Tod Bolsinger

Becoming a Good Disappointing Leader

In my last post, I suggested that the core competency for leading any “community”--from a family to a church to a country--is the ability to “disappoint your own people at a rate they can absorb.” (Heifetz and Linsky) 

In this post I want to begin to lay out some necessary skills for becoming a good disappointing leader.  And the word “good” here means both a sense of competence as well as character.  In other words, if I am going to be a good leader, I need to be committed to “skillfully” disappointing people as well as doing so for genuinely good reasons.

Here is a summary of what I want to say and then over the next few posts, I’ll take it apart and we can look at each piece. (With thanks to Ed Friedman, Peter Steinke and Murray Bowen for the "organizational systems" research that is behind all of this.)  If you want to lead effective change, in the face of resistance and even while disappointing people around you:

Start by acting on conviction, stay connected, stay calm, stay the course.

So, let's begin with the first clause: To be a good disappointing leader, you have to start by acting on a conviction. 

Now the word “start” here is actually misleading. Before you can “start” by acting on a conviction, you actually have to HAVE a conviction.  And this takes time.  Think of the forming of a clear conviction as the "prerequisite for leadership".  Clear good leadership that can withstand the disappointment of people is a product of maturity and differentiation (a term we’ll spend a great deal of time on in future posts). It is the result of study, conversation, humility and discernment. 

Having a well-thought-out, values-based conviction—an “As for me and my house” conviction (Joshua 24:15)—is not easy.  Most of us simply inherit convictions from those around us.  We take up the concerns or passions of others, we even take on the mantle of leadership to please others, or as a default.  How many of us have said, “Well, if no one else is going to do this, I guess I will (but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work out the way you’d like).” 

I think many people become pastors or take on leadership positions for ego needs.  We see the glint of admiration in the eyes of others, we hear the way they introduce us (“You know that my son is studying to be a PASTOR.  Isn’t that great?”), we like the sense that we are somebody special and we take on a role that we may not even have that much conviction about.  We imagine ourselves with our new titles.  Spiritual writer Parker Palmer was invited to apply for a college presidency.  When a “clearness committee” helped him think through his motives for pursuing the job, he finally admitted, “I think I am interested because it would be nice to get my picture in the paper.”

And soon, we are like the dog that catches the car.  We are dragged along by the sheer force and energy of others’ opinions and affirmation afraid to let go. And because we are not acting out of conviction, we fold under the disappointment of others.

But a clear, thought out conviction that comes from within one's values and is consistent with one's beliefs, is like a healthy spine and strong “core muscles” for the body.  They enable us to stand without wavering, to keep our balance, to stay grounded without having to be overly defensive or attacking.  We are like a well rooted Sequoia tree that can withstand the fires and the storms.  Others may get blown away or consumed, but convictions help us stand in the midst of the disappointment of others. 

But having a conviction is not enough.  Leaders act on their convictions.  And perhaps the clearest indicator of the clarity of a leader is his or her willingness to do so whether others follow or not. 

One of my favorite Jesus stories is when Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is dying and he tells his disciples that he is going to Judea (John 11). The disciples are not excited.  Bethany has been a dangerous place for them.  They try to talk Jesus out of going. (“Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”) He just simply restates that he has something to do and is going.  You have a sense that the disciples had to figure out if they would go to.  I imagine in my minds eye, the disciples spending the night tossing and turning, wringing their hands, arguing with each other, while Jesus likely slept like a baby.  Finally, Thomas says the other disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Now, I don’t imagine that the disciples were excited.  And this wouldn’t be the last time that they would be confused and even disappointed in Jesus, (for example ALL of the events of “Holy Week”) but his clear conviction led him to ACT as a leader.

As a leader, to act on conviction is actually quite simple (though often not easy): I will only worry about myself.  I will do what my convictions call me to do and will not worry about anyone else following.  I will  change only myself. I will not try to control anyone else. I will not try to convince anyone else of my conviction. I will just, with as much clarity and awareness as possible, start acting out of the conviction that I am committed to doing.  I will, in the words of Gandhi, “be the change I want to see in the world.” 

A most common, every day example: Very often one spouse in a marriage will come to me and say, “I want our marriage to be better and I want us to get marriage counseling, but my spouse won’t go.  What should I do?”  My answer every time: YOU go to counseling.  You start working on yourself.  Invite your spouse to join you, but whether they do or not, YOU take responsibility for yourself, only.  (And as we will learn, systems-theory teaches us that this action of personal conviction stimulates change to the system.)

