each decision is the same -- “I’m just doing the best I can with what I know now” -- it can lead to an undermining and alarming unpredictability, to programs or initiatives that are inconsistent with the mission of an institution, to bewilderment and frustration on the part of co-workers and colleagues, to confusion within boards and misunderstandings on the part of external constituents.
Yet in the face of incomplete information, there is a middle way between paralysis and recklessness. It is a way of faithfulness, a way of acting with courage in the world despite our limitations.
Recently, I attended an event where one of the most accomplished and effective leaders I have ever encountered was reflecting on his time as a senior leader in the church.
At the end of his formal remarks about his ministry, he agreed to receive questions from the audience. After several polite and predictable exchanges, one audience member asked a curious question about what ideas this leader had for how the church should be responding to the catastrophic effects of global warming.
His answer? “I don’t have many ideas; I have instincts. And what I have learned over my years of leadership is that I have well-formed instincts.”
If you knew nothing of this leader’s life, you might think that this answer was the kind of stereotypical C-suite bravado that tends toward recklessness: “I just trust my gut.”
But when you know that his life is patterned by prayer, sacramental devotion and intentional practices of reflection and learning, then you begin to understand that his instincts are oriented toward a different end.
They have been shaped by the weight of sacred text and tradition, and by his reflections on his experiences and experiments in ministry. He understands that both his instincts and his actions are reflective of something grander and larger than his own gut or the church’s bottom line; they are accountable to his understanding of the hopes and dreams of God for all of creation.
To lead knowing that we will never know all that we would like to is where sight meets faith in our leadership practice. It is the place where our own robust formation, our ongoing spiritual practice and our intentional discernment are proved indispensable, for these things help us re-narrate the questions that inevitably come, questions like those posed in every one of the situations named above. These practices help us see that each situation requires something far more deeply grounded than logic and data. Each one requires a certain attentiveness to what God is doing in the world and how our actions might further or hinder that work.
In the early days of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, my colleague Greg Jones articulated this in a slightly different way. He wrote that what sets Christian leadership apart from other kinds of leadership is its telos, that Christian leadership is oriented toward the cultivation of “thriving communities that bear witness to the inbreaking reign of God that Jesus announces and embodies in all that we do and are.”
In times when we know less than we wish we did or when the information we do have is unclear, the gift of our formation, our practice and our discernment is clarity about the aim of our leadership, and that leads to faithful instincts.
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IDEAS THAT IMPACT: DEVELOPING LEADERS
Low-budget Leadership Development
How do you develop leaders in your organization without funding? The executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches offers 10 ideas for leadership development on a shoestring.
Read more from Laura Everett »
Faith & Leadership
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP DEVELO
PMENT
Laura E. Everett: Low-budget leadership development
Bigstock/johnsroad7
How do you develop leaders in your organization without funding? The executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches offers 10 ideas for leadership development on a shoestring.
Editor’s note: This reflection is part of a series on leadership development.
Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In my experience, those of us who lead Christian institutions say we treasure leadership development, but we don’t set aside funds or time for this work. Perhaps our heart is set on leadership development, but our treasure is yet to follow.
I find myself in this position at the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Currently, we have no budget line item for leadership development. Maybe one day we will shift our financial resources, but the institution I inherited had not put funds behind these efforts.
In the meantime, we are trying low-budget leadership development, improvising how, when and where we develop the people who make this organization work. (I comfort myself with the thought that Jesus and the disciples didn’t have a line item for leadership development either, but somehow they made do.)
I know I’m not alone with the dilemma, so I thought I’d share the ways in which we are attempting cheap and scrappy leadership development. How do you form committee members, board leaders and staff for leadership without any funding?
Here are some ideas:
Beg (from anyone and everyone)
If you can’t host your own leadership training, invite yourself to other organizations’ events. Take advantage of neighboring colleges and nonprofits. Regional denominational and ecumenical institutions are poised to offer more robust leadership development than an individual congregation. If another denomination in your area is holding an intriguing leadership development opportunity, take advantage of your ecumenical relations and ask to attend.
Borrow (from other fields)
The vice president of our board is a successful lawyer who runs a local firm. When I asked him how he retains young employees, he said talented first-year associates stay if they are given “meaningful work” in their first year and are not limited to shadowing senior lawyers. By discussing the leadership development practices of a law firm, I was able to see more accurately that my own institution has had a de facto probationary period for new board members before they are allowed to do meaningful work. We now intend to bring in new board leaders with specific, meaningful projects in mind and not simply redshirt them for a year.
Steal (from colleagues)
Once a year, I meet for a retreat with the directors of councils of churches from around the country. This is a great place to pick up good ideas and learn about mistakes to avoid. My colleague at the Wisconsin Council of Churches, for example, shared with the group that he holds an annual lunch for his past board presidents. I brought this idea back from our retreat, and our executive team loved it. Historically, we have rotated our presidents off the board and then done a mediocre job of keeping a relationship with them -- the leaders who were most involved in the work. This June we held our first ex-presidents’ lunch in Massachusetts. Our turnout was great, and it generated a lot of goodwill for little money. We are already planning one for next year. Now I will circle back to my Wisconsin counterpart to tell him what we learned and thank him.
Read
Reading is one obvious low-budget way to learn. More specifically, read something on leadership development with other people so you can discuss and practice what you read in community.
If you don’t have money, spend time
MCC doesn’t have funds for leadership development, but we do have a curious provision in the personnel policies that offers “study leave.” When a local college held a daylong series of lectures about leadership at Vatican II, I decided to seize the opportunity as a “staff study day” for some continuing education. The lectures gave my colleagues and me a common experience to discuss as we reflected on our own work. Even if you don’t have time set aside by personnel policies, aim to create times for intentional study and leadership formation.
Find or create a group to learn in community
In person and online, intentional groups of colleagues provide the context for meaningful growth and change. The ELCA bishop in New England, for example, has created a Facebook group for his pastors called “Try Something New in New England.” Pastors are encouraged to experiment and “tell your stories -- good, bad, and ugly.” Similarly, but in person, three pastors in a rural setting in our state recognized their need for social media education. They got together on Tuesday afternoons and watched online videos. It wasn’t fancy or particularly high-tech, but they were learning together and had colleagues to hold them accountable to their aspirations for growth and change.
Expand your definition of leadership development
We’ve found fruitfulness in expanding the areas where we can develop leadership. For example, we are cultivating more church leaders to think strategically about stories we can pitch to the local media. We aim to develop media-savvy church leaders as part of our commitment to the vibrant, ecumenical church. So when I prepare to pitch a story, I post to Facebook about what I’m thinking and invite people to help me refine the idea. This draws in new ideas, creates a stronger pitch and demonstrates publicly what constitutes a newsworthy event. My long-term goal is to equip local pastors to make these pitches themselves.
