Over the past few months, we covered 18 leadership styles that you may have in your pastor at your church. As I’ve stated many times, every church is unique, so your pastor should be also. Not every church needs the same kind of pastor, but every church needs a pastor with humble intelligence, because healthy churches are led by humble pastors. In the book The Humility Factor, I cover four additional leadership styles, which unfortunately are not positive. As with any style, they have their strengths and the pastor with one of these not-so-positive characteristics can get things done, but often at the expense of people’s feelings, relationships, the health of the church, and tragically, the greater cause of Christ as non-believers are turned off by what they see as an insensitive and hypocritical leader. I cover them here briefly in order to complete our discussion, but also to raise a warning flag for churches that may have this type of leader. The good news remains that these leaders can improve with the impact of the humility factor, which you will see after each description.
The Narcissist
While a narcissist leader will often accomplish many good things, there is an extremely dark side to this style of leadership.
Summarizing much of the research that has been done, narcissism is a preoccupation with one’s own self-importance and the belief that one is special and more important than others. Narcissists have arrogant fantasies of endless success, a hypersensitivity to criticism, and a lack of empathy, plus being exploitative of others and operating with an extreme sense of entitlement, including the need to be the center of attention. Though often charming, they can also be cold, ruthless and controlling, all the while oblivious to their behavior. They are threatened by others’ success, reward only those who benefit them, have difficulty sharing, are generous only when it makes them look good, and have situational ethics. As Engstrom discusses in his classic book, The Making of a Christian Leader, their self-esteem is so weak that their behavior is much like that of a playground bully who abuses others in order to feel better about himself.
When a congregation lavishes admiration and rewards on a pastor who is a narcissist, they do so at the risk of great peril, because once in power, these leaders will feel entitled to satisfy their desires, even at the expense of others. They become toxic to their church as they operate with an overblown sense of self-worth and self-interest, abusing power and manipulating subordinates for their personal gain, often without knowing what they are doing. Taking advantage of others becomes second nature to them and they truly believe their own lies. The prophet Obadiah spoke of them, saying, “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’”
IMPACT: When the humility factor is added to the leadership style of Narcissistic, the humble pastor outcome is that the leader, through new awareness and brokenness, begins the difficult journey to learn to think of others before they naturally and habitually think of themselves. This will also be greatly helped by the leader’s intentionally and anonymously serving others. People will follow this leader because they see an effort to change and become a better, less self-focused leader.
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The Pacesetter
A pacesetting leader gives high energy to achieving, moving so fast it is difficult for others to keep up, and is highly critical of those who aren’t as driven to succeed. They have unreasonable expectations of employees. This is what the research of emotional intelligence classifies as a dissonant leadership style, though it can be effective, providing that the employees are self-motivated, driven, and highly talented. Unfortunately, even when people are those things, they may still respond poorly to a pacesetting boss. Due to the fact that they push so hard and expect so much, the employee actually closes themselves to them and morale plummets.
According to the work of Daniel Goleman,
The [pacesetter] leader holds and exemplifies high standards for performance. He is obsessive about doing things better and faster, and asks the same of everyone. He quickly pinpoints poor performers, demands more from them, and if they don’t rise to the occasion, rescues the situation himself. But if applied poorly or excessively, or in the wrong setting, the pacesetting approach can leave employees feeling pushed too hard by the leader’s relentless demands.
Pacesetting is often the result of a leader’s lack of self-awareness, which leaves them blind to their own failings even as they point out the shortcomings of their team members. This lack is responsible for many pacesetting leaders not having healthy humility. Unfortunately, the pacesetting style most often does not lead to a happy ending.
IMPACT: When the humility factor is added to the leadership style of Pacesetting, the humble pastor outcome is that self-awareness and openness will alert this leader to their tendency to push too hard and expect too much, hopefully before their followers quit. However, it may take losing good people in order to bring about a brokenness that will lead to a less-driving manner of leadership. Eventually, however, they may become someone whom many are willing and eager to follow.
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The Pharisee
This isn’t a leadership style that is talked about much these days, but unfortunately, there are still Pharisees in our organizations, and especially in our churches, who, due to their self-righteous pride and judgmentalism, are driving many people away from the church. In a nutshell, the Pharisee leadership style is all about self-righteousness, and one of the reasons people are repelled by judgmental pastors is because in the 21st century, just as in the time of Christ, a Pharisee is seen as self-righteous, hypocritical, and filled with pride.
Modern-day Pharisees are the pastors who set spiritual standards high, to unbelievable and often unattainable heights. They preach a narrow line that is without grace and filled with guilt. They speak with the authority of scripture, yet without compassion, and with the pride of a tyrannical commander who believes that they know best what everyone should do in all circumstances. This leader is legalistic, arrogant, uncaring, and relationally deficient. They are egotists who believe the ends justify the means and that they are the only ones to whom God speaks, thus they deserve to make and enforce the rules and to be held in honor. Pharisees have the potential to call people to raise the bar when it comes to following Christ; however, all too often in doing so, they make people feel that they are too unworthy to even try.
IMPACT: When the humility factor is added to the leadership style of Pharisee, the humble pastor outcome is that the development of compassion, forgiveness, and openness will occur. Once in place, this leader will be able to continue to uphold high standards, but do so with a softer, loving touch. Followers will respect the conviction of their leader, however, not feel put down by them when they either don’t agree or fail to meet the standards set.
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The Zealot
There is one final leadership style to discuss that is rooted in ambition and arrogance and carried out in haste with a lack of prudence. It should be acknowledged, though, that zealot leaders most often don’t begin their ministry as a zealot. They answer the call to “preach the word” and muster the courage and focus their passion to take on the mantle of leadership in a church. They, like John the Baptist proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand, or the Blues Brothers, are on a mission from God. Unfortunately, in this pastor’s zeal to do all the right things as quickly as possible, they fall into a trap in which they mistakenly assume that their special interests are the only things that matter and into a pattern that is arrogant, goal driven, and hard driving, because they are convinced that they have the best ideas. Often due to immaturity and lack of experience, they have a lack of emotional intelligence, believing that the ends justify the means. All too often the thing that overtakes their zeal for the gospel is personal ambition, which drives them to harm relationships, push congregations to change too quickly, and develop a reputation of a mover and shaker whose path is littered with human casualties.
The challenge for the 21st century lay leader is to help well-meaning, but zealous, pastors recognize the value of virtuous patience. This may not be easy in a culture that has become addicted to leadership by 15-second videos, instant messaging, and 140 characters; however, while speed is often viewed as the currency of modern business, it can have disastrous consequences that affect an organization’s most valuable asset, people, particularly in churches. Lay leaders may easily be drawn to a zealous leader who promises to deliver a complete church turnaround in record time, but buyer beware! You want to avoid the casualties of a zealous leader who lacks humble intelligence.
IMPACT: When the humility factor is added to the leadership style of Zealot, the humble pastor outcome is that brokenness, openness, and self-awareness will help this leader to be more genuinely collaborative and empathetic. They will slow down their pace and gain patience as they drive to succeed. It may be difficult for the leader to do so, and people may still grow weary of the constant push, but with effort and patience from both leader and follower, a balance can be reached.
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As you can see, the good news is that each of these leaders can improve with the impact of the humility factor. When they adopt the attributes of the humility factor and attain humble intelligence, they will gradually lead like Jesus led, and everyone benefits.
Well, we’ve covered 22 pastoral leadership styles now. If you missed any, you can go back and read them on my blog. By now you should be beginning to understand that picking a leader for your church is a lot more complicated than you might have thought! However, the key is looking for the evidence of humble intelligence. If you see that in a potential pastor, hire them!
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