People assume that leaders, being part of the core of your organisation, would be the most committed. In one way that could be true: if they are being paid, they are more likely to stick around, even if they are unhappy with how they are being led—but only because their livelihood depends on it. It doesn’t mean their heart is in their job. With that exception, it is often members of the leadership team who are the first to leave a ministry with an unhealthy leadership culture. Why? Because they have leadership eyes they will be the first to see leadership problems. Leadership matters to them, so leaders are the first to get frustrated when they are led badly.
Mature members of a leadership team know how difficult it is to lead others well. So they will show some sympathy to a struggling team leader. Hopefully they will give feedback to their leader and suggest solutions. Mature leaders can give gracious feedback and offer practical solutions and support. But if a team leader fails to listen for long enough, eventually many of their key leaders will give up and go. You may be able to maintain a small coterie of allies or yes men or women, but not a healthy leadership team.
If your leaders leave, what are you left with? Followers. And the growth of your organisation will quickly hit a ceiling. Being left with followers is fine if you are satisfied with substandard sycophants, or a revolving door of new leaders recruited, used and burned out. But if you want a team with initiative, wise long term decisions, and a healthy ministry culture, you need teams of genuine leaders.
What are some of the dynamics that result in leaders leaving?
You Can Lose Your Leaders by Over-Leading
This is the temptation of someone with strong gifts in organisational leadership. They are visionary, strategic, purposeful, and intentional. No one under them lacks clarity on what to do, how it needs to be done, and how to improve. But when not balanced by other skills and values, the strengths of directive leadership become weaknesses. Decisiveness becomes stubbornness; authority becomes authoritarian; structure becomes stifling; encouragement becomes manipulation.
What goes wrong in these cases? Did God make a mistake in making them such a driven person? It depends on what drives them. Godly ambition is a good thing (1 Tim 3:1). If driven by insecurity, ego, control and unresolved family-of-origin issues, these motives for ambition need to be examined and dealt with. If these kinds of purposeful people confront their potentially fatal flaws, they can be just the people we need in organisational leadership. Having been humbled by their weaknesses, self-awareness, and repentance, they become more appreciative of the wisdom and gifts of those with diverse temperaments and skill sets. They are ready to work with rather than rule over those whom God has put alongside them.
You Can Lose Your Leaders by Under-Leading
There are other leaders who don’t try to run the universe, who have no problem trusting God with their organisation’s future. They are not naturally interventionist. At their best, they watch someone’s life long enough to see if they have the maturity and gifts to become a potential leader; and after appointing them, they give their leaders plenty of room and time to develop their own initiatives, tactics, and gifts. They are patient and supportive.
But, at their worst, their laissez-faire approach to management becomes laziness; their unsupervised leaders begin to feel unappreciated. Leaders appreciate clarity of direction, facilitated alignment and collaboration, proactive mentoring and feedback. Without proactive leadership a ministry can start to take on water as it loses purpose and productivity, and leaders, frustrated with the aimlessness and neglect, can be the first to jump ship.
The boss’s patience (a quality) has become passivity (a problem). Under the guise of trusting God’s sovereignty, their leader has not taken responsibility.
The Solution Is Not What You Think
Can a leader who is naturally hands-on become more hands-off? Can a hands-off leader become more hands-on? Well, yes and no. You can and should learn from those who have the opposite leadership style to you. But one can’t become the other.
Each type of leader will, to a large extent, keep the strengths and weaknesses they were born with. Even if you work very hard to become like the other type, at best you can only become a pale imitation. Putting all your efforts into trying to fix your weaknesses will not turn them into strengths. Your slightly improved weaknesses will never equal the natural strengths of someone with the opposite gifts and temperament.
So what is the solution? It begins with a new sobriety about your weaknesses and a serious alertness to the temptations that go with your strengths; with a new appreciation of those with opposite gifts and temperament.
After an attitude change what action can you take? Whatever your church’s governance structure, you could appoint an offsider with authority to balance your leadership with opposite gifts. Regardless of what your organisational chart says, make yourself functionally accountable to consider their perspectives and use their gifts. Whatever your leadership structure, even if notionally they are under you, you want this person functioning as a partner. Obviously, they need to have the same vision and values, but you need someone very different from you, to whom you give real power. And you need to learn to trust them. And listen to them. And let them affect your leadership significantly. So much so that other people notice. Especially the volunteer leaders under you. They will start feeling that they are well led, rather than under-led or over-led. They will start loving your church again, instead of planning on leaving.
