2016 APEDS Program Booklet

APEDS CONFERENCEA s i a P a c i f i c E l d e r s , D e a c o n s & S p o u s e s ’ C o n f e r e n c e 2 6 - 2 8 J U LY 2 0 1 6

CommitteeConference Coordinator

Conference Speaker

Master of Ceremony

Worship Leaders

Minutes Takers

Registration & Hospiality I/C

Transportation I/C

Medical Team

Web, Conference Book & T-shirt Design

Conference Bags

Name Tags

Audio Video

Videographer

Photographer

Testifiers

Testimony sharings

Fees Collection

Beng Chuan

Dr Evertt Huffard

Adrian Teo

Kenneth LeowVincent Lim

Hedy Wong

Wai Leng

Patrick OngKenneth GongJoan Gong

Boo Chye Rosie

Arial Cheng

Joel Ruth Madiki

Doreen TangSharon Goh

Swee Ann

Tommy Chia

Haiyan

Lau Kin FattJojo RamosOng Chong FattPeter Searson

Ong Chong FattDave HoganDan Bouchelle

Keith Gant Julia Cheah Gigie Carranza Goh Wai Leng

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WelcomeOn behalf of the PP eldership, I would like to extend a warm welcome to you for taking your precious time to attend the Asia Pacific Elders, Deacons and Spouses’ Conference (APEDS Conference). We salute you with the peace and grace of God for we would not have this conference without your willing partic-ipation.

We are praying that elders will inspire a shared global vision and be willing to forge partnerships between churches to contribute to and better steward resource for our kingdom works. Let’s come to the table to feast, listen and talk to one another, sens-ing what God is doing in the various communities and joining with Him in shepherd-ing brethren in mission and ministry.

The seed idea of having elders and their spouses come together to share and encourage one another was first mooted by Benny Tabalujan, an elder of Belmore Road Church of Christ in Melbourne in the year 2014. We want to thank Benny Tabalujan and Alan & Debby Rowley and all the participants who had a great time making friends and sharing heartfelt experiences at the 2014 Eldership Weekend hosted by the Malaga Church of Christ in Perth. Then, the proposal was mooted to hold the Australian elders’ meeting once every two years but in Singapore. So we picked up the baton, but expanded the scope. Thus, we have decided to hold it this year and we have extended our invitation to deacons, church leaders and their spouses to attend the APEDS Conference.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Dr Evertt Huffard and the team of testifiers, and facilitators who will share on the lasting influence of a leader and encourage us in this conference. Thanks also go to our camera crews and the many sisters who took care of the registration and designs of the webpage, T-shirt and program handbook, as well as the logistics for the entire conference, and the accommodation details to ensure comfort for our participants.

Tan Beng Chuan From the desk of PP Eldership

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APEDS Highlights

26 - 28

JULY

Finishing Well as a Spiritual Leader

Power of Spiritual Influence

Role of a Spiritual Leader

Spiritual Transformation

How To Apply Leadership Skills

Partners in Mission

1 2 3

4 5 6

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Arrival and Registration Ballroom 1 (Level 11)

-- Dinner -- Ballroom 2 (Level 11)

Welcome

Songs

Remembering Ken Sinclair

Remembering Jane Hogan

Prayer and Worship

“Finishing Well”

Wrap-up

-- Free Time --

26JULYTUESDAY

1600

1730

1900

1920

1930

1935

1940

2005

2050

2100

Wai Leng

Adrian Teo

Vincent Lim

Ong Chong Fatt

Dave Hogan

Kenneth Leow

Evertt Huffard

Adrian Teo

APEDS Schedule

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27JULY

APEDS ScheduleWEDNESDAY

-- Breakfast ............Chatterz (Level 11 6.30am-10am) --

Welcome ............Balllroom 1(Level 11)

MRN Global Launch Site (Video)

Prayer and Worship

“Finishing Well” Lau Kin Fatt on Tan Keng Koon Songs Jojo Ramos on Alan & Janice Reyes-Po Songs Ong Chong Fatt on Ken Sinclair Songs Peter Searson on Warren Holyoak Songs Reflections: Asia Pacific Elder (Benny Tabulujan)

Songs

“Our Spiritual Influence”

--Break --

Group discussion on spiritual influences (in groups of 3)

Global Partnerships

-- Lunch ............Chatterz (Level 11 12-2pm)--

Free Time

Prayer and Worship

Why am I Here? Finding Our Role in the Church

-- Break --

Equipping Sessions

Discussion Group 1 How do shepherds manage budgets & lead spiritually? Discussion Group 2 How do leaders serve inside and outside the church? Discussion Group 3 How do leaders influence the young people? Discussion Group 4 How do leaders keep strong spiritually?

-- Dinner ............Ballroom 2 (Level 11) --

Prayer and Worship

Group Summary Reports (Group Leader)

Wrap-up

Free Time

0630

0730

0740

0745

0800

0940

1020

1050

1115

1215

1400

1430

1500

1600

1625

1730

1900

1930

2045

2100

Adrian Teo

Dan Bouchelle

Kenneth Leow

Evertt Huffard

Winston Chong

Kenneth Leow

Evertt Huffard

Charles Hooi

Ron Wade

Benny Tabalujan

Adrian Teo

Vincent Lim

Evertt Huffard

0800

0815

0820

0835

0840

0855

0900

0915

0920

0935

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-- Breakfast -- Chatterz (Level 11 6.30am-10am)

Welcome Ballroom 1 (Level 11)

Prayer and Worship

“Spiritual Transformation”

Discussion of “Becoming an Adaptive Leader” article in groups of 5

Summary

-- Break --

Best Practices in Global Leadership Development

Wrap-up

-- Lunch -- Chatterz (Level 11 12-2pm)

28JULYTHURSDAY

0630

0730

0735

0800

0900

1000

1015

1045

1145

1200

Adrian Teo

Vincent Lim

Evertt Huffard

Evertt Huffard

Jay Jarboe

Adrian Teo

APEDS Schedule

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Speaker’s BioDr. Evertt Huffard

I am in my 29th year at HST as Professor of Leadership and missions and just completed 15 years as Dean. I have been a missionary, preacher and an elder—all great learning experiences! This is my 32rd year to teach Spiritual Leadership. The first time I taught this course was at Pepperdine University in 1984 (the year after I took the class with Robert Clinton at Fuller).

I was a student at HST for five years. I completed a M.A. in missions (1973) and a M.Th. (1976). When I graduated in 1976 my wife and our

two daughters moved to Nazareth, Israel. I preached for the church there and taught Bible at the Galilee Christian High School in the Arab village of Eilaboun.

We returned to the states and moved to Los Angeles (1982) so I could work on a PhD in In-ter-cultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary (which I completed in 1985). During the five years we lived there our son was born. At that time I was blessed to preach for a small church in Montebello, in East Los Angeles, while finishing by dissertation and teaching full-time at Pepperdine University.

