The Zone Gathering

If we understand ourselves and how we’re wired, we’ll be able to lead others better, so let’s take a look at strengths and leadership styles:

STRENGTHS

• Most of us don’t really know or appreciate our talents
• Too many of us try to acquire as much knowledge and as many skills as possible in the hope of bettering ourselves in some general way
• Instead, we need to identify our dominant talents and in a focused way acquire knowledge and skills to turn them into strengths
• TALENT – naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior – innate while skills and knowledge can be acquired through learning and practice- not just juggling.
• KNOWLEDGE – facts and lessons learned
• SKILLS – steps of an activity- bring structure to knowledge – will help you perform, but not excel
• TALENT vs. SKILLS - skills determine if you can do something, whereas talents reveal how well and how often you do it.
• STRENGTH – consistent near perfect performance in an activity
• Talent, knowledge and skills combine to create your strengths
• Key to building a bona-fide strength is to identify your dominant talents and refine them with knowledge and skills

LEADERSHIP STYLES

• Leading within your areas of strength will bring you greater joy and effectiveness
• Some of you may be leading within your strength and aptitudes – others may be leading in ways that don’t fit you well
• George Barna offers some basic leadership style profiles

Barna Styles

• Directing Leaders

• Excel at conceiving and conveying a compelling vision- catalysts of change
• Enlist people to become part of the solution rather than the problem
• Proficient at making decisions – tend to make them on instincts rather than facts
• Sensitive to values and beliefs that drive their worldview and shudder at idea of compromising them
• Little interest or energy in the details; little concern for developing structure
• Restless; favor action over reflection
• Strategic Leaders
• Vision developers and shapers
• Enjoy crafting scenarios and conceptually playing them out
• Labor over detailed plans to ensure the vision becomes reality- painstakingly scrutinize reality and ask the hard questions
• Turn a compelling idea into a viable plan of action
• Firm allegiance to truth and efficiency
• Risk averse – like to get all the data- best with conceptual details rather than organizational details
• Team Building Leaders
• Like the interactive dimension of achieving a vision- organize people around a common cause
• Team builders role is the help people find, enjoy and succeed in their place
• Being with people energizes them and people are energized by their presence
• Upbeat personality, optimistic perspective, encouraging demeanor
• Use charisma and popularity to motivate people
• Don’t like meetings, paperwork or memos – tend to waffle on details
• Can be victimized by people who don’t pull through as promised
• Operational Leaders
• Master of processes
• Develop systems around the vision, resources, and opportunities available, create new routines to maximize the resources
• Build systems to tie everyone’s contributions together
• Provide stability, predictability, and consistency
• Conceive and introduce new routines to facilitate accomplishment of the vision
• Very concrete- focus on practical details the other three ignore
• Don’t like inefficiency, loose ends, communications breakdowns, cost overruns, missed deadlines
• Tendency to get too focused on managing rather than leading toward the vision
Summary
• Understanding your leadership style enables you to focus
• Leading within your strengths and style will deliver the greatest joy and fulfillment to you and the people you lead
• Focusing on your area of strength does not excuse you from doing what must be done in a situation because it’s not your primary focus
• Commit yourself not only to developing your strongest leadership style but also to growing in the areas in which you are weak Lead in your strengths but grow in your weakness. We are called to be complete disciples.
• No matter how strong leaders are in their particular style, totally overlooking the areas in which they are weak will eventually compromise their ability to lead - blindspots
• Barna’s list is just one of many leadership style formulations – others can be found in Courageous Leadership, Bill Hybels; Leadership Above the Line, Sarah Sumner

DEVELOPING A TEAM BASED ON STYLES

• The Jethro Principle – Exodus 18- Moses couldn’t do everything on his own – Jethro challenged him to select capable men to share the load with him
• No single individual, even when called and gifted by God to serve as a leader has all the resources abilities required to satisfy the leadership needs of an entire group
• Teams work best when they are comprised of individuals whose personal abilities and gifts contribute value, while the personal deficiencies are compensated for via the abilities and efforts of other team members.
• Once you determine your strength and style – determine styles of people on your team-
• Make sure people are matched with the leadership need that allows him or her to have greatest impact
• Allows you to determine what leadership function is lacking on your team and what type to add
• A team of leaders with divergent aptitudes will experience times of discomfort and instances of misunderstanding – when that tension is well managed you can be very productive team

Leading Individuals

• You also need to understand the strengths/aptitudes of the people you lead
• Individualization- best way to turn your people’s talents into productive powerful strengths
• Focus on who each person is- learn each person’s behavior, and use language to suit them- recognize different ways to relate to them and have them participate in your group
• This is time consuming, but nothing can replace the insights gained by spending time with person

All of this takes intentionality. If you don’t take the time to identify your own strengths and take the time to learn about the people you lead, you will experience frustration and you won’t be fulfilling your role as a leader to help others in their walk with Christ.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Discipleship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.