{"id":15657,"date":"2017-12-07T17:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T01:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15657"},"modified":"2017-12-07T17:36:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T01:36:54","slug":"leading-from-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leading-from-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading from behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana\u2019s Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em> is a rigorous resource and research tool for doctoral leadership students.\u00a0 The authors are Harvard Business School professors who distilled the lessons learned from a centennial leadership meeting of scholars from diverse academic, scientific, and business leadership contexts.\u00a0 \u00a0Exploring \u201cleadership comprehensively and from many directions\u201d this 848-page book provides an inclusive review of the critical challenges facing leaders today.[1]<\/a> \u00a0This post will focus on Nohria and Khurana\u2019s theories on contingent and core functions, self-monitoring and emotional intelligence, and some critical capabilities needed for global organizational leadership.\u00a0 I hope the authors leadership practices will help me narrow the scope and focus of my research into the problem of spiritual warfare. Doing good leadership, like doing good theology, is dependent on a myriad of factors.<\/p>\n

Leadership, according to the authors, is \u201ccontingent\u201d on the situation and variables like culture, type of business, characteristics of the leader, and types of followers.[2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0Leadership also depends on the kinds of \u201ccore\u201d functions the leader is performing.\u00a0 For example, leaders provide direction, organization, selection, motivation, and implementation.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 I perform these functions daily; some more than others depending on the need.\u00a0 Reflecting on my leadership practice, pattern, and research I see a blessed history of over 30 years of experience leading large and small groups of people in public safety, military aviation, missionary aviation, marketplace ministry, and business as mission.<\/p>\n

I found one reference to servant leadership in the authors book, and it was a good one.\u00a0 They used a metaphor of leading from behind and cited a Nelson Mandela parable of the shepherd who stays behind the flock while subtly leading the sheep forward without their knowledge.[4]<\/a> At my core, I use servant leadership with a bias towards situational-transformational styles.\u00a0 In other words, the leadership methods I use today, versus yesterday, \u201cdepends\u201d on what needs to be done and by whom.\u00a0 Nohria and Khurana say that the latest thoughts on situational leadership are in the constructs of \u201cself-monitoring and emotional intelligence.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Self-monitoring is where the leader perceives the needs of self and group and adapts behavior for effective leadership.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Emotional intelligence (EI) leaders are said to be more in tune with appraising the emotions of others.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Whether it is effective self-monitoring and EI or a mysterious element that leaders develop over time; I do not know.\u00a0 But what I do know is that these leadership concepts make a positive difference in the effectiveness, efficiency, and discipling power of Christian leaders.<\/p>\n

I identified positively with Chatman and Kenney\u2019s three critical capabilities for organizational leadership: \u201cdiagnostic abilities, behavioral flexibility, and unambiguous signaling of intentions.\u201d[8]<\/a> \u00a0In my synthesis of these abilities I think I have the capacity to read situations, adapt and adjust my leadership styles, balance the needs of the mission and the people, and always strive to present clear expectations to followers.\u00a0 Furthermore, Hackman says that \u201cmaster leaders\u201d have a good, if not innate, sense of timing and knowing \u201cwhen to act and when to wait.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Personally I think these are both innate and learned skills, that develop over time, trials, and experiences with success and failure.\u00a0 I believe that the leaders who persist and persevere gain the abilities and successfully add these capabilities to their leadership toolbox.\u00a0 As a Christian leader, when I add the Holy Spirit factor to my leadership praxis, the other secular models fall short in eternal effectiveness by comparison.<\/p>\n

I would like to make a bold statement here: Christian leaders are failing in their stewardship duties to train and equip the body of Christ to defend against the problem of spiritual warfare.\u00a0 For example, last Sunday night I witnessed a group of pastoral leaders and elders in a congregational business meeting make some of the worst leadership decisions I have witnessed in quite some time.\u00a0 They portrayed poor timing; did not use diagnostic tools nor survey the audience.\u00a0 They failed to read the situation; did not see where God was working and blessing.\u00a0 They choose not to adapt; did not adjust their leadership to fit the needs of the congregation.\u00a0 What was most disheartening for me was to see them decide to remove a 20-year ministry with AWANA\u2019s and abandon their stewardship responsibility to area churches and their members. \u00a0I stood up in the audience with microphone, held up an Armor of God coin, and prayerfully challenged the elders and pastors to put on their armor of God and not let Satan\u2019s spiritual warfare schemes of division, disunity, and distrust rule the day.\u00a0 \u00a0This is only one example, but I have seen this type of disunity repeated in leadership positions in missions, ministry, and churches where the leaders themselves are not prepared or equipped to endure the effects of spiritual warfare.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, this post concentrated on a narrow portion of Nohria and Khurana\u2019s vast groupings of leadership concepts, functions, and capabilities. \u00a0\u00a0I chose to focus on the leadership styles that work for me and help me connect with my dissertation research project.\u00a0 I will use the book as a leadership resource and hope that their forward looking perspective will continue to contribute to my servant leadership praxis.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Human Capital Matters. “Leadership development.” Leadership<\/em> 8 (2011) 7.<\/h6>\n
[2]<\/a> Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, eds. Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em>. Kindle ed. (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2010) Location 262.<\/h6>\n
[3]<\/a> Ibid., 288.<\/h6>\n
[4]<\/a> Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom<\/em> (London: Little, Brown & Company, 1995), 22.<\/h6>\n
[5]<\/a> Nohria and Khurana, Handbook of Leadership<\/em>, 1980.<\/h6>\n
[6]<\/a> Stephen J. Zaccaro, Roseanne J. Foti, and David A. Kenny. “Self-monitoring and trait-based variance in leadership: An investigation of leader flexibility across multiple group situations.” Journal of applied psychology<\/em> 76, no. 2 (1991): 308.<\/h6>\n
[7]<\/a> Ibid.<\/h6>\n
[8]<\/a> Nohria and Khurana, Handbook of Leadership<\/em>, 221.<\/h6>\n
[9]<\/a> J. Richard Hackman. “What is this thing called leadership.” Handbook of leadership theory and practice<\/em> (2010) 7.<\/h6>\n

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Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana\u2019s Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice is a rigorous resource and research tool for doctoral leadership students.\u00a0 The authors are Harvard Business School professors who distilled the lessons learned from a centennial leadership meeting of scholars from diverse academic, scientific, and business leadership contexts.\u00a0 \u00a0Exploring \u201cleadership comprehensively and from many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[414,1098,195,1039],"class_list":["post-15657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-khurana","tag-mandela","tag-nohria","tag-spiritual-warfare","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15658,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15657\/revisions\/15658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}