Strategic Leadership pt. II
This post is a continuation of my notes from Adam Hamilton’s session on “Strategic Leadership” at the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network. To read the previous notes, click here.
I thought this quote from Adam was interesting in relationship to preaching. He said, “I don’t always preach something that I’m practicing, but I never preach anything that I”m not going to try to live in my life.”
Adam shared some information from Ron Heifetz’s book, “Leadership without Easy Answers,” which I thought was some of the best info we received during the entire event. Paraphrasing Heifetz’s work for application in the church, Adam shared that Heifetz believes that leadership is about, “helping followers to become more authentically human.” The process of completing this task is as follows.
- Get followers to clarify what matters most [To God].
- Lead them to care about these core values.
- Identity the present reality.
- Help them understand the gap between the ideal and the reality.
- Managers plan & budget, Leaders establish and cast vision.
- Managers produce policies and procedures, Leaders align resources to achieve vision.
- Managers control & problem solve, Leaders motivate and inspire.
- Managers create predictability and order, Leaders produce change and chaos.
Seeing this list, I was struck by the idea that I really struggle when I have to work primarily out of the role of manager. It’s just not who I am.
In establishing vision for the church, Adam identified three questions that every leader needs to be able to answers. [These are outlined in further detail in Adam’s book, “Leading beyond the Walls.”
- Why do people need Jesus?
- Why do people need the church?
- Why do people need this church?
Another quote I jotted down in the session. “People who achieve success simply do what the unsuccessful people decide not to do.”
That quote led into what Adam calls, “Whatever it Takes” leadership which he described as a key philosophy for Church of the Resurrection. To illustrate this, he told the story of a pastor on his staff who had a house call to make, but was asking Adam if it was OK if she didn’t make the visit today because there was 8 inches of snow outside. Adam’s response was, “No, because today is the day that they are going to remember that you showed up.”
A final philosophy from Resurrection that Adam shared was called “Discernment by Nausea.” To describe this, he said that when his Senior management team is faced with a really difficult decision, they tend to follow the principle that, “whatever path makes me sick to my stomach is probably the path that God is calling us to go.”
This post is from a series written following the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in October of 2008. The rest of the series is available below.
