The feeling that you can do the job better yourself makes delegation difficult. But I’ve been a more effective leader when others have actually done the work.
Donald Seibert
Donald Seibert has seen the inside workings of not only churches but high-pressure corporations. As chairman and chief executive officer at J. C. Penney, he gained a reputation as an effective organizer and peacemaker. And in peace, the company prospered.
In 1981, a year when most retailers were taking their lumps, Penney’s earnings rose 44 percent on a mere 4.5 percent increase in sales. What was the secret? Business Week pointed to a new management style “keyed to group decision making … consensus management.”
Seibert, architect of that new atmosphere, is now retired, but his philosophy remains unchanged: develop a team that can continue without a hitch when key individuals leave.
Seibert was vice-president for the White House Council on Families during the Carter years and has served on the Advisory Council for Productivity Improvement.
He’s also an active member of Long Hill Chapel in Chatham, New Jersey, where he leads Sunday night congregational singing, teaches Sunday school, lends his voice to various music ministries, and has been an elder and a trustee. For several years, he has also helped lead a small Bible study group of top corporate executives.
Here are his reflections from a lifetime of service within the complex organizations of church and business.
What leadership tensions are common to both business and the local church?
In business, tensions arise when the chief executive’s objectives somehow differ from those of long-standing workers in the business. In the church, the same tensions arise when the pastor wants to do one thing, and some of the church pillars — Sunday school superintendent, chairman of the board of elders — want to do something else. The tensions are further compounded by misunderstandings about where the business — or the church — is really heading.
Can you give an example?
I was involved in a church that had a strong commitment to foreign missions — a high-profile missions conference, large missions budget, and so on. A few years after I joined, the pastor was succeeded by another man who shared the commitment to missions but also felt our church’s involvement in local ministries was not what it should be. So he tried to motivate us in the direction of local ministries, and his effort was completely misunderstood as a denunciation of foreign missions. The situation grew dramatic, with people raising their voices in meetings. The whole problem could have been avoided if the pastor’s intentions had been communicated successfully to all levels of the church.
So pastors have an obligation to articulate direction clearly, to educate the church on what they’re trying to do and how they want to do it.
Exactly. At J. C. Penney, whenever our management team prepared to issue a statement, whether it was a press release or an internal memo, we asked ourselves two questions: (1) Is this easily understood? (2) Can this be misunderstood? These questions are quite different, and often our original statement failed the second test and needed to be rewritten.
How do you measure whether you as a leader are getting your ideas across?
We use a number of techniques: attitude surveys, informal visits by members of the senior management committee, discussions with people at different levels of the company. If you take time to ask questions, you find out quickly what your people understand and do not understand.
Isn’t this all rather basic?
Yes. Communication skills are based on common sense. But often they’re so simple you ignore them.
Suppose a pastor communicates to a church that God’s purpose for them is to live holy lives and preach the gospel to the world. They decide to send out x number of missionaries, build new Sunday school facilities, etc. What happens next?
First, as the pastor, I would want to know exactly how equipped I am to handle these ministry goals. If Sunday school facilities are inadequate and need expanding, I put that down as a goal. If my missionary outreach needs expansion, I put that down. I find out how financially able the church is to meet these goals, and whether we have the potential to raise the money. I ask specific things like, “Is labor available in the church?” “Will we have to hire outside help?”
Then I ask some more difficult questions: “How many people are committed to these broad ministry objectives? Where is the support going to come from?” If I don’t have a lot of people behind me, it would be foolish to go ahead with a building program. Instead, the first objective would be to spend a year doing nothing but building support and developing understanding for the programs within the church. It’s absolutely critical to know you and your people are together in your goals and objectives.
Good sports teams have at least two things in common: a coach or quarterback who calls good plays, and players who understand their assignments. It’s interesting that a team that works together without a highly visible star will usually beat the team that depends solely on the superstar.
Finally, I’d try to keep goals simple and within reason. To illustrate, I’ve worked with several volunteer choirs. A group of amateur singers may not be able to do justice to some of Handel’s music, but if you select material within their level of competence, they sound magnificent. It may take lots of time and effort, but you can gradually raise their level of competence. Perhaps in a few years, you’ll be able to come back and have these people sing Handel.
Is there a difference between management and leadership?
Here’s a distinction I make. Management is the process of assuring that the programs and objectives we have set are implemented. Leadership, on the other hand, is the process of motivating people.
Both are strategic skills, for business people like myself and for pastors, too. Every pastor needs to know what he has to work with before any work can get done. This means taking inventory of resources, understanding the congregation’s strengths and weaknesses, reviewing all personnel — the human resources — noting where they’re placed, and eliminating structural impediments. These are basic management tools.
If a pastor or a business person is not strong in motivating, he can enlist key people who have demonstrated over time that they have influence with others. If you can identify these people and get them committed to your objectives, they can help sell your programs and motivate others to put them into effect.
What management principles tend to be missed by the local church?
In the churches I’ve attended, one of the biggest conflicts has been between lay stewardship leaders and lay spiritual leaders — typically the trustees versus the elders. Ideally, trustees raise and manage money and tangible resources; elders provide spiritual leadership. These two functions aren’t mutually exclusive, but too often lay people can’t see how their goals and objectives are common. It’s a chronic problem.
Any solutions?
