{"id":39752,"date":"2024-12-03T13:23:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T21:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=39752"},"modified":"2024-12-04T15:40:43","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T23:40:43","slug":"39752-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/39752-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Style Leadership for Parent’s Night Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Knowing that this post will put me on the hot seat has activated all the adrenaline and dopamine we’ve been talking about the past few weeks. It’s been a joy to reflect and learn together about leadership over the past few months with my colleagues, and finishing the term with Peter Northouse’s book, “Leadership Theory and Practice” is a grand finale.<\/p>\n

Northouse is a renowned scholar in the field of leadership studies. He is a professor emeritus of communication at Western Michigan University and specializes in leadership and communication. His book explores various leadership theories, their advantages and disadvantages, and how these various leadership approaches can be used in a real-world context. This book will be a great reference book for leadership moving forward. The consistent chapter structure and opportunity for questions and assessment will lend itself well to a tool I can use with the teams I lead and teach.<\/p>\n

As I inspected the book and its contents, I was drawn to the “Behavioral Approach” to Leadership from Northouse’s text. I found a great resource online of Dr. Northouse explaining the book and different styles.[1]<\/a> While he won’t win an Emmy, Northouse defines success of a Behavior Approach as someone who has, \u201ceffective task behavior and effective relationship behavior.\u201d This is a style that I consistently employ and have utilized often in my role as a local church pastor. This style is familiar to me because of the models that I’ve seen and sought to emulate. This style is important because it has a focus on the behavior of the leader. Ruth Haley Barton says, \u201cTruly, the best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is our own transforming selves.\u201d[2]<\/a> It is also the approach I utilize often because of the way that Systems Theory and Edwin Friedman’s \u201cFailure of Nerve.\u201d[3] <\/a>Friedman’s premise is that a leader\u2019s ability to maintain a non-anxious presence is the most influential gift they can give to the organizations and systems they lead. Desiring then, to lead in such a way that my behavior positively impacts and empowers people around me, led me to explore this style further.<\/p>\n

This approach identifies two different behaviors: Task Behaviors (which help group members achieve goals) and Relationship Behaviors (help group members feel comfortable with themselves and foster good relationships). I often feel the tension between tasks and relationships as a local church pastor, in how I prioritize my time and how I ought to lead the various teams I’m responsible for. I try to utilize schedule and planning for \u201cPeople Time\u201d and \u201cTask Time\u201d to balance these responsibilities, but when interruptions or changes occur, I can sense irritation and frustration rising within me.<\/p>\n

What was new to me was the Leadership or \u201cManagerial\u201d Grid, developed by Blake and Mouton in 1966. This grid will be a useful tool for reflection. It’s a great reminder of the leader that I am working towards becoming. Blake and Mouton suggest the “Team Leader” style is most effective in promoting both the production of tasks and relationships with people. They state that Team Style leaders “prioritize collaboration, open communication, and employee development to achieve organizational goals. They create a positive work environment where individuals feel empowered, motivated, and engaged.”[4] \u00a0<\/a>While that seems like a challenging task, it resonates with me and fits well with a tool we’ve been utilizing with our teams in our church for a decade.<\/p>\n

For the past ten years we’ve used Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow.\u201d[5]<\/a> It is a practical guide grounded in the research of the Gallup Organization, particularly focusing on Strengths-based Development. The book provides insights into how leaders can leverage their strengths and those of their teams to achieve better outcomes. The premise is that each leader is most effective, and finds the most fulfillment in their role, when they are operating out of their strengths. There are different 34 themes or strengths and most leaders have a \u2018top 5\u2019 that are unique to individuals and categorized in such a way that team members can assess themselves and see how they uniquely fulfill the four main functions of a leader.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

This tool has been invaluable to our team as a way to cultivate the Team Style that Blake and Mouton outline and remember that each of us, while called to lead towards many of the same goals, get there in different ways. And it takes each of us, collaborating to get to the best outcome for our teams and our church.<\/p>\n

So how does this Team Style practically express itself? This upcoming Friday, our church is hosting one of our biggest outreach events of the year. A holiday themed “Parent’s Night Out” where parents can drop their kids off for free at our church and have some time to themselves. We have a great time with the kids in our church building, playing games, crafts and activities (even an inflatable bounce house), followed by a visit from Santa. We’ve been doing this event for the past four years and I’ve been the core leader of the event. But now, we have a new Kid Ministry director who will be taking over the event, as well as college interns and high school students learning leadership skills at the event. This will be a great opportunity to practice the balance between tasks and relationships, as each leader will have relationships to manage and tasks to perform. But each leader will do so in different ways, based on the strengths or themes that God has given them. Our awareness as a team of our strengths and differences (particularly of the kid min director I’m handing the event off to) will assist me in empowering them to lead the event in the future. This will require administration and planning before the event, communication with volunteers and this emerging leader, and being present at the event in such a way that models healthy leadership but also creates space for them to ‘make it their own’ as I hand over this impactful event to someone else.<\/p>\n

Northouse\u2019s practical insights, as well as the many other great texts from our course, have made a difference in my real world of leadership, and I am grateful.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Northouse on Leadership | Online Resources<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Barton, R. Ruth. 2006. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation<\/em>. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Friedman, Edwin H., Margaret M. Treadwell, and Edward W. Beal. 2017. A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/em>. 10th anniversary revised edition. New York: Church Publishing.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid – Organizational Behavior<\/a><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Rath, Tom, and Barry Conchie, eds. 2011. Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow<\/em>. New York: Gallup Press.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> While not germane to my post, the four functions of a leader are worth considering in light of our reflections on leadership. Rath and and Conchie suggest that any leader must do four things: \u201cBuild Trust, Provide Stability, Show Compassion and Create Hope.\u201d Each leader will do those things in unique ways based on their assessed strengths, but those four practices have also been foundational to our team and leadership development in our church. (Rath and Conchie, Strengths Based Leadership<\/em>, page 82-92)<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knowing that this post will put me on the hot seat has activated all the adrenaline and dopamine we’ve been talking about the past few weeks. It’s been a joy to reflect and learn together about leadership over the past few months with my colleagues, and finishing the term with Peter Northouse’s book, “Leadership Theory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[],"class_list":["post-39752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39752","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\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39752"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39758,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39752\/revisions\/39758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}