Simon P Walker\u2019s Leading Out of Who You Are is the first in a trilogy of books he writes about what he calls \u201cundefended leadership\u201d. Walker\u2019s main assertion seems to be that undefended leadership is characterized not by knowledge or skill, but by who the leader is and the trust they establish with their followers. There are however, three things that cause leaders to be \u201cdefended\u201d: \u201cidealization, idealism and unmet emotional needs.\u201d Leaders can fall into the trap of holding onto who their followers have idealized them to be, which is alienating and forces the leader to use tools like stages, power, and control rather than leading in trust. Walker sums up these ideas by saying \u201cour primary task is to grow up. It is to learn, through the experiences we are given, who we are\u2014what it means to be courageous, what it is to serve, what it is to be loved and to love, what it is to be real, what it is to be fully human. True leadership is leadership of ourselves and others into this kind of life\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The church where I\u2019m currently on staff exemplified this goal in my hiring. My wife, Anya, and I had been attending the church for 8 months when I began to look for pastoral job openings in the area. When the elders at Common Ground found out that I was looking, they decided to offer me a position on staff. In the process they made sure that I understood if I was coming on staff, there wouldn\u2019t be a set of responsibilities that I had to fulfill. They made clear that I was not being brought on staff and paid for services rendered but because they believed that I had a pastoral gift that they wanted to help me develop and simply wanted to bless Anya and I by giving me a salary as well.
\nAs I reflect on Common Ground\u2019s approach in tandem with Simon Walker\u2019s book, I realize that the elders\u2019 thought process laid the foundation for a trust based leader-follower relationship. In a way, the way many churches approach hiring, by creating a job profile with the ideal candidate qualifications and characteristics, often a list that is realistically unattainable (or at the very least unsustainable). This also creates an environment where the person being hired is idealized as a hero or savior that can come in and meet all the identified needs or hopes. Post-hire, the person needs to continue being that hero and when the asks inevitably become more than they can bear, they quickly become a defended leader.<\/p>\n
This is especially true when I consider Chinese heritage churches (churches that have historically served Chinese immigrant communities). Culturally, relationships between leader and followers are driven by feelings and positions of shame and honor rather than trust. The innate understanding that every person plays their part in maintaining communal harmony only further entrenches leaders in the idealization and unmet emotional needs that can occur. Many post-1st generation Chinese Americans feel these very tensions and choose to leave.<\/p>\n
What might be helpful is for Chinese-American leaders, that have the capacity to become undefended (as Walker states), or perhaps even self-differentiated (as Edwin Friedman posits) leaders, to arise as \u201cchange agents\u201d (Twiss, 45) that seek to bridge the cultural gap and move Chinese-American churches and Christians toward a more trust based model of leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simon P Walker\u2019s Leading Out of Who You Are is the first in a trilogy of books he writes about what he calls \u201cundefended leadership\u201d. Walker\u2019s main assertion seems to be that undefended leadership is characterized not by knowledge or skill, but by who the leader is and the trust they establish with their followers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"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":[2433],"class_list":["post-29370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-walker-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29370","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\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29371,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29370\/revisions\/29371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}