Our children are grown and married. Ellen is a Nurse Practitioner in Nashville, her husband has his own HVAC business and they have four boys. Charissa, our second daughter, is a RN for home health care in Georgetown, TX where her husband serves as a minister for families with children. They have three boys. Our son, Stephen, is an engineer in Denver. He and his wife live in Castle Rock, CO. One of the joys of our year is the week we have all seven grandsons at our house for “Granna Camp.” Ileene, my wife of 44 ½ years, has a M.A. and Ed.D. from the University of Memphis. She taught in Shelby County Schools for 13 years (Millington). She currently directs the graduate program in education for Harding University at the Mid-South Professional Center on our campus in Memphis. She also has a MACM from HST.

For a couple of decades I have served as a consultant for church leaders and mission teams. I have not taken the time to keep up with it but from 2003 to 2007 I consulted or participated in leadership retreats and seminars in 18 churches in AR, CA, FL, GA, KS, IN, MO, MT, NC, NJ, OR, TN, and TX as well as in Canada and Switzerland. In March-May of 2008 I gave lectures on leadership in Korea, California, West Virginia, and Israel. In 2011-2013 I had three trips to Africa. I have assisted with leadership development for mission teams to Africa, Australia, South America and Europe. It looks like 2016 will be really full with four international trip (to 10 nations), preaching in 20 churches, and consulting for 8 churches.

This semester I will also be teaching Missionary Anthropology. I also teach a Doctor of Ministry seminar on Developing Leaders. I have published one book, a chapter in eight books, over twenty-five articles and five book reviews. I am currently working on a manuscript on Without Shame: A Theology of Honor for Spiritual Formation.

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Speaker’s BioJay Jarboe

IJay holds a BA from Texas Tech University in History and Speech

Communications. He is also a 1986 graduate of the Sunset School

of Preaching and a 1987 graduate of the Sunset School of Missions.

The Sunset church sponsored Jay and Sherry while they served

on a church-planting team in Mexico City for six years. The result is

Mexico City’s Metropolitan Church of Christ. The Metro church is now a multiplying church with its

own Mexican elder and other leaders.

Jay has worked in various roles in Sunset’s ministry, including serving as the Director of the

Adventures in Missions (AIM) internship program and the Dean of Missions in the Sunset Interna-

tional Bible Institute (SIBI). Jay also served as the Lead Minister at the Sunset church 2006-2010.

Jay will lead MRN’s initiatives to equip U.S. and foreign churches in stewarding more effec-

tive world missions. His passion is seeking to be transformed into the image of Christ and helping

others in the same quest. He enjoys reading, playing golf, spending time with his family and loves

Mexican “tacos al pastor”.

Jay and his wife Sherry (Holcomb) have been married for more than 25 years and have two

children, Meagan and Ryan.

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Speaker’s BioAdrian Teo, born on July 4th 1948, spent 4 years in line-management, 5 years in an in-house consultancy of the Singapore Government; 5 years in an international NGO based in Coral Gables, Florida; and consulting principal of his own training company for over 30 years. Graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (History), University of Malaya, 1971; and a Masters of Science (Management), Durham University, UK, 1977.

Adrian has professional certifications in public relations, adventure learning facilitation; cross-cultural dimensions, coaching, counselling, leadership, as well as in competency training and assessments. A regular volunteer, Adrian was active as president in 5 service organizations and is currently a director on the board of SACE-U3A Singapore, where he teaches a course on mindfulness for seniors. Married to Doreen, Adrian is father of two and a grandfather of three.

A frequent traveller, Adrian has been to 57 countries worldwide. Baptized on 10th Feb 1988, Adrian serves as an elder at the Pasir Panjang Church of Christ since 2005.

Adrian Teo

Benny Tabalujan has been a deacon and is currently an elder with the Belmore Road Church of Christ in Melbourne, Australia.

He and his wife, Pauline, have been married for 22 years and they have four children. Trained as a commercial lawyer, Benny has worked with law firms in Melbourne and Hong Kong, and has taught law and business in Singapore and Australian universities.

He is author of a number of law books as well as God on Monday: Reflections on Christians @ Work, which was shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year award in 2006. Benny and Pauline also founded Klesis Institute (www.klesis.com.au) in 2004 to help connect and equip Christians and non-denominational Churches of Christ in Australia.Benny Tabal

ujan

I grew up in Malaysia. After finishing my studies (Production Engineering) in Singapore and 18 months of technical training in the UK, I started working in Petaling Jaya, (10 km out of Kuala Lumpur). After spending nearly 20 years working in an American food company, I resigned from my job and migrated to Australia with my wife (Swee Lan) and our sons, Richard and Francis. In 1988

In 1992, my previous company requested me to work with them again; i.e. to set up food production facilities for them in Indonesia and China. In 1999, I gave up the challenging jobs of working full-time away from home and returned to Melbourne for good. Currently, I am working as a contractor. I look after the technical and warranty issues for a local company which supplies wood working machineries to the woodies. This assignment dovetails well with my hobby, as I enjoy woodwork. I am also involved in voluntary work with a group of members of the Manningham Woodcraft. Every Tuesday a group of us will make wooden components for toys to be given free of charge, to very sick children in Australia.

In August 2004, Trevor Baker and I became the first elders at Belmore Road church of Christ. This is the home congregation for me and my family, comprising Swee Lan, Richard and Sally-Kate, their children Elysse and Elijah; Francis and Christine, their children Laura, Evan.

I am currently serving together with Benny as elders at Belmore Road congregation. My passion is to serve God by serving others. I want to follow Jesus’ example of a truly humble servant. In the course of my travels (for work), I always made it a point to worship with brethren from local churches, wherever I went. This gave me the opportunities to see how others are serving God outside my home congregation.

Charles Hooi

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Speaker’s Bio

We are both 45 years old, married for 23 years with 4 children (Nathaniel-23 years old-College Student taking up B.S.Aeronautics Major in Commercial Flying, JJ-21 years old-College Student taking up B.S. Dentistry, Lady Angela-18 years old-College Student taking up B.S. Business Administration Major in Financial Management & Rico-13 years old-1st Year High School.

We were formerly devout Catholics, Business & Politically minded people, having everything the world can offer but after falling in love with Christ, our lives are being transformed by God as the Spirit helps us understand our purpose & calling. We are 11 year old christians, with all our children also baptized in-Christ.

We have tasted the world already, & we don’t want to go back to it except only to do the mission of God & to be in the front-lines in the battle fields. We have counted & are continuously counting our cost of discipleship, facing whatever trials & sufferings our journey may bring.

We are willing to die for our King, dedicating our lives & our very last breath for the mission of God. And we pray that God would use our family to be an influence of Christ leading men towards their calling.

Jojo Ramos

Dave has degrees in French and Theology with a specialization in Coaching and Counseling. He has over 26 years’ experience as a coach, counselor and trainer and has coached executives and top management in Leadership and Personal Development and Career Guidance. Dave is a trainer and qualified user of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and conducts workshops for organizations on Team Building, Leadership Coaching, Career Development and Change Management. He is a resource speaker and presenter for the Cen-tre for Fathering and conducts workshops in Marriage Enrichment and Parenting. Dave is a Certified Solution Focused Therapist and Coach, and an Approved Supervisor with the Canadian Council of Professional Certification. He is a Director of the Academy of Solution Focused Training and conducts training in the solution focused model in Singapore and the region. He works extensively with local and international schools training teachers and educators. His current book project, Solution Stories from Asia, is a collection of hope-inspiring stories from solution focused practitioners from the region. Dave is a founding member of the International Alliance of Solution Focused Teaching Institutes, member of the Association for Quality Development in Solution Focused Consulting and Training and a member of the International Coach Federation.