Don’t try to be the expert in everything
As a generalist running a small organization, I’ve learned to look to colleagues with more particular skills. I have a board president with tons of experience who has a very clear sense of what is staff work and what is board work. I look to her for these distinctions. I have a colleague who is exceedingly wise about staffing models. I look to him for wisdom about our restructured staff plan. I no longer feel I have to be the expert in everything.
Take advantage of opportunities to let others lead
A nearby seminary wanted to partner with us to host a visiting scholar for a community event. Unfortunately, this was scheduled at a time when I was to be on retreat. Instead of passing on the opportunity, we are experimenting to see what it’s like to host an event without me. My lack of availability on this day is inviting some greater leadership out of others.
Volunteer elsewhere
I’ve got an Episcopal colleague who runs the most productive meetings. I’ve also watched her cultivate impressive leadership out of younger colleagues. I want to learn to lead like her. So when the opportunity came up to serve on a board with her, I jumped at the chance. It’s an expense of my limited time, but I want to learn how she leads -- and how another organization runs. Find a good board that looks like the board you’d like to have and offer to serve on it.
These are some of the things that have worked for us at the MCC.
Do you have tips of your own to share with other Christian leaders? Post them on Faith & Leadership’s Facebook page(link is external).
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Your Job is to Develop PeopleBigstock/johnsroad7
How do you develop leaders in your organization without funding? The executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches offers 10 ideas for leadership development on a shoestring.
Editor’s note: This reflection is part of a series on leadership development.
Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In my experience, those of us who lead Christian institutions say we treasure leadership development, but we don’t set aside funds or time for this work. Perhaps our heart is set on leadership development, but our treasure is yet to follow.
I find myself in this position at the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Currently, we have no budget line item for leadership development. Maybe one day we will shift our financial resources, but the institution I inherited had not put funds behind these efforts.
In the meantime, we are trying low-budget leadership development, improvising how, when and where we develop the people who make this organization work. (I comfort myself with the thought that Jesus and the disciples didn’t have a line item for leadership development either, but somehow they made do.)
I know I’m not alone with the dilemma, so I thought I’d share the ways in which we are attempting cheap and scrappy leadership development. How do you form committee members, board leaders and staff for leadership without any funding?
Here are some ideas:
Beg (from anyone and everyone)
If you can’t host your own leadership training, invite yourself to other organizations’ events. Take advantage of neighboring colleges and nonprofits. Regional denominational and ecumenical institutions are poised to offer more robust leadership development than an individual congregation. If another denomination in your area is holding an intriguing leadership development opportunity, take advantage of your ecumenical relations and ask to attend.
Borrow (from other fields)
The vice president of our board is a successful lawyer who runs a local firm. When I asked him how he retains young employees, he said talented first-year associates stay if they are given “meaningful work” in their first year and are not limited to shadowing senior lawyers. By discussing the leadership development practices of a law firm, I was able to see more accurately that my own institution has had a de facto probationary period for new board members before they are allowed to do meaningful work. We now intend to bring in new board leaders with specific, meaningful projects in mind and not simply redshirt them for a year.
Steal (from colleagues)
Once a year, I meet for a retreat with the directors of councils of churches from around the country. This is a great place to pick up good ideas and learn about mistakes to avoid. My colleague at the Wisconsin Council of Churches, for example, shared with the group that he holds an annual lunch for his past board presidents. I brought this idea back from our retreat, and our executive team loved it. Historically, we have rotated our presidents off the board and then done a mediocre job of keeping a relationship with them -- the leaders who were most involved in the work. This June we held our first ex-presidents’ lunch in Massachusetts. Our turnout was great, and it generated a lot of goodwill for little money. We are already planning one for next year. Now I will circle back to my Wisconsin counterpart to tell him what we learned and thank him.
Read
Reading is one obvious low-budget way to learn. More specifically, read something on leadership development with other people so you can discuss and practice what you read in community.
If you don’t have money, spend time
MCC doesn’t have funds for leadership development, but we do have a curious provision in the personnel policies that offers “study leave.” When a local college held a daylong series of lectures about leadership at Vatican II, I decided to seize the opportunity as a “staff study day” for some continuing education. The lectures gave my colleagues and me a common experience to discuss as we reflected on our own work. Even if you don’t have time set aside by personnel policies, aim to create times for intentional study and leadership formation.
Find or create a group to learn in community
In person and online, intentional groups of colleagues provide the context for meaningful growth and change. The ELCA bishop in New England, for example, has created a Facebook group for his pastors called “Try Something New in New England.” Pastors are encouraged to experiment and “tell your stories -- good, bad, and ugly.” Similarly, but in person, three pastors in a rural setting in our state recognized their need for social media education. They got together on Tuesday afternoons and watched online videos. It wasn’t fancy or particularly high-tech, but they were learning together and had colleagues to hold them accountable to their aspirations for growth and change.
Expand your definition of leadership development
We’ve found fruitfulness in expanding the areas where we can develop leadership. For example, we are cultivating more church leaders to think strategically about stories we can pitch to the local media. We aim to develop media-savvy church leaders as part of our commitment to the vibrant, ecumenical church. So when I prepare to pitch a story, I post to Facebook about what I’m thinking and invite people to help me refine the idea. This draws in new ideas, creates a stronger pitch and demonstrates publicly what constitutes a newsworthy event. My long-term goal is to equip local pastors to make these pitches themselves.
Don’t try to be the expert in everything
As a generalist running a small organization, I’ve learned to look to colleagues with more particular skills. I have a board president with tons of experience who has a very clear sense of what is staff work and what is board work. I look to her for these distinctions. I have a colleague who is exceedingly wise about staffing models. I look to him for wisdom about our restructured staff plan. I no longer feel I have to be the expert in everything.
Take advantage of opportunities to let others lead
A nearby seminary wanted to partner with us to host a visiting scholar for a community event. Unfortunately, this was scheduled at a time when I was to be on retreat. Instead of passing on the opportunity, we are experimenting to see what it’s like to host an event without me. My lack of availability on this day is inviting some greater leadership out of others.
Volunteer elsewhere
I’ve got an Episcopal colleague who runs the most productive meetings. I’ve also watched her cultivate impressive leadership out of younger colleagues. I want to learn to lead like her. So when the opportunity came up to serve on a board with her, I jumped at the chance. It’s an expense of my limited time, but I want to learn how she leads -- and how another organization runs. Find a good board that looks like the board you’d like to have and offer to serve on it.
These are some of the things that have worked for us at the MCC.
Do you have tips of your own to share with other Christian leaders? Post them on Faith & Leadership’s Facebook page(link is external).
-------
In the Army, every senior officer is expected to train people two levels below and to know the mindset of those two levels above, says a retired general and Catholic lay leader.
Read more from James Dubik »
Faith & Leadership
MANAGEMENT, TEAM MANAGEMENT, LAITY
James Dubik: Your job is to develop people
In the Army, every senior officer is expected to train people two levels below and to know the mindset of those two levels above, says a retired general and Catholic lay leader.
But that is not the case.
“We have a set of nested leadership responsibilities that are multifunctional and not just a hierarchy,” says Dubik, now a consultant for and board member of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management.
