You May Have More Influence Than You Realize

This fall I'm teaching a course in leadership at the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago. The group of 21 seniors is fun-loving, generally engaged, and eager to think about how to lead within the context of a changing church in a changing culture. We are reading a novel about an Iranian woman who courageously led a small book group against the odds as her nation plunged into fundamentalism, watching a couple of movies that promise to be filled with leadership lessons (including Accepted, The Great Debaters, Real Women Have Curves, and Dodgeball), dabbling in leadership and organizational theory, exploring leadership in Scripture, diving into a couple of "church-specific" texts to help us think theologically and biblically about these issues, and sampling a couple of the millions of leadership books available in the business section these days. It's only three weeks in and it promises to be an interesting conversation.

In our last class we agreed to use this definition of leadership from Peter Northouse (2007):

Leadership is the process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals toward achieving a common goal.

It was eye-opening to a lot of students, I think, to begin reflecting on leadership as an event, rather than as a personal attribute or characteristic. Just spend some time mulling that over. I'll probably come back to the idea at another time.

We also spent quite a bit of time thinking about influence and power. These are unpopular words in some circles, especially among church leaders. Some of us are afraid of appearing to be controlling while others hesitate to put ourselves (and our egos?) on the line for something. Many of us seriously underestimate how much influence and power we actually have and/or have little idea about how to exercise it. I hear that, for example, in the voices of discouraged church leaders who feel like they've "tried everything" and feel stuck. 

So, just for fun, I asked the class to make a list of ALL the ways leaders can influence the people in their organizations. Since this was a group of seminarians, their list includes things unique to faith organizations. But many of these things are available to leaders of all kinds. You'll want to use your purpose and core values to filter this list, of course --- your own sense of ethics and morality (not to mention the law!) will prevent you from using many of these things. And some of these things are just silly. 

But I'm giving you the WHOLE list here because, well, when you're feeling stuck it's just good to be reminded that you do, in fact, have options. Here it is:

ability to connect

ability to relate

ability to see gifts of people

agenda setting

availability

being trained in rhetoric

bribes

building relationships

charm

common interest

communication

compliments

consensus building

creativity/novelty

credentials (professional and street)

credibility

damnation

delegation

ecclesiology

education

eloquence
friendship

empathy

empowering

encouragement

energy

ethics

ethnicity

expectations

experience

explicit expectations

facilitating

fear

food

forgiveness

gender

genuineness

grace

guilt

Holy Spirit

honesty

humor

information

Jesus

knowledge

knowledge of Robert’s Rules of Order and Parliamentary Procedure

language—type, quality

lead by example

listening

longevity

love

manipulating (the vulnerable)

marketing

media tricks (i.e. video etc)

mental health

miracles

modeling behavior/actions
not afraid of a fight

money

naming conflict

networking

parables

passion

personality

political savy
parables

presentation/presence

privilege

projected outcome..

relationships…

respect

seeing other’s gifts

self-interest

settings goals

sex (uality)

skills

skillz (mad)

storytelling

the body of Christ

theology

time

tradition

transparency

triangulation

visionary (how you cast things)
visioning

wealth

yelling

youth

You may, in fact, have more influence than you realize. For the sake of helping people in your organization achieve their goals, don't be afraid to use to use it.

P.S. Thanks to all the students in this fall's course "Crossing The Leadership Threshold: Who's In Charge Around Here, Anyway?" for playing along when I asked them to brainstorm this list --- and thanks to Kirsten F. for compiling the list. 

- Kelly Fryer

Comments

[Mary Hess]

Another great movie about leadership is Calendar Girls (and I LOVE that there are older women in it).

Sounds like a great course! Wish you were here...

KELLY'S RESPONSE: Thanks for the tip, Mary. I haven't seen that movie...but I'll be sure to watch it!

Great to hear from you!!

[Don McClure]

Leadership, influence, and power in the church is challenging topic in many dimensions. Too much is often bad; too little often worse.

I would like to be able to take your class. But I can't come to Chicago for the class; any chance you could share the reading list?

KELLY'S RESPONSE:

In June I taught a one-week course at LSTC --- who knows, maybe we'll meet up in a summer course one day! Here's the list for this particular class:

The Bible.
Bliese, Richard & Craig Van Gelder. The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 2005. (ISBN # 0806651091)
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House. 2004.
(ISBN# 081297106X)
Roxburgh, Alan & Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a
Changing World. Jossey-Bass. 2006. (ISBN # 078798325X)
o Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. . .and Others Don’t, New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2001. (ISBN # 0066620996)
o Coughlin, Lin (Editor), Ellen Wingard (Editor), Keith Hollihan (Editor). Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership. E-book. Jossey-Bass. 2005. (978-0-7879-7931-7) http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787979317,descCd-description.html
o Brafman, Ori, and Rod Beckstrom. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Portfolio Hardcover. 2006. (ISBN #1591841437)
o Eisaguirre, Lynne. The Power of a Good Fight: How to Embrace Conflict To Drive Productivity, Creativity, and Innovation. Literary Architects. 2006. (ISBN: # 1933669055)
o Kotter, John. Leading Change. Harvard Business School, 1996. (ISBN# 0875847471)