Dave Hogan

Dan has served as the president of Missions Resource Network (based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area) since August of 2010. Before taking the lead of this international missions ministry, Dan served in congregational ministry for over two decades with three churches: Central Church of Christ in Amarillo Texas, Alameda Church of Christ in Norman, Oklahoma and Northwest Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas. He also has served on the boards of Great Cities Missions and Christian Relief Fund, as well as other community service and para-church boards. Dan has worked with churches on 6 continents as well as congregations throughout the US. He has also spoken at colleges, lectureships, workshops and seminars around the globe.

He has published several articles, and has written three books: The Gospel Unleashed and The Gospel Unhindered published by College Press and When God Seems Absent, by Hillcrest press. He is an active blogger. His current blog is entitled Walking in the Reign.

Dan married his wife Amy in 1987. God blessed them with three children: Anna and Seth, who are both grown and married, and Abby who still lives at home. Amy is currently working at home but has served as a science teacher in Middle and High schools in Norman and Amarillo. In preparation for ministry, Dan acquired a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the Univ. of Houston-Clear Lake, a Master of Arts, Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry from Abilene Christian University.

Dan Bouchelle

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Speaker’s Bio• Born in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia in 1948• 1960-1966: high school (School certificate or Senior Cambridge)• Baptised in Ipoh Church of Christ in 1968• 1969-1972: attended Four Seas Bible College, Singapore• 1970-1971: Pioneered JB Church of Christ as a student missionary (weekend) sup-

ported by Queenstown Church of Christ (PP Church today)• 1972-1982: Minister, Kuala Lumpur Church of Christ• 1982-1995: Pioneered PJ Church of Christ• 1995-1998: B.A. (Bible); MSc (Bible), Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas• 1998-2006: Missionary, Penang Church of Christ• 2006-present: Pioneered Puchong Church of Christ• 1976: Married to Chrissy Khaw; two daughters: Sarah and Rachel; seven grand-

children

Lau Kin Fatt

I am married to Hilde and a Shepherd with the Point Church congregation at Welling-ton Point. I have been at The Point for 15+years.

My other roles are Chairman Asia Pacific for Arthur J Gallagher & Co, Chairman Austral-ian Institute of Family Counselling Inc.

My community work mainly revolves around working with chaplaincy in State (Public) Schools in our area.

Peter Searson

Ong Chong Fatt was minister to Penang (1975-1992) and presently to Petaling Jaya (1995-present). He earned a Bachelor degree and Masters of Science in Bible from Abilene Christian University. Every two years since graduation from ACU, he lectures at the South Pacific Bible College in New Zealand.

Ong Chong Fatt

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Speaker’s BioRon Wade is the Executive Director of HopeWorks, a local faith-based non-profit or-ganization whose mission is to help the poor in Memphis find employment. Prior to joining HopeWorks, he spent a 32-year career with RR Donnelley.

Ron Wade is a native Memphian who graduated from the University of Memphis with a BBA in Marketing. He also has a Master’s Degree from Harding School of Theology and currently serves on the advisory board for the school. Additionally he spends much of his time assisting the Greater United Memphis Association of Chinese.

He is active in his local church serving as an elder of Highland Church of Christ. He is married with two children, who live near Little Rock, Arkansas.

Ron Wade

Winston Chong was born in Malaysia, left home at 17 to further his studies in Canada and New Zealand, and qualified as a Certified Public Accountant in Deloittes Haskins & Sells and Coopers & Lybrand. He met his Singaporean wife, Hong Ngee, while in New Zealand and they both returned to settle in Singapore in 1988. There he worked for JP Morgan and UBS eventually holding senior positions of responsibility in Asia Pacific.

In the late 90’s, a mid-life crisis forced an authentic examination of his life. In his search for significance, he made a career switch to personal financial planning and in the process made a personal commitment to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord.

Winston believes in a life that is fully founded upon Christ. As a financial adviser and shareholder in Life Planning Associates Pte Ltd, he renders his clients financial advice that is based on biblical principles. His experiences have borne out the reality that one can never truly experience financial freedom unless fully submitted to the sovereign God from whom all things come. His unique position naturally opens opportunities to share redeeming biblical truths that shed light on the insecurity, discontentment, fear and greed experienced by all.

Winston serves as an elder in the Pasir Panjang Church of Christ, Singapore (PP), and is actively involved in leadership. He believes that God is doing something unique in and through the PP congregation. Approximately half the congregation are involved in short term missions, and the young adult and youth groups are enthusiastic about be-ing challenged to grow in ways never experienced by the earlier generations. Together with Hong Ngee, they mentor several young married couples and youth. They have led mission efforts to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and China.

Winston was the founding Board Chairman of the Sunset International Bible Institute, Singapore which secured registration as a bible school in 2010. He now serves as the liaison elder to the school. A significant third of PP’s missions funds are directed towards scholarships for students from China, Vietnam and Myanmar. Hong Ngee and he have been blessed with three children; Basil (1991); Alistair (1992), and Gillian (1995). All three actively serve in various capacities in PP including short term missions.

Winston Chong

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Discussion Grouping

Ballroom 1 Ballroom 2 Hatten 1 Hatten 2

How do Shepherds in God’s Kingdom work the

financial resources; determine budget and

lead spiritually?

How do leaders serve inside and outside the

church?

How do leaders keep strong spiritually?

How do leaders influence the young members?

Simon Goh Vittorio Vitalone Tonia Vitalone Winston Chong

Hooi Swee Lan Dan Bouchelle Ron Holland Chong Hong Ngee

Charles Hooi Tan Beng Chuan Marilyn Holland Charles KimbroJonah Talaver Yvonne Amos Jay Jarboe Goh Wai LengNing Arboly Peter Searson Vivi Vitalone Peter AmosChito Cusi Hilde Searson Tebogo Ramatsui Gillian RaineTess Cusi Dennis Welch Barry Packer David NelsonBoo Chye Sharon Welch Joyce Hardin Tommy ChiaKim Kai Tan Teck Su Evertt Huffard Letty TalaverSam Leow Jab Mesa Benny Tabalujan Tess TalaverDavid Clark Rebecca Mesa Atsushi Lex TalaverZhang Hai Yan Wong Wee Loke Lau Kin Fatt Janet GantMark Hooper Ong Chong Fatt Chrissy Lau Rosie OoiDebbie Hooper Ong Kok Bin Joseph Wang Lim Swee AunMichael Bowen Remie Talaver Steve Raine Lim Lai FunKris Bowen Keith Gant Lady Janet Alice LauBill McDonough Kevin Reynolds Jojo Ramos David FinchMarie-Claire McDonough Debra King Hedy Wong Kenneth GongLawrence Lee John King William Wong Chee Kung LingSteven Tham Lois Knox Doreen Lim Joel MadikiAdrian Teo Wayne Knox Lim Li Chhoan Ruth MadikiDoreen Teo William Lim Gloriae Clark Kenneth LeowDave Hogan Cyndy Tan Ron WadeJoel Reed Binoy Thomas Vincent Lim