“Every commander is also a teacher, so your job as a senior leader is to develop your subordinates,” he said.
Generally, every senior officer is responsible for training people two levels below and, in turn, knowing the mindset of those two levels above. As a result, leaders at every level understand the broader goals and mission beyond their own positions and are thus empowered to act creatively within that understanding.
“This is a coherent set of leaders who as a body are moving the organization forward, moving a mission forward,” Dubik said.
Dubik spent 40 years in the military. In his final command before retiring in 2008, he oversaw the training of Iraqi security forces.
He spoke with Faith & Leadership about the Army’s approach to leadership development. The video clip is an excerpt from the following edited transcript.
Q: How does the Army develop leaders?
Three approaches occur simultaneously: institutional, organizational and personal.
Institutionally, we have a well-structured, transparent and clear approach: select, train and promote.
You select a person for promotion, you train the person before he or she gets promoted, and then you promote the person and put him or her in the job.
This is a progressive set of educational experiences, whether you’re a sergeant or an officer.
Before you’re a sergeant, for example, you go to basic leadership school. When you get your first stripe after sergeant, you go to basic noncommissioned officer school. You get your second stripe; you go to advanced. You get your third stripe, and so on.
This system recognizes that as a person grows in responsibility, as their role and the scope of their job gets larger, the institution has an obligation to prepare that person for the duties that he or she is expected to execute.
The same thing happens with officers -- lieutenants, captains, majors, every one of us. Before you get promoted, you go to a school.
We also have specialty schools for technical specialties and command operations. Before I commanded, for example, at the company level, which is 150 people, I went to a company commander preparation course.
It wasn’t long, a couple of weeks, but it was specifically designed to help me think through the kinds of issues that I would face as a company commander. Again, the same thing at each level.
Although it happens occasionally, we don’t want to put anybody in a job they are not prepared for. So with “select, train and promote,” we do the best we can to prepare them.
Q: And the organizational side of leadership development?
Regarding the organizational approach, every commander is also a teacher, so your job as a senior leader is to develop your subordinates.
Our general rule is you develop subordinates two levels below you. So, for example, if I am a lieutenant colonel -- a commander of a battalion of 500 people -- part of my job is to train my majors, who are one level down, and my subordinate commanders, captains. And the major’s job is to develop captains and the lieutenants two levels down, who are generally entry-level leadership positions.
It’s engrained that we expect our senior commanders to help develop people two levels down, and this occurs in day-to-day operations.
If I’m a lieutenant colonel circulating in the battlefield and I see a captain doing something that captains shouldn’t be doing, my job is to teach that person, “Hey, that’s not really a captain’s job.”
You do that always on the side, always in the right way if at all possible.
It also happens in meetings. Meetings are teaching opportunities, if you use them correctly. It also happens in social events. The commander is expected to have social events to bond the unit, to help develop a sense of camaraderie in an organization.
There are also formal trainings. What the Army does is train. If it’s not a war, it’s training. So training is a way to challenge leaders to develop certain skills.
As a company commander, you analyze which skills people are very good at and which skills they aren’t good at and then set the conditions in your training to help you develop the skills that they are not good at.
Q: And the third approach, the personal?
In the Army, each of us is also responsible for our own development.
The Army expects everyone to read beyond their current position, to do some historical study of people who had similar positions above them, so that the onus is not just on the institution, not just on your commander and your organization; it’s also on you.
We’re responsible for our continued development intellectually and physically. Our profession is a tough profession, so you have to maintain some sense of physical fitness.
Q: Regarding that second approach, the organizational, you’re basically saying that leadership development practices are inherently built into the Army’s organizational structure, its hierarchy. Give us an example of what you’re talking about and how you’ve used this approach in developing leaders.
I’ll use myself in Iraq. Two levels up from me was the secretary of defense and the president. I had to execute what I did in Iraq consistent with their intent.
I didn’t talk to these guys often, but I read a lot of what they wrote. I listened to their speeches and their testimonies so that I would have a sense of the direction they were going.
Two levels below me were a set of colonels who were training the Iraqi army, the police, the navy, developing the ministerial systems and the minister of defense.
They had to understand the direction I wanted to go so that in their day-to-day activities they could use their initiative and creativity in a way that was consistent with the overall direction.
The hierarchy is not just so that orders can flow down and subordinates can bow down. This is a coherent set of leaders who as a body are moving the organization forward, moving a mission forward. The set of leaders are also psychologically tied. In battle, things don’t always go well, and when a subordinate knows that he or she is tied up and down in a nested set of people who care for them, then the difficulties of battle start to be bearable.
Externally, the chain of command looks like a hierarchy where the general at the top says, “Everyone must X today,” and the order goes all the way down to thousands of soldiers Xing all over the place. But that’s not the case at all; we have a set of nested leadership responsibilities that are multifunctional and not just a hierarchy.
Q: So if I’m a lieutenant, it’s not enough that I know what I’m supposed to do as a lieutenant. I’m supposed to know also what the captain is thinking. I’m supposed to know what the major is thinking.
Right. Exactly.
Q: And the beauty of this becomes that I’m not trapped in my lieutenant role. By knowing the thinking of those one and two levels up, it frees me up and actually makes for a decentralized command.
The challenge in our profession is to understand that in war you must accomplish two things.
You must allow your subordinates maximum flexibility, because opportunities and challenges arise at the point of battle that cannot be foreseen.
If the subordinate waits to report up and wait for instructions, the opportunity will have gone away and the challenge will only have grown. So you want decisions to be made at the lowest possible level.
The other side of the coin, though, is that a subordinate can desynchronize a large operation by acting in an errant way, in a way inconsistent with the overall direction of the organization.
You have these dueling challenges as a commander: use your creativity, but don’t screw the big plan up.
The way that we tried to balance those two seemingly opposite realities is what we call “commander’s intent,” so that I explain my intent such that people two levels below know what I want to accomplish.
What’s the purpose of this operation? What effect are we trying to have on the enemy? What are the parameters in which I am to operate, the things that I can and cannot do? What are the things that I must do?
That creates a dynamic where the subordinate can use his or her creativity within that intent. It increases the probability that the subordinate will act and decide quickly to take advantage of opportunities and overcome obstacles before they become large, without desynchronizing the larger operation.
That’s the dynamic you want to set up. When you have this “commander’s intent” nested properly up and down the chain of command, you increase the probability of success astronomically.
The onus, though, is on the senior commander. If I’m a colonel, I can’t assume that my lieutenant colonels and captains know my intent or how to act within it.
Part of the training and leader development that occurs is about building an understanding of that intent. I help them. I set up training exercises where they’re not in communication so they must decide and act within my intent, and then we have a discussion afterwards about what went well and what didn’t go well and why did you make that decision -- that wasn’t my intent.
That helps establish the nested understanding that you need.
Q: In the giving of orders, the exercise of command, how much authority comes from the rank and how much from the person who’s in the position?
They’re equal.
