The new leadership style that future leaders seek

Bob Whitesel Dec. 7, 2024

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Modern leadership has customarily been associated with command-and-control leadership as depicted in Adam Smith's seminal book The Wealth of Nations. In this model the role of the leader or manager is to "command" often unwilling workers to pursue a goal while "controlling" their actions to attain it. Upon Smith's ideas Frederick Taylor built Theory X, famously asserting; "The worker must be trimmed to fit the job."

Millennial and Gen. Z leadership, not surprisingly, react against this emphasis on a leadership expert and instead embrace a consensus-building and collaborative approach. Harrison Monarch describes the contrast this way:

"The archaic command-and-control approach is shelved in favor of a culture in which managers admit they don't have all the answers and will implement and support team decisions. This means managers become the architects of that team dynamic rather than the all-seeing purveyors of answers. The result is a culture of trust and employee empowerment that is safe."

Researchers Bruno Dyck and Frederick A. Starke found support for the success of a collaborate approach in churches. As Christian professors who study the formation of breakaway organizations (e.g. how/why people leave a church), they also participate on the boards of their churches. They found:

• Pastors who command change (or even who align themselves with a subgroup of change components who do so) will usually be pushed out by the status quo unless the leader demonstrates collaborative leadership.
• That before the change is implemented, the successful leader will build consensus for a change, even among the naysayers.
• That implementing change too fast and without vetting it with the status quo results in failed change.
• And disturbingly, pastors and those proposing change will usually be "forced out of the church" if they don't create a guiding coalition of both change proponents and the status quo before embarking upon the change.

John Kotter is a Harvard management professor who found the key to creating successful change is a "guiding coalition" to generate that change. He found that when one person or one side pushes for change, the other sides will push back with the resultant change creating division rather than progress. Kotter's solution is to create (as the second step of his eight-step process) a "guiding coalition" of both change proponents and the status quo who will bring change in a collaborative and negotiated manner.

Best practices for the church:

• Church leaders of the future must resist command-and-control tendencies and instead embrace approaches oriented toward collaboration.
• Church leaders must go to the status quo and listen to their concerns before launching into a change. I have found that simply giving status quo members a hearing goes a long way to helping them feel their voice and concerns are heard.
• When division occurs during a change (and it most always will) the successful change leader will bring the two sides together to grasp the common vision and cooperate on a solution.

Adapted and updated 12/24 from an address by the author to the Great Commission Research Network (GCRN), Asbury Theological Seminary, Oct. 19, 2017 titled: "How Changing Generations...Change: Harnessing the Differences Between Generations and Their Approaches to Change."

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Bob Whitesel (D.Min., Ph.D.) is a foresight coach, professor, and award-winning author of 14 books. For over 30 years, he has guided leaders and churches to pivot and engage what’s next. He holds two earned doctorates from Fuller Theological Seminary and teaches on leadership foresight, church health, and organizational change. His website is www.ChurchForesight.com. Learn More »

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