Lori Reed Rebecca Thomas

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ParticipantsName of Participants Country Church

* Vittorio Vitalone Italy Viale Jonio Church of Christ

* Tonia Vitalone Italy Viale Jonio Church of Christ

* Khin Nyiap Chong Singapore PPCOC

* Hong Ngee Chia Singapore PPCOC

* Ronald Holland USA The Hills Church

* Marilyn Holland USA The Hills Church

* Mark Hooper USA Highland Oaks Church of Christ

* Debra Hooper USA Highland Oaks Church of Christ

* Lori Reed USA North Atlanta Church of Christ

* Joel Reed USA North Atlanta Church of Christ

* Terry Bouchelle USA The Hills Church of Christ

* Jay Jarboe USA The Hills Church of Christ

* Virginia Vitalone Italy Viale Jonio Church of Christ

* Ludwig Ramatsui South Africa Seeiso St Church of Christ

* Barry Packer USA Highland Oaks Church of Christ

* Joyce Hardin USA Westover Hills Church of Christ

* Evertt Huffard USA Church of Christ at White Station

* Charles Kimbro USA Riverside Church of Christ, TX

Michael Bowen Laos

Kristen Bowen Laos

Simon Goh Singapore PPCOC

Wai Leng Low Singapore PPCOC

Beng Chuan Tan Singapore PPCOC

Kenneth Leow Singapore PPCOC

Swee Lan Tay Australia Belmore Road Church of Christ

Charles Hooi Australia Belmore Road Church of Christ

Yvonne Amos Australia The Point

Peter Amos Australia The Point

Gloriae Clark Australia Point Church

David Clark Australia Point Church

Peter Searson Australia The Point Church

Hilde Searson Australia The Point Church

Benny Tabalujan Australia Belmore Road Church of Christ

ASIA PACIFIC ELDERS, DEACONS & SPOUSES’ CONFERENCE 2016

* Mission Resource Network # Partners In Progress

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Atsushi Tsuneki Japan Mito Church of Christ

Dennis Welch Cambodia

Sharon Welch Cambodia

# William McDonough Cambodia Church of Christ

# Marie-Claire McDonough Cambodia Church of Christ

Haiyan Zhang China Beijing Church

Ruth Madiki India Church of Christ Gollaprolu

Joel Madiki India Gollaprolu Church of Crhist

Binoy Thomas India C.C. of Cochin

Rebecca Thomas India C.C. of Cochin

Kin Fatt Lau Malaysia Puchong Church of Christ

Yeong Wah Khaw Malaysia Puchong Church of Christ

Lin Feng Wang China JIULIAN COC

Teck Su TAN Singapore PPCOC

Jab Mesa Papua New Guinea

Melanesian Bible College

Rebecca Mesa Papua New Guinea

Melanesian Bible College

Wee Loke Wong Malaysia PJ Church of Christ

Chong Fatt Ong Malaysia PJ Church of Christ

Kok Weng Lee Malaysia PJ Church of Christ

Wai Keong Tham Malaysia PJ Church of Christ

Kok Bin Ong Malaysia Seremban CoC

Gillian Raine New Zealand Otumoetai Church of Christ

Steven Raine New Zealand Otumoetai Church of Christ

David Nelson New Zealand Otumoetai Church of Christ

Tommy Chia Singapore Cnurch of Christ Moulmain Road

Jonah Talaver Philippines Zamboanga City Church of Christ

Leticia Talaver Philippines Zamboanga City Church of Christ

Remie Talaver Philippines Zamboanga City Church of Christ

Maria Teresa Talaver Philippines Zamboanga City Church of Christ

Lex Arboly Philippines Church of Christ

Ning Arboly Philippines Church of Christ

Lady Janet Ramos Philippines Midtown Church of Christ

JoJo Ramos Philippines Midtown Church of Christ



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Luis Cusi Philippines Church of Christ (Banilad, Cebu)

Tess Cusi Philippines Church of Christ (Banilad, Cebu)

Adrian Teo Singapore Pasir Panjang COC

Doreen Teo Singapore Pasir Panjang COC

Keith Gant Singapore Pasir Panjang COC

Janet Gant Singapore PPCOC

Boo Chye Ooi Singapore PPCOC

Rosie Foo Singapore PPCOC

Hedy Tan Singapore Church of Christ, Pasir Panjang

William Wong Singapore Church of Christ, Pasir Panjang

Swee Aun Lim Singapore Pasir Panjang COC

Lai Fun Wan Singapore Pasir Panjang COC

Kim Kai Chan Singapore Moulmein Church of Christ

Alice Lau Singapore Moulmein Church of Christ

Doreen Lim Singapore PPCOC

Li Chhoan Lim Singapore PPCOC

David Finch United States South Baton Rouge Church of Christ

Kevin Reynolds United States The HIlls Church of Christ

Debra King USA Stones River Church of Christ

John King USA Stones River Church of Christ

Sam Leow United States Highland Church of Christ

Ronald Wade USA Highland Church of Christ

Lois Knox USA Belton Church of Christ, TX USA

Wayne Knox USA Belton Church of Christ, TX USA

Kenneth Gong Malaysia Seremban CoC

Joan Gong Malaysia Seremban CoC

William Lim Malaysia Seremban COC

Cindy Tan Malaysia Seremban COC

Dave Hogan Singapore Moulmein Church of Christ

Vincent Lim Singapore Pasir Panjang COC



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Reading Material

Spring 2011 Lifelong Faith 3

Practicing the 10 Truths about Leadership From: The Truth about Leadership: The No-Fads Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know James M Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner


Truth One. You Can Make a Difference

Truth Two. Credibility is the Foundation of Leadership


Truth Three. Values Drive Commitment

Truth Four. Focusing on the Future Sets Leaders Apart

Truth Five. You Can’t Do It Alone

Truth Six. Trust Rules


Truth Seven. Challenge Is the Crucible for Greatness

Truth Eight. You Either Lead by Example Or You Don’t Lead At All

Truth Nine. The Best Leaders Are the Best Learners


Truth Ten. Leadership Is an Affair of the Heart

The Truth about Leadership James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner (Jossey-Bass, 2010)

Spring 2011 s Lifelong Faith s 26

Becoming an Adaptive Leader Based on the work of Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky

daptive leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. The concept of thriving is drawn from evolutionary biology, in which a successful adaptation has three characteristics: (1) it preserves the DNA essential for the species’ continued survival; (2) it discards (reregulates or rearranges) the DNA that no longer serves the species’ current needs; and (3) it

creates DNA arrangements that give the species’ the ability to flourish in new ways and in more challenge environments. Successful adaptations enable a living system to take the best from its history into the future.

What does this suggest as an analogy for adaptive leadership? 1. Adaptive leadership is specifically about change than enables the capacity to thrive. New environments

and new dreams demand new strategies and abilities, as well as the leadership to mobilize them. As in evolution, these new combinations and variations help organizations thrive under challenging circumstances rather than perish, regress, or contract. Leadership, then, must wrestle with normative questions of value, purpose, and process. What does thriving mean for organizations operating in any particular context?

