Ed teaching at our Growing Leaders course
One day I was struck with a dawning and somewhat scary thought about my role as the minister of my church. At the time, I had planted a church along with a team of people, that was growing and thriving. It was becoming really clear to me that I had a significant role as the leader of this church. The dawning realisation was that I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘leadership’ actually was, and what it entailed. Or to put it a little more sharply, I didn’t really know what I was doing.
At that time, there was no doubt that I was engaged in doing the things that leaders do, and I was aware of that. The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right things, or if I was doing them the right way. I had received a theological education that had equipped me very well in some areas. However, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I hadn’t been taught very much about ‘leadership’, and some of what I had been taught was worse than useless.
It became clear to me that if I was going to be the leader that my church needed, I would have to develop a personal theology about the practice of leadership. It was clear to me that I needed to be a leader. Members of the congregation were asking me to be clearer about the vision of our church, but I wasn’t really sure that I knew what the vision was. We had grown to the point where we were able to add some staff members to the team. This was incredibly exciting, but also really challenging. I had never actually led a staff team before, and I felt very uncertain about how exactly to do that. As well as that, I wondered if there were other things that I should have been doing as the leader that I hadn’t even thought about. There were some things that I knew I didn’t know. I suspected that there were other things that I didn’t know that I didn’t know! To be honest, I didn’t feel like I knew a lot!
Knowledge is always preceded by ignorance, and I knew I was pretty ignorant. So over the next five years or so, I went on a quest to work out what leadership is, and how you exercise it. I was blessed to have some great companions and guides on this journey. During this time I was accepted into the Arrow Leadership programme, and through that met people like Ian Jagelman, an older and wiser Christian leader who was writing on the subject of leadership. I committed myself to reading, thinking, talking, learning, writing and teaching about what it means to be a leader.
All that coincided with a period of time which was quite dark and difficult for me. I faced challenges in our church for which I felt woefully ill-equipped. At that same time, I was struggling in my marriage. I had begun to realise that the upbringing I had received in my family was impacting the way I related to lots of people, but especially to my own family. It began to dawn on me that the quest to understand leadership, and the desire to be a better husband and father, were really one and the same.
Out of the confusion and storm came clarity. I can tell you now what I think leadership is, and how it should be practiced. In fact I can give you a pretty simple formula. It’s a simplicity that comes from the far side of complexity, after much thinking and wrestling and struggle.
So here it is: Leadership is influence through vision and nurture.
Leaders influence people around them. Sometimes they give orders and act in directive ways, but really powerful leadership is highly influential. In fact it doesn’t even need titles or positions. Good leaders influence people.
When I realised that, it led me to the next question. Exactly how do leaders influence people? My own personal answer is that leaders influence through vision and nurture.
By Vision I mean the ability of the leader to help the organisation understand what it is and where it needs to go. It includes all sorts of activities like developing strategies, raising resources and solving problems. Great leaders are able to help organisations gain clarity on these matters, which creates unity and momentum.
However, I also realised that this is only half of the leaders task. The leader also needs to be engaged in Nurture. This somewhat idiosyncratic term has become incredibly important to me. The insight came from reflection on my own family of origin, and how it did and didn’t equip me well for the leadership task. Great leaders do the vision thing, but they also grow other leaders around them. This involves training, but also much more. They are able to create an environment which fosters the growth of the people who work (in both paid and voluntary capacities) and allow them to develop and flourish. This means the team environment will be inclusive, sustaining and collaborative.
The truly great leaders drive the organisation to great results. And they do it through growing the people who work with them. They demonstrate great influence, through vision and nurture.
For me, that sums up the kind of leadership to which I aspire. Needless to say, I have often fallen short of that aspiration. However, having clarity about what leadership actually is has allowed me to grow and develop. Not surprisingly, the exemplar of this kind of leadership is Jesus himself. At my stage of life, my desire is to see other leaders raised up who are leaders like Jesus.
Personally, I see it as the greatest need, and the greatest opportunity for the Church in Australia in the 21st century.
Ed Vaughan