We’re a deferential hierarchy, so there is deference and respect to the rank. But we’re also an organization of human beings, and it’s probably not surprising that some people wear their rank better than others. It’s the combination, in the final analysis, that works.
Look, American soldiers are really great Americans, but they’re still Americans, and Americans are really good at not doing something they think is really stupid.
So if an American soldier gets an incredibly stupid order, they’re going to say, “Yes, sir. Roger that,” and then it will never happen. Because something happened -- we couldn’t get this; we couldn’t get that. Some legitimate reason will pop up.
The fact that you issue an order as a senior officer is interesting, and may be compelling, if the order makes sense.
There is this positional authority that exists at every rank, and the higher you go, the more your position is respected -- but less important.
As a three-star in Iraq, I reported to General [David] Petraeus and the secretary of defense above him and had working for me 13 general officers and flag officers of a variety of nations, each of whom was a seasoned professional with more than 30 years’ experience.
So you lead that group in an entirely different way -- a much more participative, collegial, discursive leadership style -- than you might in the situation where you have a battalion commander with 24 years’ experience over people with five and less.
As you grow in rank and responsibility, the type of leadership -- the way you get people to align around the common goal of the organization and move forward -- changes and becomes much less positional and much more personal.
Q: Lieutenants are in the unusual position of commanding people, especially sergeants, who have far more seniority than they do, which is in some ways similar to the situation young pastors often find themselves in. How do you teach leadership in that situation?
A lieutenant is in charge of 20 to 40 people and has subordinate leaders who are sergeants. There are no other officers in the lieutenant’s organization. So a 21-year-old lieutenant finds himself responsible for a set of sergeants who are far more experienced.
When I was a first lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, my platoon sergeant had four tours in Vietnam and two of my squad leaders had tours in Vietnam. I did not. I came right out of Gannon College with my philosophy degree and my paratrooper wings and showed up as their leader.
So the first thing that a lieutenant has to understand is that you don’t have to know everything and you don’t have to make every decision yourself. Generally, it’s the platoon sergeant who teaches the lieutenant this. I know my platoon sergeant taught me.
When I issued an instruction that would be not so good -- which I did as a lieutenant; all lieutenants do -- he would pull me off to the side and say, “Lieutenant, that really wasn’t the right thing to say. You ought to go back and change it this way.”
He would then create the conditions that if I did as he suggested, he would tell the sergeants, “See, this guy is smart. We can teach him. He can learn. He’ll be good.”
Whereas if a lieutenant just gives him the stiff-arm -- “I’m the officer here; you’re not. Just do what I say” -- it sets up a really bad dynamic.
Generally, the lieutenant learns one way or the other, either through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. But the better lieutenants are the ones who listen and understand that it’s OK to learn from others.
When a sergeant comes to the lieutenant and says, “Here’s my experience; here’s what I think we ought to do,” the sergeant isn’t stealing authority from the lieutenant.
It’s not like you have this bag of authority and someone cut a hole in it and is draining it.
This is a person who is trying to increase your authority by teaching you as a lieutenant that it’s not the bar on your shoulder but it’s this other aspect of leadership -- your proficiency, your ability to make sense, to listen, to adapt and learn. So sergeants play a very critical role in leadership training of officers.
Q: I wonder who the “sergeants” are in congregations or in denominations who can help play this role for young pastors starting out.
I wouldn’t want to overstretch the analogy, but the issue lieutenants face is responsibility for an organization under conditions where that person doesn’t understand how the organization runs yet completely, nor does he or she have full understanding of the people in that organization.
So the real issue for me becomes a learning issue.
Am I so arrogant that I’m not going to learn from other people, even from my subordinates? Am I so arrogant that even though I know what I don’t know, I’m not going to go find a person that does know and then use their knowledge?
If that’s the kind of person I am, leadership is not going to be easy for me, and followership will go down, not up.
There’s a contract between leaders, an implicit contract, where I acknowledge you as a leader. I will follow you as a leader and you will take care of me in the process. You will make the best decisions with the best set of information available as possible. There’s this mutuality.
When I took over my first platoon -- no, my second platoon -- I went in and I took over in an official ceremony and went to meet my sergeants. And one guy, Sgt. Mark Archer, was sitting in the back at a corner, and he was like, “Hmm,” and I went up to him afterwards.
I said, “Mark” --- or, “Sgt. Archer, what’s the problem?” I know him as Mark now, because we’re still friends. This was from 1974. So, “Sgt. Archer, what’s the problem?”
He says, “Well, I’m just looking at you and making up my mind whether I’m going to risk my life for you.”
Well, that kind of puts a sharp point on it right then and there, and it’s that kind of expectation that followers have of their leaders.
“I’ll follow you, buddy. But I want to follow you more out of interest. I want to follow you because I have some confidence in your ability.”
“Every commander is also a teacher, so your job as a senior leader is to develop your subordinates,” he said.
Generally, every senior officer is responsible for training people two levels below and, in turn, knowing the mindset of those two levels above. As a result, leaders at every level understand the broader goals and mission beyond their own positions and are thus empowered to act creatively within that understanding.
“This is a coherent set of leaders who as a body are moving the organization forward, moving a mission forward,” Dubik said.
Dubik spent 40 years in the military. In his final command before retiring in 2008, he oversaw the training of Iraqi security forces.
He spoke with Faith & Leadership about the Army’s approach to leadership development. The video clip is an excerpt from the following edited transcript.
Q: How does the Army develop leaders?
Three approaches occur simultaneously: institutional, organizational and personal.
Institutionally, we have a well-structured, transparent and clear approach: select, train and promote.
You select a person for promotion, you train the person before he or she gets promoted, and then you promote the person and put him or her in the job.
This is a progressive set of educational experiences, whether you’re a sergeant or an officer.
Before you’re a sergeant, for example, you go to basic leadership school. When you get your first stripe after sergeant, you go to basic noncommissioned officer school. You get your second stripe; you go to advanced. You get your third stripe, and so on.
This system recognizes that as a person grows in responsibility, as their role and the scope of their job gets larger, the institution has an obligation to prepare that person for the duties that he or she is expected to execute.
The same thing happens with officers -- lieutenants, captains, majors, every one of us. Before you get promoted, you go to a school.
We also have specialty schools for technical specialties and command operations. Before I commanded, for example, at the company level, which is 150 people, I went to a company commander preparation course.
It wasn’t long, a couple of weeks, but it was specifically designed to help me think through the kinds of issues that I would face as a company commander. Again, the same thing at each level.
Although it happens occasionally, we don’t want to put anybody in a job they are not prepared for. So with “select, train and promote,” we do the best we can to prepare them.
Q: And the organizational side of leadership development?
Regarding the organizational approach, every commander is also a teacher, so your job as a senior leader is to develop your subordinates.
Our general rule is you develop subordinates two levels below you. So, for example, if I am a lieutenant colonel -- a commander of a battalion of 500 people -- part of my job is to train my majors, who are one level down, and my subordinate commanders, captains. And the major’s job is to develop captains and the lieutenants two levels down, who are generally entry-level leadership positions.