2. Successful adaptive changes build on the past rather than jettison it. In biological adaptations, though

DNA changes may radically expand the species’ capacity to thrive, the actual amount of DNA that changes is miniscule. A challenge for adaptive leadership, then, is to engage people in distinguishing what is essential to preserve in their organization’s heritage from what is expendable. Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. They make the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-‐how. The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies, and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.

3. Organizational adaptation occurs through experimentation. Those seeking to lead adaptive change

need an experimental mind-‐set. They must learn to improvise as they go, buying time and resources

Ronald Heifetz is the King Hussein bin Talal senior lecturer in public leadership and founder of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, and the author of Leadership without Easy Answers (Harvard Business Press, 1998). Marty Linsky is adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University. Heifetz and Linsky have co-‐authored two books: Leadership on the Line (Harvard Business Press, 2002), and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (Harvard Business Press, 2009).

A


along the way for the next set of experiments. For example, companies must often be willing to lose money in failures until they bring a successful product to market.

4. Adaptation relies on diversity. By diversifying the gene pool, nature markedly increases the odds that some members of the species will have the ability to survive in a changing ecosystem. The secret of evolution is variation, which in organizational terms could be called distributed or collective intelligence. For an organization, adaptive leadership would build a culture that values diverse views and relies less on central planning and the genius of the few at the top, where the odds of adaptive success go down.

5. New adaptations significantly displace,

reregulate, and rearrange some old DNA. By analogy, leadership on adaptive challenges generates loss. Learning is often painful. One person’s innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant. Not many people like to be “rearranged.” Leadership therefore requires the diagnostic ability to recognize those losses and the predictable defensive patterns of response that operate at the individual and systemic levels. It also requires know-‐how to counteract these patterns.

6. Adaptation takes time. Most biological

adaptations that greatly enhance a species’ capacity to thrive unfold over thousands, even millions of years. In organizations, it takes time to consolidate adaptions into new sets of norms and processes. Adaptive leadership thus requires persistence. Significant change is the product of incremental experiments that build up over time. And cultures change slowly. Those who practice this form of leadership need to stay in the game, even while taking the heat along the way.

Mobilizing people to meet their immediate adaptive challenges lies at the heart of leadership in the short term. Over time, these and other culture-‐shaping efforts build an organization’s adaptive capacity,

fostering processes that will generate new norms that enable the organization to meet the ongoing stream of adaptive challenges posed by a world every ready to offer new realities, opportunities, and pressures. (Source: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, pages 14-‐17)

Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges Adaptive leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to tackle the toughest problems and do the adaptive work necessary to achieve progress. Leadership would be an easy and safe undertaking if organizations and communities only faced problems for which they already knew the solutions. Everyday, people have problems for which they do, in fact, have the necessary know-‐how and procedures—what leadership experts Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky call technical problems. But there are also a whole host of problems that are not amendable to authoritative expertise or standard operating procedures. They cannot be solved by someone who provides answers from on high. Heifetz and Linsky refer to these problems as adaptive challenges because they require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization or community. Without learning new ways—changing attitudes, values, and deep-‐seated behaviors—people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment. The sustainability of real change depends on having the people with the problem internalize the change itself.

Sharon Daloz Parks, in Leadership Can Be Taught, describes the distinction between technical and adaptive issues in this way:

Technical problems (even though they may be complex) can be solved with knowledge and procedures already in hand. In contrast, adaptive challenges require new learning, innovation, and new patterns of behavior. In this view, leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to address adaptive challenges—those challenges that cannot be resolved by expert knowledge


and routine management alone. Adaptive challenges often appear as swamp issues—tangled, complex problems composed of multiple systems that resist technical analysis and thus stand in contrast to the high, hard ground issues that are easier to address but where less is at stake for the organization or the society. They ask for more than changes in routine or mere performance. They call for changes of heart and mind—the transformation of long-‐standing habits and deeply held assumptions and values. (Parks, 10)

Distinguishing Technical Problems

and Adaptive Challenges Kind of Challenge

Problem Definition

Solution Locus of Work

Technical Clear Clear Authority

Technical & Adaptive

Clear Requires Learning

Authority & Stake-‐holders

Adaptive Requires Learning

Requires Learning

Stake-‐holders

Technical problems are well defined: Their

solutions are known and those with adequate expertise and organizational capacity can solve them. For example, a church that sees the participation of children and their families decline in the summer, can develop a multi-‐week vacation Bible school program that engages children and their parents during the summer months. It is a technical problem because the resources are available for purchase and the implementation tasks, while requiring plenty of work, are well known and within the existing skill-‐set of the church’s faith formation leadership.

Adaptive challenges are entirely different. The challenge is complex and not so well defined; and the answers are not known in advance. Adaptive challenges require innovation and learning. For example, developing a plan for the faith formation of Baby Boomers in a church is an adaptive challenge today. People in this generation present a whole new set of challenges and opportunities for churches. They bring new spiritual and religious needs, and are creating a new “stage of life” that combines work, retirement, volunteerism, and family. There

are few established models or resources for faith formation with this generation. This adaptive challenge will require creating new models and approaches, experimenting, evaluating, redesigning, and continuous learning.

In the view of Heifetz and Linsky, leadership is mobilizing a congregation to engage its own most pressing problems and deepest challenges. Leadership builds capacity and sustainability within a congregation as it mobilizes a congregation to engage and make progress on its deepest challenges. Leaders help people understand the changed nature of their situation, and develop new ways of doing faith formation and being church. Mobilizing people for adaptive work is to help them enter into that zone of risk where new learning and new self-‐understanding, as well as new ways of acting, can be discerned.

What Heifetz describes as adaptive work is, at its heart, spiritual work. It involves the central dynamics of the spiritual life and of transformation, which includes loss, risk and trust, even death and resurrection. Our sacred Scriptures, sacraments and our symbols are all powerful resources for adaptive challenges and adaptive work that we face at this time. No program, effort at restructuring, or ‘right’ pastor alone will meet this challenge. It involves our own changes of minds and hearts. (Robinson, 45)

Moses and Adaptive Leadership Anthony Robinson in Leadership for Vital Congregations presents Moses as an excellent illustration of adaptive work and leadership.

Moses, who over the long stretch of the Exodus and wilderness journey engaged in helping former slaves make the transition from one reality, slavery, to a new and different one, freedom lived in covenant with Yahweh. As the author of the First Letter of Peter would later put it, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:10). But this change is a long and labored one, filled with difficult learning for all concerned. And even if Moses was granted some rather impressive technical moves, like a staff transformed from wood to snake with a simple toss, in the end of the work


of this transformation is adaptive work which the people themselves must do. Time and again, during the years of the wilderness sojourn Moses was confronted by those who wanted a quick fix, a technical solution. “Give us bread,” they demanded. Manna was provided, but the gift of manna only points to a deeper source of provision and to the new reality that is emerging, the reality of living in a trusting relationship with God. As in adaptive work, the problem or challenge that Moses and the people faced was not clearly known or defined at the outset. It was much more than making it through the Red Sea and gaining freedom from Egypt. That was the “freedom from” aspect of the story. But that story was followed by the “freedom for” element. To discern what they were free for required learning and change of hearts and minds. Nor was there any readily apparent or clearly applicable solution for this huge adaptive challenge. The solution, such as it was, required making the journey, living into the new reality of God’s faithful people in the midst of an uncertain solution. Heifetz describes the leader’s task as ‘mobilizing adaptive work.’ Moses mobilized adaptive work in a most literal way, leading people on a journey of learning and transformation. (Robinson, 44)

Seven Ways to Know if You Are Facing an Adaptive Challenge

1. If the solution requires operating in a

different way than you do now. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

2. If the problem AND the solution require learning. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

3. If the solution requires shifting the authority and responsibility to the people who are actually affected. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

4. If the solution requires some sacrifice of your past ways of working or living. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

5. If the solution requires experimenting before you’re sure of the answer. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

6. If the solution will take a long time. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

7. If the challenge connects to people’s deeply held values. . . you may be facing an adaptive challenge.

The Process of Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership is an iterative process involving three key activities: (1) observing events and patterns around you; (2) interpreting what you are observing—developing multiple hypotheses about what is really going on; and (3) designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenge you have identified. Each of these activities builds on the ones that come before it; and the process overall is iterative: you repeatedly refine your observations, interpretations, and interventions.