My friend and co-worker, Charlie Campbell is both a pastor and marriage and family therapist.  Charlie has said, that “a leader is someone who would be doing what they are doing anyway.”  It doesn’t matter if anyone follows, I’ll do it anyway, they say. It doesn’t matter if anyone likes this, I am going to do this anyway.  It doesn’t matter if anyone else cares for the environment, works for better schools, is committed to their marriage, makes their church more welcoming to the stranger, tries to bring peace where there is conflict, speaks the truth to power, loves those who don’t love, or forgives those who are filled with enmity… It doesn’t matter if anyone notices, anyone affirms it, anyone even cares about it…this is my conviction and I’ll be doing it anyway.

In one respect, the clearest sign of a leader, is that leaders don’t begin on the basis of whether anyone is following or not.  In one sense, followership is irrelevant.  Leaders start being leaders by acting on conviction. 

But what makes a leader really a leader is what we do when the followers start having opinions about our convictions.  When we hear the grumblings, the criticisms, the second-guesses.  When we see the glance of rolled eyes or hear the clearing of throats.  When those around us start getting anxious about our convictions and we find ourselves naturally looking over our shoulders wondering whether we are heading off alone.  The difference between Leaders and Lone Rangers is what they do next. And that is where we will pick this up…

Disappointing Leadership: The Core Competency

“Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.”  Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky

Most of us who take on leadership roles do so from a place of technical competence.  The best player on the team often becomes the captain.  The best teacher in the department is asked to become head of the department.  The best sales associate is given a promotion to manager.  And as I wrote in my last post, the best “lay leader” in a church is encouraged to become a pastor.  This, of course, can be the root of the dreaded “Peter Principle”: "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."  Not every one who is competent at sales is good at managing (see Scott, Michael)  not everyone who is a good teacher is a good administrator.  But there is one core competency for leadership that is almost never recognized until it is too late: Disappointing people well or, as Linsky and Heifetz say, “at a rate they can absorb.”  And this is the skill that requires such incredible competence: Disappoint people too much and they give up on you, stop following you and may even turn on you.  Don’t disappoint them enough and you’ll never lead them anywhere.

In my last two posts I have written about the complexities of pastoral leadership and the confusion of the role of leadership that plagues most of us right from the beginning.  I promised to take up some of the “adaptations” that are necessary for making the transition from “star player” to “coach” or leader.  And with this post I want to begin some specific reflections on the necessary competencies of a leader.

First, leadership isn’t so much taking people where they WANT to go (that is more what management is all about.)  Leadership is taking people where, in that great phrase of Lincoln’s, “the better angels of their nature” know that they need to go and yet resist going.  Deftly handling resistance and the disappointment that comes along with it so that a community of people can accomplish a goal for the greater good is the core competency of leadership.

What does it take to disappoint people well?  I’ll discuss those particular skills in my next post.  But there is one internal adaptation of expectation that is necessary in order to leading through disappointment.  By definition, the move to leader from a position of technical competence is difficult.  And not just technically difficult (e.g. learning how to run a good department meeting, managing direct reports, setting vision and protecting values).  The real challenge of leadership is that it is emotionally difficult for the leader.  The first great challenge for the person who wants to go from player to “coach”, from star to leader is to determine whether you have the stomach for disappointing people.

Technical competence pleases people.  When we hit our sales numbers, or teach a really good Bible Study, sing a great solo, run a really great program, or hit a home run and people cheer.  Most of us who have been asked to consider leadership have big cheering sections.  We are used to applause, affirmation and a feeling of success.  But the minute you accept the call to leadership, you have to expect that most of the cheering will stop. 

When you stand before people and tell them that in order to accomplish a mission, they have to change, adapt, give up something for the greater good, work with those whom they don’t like or compromise on something that they care about they get mad.  They get really mad.  And mostly, they get mad at you.

For those of us who are pastors, this is even harder.  Note that the quote above from Linsky and Heifetz  defined leadership as, “disappointing your own people.”  (This is a huge part of the complexity that I wrote about previously.)  Leaders want to bring change.  We want to accomplish big goals.  We gave up our cozy platforms of people-pleasing technical competence to take some big hill.  But the real challenge of leadership is not anywhere “out there,” it’s among our own people.  People whom we love.  People who love us.  People whom we consider “brothers and sisters.”  People who are the “family” of God for us.  People with whom we have found a place of belonging, camaraderie of beliefs, a sense of shared purpose and meaning in life.  The call of leadership is learning how to disappoint THESE particular people well and that is not what most of us ever considered when a most pleased people asked for us to lead them.  

Next Post: the skills for disappointing well.

The Problem with “Going Pro”

What do Wayne Gretzky, Bart Starr, Isaiah Thomas, Ted Williams and many, many pastors have in common?  They were once great players who became woeful coaches. 

