Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve been pondering this list written by Jon & Dave Ferguson about how to easily obliterate a culture of leadership. It’s certainly stirred my thinking about how we do things at IKON and ways to move forward as we wrestle with what a leadership culture will eventually look like for our community in San Francisco.
I’m not sure I realized how exciting yet challenging it can be to create a new culture from scratch, but that’s exactly the situation we church planters find ourselves in. It’s also funny to think that you can obliterate a leadership culture when the culture doesn’t exist quite yet, but I’d say that it’s easier to obliterate the possibility of a strong leadership culture before it even begins.
So, here are the Top 9 Ways to Obliterate A Leadership Culture (Before You Even Begin):
- Make really small “ASKS” of people. In other words, don’t challenge people to do anything that requires a significant level of investment or sacrifice. Minimize whatever you need them to do just so they’ll say “yes” to being a “leader.”
- Decide today that Small Groups won’t work anymore. Conclude that people are really best cared for and leaders are better developed in a classroom setting. This alone could kill your leadership culture overnight.
- Lead with “NO” (this is the opposite of leading with “YES”). Get really good at helping people understand why their idea is not a good one and how it will never work. Phrases that can help you expand your “no” vernacular are: “I doubt it,” “I don’t think so,” “Probably not,” etc.
- Never celebrate “Wins”. No matter how successful a leader or team of people may e, don’t take time to honor their accomplishments in any way. Send the message that what they did was simply expected and deserves no special recognition.
- Don’t expect artists to develop artists. Establish such high standards for your artists (vocalists, musicians, etc.) that they convince themselves and everyone else that they are irreplaceable and couldn’t possibly find anyone that could be developed to their level.
- Hire more staff to coach leaders. Believe the lie that developing an unpaid layer of leaders to coach other leaders is nearly impossible and does not work. This will force you to hire way more staff than you could ever afford.
- Make it really difficult to step into leadership. Create lots of red-tape and put people through all sorts of hoops so that it is extremely difficult to step into leadership. One way to do this would be to insist that anyone aspiring to lead needs to attend a weekly leadership class for six months.
- Turn your teams into Committees. Stop your leadership team cold in their tracks by insisting that they are now committees, that they can only make a decision if there is unanimous agreement, and that they must operate based on Robert’s Rules of Order.
- Offer no on-going training. Make the assumption that once people have said “yes” to leading they have all the tools and resources they need to be successful. In addition, provide absolutely no coaching, just figure if they need some help, they’ll let you know.
Related posts:
- leadership vs. spiritual formation: where’s the both/and?
- The Challenge of Leadership
- a culture of fun
- a culture of trust
- the power of the apprentice
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[...] I posted the Top 10 Ways To Obliterate A Leadership Culture by Jon & Dave Ferguson. However, it leaves me wondering: “How do you nurture a culture [...]