Leadership begins with one person—the leader. A thousand people may be led or a dozen management skills exercised, but ultimately the leadership equation may be reduced to a lone person, one individual whom people follow.
At the time of the interview, J. Richard Chase was president of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Dick was formerly president of Biola University in La Mirada, California. During his twelve-year tenure, enrollment grew from 1,800 to 3,100 students, and graduate offerings were expanded greatly through Talbot Theological Seminary and Rosemead School of Psychology.
Some leaders are outgoing; some introverted. Some can talk their way out of any situation, while others perform their way out. So what traits of a great leader are nonnegotiable? What traits can a leader not afford to lose?
Since my educational background is primarily in classical rhetoric, I’ll start with the old classical questions: What are the dimensions of a person who has the leadership ethos? What kind of person has the manner of life that causes other people to follow him?
I would answer those questions by identifying three broad categories: competency, personal character, and genuine concern for others. This threefold concept is primarily associated with Aristotle, but it is also biblical. It is virtually the outline Paul uses in, when he defends his own apostolic leadership. He starts by mentioning his competency, then moves to genuine concern for others, and finally closes with character.
Leaders make decisions and take action; and if their leadership demonstrates competency, genuine concern for others, and admirable character, people will say, “I like what that person is doing. I’m going to follow him.”
Let’s start with competency. In the church, pastors are expected to be competent at many things, but particularly preaching. Can the pastor who is not a very good preacher be a successful leader?
Sure. I have known thriving churches where the pastor has not been strong in the pulpit. But in cases like that, the pastor was competent in communicating knowledge of the Scriptures in other ways. He might not have been overly articulate or able to put words together well on Sundays, but he was unusually effective in small Bible studies, midweek services, or in homes over a cup of coffee.
Often the pastor was competent in putting together a staff. I know one church where the Sunday school staff carried the major load of formal biblical instruction for the church. And what was beautiful was that the pastor in no way felt threatened by these staff members. He chose them. So even though he was not outstanding in the pulpit, his competency in working with staff, in administrating, and in demonstrating genuine concern for people, had made him a dynamic, successful leader. Above all, he modeled biblical qualities of character.
As leaders give away various tasks to others, what tasks remain uniquely their own?
There are very few tasks on the Wheaton College campus that I can do as well as the people hired to do them. In virtually every instance, I’m not as good as they are at their task.
The one area where I have to gain expertise is grasping the “broad view” of where the institution is going. Somebody has to have overall leadership of basic operations. But that person, by virtue of his need to see the broad view—and to stimulate others to pursue the broad goals of the institution—forfeits the opportunity to outperform others in specific tasks.
How do you define character?
By character, I mean a leader must have the kind of personal qualities that would-be followers respect. That’s true for non-Christian leaders as well as Christian leaders.
Certainly the Christian leader must have godly character. The biblical view of leadership focuses far more on the quality of being than on the quality of doing. The passages in Titus, Timothy, Peter, and so on, are almost always about what kind of person you are. What should a bishop be? What should an elder be? What should the young man be?
Peter Drucker, in one of his books, comments that “quality of character” doesn’t make a leader, but the lack of it flaws the entire process. God knows there are certain qualities required of a person to be a Christian leader. Without them, a Christian leader becomes useless to God.
The tragedy in our society is we’re far less interested in measuring leaders by the biblical qualities of character than nonbiblical ones like a macho image.
One of the biblical qualities is being a servant. What does it mean to be a “servant leader”?
A leader meets people’s needs, and you’re not going to build a healthy church by doing it yourself. A lesson I have had a hard time learning is that you can’t run a college by yourself. You have to get others involved.
So the servant leader is someone who is not only not upset if others are doing their thing, he is providing the platform where they can. If people are saying, “Hey, that was a great lesson today by the Sunday school teacher,” the pastor doesn’t say, “Well, what about my sermon?” Instead, he says, “I’m sure glad that teacher is here, aren’t you?”
I know a pastor who has a small church in a small community. He’s never going to have a church with 5,000 members. But it may be that with the kind of impact he’s had on that community and on individuals, a hundred years from now he might be viewed by church historians as a leader who produced a generation of leaders.
Do you feel God has shaped you specifically for leadership?
Looking back, I do. I see a number of difficult things I wish I had not had to go through, and many times I thought I wouldn’t make it, but as a leader I have drawn heavily on some of these very difficult situations.