I know, it’s an interesting tidbit about the superstar athletes, but what does this have to do with being a pastor? 

In my last post, I reflected on the complexity of being a pastor and the toll it often takes on leaders.  In this post, I want to offer another piece of Pastoral Complexity:  We are mostly confused about our calling.  That is to say, we often become pastors without realizing what the job really is. 

Most of us who end in the pastorate do so because someone experienced our ministry skills and encouraged us to consider it as a vocation.  In short, most of us were about the best lay leaders in our churches, organizations or missions and somewhere along the way someone heard us teach, heard us pray, saw us at a bedside or were part of a successful ministry program that we headed up and they told us that we were so good, that we should “go pro.”  (And most often, was mostly about “preaching”.  If you could preach or teach the Bible better than most, then it was assumed that you were called to be a pastor.)

And so what did we do?  We headed off to “professional ministry school” (i.e. “seminary”) or took a job on a church staff with the assumption that now the only thing that was going to change was that we were going to be PAID to do what we used to do as a VOLUNTEER.  (And, really, what’s not to like about that?)  On top of that, once we got our “professional association card” (i.e. “ordination”) we then became the resident “pro” for all kinds of wonderful and meaningful family and community “religious events” (like weddings, baptisms, funerals, invocations and such).  For most of us, this seemed like it would be the best possible world.  Our friends and family were proud of us, our home churches affirmed us and we now got to be paid (ok, not much pay, really, but the “ego perks” were nice) and “freed” to “do ministry full-time.”  We were now expected to be the resident “pro”, the “star player”, the “free agent” who brought the “home team” great results.

But… there is one really big problem.  Being pastor really isn’t about being the star player.  It’s really about being a COACH.  When you get ordained, you don’t get on the playing field, you go to the bench.  You are not the “resident professional Christian” but the leader of a community of mission. 

And that leadership calling is very, very different than most of us expected.

When you become a pastor, your domain is away from the stadium lights and cheering fans and off to the “practice field” where you, in the words of Paul, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). And let’s face it, many of us who are quite gifted at teaching, preaching, counseling and care are just not all that good at “equipping the saints” for teaching, preaching, care and mission. Like Bart Starr or Isaiah Thomas, we are much better at taking the ball into our own hands than we are at leading a team of players. 

For many star athletes, however, perhaps the hardest parts about the adjustment from “player” to “coach” however are the things “away from the field.”  Deciding who “plays” and who doesn’t, managing conflicts, developing strategy, motivating players (who are sometimes pretty unmotivated) and making personnel decisions for the overall health of the team.  Many famous athletes who were great in the game wither under the criticism of the press and the second-guessing of the fans, and grow weary of the “drama” of the locker room and front office. 

In the same way, when most pastors are interviewed about the hardest parts of their job, they talk about how seminary didn’t prepare them for strategic planning, conflict resolution, organizational leadership and staff supervision, (let alone personnel issues, building projects, and administering preschools and the like.)

Even more, this “equipping” and “coaching” ministry is often much more about conflict, change management, and attending to a relational “system” than it is about teaching the Bible or training eager lay people to “share their faith” or serve others.  Again, most pastoring (at least in congregations) is far more about LEADERSHIP than anything else.  And that is pretty different than what we signed up for.

If that wasn’t enough (and this is where it gets really complex….) The REAL players…the laity, would mostly rather that we DIDN’T coach or lead them either.  Most lay people, truth be told, don’t want to be players, they want to be “Fans.”  They want the “Pros” to do the ministry. (That’s why they sent us to seminary, isn’t it?).  They don’t want to suit up and take the field any more than we want to go to the bench and coach them. 

And so…soon, we all fail.  Before long the “coaches” start just asking to play (like pastors who only want to preach and teach and do visitation, you know “real ministry”) and the “players” become spectators.  And the mission of a community of God’s people who are seeking to live out the Kingdom of God is really what gets benched. 

Of course, there are some “players” who become great coaches.  And that “adaptation” is what I want to write about next time.

A Christian Leader Opens His Heart and Sets an Example for Us

A Christian Leader Opens His Heart and Sets an Example for Us

With thanks to Mark D. Roberts for this post, I want to pass along my appreciation and share my respect for John Piper for his openness and humility about what triggered his eight-month sabbatical and offer a few additional thoughts. 

I once was part of a leadership group with renowned CEO Max DePree. Someone made the comment about how hard we pastors work and someone else chimed in that pastors work harder than anyone. Max wisely and calmly chided us, saying that from his experience pastors don't work harder than any other executive or mid-level manager in most companies he knows.  I wholeheartedly agree.   I don't travel nearly as much as most of the men my age in my congregation. And while I work hard, I also get lots of support to balance family and personal time with work time. (I am even taking a few days off this week to recuperate from Holy Week.) 

