18 Principles

From Leaderpedia

Contents 1 The 18 Principles of Leader Development 1.1 Holistic: 1.2 Spiritual: 1.3 Relational: 1.4 Experiential: 1.5 Instructional: 1.6 Intentional:

The 18 Principles of Leader Development

Within that framework, we use 18 principles of leader development, in six groups. These principles are discussed in detail in Building Leaders: SpiritBuilt Leadership#4. In summery, effective leader development will be:

Holistic:

1. The church needs healthy leaders.

The healthy Christian leader will be strong in the five areas of Christ, Community, Character, Calling and Competencies. Therefore, an effective process of leader development will include and balance all five focuses.

Spiritual:

2. Ultimately, God is the One who builds leaders.

Therefore, ConneXions strives to allow the Holy Spirit to always have His way. We must never allow our agenda to prevent Him from accomplishing His. In addition, since God uses everything in life to change us, the ConneXions process helps the emerging leader (a) understand the past work of God in his life, (b) respond to God’s present dealings, and (c) prepare for the future work of God in his life and ministry.

3. Prayer must saturate leadership development.

Jesus consistently prayed for, with and over His emerging leaders. Moreover, Jesus revealed the Father to His disciples; they saw God, heard His voice and touched Him! The primary characteristic of an effective Christian leader is that he knows God and that he lives and ministers out of his inward union with God. And our primary responsibility in building new leaders is to see that they know God – we must teach them to pray!

Relational:

4. Healthy leaders are built in community.

Therefore, the entire local church community must take responsibility for and actively participate in building leaders. By moving from the disconnected “factory” approach to the “family,” we will achieve:

• Multiplication. The inherent limitations of the centralized factory will be lifted, the family approach providing a model that can be multiplied virtually endlessly with every local church or group of churches providing a learning environment for their emerging leaders.
• Flexibility. When it comes to leader development, “one size” does not fit all. Around the world, leaders from a vast variety of cultures, backgrounds, experiences, education levels, etc. need to be built. Our approaches must be flexible and customizable. In addition, in many countries the environment is rapidly changing around the church, again requiring flexibility in our approaches to leader development.
• Self-support. The local church provides the financial support for the learning process, thus maintaining both responsibility for and control of the development of its own emerging leaders. To be truly self-governing, the community must be self-supporting.
• Holistic development. The learning process becomes considerably more effective since the local church provides the spiritual, relational and practical context for the development of the whole man.
• Security in restricted countries. In restricted countries, factories are obviously not viable due to their size, visibility and the ease with which they can be closed down. Church-based learning communities, on the other hand, can be small, easily-hidden and pervasive.
• The right people receive training. The emerging and existing leaders who need training the most are those who are already engaged in ministry and cannot leave their work for years at a time to go and study in a distant Bible school. In the factory approach we consistently train the wrong people.
• Ongoing, lifelong leader development. The training is not limited to a certain period of time, but continues throughout the emerging leaders’ lives. Leaders are built over lifetimes!
• Effective evaluation. Members of the local community who know the emerging leader and who work with him on a daily basis are the very best ones to help him both establish goals for his development and evaluate his growth toward those goals.

Because of the importance of this principle we've included the entire chapter in this PDF file: Healthy Leaders Are Built in Community (95k).

5. Leaders build leaders.

Teachers and courses don’t build leaders, although they can help. But it takes a leader to impart the vision, passion, courage and strategic perspectives of leadership. Therefore, we should not seek the perfect “package” that will work “all-by-itself.” Packages don’t build leaders; leaders build leaders. The very best package will only be a tool in the hands of a mature and qualified leader. Additionally we should expect each leader to take the tool and use it differently. The tool must not rule.

6. Leaders who build leaders should themselves be involved in the daily responsibilities of leadership.

They should not teach in an artificial environment removed from the real world. Jesus and Paul (e.g., Acts 19:9-11) both conducted extensive and fruitful personal ministries while concurrently building new leaders. This practice maintains integrity and reality, brings credibility and empathy, and dramatically increases effectiveness.

7. Leaders are built a few at a time.

Since leaders personally build leaders, one leader can build only a few other leaders – if he wants to do it properly. Jesus built only a few main leaders to head His entire church that would change the world! Paul and other biblical leaders pursued leader development the same way. The idea of personally and quickly raising up “thousands of leaders” is not a biblical one. The biblical model is this: “the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). In other words, build a few good leaders, who each will build a few good leaders, who each will do the same, and so on. In a relatively short time, we will have the dramatic multiplication of leaders we need. The difference is: they will be good leaders.

8. We must build the right ones!

Our process focuses on a few, so they must be the right ones.

