Leadership Development

At the monthly pastors meeting here in San Diego we discussed leadership development.  Dick Kaufmann noted that churches need both systemic and systematic leadership development

Systemic Leadership Development is using your entire organization (the church body) in the process of developing leaders.  This is organic and is often through inviting & involving people into leadership paths.  For example, a community group leader invites an attender to lead a portion of the meeting.  Over time this develops into an apprenticeship, which eventually leads to a new community group leader.

Systematic leadership Development is planning a process or system to develop people.  Formal education uses this model, or elder training would as well.  

As leaders are put in positions of responsibility, here are the four modes of managing them:

Delegating – What areas of responsibility do they have a handle on and only require my time when they need help or are having trouble?

Participating – What areas do they need my involvement, where I am available to discuss options they've come up with.

Coaching – Where do they need coaching to help grow and provide guidance.

Telling – Where do they need me to tell/do things to train them so they can learn to manage these on their own?

leadership-and-the-1-minute-mgr.jpgThe goal is to have all areas fully delegated and only require your attention when the leader needs help. Dick said the best book he's read on some of these things is  Leadership and the One Minute Manager.  Lastly, you are constantly working on issues of Confidence or Competence.  The most dangerous person is a highly confident/incompetent person.  You want to grow the confidence of the competent to maximize potential.