Well, let me tell you what we did at Penney’s. We used to agree on our main objectives and then turn each division loose to plan: the retail division produced a plan, the buyers produced a plan, marketing produced a plan, and so on. Even though we were all working from the same objective, we often found things just didn’t mesh. We weren’t synchronized. And when the results weren’t productive, we had a lot of finger pointing as to whose plan failed.
We moved to a team-management approach. We gathered the leaders from each division into a room and said, “Don’t come out until you’ve produced one harmonious plan.” Not only did we start to get good results, but the finger pointing stopped, because each leader was co-author of the plan.
I don’t want to oversimplify, but is there any reason why the same principle can’t work in the church? The boards of elders and trustees, for instance, could put together leaders from both boards and produce one good plan. Of course, for the plan to work, all board members must fully understand the plan and be sold on it. Again, communication must prevent misunderstanding.
What about the oft-repeated line “You can’t run a church like a business”? In what way should business principles not be brought into the church?
Businesses exist to make financial profit; without profit the business dies, and no other objectives can be accomplished. So I would say that in running a church, you should not use business objectives.
But in administering church programs, you should consider using good business principles.
One of those principles is to treat people with respect. I believe it’s not only questionable morally but counterproductive to run over people in any kind of situation, church or business. You may produce short gains that way, but you’ll pay the price down the road in alienated and departed parishioners.
Is the pastor the chief executive officer of the church in the same way as a ceo is in a corporation?
I think the pastor is the church’s ceo, but the two positions are not parallel. As the ceo of a corporation, everyone reports to me either directly or indirectly. The ceo of a church is more like the ceo of our nation — the President. He leads, but only with our consent.
What do you expect from the pastor in this unique leadership role?
I expect the pastor to be the initiator of clearly defined, easily understood spiritual goals. I don’t expect him to develop all the programs to accomplish these goals, but he has to initiate them.
Over the years, have your various pastors successfully done this?
Not all of them. In some places I was never sure, not only of what I was expected to do in the church but of where the church was going in general.
In fact, if you asked the members of a typical congregation to write in twenty-five words or less where they think their church is headed, you’d get many different answers.
In addition to the role as initiator, how does the pastor function as church administrator?
The buck stops with the pastor, who must assume final responsibility for the way the church is administered. That’s not to say every pastor is a good administrator. You have other functions to perform, and you’d probably like to spend more time on sermon preparation and counseling, for instance. But, regardless, you have to be accountable for how the church is run. You can delegate administration, but you can’t delegate accountability. The big danger in delegating administration — if you then walk away from it — is that the wrong administrator can gradually change the whole program of your church.
Does that mean a pastor must supervise each ministry of the church?
Certainly not. I feel I’ve been a more effective leader when others have actually done the work. And I want everyone to know who accomplished what. It’s the same with pastors. The feeling that you can do the job better yourself makes delegation difficult. But delegation is a must in any organization, and I believe people will execute a plan more successfully if it’s their plan too.
As a leader, how do you overcome the feeling that you can do the job better yourself?
That’s not easy to answer. I think it’s a given that the pastor will not be the most skilled person in the church at everything. Otherwise he’d be leading the choir, singing the solos, and running the air conditioning. In my company, I can find someone who is better than I am at performing almost every function. Marketing, advertising, writing product specifications — you name it, someone can do it better.
But a symphony conductor is not usually the best French horn player, and he doesn’t feel threatened. His role is to make the whole orchestra function to its potential. You should not feel threatened by an individual with great administrative skills, for example. Use him; help him realize his potential within the church.
But what happens when the French horn player only wants to play solos? Doesn’t participatory leadership encourage that kind of thing?
I suppose in some cases it does. But then you have the other side: When a number of people participate in leadership and administration, they help deal with the would-be soloist. The responsibility doesn’t rest entirely on your shoulders. Furthermore, in my church experience, most problems of this nature sprang from spiritual problems within the individual. They weren’t the result of management styles at all.
So you’re democratic as opposed to autocratic?
I am careful not to be autocratic. True, many organizations prosper under an autocratic leader. But in those places, you’ll also find a lot of unhappy people. When they find they just can’t work in that kind of environment, they leave.
And in a church with an autocratic pastor, a large part of the congregation becomes so dependent on this type of leader that when he steps down, he’s almost impossible to replace. One of the principal responsibilities of a ceo is to assure the company that an appropriate successor is ready to step in if something happens. There can be no interruption of the company’s growth. This is hard to pull off in companies led by an autocratic leader. In a sense, it is much better if my organization doesn’t depend on me as an individual but rather on my part in the long-range goal-setting process. And when I leave, this process must go on.
If I don’t have strong management skills, can I still lead effectively?
Yes, if you recognize that management does need to happen in your church. And just because you’ve never worked with management principles and tools doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Pastors are formally educated people; they have the basic intellect to understand these things. I believe many pastors would surprise themselves by discovering what good administrators and managers they really are. We all know people who became good golfers past the age of fifty. They never knew they had the talent.
My own formal education was not in business administration. I know highly successful business people who have degrees in music, English, and philosophy. Administrative skills were picked up along the way.
Can you summarize your leadership principles for pastors and other church leaders?
I believe organizations improve when you do the following:
— Understand your own objectives, your own sense of mission and goals.
— Clearly articulate those objectives to your lay leaders, and try to get some feedback as to how well they understand them.
— Exercise patience. It will take time before you have enough of your parishioners behind you to turn objectives into working programs.
— Take inventory of your personal resources and those available within your congregation.
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