It’s engrained that we expect our senior commanders to help develop people two levels down, and this occurs in day-to-day operations.
If I’m a lieutenant colonel circulating in the battlefield and I see a captain doing something that captains shouldn’t be doing, my job is to teach that person, “Hey, that’s not really a captain’s job.”
You do that always on the side, always in the right way if at all possible.
It also happens in meetings. Meetings are teaching opportunities, if you use them correctly. It also happens in social events. The commander is expected to have social events to bond the unit, to help develop a sense of camaraderie in an organization.
There are also formal trainings. What the Army does is train. If it’s not a war, it’s training. So training is a way to challenge leaders to develop certain skills.
As a company commander, you analyze which skills people are very good at and which skills they aren’t good at and then set the conditions in your training to help you develop the skills that they are not good at.
Q: And the third approach, the personal?
In the Army, each of us is also responsible for our own development.
The Army expects everyone to read beyond their current position, to do some historical study of people who had similar positions above them, so that the onus is not just on the institution, not just on your commander and your organization; it’s also on you.
We’re responsible for our continued development intellectually and physically. Our profession is a tough profession, so you have to maintain some sense of physical fitness.
Q: Regarding that second approach, the organizational, you’re basically saying that leadership development practices are inherently built into the Army’s organizational structure, its hierarchy. Give us an example of what you’re talking about and how you’ve used this approach in developing leaders.
I’ll use myself in Iraq. Two levels up from me was the secretary of defense and the president. I had to execute what I did in Iraq consistent with their intent.
I didn’t talk to these guys often, but I read a lot of what they wrote. I listened to their speeches and their testimonies so that I would have a sense of the direction they were going.
Two levels below me were a set of colonels who were training the Iraqi army, the police, the navy, developing the ministerial systems and the minister of defense.
They had to understand the direction I wanted to go so that in their day-to-day activities they could use their initiative and creativity in a way that was consistent with the overall direction.
The hierarchy is not just so that orders can flow down and subordinates can bow down. This is a coherent set of leaders who as a body are moving the organization forward, moving a mission forward. The set of leaders are also psychologically tied. In battle, things don’t always go well, and when a subordinate knows that he or she is tied up and down in a nested set of people who care for them, then the difficulties of battle start to be bearable.
Externally, the chain of command looks like a hierarchy where the general at the top says, “Everyone must X today,” and the order goes all the way down to thousands of soldiers Xing all over the place. But that’s not the case at all; we have a set of nested leadership responsibilities that are multifunctional and not just a hierarchy.
Q: So if I’m a lieutenant, it’s not enough that I know what I’m supposed to do as a lieutenant. I’m supposed to know also what the captain is thinking. I’m supposed to know what the major is thinking.
Right. Exactly.
Q: And the beauty of this becomes that I’m not trapped in my lieutenant role. By knowing the thinking of those one and two levels up, it frees me up and actually makes for a decentralized command.
The challenge in our profession is to understand that in war you must accomplish two things.
You must allow your subordinates maximum flexibility, because opportunities and challenges arise at the point of battle that cannot be foreseen.
If the subordinate waits to report up and wait for instructions, the opportunity will have gone away and the challenge will only have grown. So you want decisions to be made at the lowest possible level.
The other side of the coin, though, is that a subordinate can desynchronize a large operation by acting in an errant way, in a way inconsistent with the overall direction of the organization.
You have these dueling challenges as a commander: use your creativity, but don’t screw the big plan up.
The way that we tried to balance those two seemingly opposite realities is what we call “commander’s intent,” so that I explain my intent such that people two levels below know what I want to accomplish.
What’s the purpose of this operation? What effect are we trying to have on the enemy? What are the parameters in which I am to operate, the things that I can and cannot do? What are the things that I must do?
That creates a dynamic where the subordinate can use his or her creativity within that intent. It increases the probability that the subordinate will act and decide quickly to take advantage of opportunities and overcome obstacles before they become large, without desynchronizing the larger operation.
That’s the dynamic you want to set up. When you have this “commander’s intent” nested properly up and down the chain of command, you increase the probability of success astronomically.
The onus, though, is on the senior commander. If I’m a colonel, I can’t assume that my lieutenant colonels and captains know my intent or how to act within it.
Part of the training and leader development that occurs is about building an understanding of that intent. I help them. I set up training exercises where they’re not in communication so they must decide and act within my intent, and then we have a discussion afterwards about what went well and what didn’t go well and why did you make that decision -- that wasn’t my intent.
That helps establish the nested understanding that you need.
Q: In the giving of orders, the exercise of command, how much authority comes from the rank and how much from the person who’s in the position?
They’re equal.
We’re a deferential hierarchy, so there is deference and respect to the rank. But we’re also an organization of human beings, and it’s probably not surprising that some people wear their rank better than others. It’s the combination, in the final analysis, that works.
Look, American soldiers are really great Americans, but they’re still Americans, and Americans are really good at not doing something they think is really stupid.
So if an American soldier gets an incredibly stupid order, they’re going to say, “Yes, sir. Roger that,” and then it will never happen. Because something happened -- we couldn’t get this; we couldn’t get that. Some legitimate reason will pop up.
The fact that you issue an order as a senior officer is interesting, and may be compelling, if the order makes sense.
There is this positional authority that exists at every rank, and the higher you go, the more your position is respected -- but less important.
As a three-star in Iraq, I reported to General [David] Petraeus and the secretary of defense above him and had working for me 13 general officers and flag officers of a variety of nations, each of whom was a seasoned professional with more than 30 years’ experience.
So you lead that group in an entirely different way -- a much more participative, collegial, discursive leadership style -- than you might in the situation where you have a battalion commander with 24 years’ experience over people with five and less.
As you grow in rank and responsibility, the type of leadership -- the way you get people to align around the common goal of the organization and move forward -- changes and becomes much less positional and much more personal.
Q: Lieutenants are in the unusual position of commanding people, especially sergeants, who have far more seniority than they do, which is in some ways similar to the situation young pastors often find themselves in. How do you teach leadership in that situation?
A lieutenant is in charge of 20 to 40 people and has subordinate leaders who are sergeants. There are no other officers in the lieutenant’s organization. So a 21-year-old lieutenant finds himself responsible for a set of sergeants who are far more experienced.
When I was a first lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, my platoon sergeant had four tours in Vietnam and two of my squad leaders had tours in Vietnam. I did not. I came right out of Gannon College with my philosophy degree and my paratrooper wings and showed up as their leader.
So the first thing that a lieutenant has to understand is that you don’t have to know everything and you don’t have to make every decision yourself. Generally, it’s the platoon sergeant who teaches the lieutenant this. I know my platoon sergeant taught me.
When I issued an instruction that would be not so good -- which I did as a lieutenant; all lieutenants do -- he would pull me off to the side and say, “Lieutenant, that really wasn’t the right thing to say. You ought to go back and change it this way.”