One of the tendencies in organizations is that

leaders feel pressure to solve problems quickly, to move to action. So they minimize the time spent in diagnosis, collecting data, exploring multiple interpretations of the situation, and alternative potential interventions. To diagnose an organization while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from the “on-‐the-‐ground” events. Heifetz and Linsky use the metaphor of “getting on the balcony” above the “dance floor” to depict what it means to gain the distanced perspective necessary to see what is really happening. When a leader can move back and forth between balcony and dance floor, he or she can

1. Observe

2. Interpret

3. Intervene


continually assess what is happening in the organization and take corrective action. When leaders perfect this skill, they are able to simultaneously keep one eye on the events happening immediately around them and the other eye on the larger patterns and dynamics.

A second tendency is that people begin analyzing the problem by personalizing them (“If only this person was a better leader...”) or attributing the situation to interpersonal conflict (“these two people don’t work well because their work styles are so at odds”). This tendency often obscures a deeper, more systemic (and perhaps more threatening) understanding of the situation, for example conflict between two people can be structural, not personal, even if it’s taken on a personal tone. To counteract the personalization of problems start with diagnosing and acting on the system (“moving outside in”) and then do the same for the self (“moving inside out”).

Designing Effective Interventions Effective interventions mobilize people to take an adaptive challenge. Here is a checklist, a series of practices that can make your interventions more effective. They are presented as they might be employed more or less sequentially, but you can think of them as individual practices as well.

Step 1. Get on the Balcony Observe what is going on around you. Stay diagnostic even as you take action. Develop more than one interpretation. Watch for patterns. Reality test your interpretations when it is self-‐serving or close to your default. Debrief with partners as often as you can to assess the information generated by your actions, and the interventions of others, in order to think through your next move.

Step 2. Determine the Ripeness of the Issue in the System How resilient and ready are people to tackle the issue? An issue is ripe when the urgency to deal with it has become generalized across the organization. If only a subgroup or faction cares passionately, but

most other groups in the system have other priorities on their mind, then the issue is not yet ripe.

The ripeness of an issue, then, is a critical factor in planning a strategy of intervention. Is the urgency localized in one subgroup and not yet widespread across the larger organization? Or, on the other hand, are people avoiding the hard work of dealing with the adaptive challenge at hand because the pain of doing so has reached too-‐high levels of disequilibrium? Is the prevailing momentum to treat the situation as a technical problem or an adaptive challenge? Your answer to these questions will affect how you frame your intervention strategy and the timing of your actions.

Step 3. Ask, Who Am I in This Picture? How are you experienced by the various groups and subgroups? What role do you play in them? What perspectives on the adaptive issues do you embody for them? Because they are comfortable with the way you usually act, they are probably quite proficient at managing you in that role to ensure that you do not disturb their equilibrium.

Consistency is a high value in management but a significant constraint in leading adaptive change.

You will have to be less predictable that usual to get constructive attention and make progress on an adaptive issue.

Step 4. Think Hard About Your Framing Thoughtful framing means communicating your intervention in a way that enables group members to understand what you have in mind, why the intervention is important, and how they can help carry it out. A well-‐framed intervention strikes a chord in people, speaking to their hopes and fears. That is, it starts where they are, not where you are. And it inspires them to move forward.

Think about the balance between reaching people above and below the neck. Some groups and some people need data first, before the emotion. For others, it is the reverse. Connect your language to the group’s espoused values and purpose. Consider the balance between strong attention-‐getting


language and language that is loaded as to trigger flight-‐or-‐fight responses rather than engagement.

Step 5. Hold Steady When you have made an intervention, think of it as having a life of its own. Do not chase after it. The idea will make its way through the system, and people will need time to digest it, think about it, discuss it, and modify it. If you think of it as “yours,” you are likely to get overly invested in your own image of it.

Once you have made an intervention, your idea is theirs. You cannot control what people do with your intervention. So as this process unfolds, resist the impulse to keep jumping in. Let people work with your idea. Listen closely to how various subgroups are responding to your ideas, so you can calibrate your next move. Watch for the ways and the elements of it that are taking hold. Watch for avoidance mechanisms, like an immediate rejection or silence.

Your silence is a form of intervention. It creates a vacuum for others to fill. They key is to stay present and keep listening.

Holding steady is a poised and listening response. People will appreciate, even if they never say so, the patience and respect it shows.

Step 6. Analyze the Factions That Begin to Emerge As people in your own close-‐in group begin to discuss your intervention, pay attention to who seems engaged, who starts using your language or pieces of your idea as if it were their own. Listen for who resists the idea. Use these observations to help you see the contours of the factions that various people represent on the issue. Faction mapping of your close-‐in group will give you valuable information about the ways the larger system of people will deal with the issue, which is critically important because refining and implementing your change initiative will usually require the involvement of people from the larger system.

Step 7. Keep the Work at the Center of People’s Attention Avoiding adaptive work is a common human response to the prospect of loss. Avoidance is not shameful; it is just human.

Expect that your team will find ways to avoid focusing on the adaptive challenge in doing their diagnosis as well as in taking action. Resistance to your intervention will have less to do with the merits of your idea and mostly to do with the fears of loss your idea generates.

It falls to you, your allies, and others who lead in the organization to keep the work at the center. Begin by trying to understand the impact of new directions on the constituents behind the people in your working group, and how the pleasure or displeasure of those constituents is going to play out in the behavior of the person. Then think about how you can help that person with their problem, e.g., presenting the idea to their group or making sure the person receives credit for making the new idea happen.

A second strategy is to help the members of your team who are worried about their own people, interpret their group’s resistance in terms of threat and loss. Dealing with the fears of loss requires a strategy that takes these losses seriously and treats them with respect.

Finally, get allies. You need to share the burden of keeping the work at the center of people’s attention. (Source: Chapter 9. Design Effective Interventions in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership) Each of these seven steps can be understood as a skill set. Rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 for each of the seven steps. What are your strengths? Where do you need to build you skills? Works Cited Heifetz, Ronald, Marty Linsky, and Alexander

Groshow. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Cambridge: Harvard Business School, 2009.

Parks, Sharon Daloz. Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World. Cambridge: Harvard Business School, 2005.

