Leader's Insight: Supporting Leaders When You Disagree

Keeping your role as a second chair leader in perspective is important, especially when you may not agree with everything that your leader says or does. Leadership editorial resident Abram Book caught up with West University Baptist Church associate pastors Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson, authors of Leading from Second Chair (Jossey-Bass, 2005) to discuss “managing up.” In the second part of this interview, Bonem and Patterson talk about the challenges of supporting their senior pastor during periods of disagreement, advocating their own ministry while maintaining a “whole church” view, and leading successfully without drawing people away from someone else’s leadership.

How do you support your leader when he does something you don’t agree with?

Patterson: With the words “yes, sir.” (laughter)

Bonem: To me, it starts behind closed doors, with just knowing him and knowing his heart, and knowing that on the core values level we’re really on the same page. It’s also important to me to distinguish between big issues and small ones. If it’s a big deal, then I’m going to talk to him behind closed doors one-on-one and just tell him that we’re moving in a direction that is uncomfortable for me and why.

Patterson: We have a very shared model of leadership. It’s the kind of relationship where we all know we need each other, and so he’s allowed us into that upper level of leadership. We stress that shared leadership model so much just because of the insubordination that is in the hearts of so many leaders in the church. If you look at Jesus, he’s always subordinate to the Father, he only does what he sees the Father calling him to do.

Bonem: I have a sense in my role here on the staff that there is not any issue that I cannot go in and have a frank, one-on-one conversation with my leader. There’s not anything that’s off limits. It’s almost an unspoken set of rules we have.

What are some ways you have been pulled into another person’s disagreements with your senior leader? How do you typically respond?

Patterson: When you have leaders of influence at a first chair and second chair level, that’s going to happen, it’s just a given. One of the things we talk about is just to throw away the second chair’s job description, because it’s always going to change. But if you could write an ideal job description for a second chair, it would be “support the first chair, see deep and wide, and then get to your specific task.” So for us, the answer is that the first chair is the leader that God has put in our midst, I understand your concern, and if you’ll allow me, I’ll take this concern to him, but we’ve got his back. It can breed disloyalty and create a power base that’s very divisive if you let that person’s motives define the situation.

Bonem: I try to carefully listen to what that person is saying, and like Roger said, try to be discerning about it. Ultimately I want to help them to do what I’ve done, which is to look more deeply into my pastor’s heart and see the bigger picture. More often than not, I just leave my first chair a voicemail or speak with him directly and just let him know that this is going on. I’m going to name names when I do that, too. I think one of the worst things a second chair can do is to just go to the senior pastor and tell him that there is this person or group of people who are not happy with your leadership. That doesn’t help the pastor to evaluate where the issue is coming from and how serious it is.

How do you advocate and stand up for your area of responsibility while maintaining a “whole church” view at the same time?

Patterson: I think you have to lead with the whole church view.

Bonem: I have a really deep conviction that if I’m arguing for something that supports my area or one of the ministries that reports to me at the expense of something that would be better for the church overall, that’s a losing proposition. We’ll look at people who have great leadership potential and who could be put to use in several different ministry areas.

Patterson: Successful second chair leaders are thinking about the success of the overall church first. Successful second chair leaders will capture influence across the board because they view the organization as a whole. They are as concerned about children as they are about adult education, even though, for example, adult education is their area. Mike is a perfect example, he sees the church as a whole, and even though he works primarily with adults, he understands that the better we are with children, the more adults will come.

Bonem: Where churches get into trouble is that they have one or two bad apples, one or two people who start to feel really territorial about their area, and then it’s easy for somebody else to do the quid pro quo.

Is it part of your job description to articulate the overall vision of the church, or is that something that you leave primarily to the first chair?

Patterson: We talk about the second chair leader’s role as being that of a vision amplifier. You have to be careful in how you amplify the vision, because if you aren’t careful, you can put too much of your own spin on it and you can distort what you’re trying to amplify.

Bonem: I make the announcements on Sunday morning. I don’t preach or have a platform in terms of standing in front of the whole congregation, so it’s not my job to just stand up and repeat or rephrase in that kind of format, but it’s very much my job in one-on-one interactions with lots of our leaders in small group settings to just live it out in terms of how I show that my priorities are in step with the overall leadership.

Patterson: In our capital campaign to raise funds for renovations on both campuses right after we expanded, we really had to overcome some outcry from folks who thought maybe we were moving too hard and too fast. I remember the opportunity that sat in my lap as a teaching pastor just to help some people be freed up to follow, because they had questions, partly because we’d just acquired the property the previous fall by overwhelming church approval, yet at the same time, when you take 135 people out of your church to launch a new campus, everyone starts feeling the pain of it.

How do you “lead from the second chair” without drawing people away from someone else’s leadership?

Patterson: I share the pulpit with the first chair (senior pastor) every week, because I’m always preaching at one of the two campuses. Over at the new campus, a new family had been attending for several weeks, and so I made it a point to go over and greet them. When I did, the man looked at me and said, “Roger, I really like how you lead services better than your pastor.” I told Ray that I appreciated his affirmation of me, but that it is not about me, and it’s not about our senior pastor. Our desire as church leaders is that he encounters God when he shows up.

Bonem: My gifts and my temperament are so different from Roger and from our senior pastor. I’m not seminary trained, I’m an MBA, very detail oriented and so when I look at the three of us as the senior leadership team, I see my gifts as so different, yet so complementary to them. In my mind, it’s never an issue of competition. However, if I let pride start to creep in and convince myself that the church needs me more than it needs them, all I have to do is look at the pulpit on Sunday morning and say, “Think again, buddy.” (laughter)

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