Once I was involved in a family business and some very expensive lawsuits were brought against the business. I recall coming to the place where I realized I had the Lord and my loved ones and that had to be sufficient. It took a lot of money and some good attorneys to finally get me extricated from the situation. But that experience made me far more understanding of people who find themselves in difficult binds. Instead of saying, “Well, you shouldn’t have been in that situation,” or “We can’t use you,” I understand now how people can get trapped and the support they need to survive and prevail.
Can leaders be trained?
Yes, I think they can. Going on the assumption that everybody has charisma for somebody, they can enhance that charisma by becoming competent in certain areas.
I think of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who many believe was a mediocre line officer and whose career was going no place. He requested to go to Panama, I think, to work under a certain general. That general had a transforming impact on his life as an officer; he taught Eisenhower how to become a competent leader.
How do you find your niche, that area in which you can become competent?
You shouldn’t listen to Charles Swindoll and say, “I’m going to be like him,” if you don’t have his abilities. Despite his dedication to extensive study and prayer, he has the ability to see the helpful things we often miss, and he can communicate truth in memorable ways. And you can’t listen to a lecture by Carl Henry and say, “I’m going to be like him,” unless you have his theoretical ability and mental tenacity to see through a problem.
You shouldn’t pick a model and say, “He’s interesting; he has a following; I want to be like him.” You need to say, “God, what are my gifts? Help me to see what they are, and help me to develop them to the best of my ability.” That may mean that you will have fewer followers than other leaders, but the followers you have will be the ones God wants you to have.
Do you see a difference between leadership and management?
A definition I’ve run into says, “You manage what’s there.” Leaders should be good managers in the sense that they ought to be looking for more creative ways to enhance what they’re already doing. But if you equate management with maintenance, then you’ve got a problem. As a leader, you need to be out front, breaking new ground, providing vision. Maintenance can push aside visionary leadership, and that’s not good.
Pastors easily get into that situation: They preach every Sunday, teach the Bible on Wednesday, and do discipling on another day, until there’s little time to capture a vision, a new challenge for their congregations to impact the world for Christ. Managing can become a leadership role as long as it challenges others to do more than attend and listen.
Vision involves long-term goals. How do you impart such goals when many followers expect short-term results?
That’s a problem I’m constantly wrestling with. The catchword for our age is now. Because of that, people favor short-range goals. I spoke two or three years ago at a long-range planning session, and afterward a person said to me, “Why do you do long-range planning? We’ve done it, and we find that nothing holds; everything changes before the goal is reached.”
A leader, however, is part salesperson. The leader needs to make long-term goals desirable, and provide short-range stepping-stones to get there.
How many important decisions do you make in a year?
Not many. The most important are the few key ones concerning staff and long-range goals. There are three or four of those watershed decisions a year. These are decisions where it is tough to redirect the action once the course is set.
I also participate in hundreds of decisions for which people come to me for final approval.
What would you consider your chief weaknesses as a leader?
Having been in senior administration for over 20 years now, I’ve concentrated on catching the big picture and on articulating it to the public. Because I get intrigued with the big picture, I like to see how it’s working out. So my greatest fault is that I meddle too much.
I try to do it wisely, but I don’t always. For example, I will sit down with a faculty member and while we’re talking I’ll get excited and prematurely share my vision for a program. It may be I’ve talked in generalities with the vice-president, and he hasn’t had a chance to get going on the activity. That makes him look bad. I can create havoc that way.
Another problem I have involves letters I receive. People write the president because they’re concerned. But I can’t respond to every single one, and I can’t meet with every person with a problem. There are just not enough hours in the day. So some correspondence has to be delegated. I feel if there is a problem and someone has written me, that person deserves a personal answer. So I tend to get more involved than I should.
Do you enjoy leading?
That’s a tough question. I enjoy studying and practicing leadership, but I dislike its loneliness. I dislike the fact that sometimes the processes that went into a decision cannot be made known. You have to appear ignorant or off base because you will do more harm if you explain why than if you just keep your mouth closed and move ahead. A lot of pastors feel that pressure following decisions regarding personnel; they’re seldom at liberty to disclose all the reasons behind their decisions.
I also dislike conflict and strife, yet that is part of leadership.
Basically, I want to be thoroughly equipped at whatever I do, I want to be genuinely concerned about my brother, and I want to be the kind of person the Lord wants me to be. If I do those things, I will be demonstrating leadership.
From the book Leaders. Copyright © 1987 Christianity Today.