Robinson, Anthony B. Leadership for Vital Congregations. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2006.


Video Presentations Faith & Leadership Website (Duke University):

www.faithandleadership.com/multimedia/ronald-‐heifetz-‐the-‐nature-‐adaptive-‐leadership

Institute for Educational Leadership (Ontario, Canada): www.education-‐leadership-‐ontario.ca/videos06-‐07.shtml

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/13117695

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership Ronald Heifetz, Martin Linksy, and Alexander Grashow (Cambridge: Harvard Business, 2009) The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is a hands-‐on, practical guide containing stories, tools, diagrams, cases, and worksheets to help you develop your skills as an adaptive leader, able to take people outside their comfort zones and assess and address the toughest challenges. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership can be your handbook to meeting the demands of leadership in a complex world.

Leadership on the Line Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz (Cambridge: Harvard Business, 2002) For all its passion and promise, for all its excitement and rewards, leading is risky, dangerous work. Why? Because real leadership-‐the kind that surfaces conflict, challenges long-‐held beliefs, and demands new ways of doing things, causes pain. And when people feel threatened, they take aim at the person pushing for change. In Leadership on the Line Heifetz and Linsky show that it is possible to put ourselves on the line, respond effectively to the risks, and live to celebrate our efforts. With compelling examples the authors illustrate proven strategies for surviving and thriving amidst the dangers of leading.

Leadership without Easy Answers Ronald A. Heifetz (Cambridge: Harvard Business, 1998) Ronald Heifetz offers a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it. Drawing on a dozen years of research, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority.

Leadership Can Be Taught Sharon Daloz Parks (Cambridge: Harvard Business, 2005) If leaders are made, not born, what is the best way to teach the skills they need to be effective? Sharon Daloz Parks invites readers to step into the classroom of Harvard leadership virtuoso Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues to understand a dynamic type of leadership and experience a mode of learning called “case in point.” Case-‐in-‐point uses individuals’ own experiences—and the classroom environment itself-‐as a “crucible” for learning. Leadership Can Be Taught reveals how we can learn, practice, and teach the art of leadership in more skilled, effective, and inspired forms.


A Guide for Adaptive Leadership

Problems that we can solve through the knowledge of experts are technical challenges. Problems that experts cannot solve are called adaptive challenges. Solutions to technical problems lie in the head and solving them

requires intellect and logic. Solutions to adaptive problems lie in the stomach and the heart and rely on changing people’s beliefs, habits, ways of working or ways of life. (Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky)

Adaptive challenges require experiments, discoveries and adjustments from many places in the organization or community. To make the adaptive leap to survive in the new environment requires people to learn new ways of

behaving and adopt new values and attitudes. Sustaining change requires the people with the problem to internalize the change itself. (Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky)

1. Define the Challenges Confronting Leadership

Technical Problems Adaptive Challenges Problem is well defined. Answer is known. Implementation is clear.

Challenge is complex. Answers are not known. Implementation requires innovation and learning.

Examples of Technical Problems Adaptive Challenges in Your Church

2. Apply the Adaptive Leadership Process Take a new adaptive challenge and plan your response using the adaptive leadership process:

Process How Will You Do This? 1. Observing events and patterns around you

Stayed tuned to external clues from the environment and opportunities for innovation

2. Interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is really going on

3. Designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenge Experiment and innovate with new practices,

processes, programs, and/or activities Evaluate the results of the intervention; learn; decide

what needs to be improved Modify the intervention using the evaluation results Continue the cycle of innovating and learning

3. Facilitate the Process of Implementing an Intervention Use the seven practices in the article to facilitate the process of making an intervention, and making your intervention more effective.

Winter 2010 s Lifelong Faith s 34

Becoming a Change Leader From: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard Chip Heath and Dan Heath

In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath, authors and professors, ask the question why it’s so hard to make lasting changes in our organizations, in our communities, and in our own lives. The primary obstacle, say the Heaths, is a conflict that’s built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In this excerpt from Chapter One of their book, they describe the three elements of change that can be applied at every level of life—individual, organizational, and societal.

aybe you want to help your brother beat his gambling addiction. Maybe you need your team at work to act more frugally because of market conditions. Maybe you wish more of your neighbors would bike to work.

Usually these topics are treated separately—there is “change management” advice for executives and “self-‐help” advice for individuals and “change the world” advice for activists. That’s a shame, because all change efforts have something in common: For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. Your brother has got to stay out of the casino; your employees have got to start booking coach fares. Ultimately, all change efforts boil down to the same mission: Can you get people to start behaving in a new way?

We know what you’re thinking—people resist change. But it’s not quite that easy. Babies are born every day to parents who, inexplicably, welcome the change. Think about the sheer magnitude of that change! Would anyone agree to work for a boss who’d wake you up twice a night, screaming, for trivial administrative

Chip Heath is professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE). The are the authors of the bestselling books Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Broadway Books, 2010) and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007).

This article is excerpted from Chapter One. Three Surprises of Change in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (New York: Broadway Books, 2010). Used by permission.

M


duties? (And what if, every time you wore a new piece of clothing, the boss spit up on it?) Yet people don’t resist this massive change—they volunteer for it.

In our lives, we embrace lots of big changes—not only babies, but marriages and new homes and new technologies and new job duties. Meanwhile, other behaviors are maddeningly intractable. Smokers keep smoking and kids grow fatter and your husband can’t ever seem to get his dirty shirts into a hamper.

So there are hard changes and easy changes. What distinguishes one from the other? We argue that successful changes share a common pattern. They require the leader of the change to do three things at once. We’ve already mentioned one of those three things: To change someone’s behavior, you’ve got to change that person’s situation.

The situation isn’t the whole game, of course. You can send an alcoholic to rehab, where the new environment will help him go dry. But what happens when he leaves and loses that influence? You might see a boost in productivity from your sales reps when the sales manager shadows them, but what happens afterward when the situation returns to normal? For individuals’ behavior to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds.

The problem is this: Often the heart and mind disagree. Fervently.

Your Brain Isn’t of One Mind

Our built-‐in schizophrenia is a deeply weird thing, but we don’t think much about it because we’re so used to it. When we kick off a new diet, we toss the Cheetos and Oreos out of the pantry, because our rational side knows that when our emotional side gets a craving, there’s no hope of self-‐control. The only option is to remove the temptation altogether.

The unavoidable conclusion is this: Your brain isn’t of one mind.

The conventional wisdom in psychology, in fact, is that the brain has two independent systems at work at all times. First, there’s what we called the emotional side. It’s the part of you that is instinctive, that feels pain and pleasure. Second, there’s the rational side, also known as the reflective or

conscious system. It’s the part of you that deliberates and analyzes and looks into the future.

In the past few decades, psychologists have learned a lot about these two systems, but of course mankind has always been aware of the tension. Plato said that in our heads we have a rational charioteer who has to rein in an unruly horse that “barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined.” Freud wrote about the selfish id and the conscientious superego (and also about the ego, which mediates between them). More recently, behavioral economists dubbed the two systems the Planner and the Doer.

But, to us, the duo’s tension is captured best by an analogy used by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his wonderful book The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-‐ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched.