He would then create the conditions that if I did as he suggested, he would tell the sergeants, “See, this guy is smart. We can teach him. He can learn. He’ll be good.”
Whereas if a lieutenant just gives him the stiff-arm -- “I’m the officer here; you’re not. Just do what I say” -- it sets up a really bad dynamic.
Generally, the lieutenant learns one way or the other, either through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. But the better lieutenants are the ones who listen and understand that it’s OK to learn from others.
When a sergeant comes to the lieutenant and says, “Here’s my experience; here’s what I think we ought to do,” the sergeant isn’t stealing authority from the lieutenant.
It’s not like you have this bag of authority and someone cut a hole in it and is draining it.
This is a person who is trying to increase your authority by teaching you as a lieutenant that it’s not the bar on your shoulder but it’s this other aspect of leadership -- your proficiency, your ability to make sense, to listen, to adapt and learn. So sergeants play a very critical role in leadership training of officers.
Q: I wonder who the “sergeants” are in congregations or in denominations who can help play this role for young pastors starting out.
I wouldn’t want to overstretch the analogy, but the issue lieutenants face is responsibility for an organization under conditions where that person doesn’t understand how the organization runs yet completely, nor does he or she have full understanding of the people in that organization.
So the real issue for me becomes a learning issue.
Am I so arrogant that I’m not going to learn from other people, even from my subordinates? Am I so arrogant that even though I know what I don’t know, I’m not going to go find a person that does know and then use their knowledge?
If that’s the kind of person I am, leadership is not going to be easy for me, and followership will go down, not up.
There’s a contract between leaders, an implicit contract, where I acknowledge you as a leader. I will follow you as a leader and you will take care of me in the process. You will make the best decisions with the best set of information available as possible. There’s this mutuality.
When I took over my first platoon -- no, my second platoon -- I went in and I took over in an official ceremony and went to meet my sergeants. And one guy, Sgt. Mark Archer, was sitting in the back at a corner, and he was like, “Hmm,” and I went up to him afterwards.
I said, “Mark” --- or, “Sgt. Archer, what’s the problem?” I know him as Mark now, because we’re still friends. This was from 1974. So, “Sgt. Archer, what’s the problem?”
He says, “Well, I’m just looking at you and making up my mind whether I’m going to risk my life for you.”
Well, that kind of puts a sharp point on it right then and there, and it’s that kind of expectation that followers have of their leaders.
“I’ll follow you, buddy. But I want to follow you more out of interest. I want to follow you because I have some confidence in your ability.”
-------
Training Young People to Lead in a Christian Organization
The top executive at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship uses her organization's strategic plan to build a team of young leaders at CBF headquarters.
Read more from Suzii Paynter »
Faith & Leadership
Editor's note: This interview is part of a series on leadership development.
Suzii Paynter stepped into the role of executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) at a time when the organization was making dramatic systemic changes.
Soon after her arrival, CBF adopted a new governance structure and strategic plan to guide the global nonprofit organization, which comprises 1,800 churches and more than 130 missionaries.
With those changes came shifts in leadership development, as Paynter expanded the leadership team and began to map the organization’s staff structure and performance evaluation to the new plan.
Guiding and nurturing young people in leadership is a particular focus of Paynter’s work.
“It’s a big commitment of my time to create a strong, broadly based leadership team,” she said. “We have a lot of young leadership in our ranks. … This is our future, this large number of leaders that we want to keep and sustain.”
Paynter spoke to Faith & Leadership about leadership development of the CBF staff, including the unique opportunities offered by her “denomi-network.” The following is an edited transcript.
Q: How has your staff changed since you’ve been in this position?
When I came, there were three direct reports to this position, so I’ve expanded that structure [to currently 10]. I’ve flattened the organization, taken out some of the folks in between, and I’ve done that in order to create a broadly based, younger leadership team in the organization.
Q: When you came into this position a year and a half ago, how did you assess what needed to be done in terms of leadership development?
One of the things that was driving us is that we had a new strategic plan. And so I mapped our staff structure and the incentives -- both intended and unintended -- that came from that staff structure to this new strategic plan.
Q: When you began to think about leadership development, how did you set overall goals for the organization, as well as individual goals for people within it?
One step was assessing our assets. One of the assets that I saw was a tremendous number of young leaders in our community. Unlike some other denominational groups that do not have a large number of younger clergy, because of our relationship with 15 seminaries and divinity schools, we have a lot of young leadership in our ranks, in our churches.
When I came, we had 255 active résumés; that let me know there were a lot of people on the move out there, most of them in their early or mid-career. So I said, “This is our future, this large number of leaders that we want to keep and sustain.”
That helped me make a decision about leadership development on my own staff. First of all, I wanted to draw from that same pool of people. How do I make natural connections to that network that are reflected here at the national and global office?
I believe that your leaders in your congregation are going to look to your office here and ask themselves the question, “Do I see people that look like me, that went to seminary with me, that care about the things I care about?” They want to see a reflection of themselves in the leadership of our denomination.
Q: So you wanted to get younger folks in leadership in the denominational office as a reflection of what was already happening on the ground, so to speak?
Right. There were terrific younger employees with a lot of very good service on the staff among the people that were employed when I came. So one of my strategies was to assess their performance and strengths and ask myself the question, “In the changing of these new job descriptions, how do I give these folks that do have connections, that do look a lot like our constituency, how do I give them new responsibilities that match the strategic plan, and then how do I prepare them to carry out those responsibilities effectively?”
Q: So on the second point, what processes have you developed to help them carry out those responsibilities?
Regular communication is really important, and what that means for us is as a group we meet every other week as a leadership team, and I have 30-minute one-on-one meetings with every one of them once a month, so that we have standard discussion times. We build those agendas cooperatively.
And then certain members of my staff I sent to the Leadership Education workshop; I sent four of them together. I knew that they were going to be working as a team, working from new positions, and I wanted them to go together to a common professional development training so that they had common language and common tools that were interdisciplinary. That’s another really important piece for me.
We’ve done some work understanding ourselves as individuals. We’ve had one Enneagram workshop, and we’ll probably have another one, with not just the folks on the leadership team but across the whole staff.
Q: And is that more about assessing who you are as a leader, and less about skills?
I think it’s important to do both of those things. The other aspect is we’ve had a theologian-in-residence this year, too, so having a monthly conversation around theology, around biblical interpretation.
All of those conversations -- the personal conversation, the skills conversation, the theological conversation -- I think part of my responsibility in leadership development is providing the context for meaningful conversations in these big areas that shape and form us as an organization.
Q: Why do you use the Enneagram?
Because it has both a spiritual component and a personality component, and because you self-define. In other words, you’re not being handed back a questionnaire that tells you who you are; you’re listening and deciding. And to me, that is a very important function of ownership when you’re talking about information about yourself.
Q: How do you know people are making progress on their goals?
Having these monthly meetings really does give us the opportunity to check in on goal setting and have a pretty honest conversation about what’s happening.
