Photo Credit: Priorities, by Washington State House…, Flickr

I’m grateful to teach in an area of study I thoroughly enjoy. My primary role is serving as Professor of Ministry Leadership at Bethel Seminary. While every job has aspects that require work that is not explicitly enjoyable, I’m thankful that a majority of what I get to do also is personally enjoyable and fulfilling.

When I consider the core of what I teach about leadership, the focus of my teaching revolves around four leadership priorities. Here is an overview of these priorities.

1 – Servant Leadership and Follower Focus

How do your prioritize your commitments and practices as a leader? Servant leadership is an approach to leadership that prioritizes followers over leader self-interest. While many leadership thinkers would argue a commitment to organizational goals must be prioritized over the people of the organization, a servant leadership perspective argues that the most effective way to accomplish organizational commitments is through focus on followers. By focusing on followers, these followers are then able to deliver exceptional products or services to those the organization as a whole serves.

While the organization as a whole needs to be externally focused (serving its customers, constituents, or mission), the primary focus of the leader must be on serving and caring for the followers who are directly responsible for fulfilling the organization’s mission. I point my students to the importance of servant leadership practice and follower-focus in their leadership work. This leadership commitment is about prioritizing follower-focus and empowering followers for service of the mission.

2 – Transformational Leadership and Organizational Transformation

Complementing the follower-focus of servant leadership, transformational leadership is about creating broad and intrinsic ownership of the organization’s mission by leaders and followers alike. Transactional leadership is primarily based on a leader-follower exchange that incentivizes followers through extrinsic motivators. In contrast, transformational leadership is based on a leader-follower engagement that motivates followers intrinsically. Transformational leadership is about engaging followers in such a way that leaders and followers are mutually committed the organization’s mission and are willing to undergo transformational change with organizational goals in view.

3 – Team Leadership and Collaborative Orientation

In addition to servant and transformational leadership principles, I also advocate for collaborative and team-oriented approaches to leadership. Collaborative approaches to leadership and the use of teams recognizes and affirms that great wisdom exists within the people of organizations. Rather than providing an overly directive or top-down approach to leadership, collaborative and team-oriented approaches to leadership harnesses the wisdom and insights of the people on teams. This leadership commitment is about leveraging team wisdom and utilizing collaboration toward the end of decentralizing authority and empowering people to effectively carry out local work.

4 – Purpose in Leadership and Meaning-Based Living

Finally, I point students to the importance of meaning and purpose in their approach to leadership. On this point, Eisenberg and Goodall write that, “employees want to feel that the work they do is worthwhile, rather than just a way to draw a paycheck,” and to see work as, “a transformation of its meaning—from drudgery to a source of personal significance and fulfillment.” While employees bear responsibility for personally engaging their work with purpose, leaders play an important role in helping organizational members understand why the work they do matters. This leadership commitment is about being purpose-motivated and infusing both our personal work and the work of others with whom we work with meaning and significance.

In both my masters and doctoral level classes, my leadership courses are infused with each of these threads. This provides an overview of each, and I intend to take up each one in a bit more detail in future posts.

What are your leadership priorities? How do your priorities and commitments line up with these four principles? Take some time to share your priorities and thoughts below.

Photo Credit: Artist at work, Jean-Francois Phillips, Flickr

I have been sharing my top blogs posts from 2015. It’s time for #1!

The #1 post from 2015 was …

Let Your Life Speak — How to Understand Your Vocational Call

Interestingly, this “top post” received twice as much interest as the next closest post last year. This likely speaks to many realities, not the least of which is how much people are interested in discerning their sense of vocation and calling. We want to be about work that matters. We want to carry out this calling in a manner that let’s our life speak.

So, how do you discern your vocational path? How do you decide what your contribution to the world will be? What is your vocational calling?

These are big questions. How we understand our work and the contribution we make to the world is vital from our earliest days of vocational discernment on through adulthood.

• It is vital for teens as they consider potential pathways for further education and future work.
• It is vital for adults as they work to make ends meet for their family, and particularly as they seek to do so in a manner that is fulfilling to them personally and meaningful to others societally.
• It is vital to all engaged in any form of vocation because our work lives occupy the majority of our waking hours.

Understanding the importance of vocational discernment is one thing. Understanding how to approach this process of vocational discernment is quite another.

I invite you to reflect on your process of vocational discernment as you engage Purpose in Leadership’s #1 post from 2015…

Let Your Life Speak — How to Understand Your Vocational Call

Photo Credit: Communication, by elycefeliz, Flickr

In a previous post I shared some observations on my top blogs posts from 2015. This week we come to the top two posts.

The #2 post from 2015 was …

7 Levels of Leadership Communication

Effective leadership and effective communication are intimately connected. I often tell students, “Although you can be an effective communicator without being an effective leader, effective communication is foundational to effective leadership.”

For some of you, this is energizing. For others—perhaps those who do not like public speaking—this can sound intimidating. But whether we like it or not, effective communication is vital for effective leadership.

It is important to remember, however, that communication takes many forms, uses many mediums, and happens at many levels. While some leaders excel at public forms of communication such as plenary speaking or communication through mass media, others excel at interpersonal forms of dyadic and small group communication.

As leaders, the key is to know our strengths and growth edges as leadership communicators.

Check out this top post (both in 2014 and 2015) and a quick list of 7 Levels of Leadership Communication that you may use to think through strengths and growth edges in your leadership communication practice.

Here’s the link to the Purpose in Leadership’s #2 post from 2015:

7 Levels of Leadership Communication

In a previous post I shared some observations on my top blogs posts from 2015. In the coming weeks I will be taking time both to share new content and to share some of the top viewed posts from the past year.

The #4 post from 2015 was …

Groups vs. Teams: What’s the Difference?

I love Shidle’s observations about teams…

“A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself
and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.”

– Norman Shidle

Most people participate in some form of a team or group on a regular basis. This happens through recreation in the realm of sports and clubs. This happens on the job as people come together to get things done within organizations.

Although you likely have been part of both groups and teams in the past, do you understand the difference? What are the key distinctions between a group and a team?

Check out this top post (both in 2014 and 2015) regarding the difference between groups and teams. Here’s the link to the Purpose in Leadership’s #4 post from 2015:

Groups vs. Teams: What’s the Difference?