However there are two ways, that both collude very negatively and demonstrate how pastoral work is at least a bit more COMPLICATED than other professions.  And it is that complexity that is potentially very dangerous to souls, relationships and, yes, ministries of pastors and other Christian leaders.

1. We work in what Ed Friedman calls "an emotional field".  That is that our work, by it's very nature, is work that demands that we constantly negotiate and monitor our own emotional issues while at the same time navigating the emotions and anxieties of other people and the church system.  We not only preach, teach, lead, administrate, counsel and consult, we do it while also attending to the emotional health of the church system, tending to (mostly unspoken) projections and expectations  of a community that is by nature filled with confusing boundaries.  The church is a "family" and a "business" at the same time.  People want us to be both "professional" and "personal".  We get criticized for not knowing everything there is to know about the mystery of God and not knowing every person's name in our congregation when we run into them at the grocery store.  Our congregation is both our "customer" and our "client" and our "partners" and our "bosses" all at the same time.   Again, we don't work harder. It's just really complex and emotionally really demanding.
   
2. Ministers are very prone to confuse our "self" with our "roles".   In our "roles" we are admitted into the holy ground of people's personal lives and literally into every setting in the church life. (And in the church itself: I  have a coveted "#1 key" that can open every door in our church. An apt symbol for the role of a pastor.)  We are often asked to pray at OTHER people's family gatherings, we get welcomed into hospital rooms that even family members can't go in.  People trust us with family secrets. I can walk into any meeting, any classroom, any conversation on the patio at our church and they will literally stop what they are doing to welcome me and listen to whatever I want to say.  But that is because I am the "PASTOR". ("Tod" can't do any of that. Because when I try that at home, my 13 year old daughter says, "Daddy, you're interrupting!" )  And the respect and affirmation we get as pastors is heady stuff and often in great contrast to the "normal" lives we live outside the pulpit and away from the congregation. As a pastor, when I preach a sermon, people literally tell me they "LOVE me."  And I think, at that moment, they really mean it. When God works in people's lives, they genuinely feel something of love toward the messenger.  And since most of us who go into ministry do so as "wounded healers" who are working out their own brokenness, it is really tempting for ministers to work out their personal foibles in the church setting and neglect their emotional, relational and spiritual lives.  It is very tempting to believe that because others are being saved, sanctified and comforted through you, that you MUST really be as secure, holy and solid as WISH you were.   Most Christian leaders problems come from confusing the "role" that God gives us and equips us to play with the "self" that is always in need of grace, community, and truth to be whole.  
   
   We pastors must indeed bring our real "self" to our roles, but we must keep clear that we are NOT our roles. We are children of God in need of discipline by our heavenly father, we are spouses and parents and siblings and friends.  We are saints in need of sanctification and sinners in need of forgiveness.  We may pray eloquently and preach passionately, but we also snore and swear and have hurt feelings and very humble foibles and fears.  If we only play the role all the time, not only do our families and relationships suffer, our souls will die, too.

In the famous story, Narcissus is cursed for being cruel to another. The curse is that he will fall hopelessly and helplessly in love with the next face he sees.  He sees his own face in a reflection in a lake and then can't take his eyes off of his own reflection, so he sits by the lake pining in sadness until he dies.  We tend to think of narcissists as ego-maniacs who "love themselves".  But as the best psychology will tell us, narcissism is a wound that comes from not getting enough love and care for our "real" selves.  We narcissists (and pastors are in the same category with actors, politicians and business executives here) are those who have learned to get affirmation for our "image" that we can't seem to get for our "selves."  We must never forget that in the myth, Narcissus, dies of starvation.  He can't pull away from attending to the image in the lake to feed his genuinely hungry self. 

Four years ago, my congregation gave me a three month sabbatical.  The Lily Foundation offered me a most generous grant and I had told them, "I am not burned out or discouraged, at all, but I want to avoid being so.  I want to spend some time away from my congregation thinking and learning about what it takes to be both 'healthy' and 'faithful.'" I was so pleased that both the Foundation and my congregation saw fit to give me the time away.  I was thrilled that I didn't need to have a crisis to have a reason to attend to my "self" away from my "role" for a time.

I  offer my congratulations, kudos, respect and appreciation for John Piper and his congregation.  Hopefully more pastors and congregations will do the same.

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"Judas, Peter" A Poem for Easter

"Judas, Peter”

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?
—Luci Shaw,