I’m a very big fan of having a good structured performance review; I think it’s a good discipline. But it also can be kind of a deferred process, you know -- you can wait too long to address something if you’re just waiting for the formal performance review.
With a new strategic plan and with new people in positions of leadership, you need a more consistent review of goals that is informal, where there’s more give-and-take and discussion about it; you don’t feel like your whole job is riding on it or something is going to be dropped in your personnel file.
Q: And do you also do the structured annual review?
Yeah. And we’re right in that process right this minute.
Q: What’s your process for setting individual and group goals?
Because we have this new strategic plan, we’ve really tried to tailor our goals back to that and use that as a touch point. We ask the question, “Looking at this strategic plan, where do you see your division or your work? What goals can you contribute, and where do they plug in?”
The question is not just, “What do you wake up every day and love to do, and how do we make that your goal?” That’s not the point. The point is to really move toward the outcomes that are envisioned in our strategic plan.
One of those big outcomes is greater collaboration. I’m asking all my direct reports to have a collaboration goal or goals. Then we can ask the question, “What is it within your work that is going to show benchmarks toward collaboration? What would that look like next year if you’re more collaborative?”
So that’s been the process, of using this strategic plan as our guiding light, and then in setting goals with each person, really looking at two or three aspects.
No. 1, the actual content in programs that they supervise, because everybody that’s my direct report is going to have multiple programs under them.
And secondly, the management aspect of their jobs -- the people that report to them, the budget and finance responsibilities that they have, the HR and personnel policies, you know, all of the managerial aspects -- pay attention to that and let them know that I think that’s important.
So it’s not just important that they go out and have a great conference somewhere but also that the people that were doing the catering and were setting things up and printing the materials for it also had a great experience. So that the staff that reports to you is not sacrificing for you to have a great event but they’re just as fulfilled by your event as you are because of the way in which you’re working with them.
And the third thing is external relationships. Who are they interfacing with? It might be church engagement, global field personnel, ecumenical relationships, interfaith relationships, pastors or youth ministers -- they have some goal that is about those external relationships.
I try to structure their goals so that they represent growth and development and achievement in all three of those areas.
One thing I also believe in is when you give a person responsibility, you also give them budget money to live that out. And so I think it’s very important, as you give people responsibility, to give them the opportunity to spend money and plan for the expenditure of money and report on the expenditure of money toward the goals that they set.
Q: Are there any particular issues in bringing along and developing younger leaders?
I don’t really want to generalize by age too much. One of the things I am very interested in is maintaining the idea that all of us are in different life stages and that, as a staff, a part of developing leadership is helping people embrace and love the time of life that they’re in.
Right now I have several staff members that have preschool children or newborn children, and I want to be clear with them that I understand what time of life they’re in, what that means in terms of demands or time structure.
I want them to come to work as the mother of a 2-year-old or the father of a newborn. I want them to come to work as that person, and not have that be something where they feel like they have to juggle their life on the side and then rush in here and pretend they’re somebody else.
Q: What was your own development as a leader? What experiences are you drawing from, now that you are in a position of guiding other people in their development?
One thing is that I was given responsibility, and was expected to show performance indicators for that responsibility, when I was teaching at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches. I was a graduate student, but I was also an employee, and I was given responsibility for a study-skills program for students.
I was expected to show indicators and benchmarks for that program and manage the schedule and things like that, so I had the expectation that if you’re given the responsibility, you’re also expected to show results, and that those things go together.
Q: Did you have a mentor?
I had a wonderful mentor, Dr. Beverly Young. She helped me become involved in professional associations. She said, “Go ahead, volunteer to be the treasurer! Nobody ever wants to be the treasurer or the secretary or whatever -- just volunteer for that job, and you’ll have an opportunity for leadership.” And she was right about that.
That was very formative for me. Professional organizations, as volunteer organizations, allow you a lot of latitude for expressing leadership gifts. And it was still a pioneer era for women in leadership. Becoming an officer of that professional organization gave me standing that I would never have gotten.
It gave me an opportunity to do a lot of public speaking, to interface with a lot of other leaders, to then connect to global organizations. So that’s one of the reasons that today I’m heading up a nonprofit volunteer organization.
There are a lot of people involved in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship [for whom] this is a place to express their leadership. Whether they’re on an advisory council or leading a church engagement network for global missions or teaching in a pastor school in Romania or in China, they’re expressing tremendous leadership skills through a nonprofit network.
Q: So that’s how you developed as a leader, and you see yourself as providing similar kinds of opportunities.
Right. That’s really a beautiful gateway, to me, when I look at this organization and take note of the assets that are spread throughout our community -- these wonderful, talented people. How can I help open the doors for them to go share their gifts?
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The top executive at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship uses her organization's strategic plan to build a team of young leaders at CBF headquarters.
Read more from Suzii Paynter »
Faith & Leadership
CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Suzii Paynter: Training young people to lead in a Christian organization
The top executive at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship uses her organization’s strategic plan to build a team of young leaders at CBF headquarters.
Editor's note: This interview is part of a series on leadership development.
Suzii Paynter stepped into the role of executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) at a time when the organization was making dramatic systemic changes.Soon after her arrival, CBF adopted a new governance structure and strategic plan to guide the global nonprofit organization, which comprises 1,800 churches and more than 130 missionaries.
With those changes came shifts in leadership development, as Paynter expanded the leadership team and began to map the organization’s staff structure and performance evaluation to the new plan.
Guiding and nurturing young people in leadership is a particular focus of Paynter’s work.
“It’s a big commitment of my time to create a strong, broadly based leadership team,” she said. “We have a lot of young leadership in our ranks. … This is our future, this large number of leaders that we want to keep and sustain.”
Paynter spoke to Faith & Leadership about leadership development of the CBF staff, including the unique opportunities offered by her “denomi-network.” The following is an edited transcript.
Q: How has your staff changed since you’ve been in this position?
When I came, there were three direct reports to this position, so I’ve expanded that structure [to currently 10]. I’ve flattened the organization, taken out some of the folks in between, and I’ve done that in order to create a broadly based, younger leadership team in the organization.
Q: When you came into this position a year and a half ago, how did you assess what needed to be done in terms of leadership development?
One of the things that was driving us is that we had a new strategic plan. And so I mapped our staff structure and the incentives -- both intended and unintended -- that came from that staff structure to this new strategic plan.
Q: When you began to think about leadership development, how did you set overall goals for the organization, as well as individual goals for people within it?
One step was assessing our assets. One of the assets that I saw was a tremendous number of young leaders in our community. Unlike some other denominational groups that do not have a large number of younger clergy, because of our relationship with 15 seminaries and divinity schools, we have a lot of young leadership in our ranks, in our churches.
When I came, we had 255 active résumés; that let me know there were a lot of people on the move out there, most of them in their early or mid-career. So I said, “This is our future, this large number of leaders that we want to keep and sustain.”