Experiential:

9. Leaders learn by doing.

Jesus built leaders “on the job” where they dealt with real problems and opportunities and faced real conse quences. Therefore, we must balance “classroom” instruction time with practical “in the field” “hands on” ministry. One tragedy of the traditional approach to Christian leader development is that we remove emerging leaders from their normal context of life and ministry and put them in an artificial environment (for years at a time), the nature of which they will never again be in for the rest of their lives, and then we teach them things, much of which they will never use!

10. Leaders are built through fire.

Like steel is made hard in the fire, like gold is purified in the furnace, like coal is formed under pressure into diamonds, leaders are built through fire. It is far better to put the emerging leader under pressure before he is given significant responsibility and authority than to wait until the time when failure under pressure will destroy both the leader and those with him. Therefore, ConneXions intentionally, but carefully and responsibly, puts the emerging leader under pressure to squeeze deep heart issues to the surface where they can be revealed and resolved – in the context of supportive, accountable community.

11. Challenging assignments stretch and mature the emerging leader.

These assignments need to be a little bit above their present perceived capacity. Not too far above or else they will fail, be discouraged and give up; but not below or equal. The assignments must stretch them.

Instructional:

12. The Word of God is the foundation and the means for building healthy leaders.

The teaching of the Word of God was central in Jesus’ method of building leaders, and it must be in ours. For the Word to be properly taught:

• There must be both the teaching of the Word and personal relationship with the leader.
• There must be engagement. Teaching is not necessarily learning. Teaching involves what you know; learning involves what you actually do. Nothing has been effectively taught until the behavior has changed.
• The best teaching will often be an interactive dialogue between learner and teacher; not an endless monologue to which the learner passively listens. Lecturing is rarely the best way for learning to occur. Listening is not learning. Learning requires activity.
• We must teach the Word and not merely about the Word.
• Our teaching should be practical, relevant and appropriate for the emerging leaders we’re building.
• Emerging leaders must be engaged in the process. They must be active. They cannot be passive recipients. They must actively take responsibility for their own learning and be engaged in their hearts (broken and accountable before God and the community); in their heads (the various learning opportunities) and in their hands (actively doing ministry). We must design transformational experiences that will help them to learn, to do and to be.

Intentional:

14. Responsibility for learning and growing is shared by the emerging leader and the church community.

Leader development is not something you do “to” someone or “for” someone. Fundamentally, building leaders involves providing opportunities for growth: opportunities for learning, experiences, responsib ilities, relationships, observing, suffering, etc. These opportunities will not magically produce growth and there is no guarantee that specific individuals will take advantage of them, but if we do not intentionally provide opportunities there will be little growth.

15. Building leaders takes time.

We should not be unrealistic about the amount of transformation that is possible in a short period of time. It takes a lifetime to build a mature and seasoned leader. Thus, our goal in short-term training is not to achieve final and complete maturity, but to lay a sound and comprehensive foundation in the emerging leader’s life. Moreover, our goal is to help him become a lifelong learner who will properly build on the foundation for the rest of his life.

16. People grow in different ways and their callings are different.

Therefore, we must use a variety of learning experiences to assist emerging leaders’ transformation, and their learning goals should reflect their unique callings.

17. Both team and individual learning contexts must be provided.

The most effective leader has learned to integrate the discipline required for working in teams with the discipline of individual initiative. Therefore, our design must balance individual and team contexts for learning.

18. Effective leadership development is a complex, experiential collage.

Even though we can identify certain of its elements, leader development is not a simple and orderly step-by-step procedure of moving through a series of predictable and successive points. In reality, leader development is a complex and multifaceted experiential collage. It is an experiential collage of diverse people, relationships, influences, assignments, tasks, responsibilities, duties, deadlines, opportunities, pressures, crises, blessings, sufferings, rejections, successes, mistakes, etc., that all work together to build the emerging leader.

Thus, an effective leader development process will be a fiery immersion in real-life, real-time experiences, reflecting the complicated and fundamentally difficult nature of Christian leadership, bringing deep heart issues to the surface to be dealt with, and compelling the participant to look utterly to God for success.

Leader development will look different from nation to nation, from culture to culture, from situation to situation, from time to time; but these 18 biblical principles will be effective anywhere.

Moreover, these principles can be applied in various situations:

• For those establishing new residential learning communities for emerging leaders.
• For those seeking to improve existing seminaries or Bible schools.
• For those who do short-term trainings for existing leaders.
• For those involved in teaching or mentoring emerging or existing leaders in any formal, non-formal or informal environment.

These principles will work as you apply them in the wisdom the Holy Spirit gives you as you join Him in this great task of building leaders.