Leading vs. Managing
I read Anne Jackson’s new book, Mad Church Disease, a few months ago. This quote from Wayne Cordeiro, the senior pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Oahu, Hawaii keeps reverberating through my brain. In describing some practices he changed as a result of dealing with ministry burnout, he offered this:
“I’ve learned that God has made me to be a leader, not a ‘manager.’ I was pulled in to ‘managing’ for a few years as my main course. That diminished my leadership immune system, and I became susceptible to contagious maladies such as discouragement, exasperation, and being demotivated by others.”
There is a distinction between leading and managing. They are two entirely different roles. Both are valuable to an organization, but rarely is a person gifted to both lead and manage. They are typically wired up to do one or the other.
In their book First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman defined both roles like this:
Managers – “Great managers look inward. They look inside the company, into each individual, into the differences in style, goals, needs, and motivation of each person. These differences are small, subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person’s unique talents into performance.”
Leaders – “Great leaders look outward. They look out at the competition, out at the future, out at alternative routes forward. They focus on broad patterns, finding connections, cracks, and then press home their advantage where the resistance is weakest. They must be visionaries, strategic thinkers, activators. When played well, this is, without doubt, a critical role. But it doesn’t have much to do with the challenge of turning one individual’s talents into performance.”
That’s how Buckingham and Coffman described the two roles in marketplace organizations, but the Bible also distinguishes these two rules. The spiritual gift of leadership found in Romans 12:8 is very different from the spiritual gift of management (or administration) found in I Corinthians 12:28. Few people have both of these gifts, but both are needed within a healthy church body.
The point here isn’t to value one of these gifts over the other. (That would be a fruitless exercise because both are needed for a church or any organization to function properly.) However, I think it’s essential to identify how we are gifted and to also consider those we are responsible for in our ministry roles. If we are trying to be a manager when we’re actually a leader, we will be unfulfilled and face ministry burnout like Wayne described. Likewise, if we’re forced into a leadership role when we’re actually a manager, we will face the same challenges.
So, here are some questions to consider, pray about and discuss with your team:
- Are you a leader or manager? (How do you know?)
- Are you in a role that allows you to lead or manage according to your gifts?
- Do you know whether or not the people working for you are leaders or managers?
- Are they serving in roles that fit their giftedness?
- Have you defined what roles in your organization need leaders and which ones need managers?
- When one of those roles are open, are you trying to find the person who is best gifted to lead or manage?
I consider this a big topic that churches, generally, have failed to address. I challenge you to prayerfully consider this in the coming days for yourselves and your teammates. The health of your ministry, both personal and corporate, is at stake. And, while you’re at it, invite your ministry team to press into this conversation as well. Take a staff meeting to discuss the differences and challenge your team to make sure they are in a position that best reflects the way God created them…whether they are leaders, managers or neither. God wants you serving where he designed you to be serving; to do otherwise is to disobey God.
Are you staring ministry burnout in the face? Is it because you’re not doing what God created you to do?
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Benis got it right over 20 yrs ago : Managers do things right; Leaders do the right things. Inward vs. Outward focus succintly stated.
I like this discussion.
What I don’t like about Cordeiro’s quote is the seeming implication that those with the gift of leadership can simply abdicate the responsibility to work at close relationships. e.g. “only mangers need to worry about individuals.” Even with the gift of leadership in tow, you’re still leading people.
Established organizations seem to have much more recognition for their need for managers than their need for leaders. A real pain for leaders in those orgs.
Great subject. The distinctions between the manager and leader are powerful if applied. I agree more with John P. Kotter’s “A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management” definitions: managers operate with systems, leaders operate with vision and people. Every organization and individual requires a mix of management and leadership appropriate to levels of responsibility. The organization that fails to identify and develop visionary leaders will fail in times of rapid change. You can’t go wrong with the U.S. Army definition of a leadership: the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization.
Tony,
Engaging post. A few challenges to any organization identifying the recognition of leaders vs managers. 1) normally a person isn’t good both, 2) if the organization is able to identify where a person fits will they work together with the leader or manager?, 3) is there a possibility that a person can lead well in one area and not another?
While a great question to consider where someone’s strengths lie manage vs lead, there is a responsibility to ask “Now how do we maximize everyone’s contribution?”, “How do we handle the issues when adjusting where people are contributing?”.
In the context of a church, I have found people can be very territorial about where they contribute. Can be difficult to ask them to change what they are doing.
Thanks,
Ted
ted@tedkinzer.com
Twitter: @terribleted66
Manager’s work fizzles once the person is gone. The leader’s work lives on.
I understand that top level leaders should abdicate the role of manager to make room for greater success. However, I disagree that managers are not leaders. It’s just that leadership looks different when you’re in the trenches of management than it does when you’re sitting on the lonely throne.
I’m late to the discussion, however, the styles discussed, and whether or not someone is serving in the area of their maximum giftedness, whether management or leadership, is especially critical if they are managing or leading volunteers…just think about the differences for a moment…are they looking for the uniqueness and finding just the right way to release those talents into the kingdom, or are they pushing and trying to activate the strategic thinking and vision prior to knowing what those talents might be?
I love this debate over Leading v. Managing, especially because I am pastor on staff at a large weekend attendance in Columbus, Ohio. It seems to me that “the church” has taken in too much of traditional management systems found in secular organizations only to find that there is no one-to-one correlation. Just because we’re responsible for a multi-million dollar budget, thousands of people, and under the public eye doesn’t mean we should hunker down to make sure our charts are color coordinated and every goal is met with precision.
Now I find it interesting that many secular organizations are becoming more “spiritual”, while Christian organizations are becoming more “management oriented”. I don’t have any articles to point you to at the moment. My comment here comes from the conversations I have had with business professionals in our congregation.
I am being cynical, of course. My bent is towards management, because I know we are ultimately accountable to God for the things we’ve been entrusted with. I love systems, charts, graphs, and goal setting/metrics.
And I am also a spiritual being. God has given me[us] the most precious gift we could ever receive…HIS SPIRIT. It’s the Holy Spirit that gives me the spiritual gift of administration (also translated leadership, see Romans 12:8). I am seeking to find the value of both leading and management, because I don’t believe it’s an either/or conclusion to the matter. It really is the Spirit in which we lead and manage.
Great discussion and I have been thinking about this blog post the past week, so great post to get people thinking about this subject. I feel the tension that others have expressed, I have both gifts of leadership and administration and have to use both gifts in my role as a small groups pastor. As a shepherd there are times I need to lead and times I need to “manage” the flock. There are definitely pastors that tend to be stronger in one area or the other. Still, my experience has been that all of us as pastors need to function in both roles time to time depending on the situation. Andy Stanley also comes to mind as a well known pastor who seems to function very well in both roles, at least from an outsider vantage point.
I wrote about this topic last summer and it caused a stir in the Organizational Leadership master’s program I am a part of. This is a dividing line apparently for some in the academic world.
You can read my post here:
http://www.ronedmondson.com/2008/07/are-you-are-leader-or-a-manager.html
Obviously I agree with you.