We continue the “Ten Best Ways to Ruin Your Church Staff” to avoid for those pastoral leaders who want to keep and develop quality staff ministry colleagues, (For those pastors who want to get rid of troubling church staff, then this is the way to do it!). Today, no. 2: Micromanage and Overfunction.
2. Micromanage and overfunction. Insecure leaders tend toward being willful and lack an ability to respect boundaries. Those tendencies manifest themselves in overfunctioning, herding and in fostering groupthink. Overfunctioning leaders take responsibility for what is not theirs. They take on others’ anxiety and impose themselves on their staff: micromanaging their work, schedules, and even thinking for them. For example, they’ll ask how many were in attendance at Sunday School and offer advice on what to do to increase the numbers, insist on unrealistic office hours, set program goals for staff members (often without the staff member’s consultation), or, making staff members responsible for other people’s functioning.
Effective leaders treat their staff as professionals, knowing that staff will rise to the leader’s level of expectations, but more importantly, will rise to the level of the example the leader sets. Effective pastors allow their staff to shape their own ministry—it’s what they were called to do.
From, Perspectives on Congregational Leadership: Applying Systems Theory for Effective Leadership, by Israel Galindo. See the new Perspectives on Congregational Leadership blog site.
Israel,
I find universal truth in your words — concepts that can be applied to leaders and leadership in general. Thanks!