Take me to your leader(s)

Leadership. What comes to mind when you hear the word?

If you are like most people in the western self-determinist part of the world, you think of a person, an individual. History and Scripture would not necessarily dissuade you. Lincoln, Churchill, Moses, King David. We immediately gravitate toward their successes. The individual is, for us, the focal point of leadership!

Closer to home: John A. MacDonald. Oops, wait. But the exception proves the rule, doesn’t it? What the world needs now is better leaders!

Leadership is a category we seem to reserve for individuals. We look for and raise up one person to exhibit successful leadership. And when we discover this person is no longer leading properly, we dismiss them – or remove their statues.

This overemphasis on putting authority in the hands of one person is affirmed in popular literature. Harvard authors, in a book entitled Governance as Leadership, reported in an unscientific yet revealing stat that Barnes & Noble listed 27,220 books with the keyword “leader” in the title in 2004, whereas the words “trustee,” “governance,” or “board,” which speaks to the plurality of organizational leadership, only appeared in 2,349 titles. A 12:1 ratio! I recently ran this same experiment online through Barnes and Noble’s website. The results are better but still point in the same direction. The ratio is 4:1 in favour of individuals versus groups or systems as leaders.

Can we loosely conclude that we are four times more likely to think, write or promote the importance of individuals when it comes to accomplishing successful initiatives than we are to concentrate on the systems and group dynamics that affect the same hopes?

More research needed

Many people reading this column may know, from my history among Christian communities, that I have been on both sides of this leadership dynamic. As such, it has made me a so-called expert whether I have wanted to be or not. I have done a lot of thinking throughout the ups and downs of my career to reflect on what leadership really means. Besides that, I have two degrees specifically in leadership. I guess by now I should know a thing or two. But actually, the old adage is true: “The older I get, the more questions I have.”

So let’s explore, or re-explore, together through this column for the sake of the Christian communities we belong to. Churches, schools, community organizations, charities, workplaces – this discussion matters for wherever we apply our faith and put some people in charge of others.

Let’s pick up the broken pieces of the Sir John A’s within our Christian communities. According to Pastor Justin Carruthers, it is approximately 10 times more likely that a Christian Reformed Church pastor is let go from their job today than in the 1980s (“The NFL, Culture Wars, and Article 17’s,” Jan. 8, 2024). Does this mean pastors are doing 10 times worse than they were 40 years ago, or are there other factors at play? Could this (also) be a group, systems or systemic issue?

Let’s expand our definition of leadership to include more than just the individual. That’s what I’d like to explore in this column, moving forward.