Lead From Your Strengths

I was interested to read a recent
article by Chad Hall on the subject, ‘Lead From Your Strengths’. He quotes Marcus Buckingham, a British-born
leadership guru with a business background. Businesspeople and pastors are
lapping up his approach. A URC minister friend who belongs to the WCA recently
heard him speak at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit, and said it was the best
teaching on leadership he has ever heard. Hence my interest in Hall’s piece.

I haven’t bought Buckingham’s books, and it’s apparent that
if you want to use his online Strengths
Finder (I know, I’m a sucker for these surveys), you need to have purchased
the relevant book and have an access code. So all I have to go on is Hall’s
summary. He says this: Buckingham helps you evaluate which are your top five
strengths from a selection of thirty-four. It’s then a question of using those
strengths. To quote Hall:

Using strengths means three things: (1) knowing what your
strengths are so you can focus on making the most of them; (2) applying your
strengths to an ever-increasing range of opportunities; in other words, use
them more and more; and (3) further strengthening your strengths rather than
shoring up your weaknesses as your best plan for leadership development.

How do we evaluate the – ahem – strengths (and weaknesses)
of this teaching from a Christian perspective? Beginning with the positive,
there is clearly something here that taps into emphases on spiritual gifts and
offices. No-one is omnicompetent. We each have a place in the Body of Christ,
and we depend on each other. Furthermore, in leadership terms this needs
linking to a team leadership style. It is common to observe that no minister
has all the gifts required for ministry, and will certainly not be a duplicate
of his or her predecessor. This is compassionate in promoting an understanding
attitude to leaders, but the obvious corollary to me is that the missing gifts
need to be found from somewhere. If the minister doesn’t have them (and why
should s/he?), then either they need to be found in the congregation generally,
or we need a team of leaders. There is an important task to find those who can
minister in ways I cannot, and to authorise and liberate them.

So my broad sympathies are with leading from my strengths. I
have had enough experience in fifteen years of church members upset because I didn’t
fit their mould of the gifts a minister should have. If there were a wider
acceptance that leaders use their strengths, not their weaknesses, it would
save a lot of pain for many people – not just the leaders.

However (you knew that word was coming, didn’t you?) … I am
aware from personal experience that it is easy to hide behind those things I know
to be my strengths and not grow. I have previously
written
here
how I had never previously taken school assemblies. I had run from them! My predecessor
in this appointment was a teacher before he entered the ministry. He was
doubtless a natural. However, I now enjoy greatly going into primary schools. I’ve
even collected a second one. I seem to have struck a chord with the children. I
didn’t know I could do that. Perhaps Buckingham allows you to tap previously
undiscovered strengths. Either way, we need an openness and vulnerability so
that using our gifts in concert with others of differing abilities doesn’t
become a reason to hide.

Technorati Tags: ministry, leadership, spiritualgifts, ChadHall, MarcusBuckingham