That helped me make a decision about leadership development on my own staff. First of all, I wanted to draw from that same pool of people. How do I make natural connections to that network that are reflected here at the national and global office?
I believe that your leaders in your congregation are going to look to your office here and ask themselves the question, “Do I see people that look like me, that went to seminary with me, that care about the things I care about?” They want to see a reflection of themselves in the leadership of our denomination.
Q: So you wanted to get younger folks in leadership in the denominational office as a reflection of what was already happening on the ground, so to speak?
Right. There were terrific younger employees with a lot of very good service on the staff among the people that were employed when I came. So one of my strategies was to assess their performance and strengths and ask myself the question, “In the changing of these new job descriptions, how do I give these folks that do have connections, that do look a lot like our constituency, how do I give them new responsibilities that match the strategic plan, and then how do I prepare them to carry out those responsibilities effectively?”
Q: So on the second point, what processes have you developed to help them carry out those responsibilities?
Regular communication is really important, and what that means for us is as a group we meet every other week as a leadership team, and I have 30-minute one-on-one meetings with every one of them once a month, so that we have standard discussion times. We build those agendas cooperatively.
And then certain members of my staff I sent to the Leadership Education workshop; I sent four of them together. I knew that they were going to be working as a team, working from new positions, and I wanted them to go together to a common professional development training so that they had common language and common tools that were interdisciplinary. That’s another really important piece for me.
We’ve done some work understanding ourselves as individuals. We’ve had one Enneagram workshop, and we’ll probably have another one, with not just the folks on the leadership team but across the whole staff.
Q: And is that more about assessing who you are as a leader, and less about skills?
I think it’s important to do both of those things. The other aspect is we’ve had a theologian-in-residence this year, too, so having a monthly conversation around theology, around biblical interpretation.
All of those conversations -- the personal conversation, the skills conversation, the theological conversation -- I think part of my responsibility in leadership development is providing the context for meaningful conversations in these big areas that shape and form us as an organization.
Q: Why do you use the Enneagram?
Because it has both a spiritual component and a personality component, and because you self-define. In other words, you’re not being handed back a questionnaire that tells you who you are; you’re listening and deciding. And to me, that is a very important function of ownership when you’re talking about information about yourself.
Q: How do you know people are making progress on their goals?
Having these monthly meetings really does give us the opportunity to check in on goal setting and have a pretty honest conversation about what’s happening.
I’m a very big fan of having a good structured performance review; I think it’s a good discipline. But it also can be kind of a deferred process, you know -- you can wait too long to address something if you’re just waiting for the formal performance review.
With a new strategic plan and with new people in positions of leadership, you need a more consistent review of goals that is informal, where there’s more give-and-take and discussion about it; you don’t feel like your whole job is riding on it or something is going to be dropped in your personnel file.
Q: And do you also do the structured annual review?
Yeah. And we’re right in that process right this minute.
Q: What’s your process for setting individual and group goals?
Because we have this new strategic plan, we’ve really tried to tailor our goals back to that and use that as a touch point. We ask the question, “Looking at this strategic plan, where do you see your division or your work? What goals can you contribute, and where do they plug in?”
The question is not just, “What do you wake up every day and love to do, and how do we make that your goal?” That’s not the point. The point is to really move toward the outcomes that are envisioned in our strategic plan.
One of those big outcomes is greater collaboration. I’m asking all my direct reports to have a collaboration goal or goals. Then we can ask the question, “What is it within your work that is going to show benchmarks toward collaboration? What would that look like next year if you’re more collaborative?”
So that’s been the process, of using this strategic plan as our guiding light, and then in setting goals with each person, really looking at two or three aspects.
No. 1, the actual content in programs that they supervise, because everybody that’s my direct report is going to have multiple programs under them.
And secondly, the management aspect of their jobs -- the people that report to them, the budget and finance responsibilities that they have, the HR and personnel policies, you know, all of the managerial aspects -- pay attention to that and let them know that I think that’s important.
So it’s not just important that they go out and have a great conference somewhere but also that the people that were doing the catering and were setting things up and printing the materials for it also had a great experience. So that the staff that reports to you is not sacrificing for you to have a great event but they’re just as fulfilled by your event as you are because of the way in which you’re working with them.
And the third thing is external relationships. Who are they interfacing with? It might be church engagement, global field personnel, ecumenical relationships, interfaith relationships, pastors or youth ministers -- they have some goal that is about those external relationships.
I try to structure their goals so that they represent growth and development and achievement in all three of those areas.
One thing I also believe in is when you give a person responsibility, you also give them budget money to live that out. And so I think it’s very important, as you give people responsibility, to give them the opportunity to spend money and plan for the expenditure of money and report on the expenditure of money toward the goals that they set.
Q: Are there any particular issues in bringing along and developing younger leaders?
I don’t really want to generalize by age too much. One of the things I am very interested in is maintaining the idea that all of us are in different life stages and that, as a staff, a part of developing leadership is helping people embrace and love the time of life that they’re in.
Right now I have several staff members that have preschool children or newborn children, and I want to be clear with them that I understand what time of life they’re in, what that means in terms of demands or time structure.
I want them to come to work as the mother of a 2-year-old or the father of a newborn. I want them to come to work as that person, and not have that be something where they feel like they have to juggle their life on the side and then rush in here and pretend they’re somebody else.
Q: What was your own development as a leader? What experiences are you drawing from, now that you are in a position of guiding other people in their development?
One thing is that I was given responsibility, and was expected to show performance indicators for that responsibility, when I was teaching at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches. I was a graduate student, but I was also an employee, and I was given responsibility for a study-skills program for students.
I was expected to show indicators and benchmarks for that program and manage the schedule and things like that, so I had the expectation that if you’re given the responsibility, you’re also expected to show results, and that those things go together.
Q: Did you have a mentor?
I had a wonderful mentor, Dr. Beverly Young. She helped me become involved in professional associations. She said, “Go ahead, volunteer to be the treasurer! Nobody ever wants to be the treasurer or the secretary or whatever -- just volunteer for that job, and you’ll have an opportunity for leadership.” And she was right about that.
That was very formative for me. Professional organizations, as volunteer organizations, allow you a lot of latitude for expressing leadership gifts. And it was still a pioneer era for women in leadership. Becoming an officer of that professional organization gave me standing that I would never have gotten.
It gave me an opportunity to do a lot of public speaking, to interface with a lot of other leaders, to then connect to global organizations. So that’s one of the reasons that today I’m heading up a nonprofit volunteer organization.
There are a lot of people involved in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship [for whom] this is a place to express their leadership. Whether they’re on an advisory council or leading a church engagement network for global missions or teaching in a pastor school in Romania or in China, they’re expressing tremendous leadership skills through a nonprofit network.
Q: So that’s how you developed as a leader, and you see yourself as providing similar kinds of opportunities.
Right. That’s really a beautiful gateway, to me, when I look at this organization and take note of the assets that are spread throughout our community -- these wonderful, talented people. How can I help open the doors for them to go share their gifts?
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