Most of us are all too familiar with situations in which our Elephant overpowers our Rider. You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever slept in, overeaten, procrastinated, tried to quit smoking and failed, skipped the gym, gotten angry and said something you regretted, abandoned your Spanish or piano lessons, refused to speak up in a meeting because you were scared, and so on. Good thing no one is keeping score.

The weakness of the Elephant, our emotional and instinctive side, is clear: It’s lazy and skittish, often looking for the quick payoff (ice cream cone) over the long-‐term payoff (being thin). When change efforts fail, it’s usually the Elephant’s fault, since the kinds of change we want typically involve short-‐term sacrifices for long-‐term payoffs. (We cut back on expenses today to yield a better balance sheet next year. We avoid ice cream today for a better body next year.) Changes often fail because the Rider simply can’t keep the Elephant on the road long enough to reach the destination.

The Elephant’s hunger for instant gratification is the opposite of the Rider’s strength, which is the ability to think long-‐term, to plan, to think beyond the moment (all those things that your pet can’t do).

But what may surprise you is that the Elephant also has enormous strengths and that the Rider has


crippling weaknesses. The Elephant isn’t always the bad guy. Emotion is the Elephant’s turf—love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty. That fierce instinct you have to protect your kids against harm—that’s the Elephant. That spine-‐stiffening you feel when you need to stand up for yourself—that’s the Elephant.

And even more important if you’re contemplating a change, the Elephant is the one who gets things done. To make progress toward a goal, whether it’s noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant. And this strength is the mirror image of the Rider’s great weakness: spinning his wheels. The Rider tends to overanalyze and overthink things. Chances are, you know people with Rider problems: your friend who can agonize for twenty minutes about what to eat for dinner; your colleague who can brainstorm about new ideas for hours but can’t ever seem to make a decision.

If you want to change things, you’ve got to appeal to both. The Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy. So if you reach the Riders of your team but not the Elephants, team members will have understanding without motivation. If you reach their Elephants but not their Riders, they’ll have passion without direction. In both cases, the flaws can be paralyzing. A reluctant Elephant and a wheel-‐spinning Rider can both ensure that nothing changes. But when Elephants and Riders move together, change can come easily.

Self-Control Is An Exhaustible Resource

When Rider and Elephant disagree about which way to move, you’ve got a problem. The Rider can get his way temporarily—he can tug on the reins hard enough to get the Elephant submit. (Anytime you use willpower you’re doing exactly that.) But the Rider can’t win a tug-‐of-‐war with a huge animal for long. He simply gets exhausted.

To see this point more clearly, consider the behavior of some college students who participated in a study about “food perception” (or so they were told). They reported to the lab a bit hungry; they’d been asked not to eat for at least three hours beforehand. They were led to a room that smelled amazing— the researchers had just baked chocolate-‐chip cookies. On a table in the center of the room

were two bowls. One held a sampling of chocolates, along with the warm, fresh-‐baked chocolate-‐chip cookies they’d smelled. The other bowl held a bunch of radishes.

The researchers had prepped a cover story: We’ve selected chocolates and radishes because they have highly distinctive tastes. Tomorrow, we’ll contact you and ask about your memory of the taste sensations you experienced while eating them.

Half the participants were asked to eat two or three cookies and some chocolate candies, but no radishes. The other half were asked to eat at least two or three radishes, but no cookies. While they ate, the researchers left the room, intending, rather sadistically, to induce temptation: They wanted those poor radish-‐eaters to sit there, alone, nibbling on rabbit food, glancing enviously at the fresh-‐baked cookies. (It probably goes without saying that the cookie-‐eaters experienced no great struggle in resisting the radishes.) Despite the temptation, all participants ate what they were asked to eat, and none of the radish-‐eaters snuck a cookie. That’s willpower at work.

At that point, the “taste study” was officially over, and another group of researchers entered with a second, supposedly unrelated study: We’re trying to find who’s better at solving problems, college students or high school students. This framing was intended to get the college students to puff out their chests and take the forthcoming task seriously.

The college students were presented with a series of puzzles that required them to trace a complicated geometric shape without retracing any lines and without lifting their pencils from the paper. They were given multiple sheets of paper so they could try over and over. In reality, the puzzles were designed to be unsolvable. The researchers wanted to see how long the college students would persist in a difficult, frustrating task before they finally gave up.

The “untempted” students, who had not had to resist eating the chocolate-‐chip cookies, spent 19 minutes on the task, making 34 well-‐intentioned attempts to solve the problem.

The radish-‐eaters were less persistent. They gave up after only 8 minutes—less than half the time spent by the cookie-‐eaters—and they managed only 19 solution attempts. Why did they quit so easily?

The answer may surprise you: They ran out of self-‐control. In studies like this one, psychologists have discovered that self-‐control is an exhaustible resource. It’s like doing bench presses at the gym.


The first one is easy, when your muscles are fresh. But with each additional repetition, your muscles get more exhausted, until you can’t lift the bar again. The radish-‐eaters had drained their self-‐control by resisting the cookies. So when their Elephants, inevitably, started complaining about the puzzle task—it’s too hard, it’s no fun, we’re no good at this—their Riders didn’t have enough strength to yank on the reins for more than 8 minutes. Meanwhile, the cookie-‐eaters had a fresh, untaxed Rider, who fought off the Elephant for 19 minutes.

Self-‐control is an exhaustible resource. This is a crucial realization, because when we talk about “self-‐control,” we don’t mean the narrow sense of the word, as in the willpower needed to fight vice (smokes, cookies, alcohol). We’re talking about a broader kind of self-‐supervision. Think of the way your mind works when you’re giving negative feedback to an employee, or assembling a new bookshelf, or learning a new dance. You are careful and deliberate with your words or movements. It feels like there’s a supervisor on duty. That’s self-‐control, too.

Contrast that with all the situations in which your behavior doesn’t feel “supervised”—for instance, the sensation while you’re driving that you can’t remember the last few miles of road, or the easy, unthinking way you take a shower or make your morning coffee. Much of our daily behavior, in fact, is more automatic than supervised, and that’s a good thing because the supervised behavior is the hard stuff. It’s draining.

Dozens of studies have demonstrated the exhausting nature of self-‐supervision. For instance, people who were asked to make tricky choices and trade-‐offs—such as setting up a wedding registry or ordering a new computer—were worse at focusing and solving problems than others who hadn’t made the tough choices. In one study, some people were asked to restrain their emotions while watching a sad movie about sick animals. Afterward, they exhibited less physical endurance than others who’d let the tears flow freely. The research shows that we burn up self-‐control in a wide variety of situations: managing the impression we’re making on others; coping with fears; controlling our spending; trying to focus on simple instructions such as “Don’t think of a white bear”; and many, many others.

Here’s why this matters for change: When people try to change things, they’re usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful

supervision by the Rider. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-‐control.

And when people exhaust their self-‐control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change.

So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that’s the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

When You Break Through to Feeling Things Change

Jon Stegner believed the company he worked for, a large manufacturer, was wasting vast sums of money. “I thought we had an opportunity to drive down purchasing costs not by 2 percent but by something on the order of $1 billion over the next five years,” said Stegner, who is quoted in John Kotter and Dan Cohen’s essential book The Heart of Change.

To reap these savings, a big process shift would be required, and for that shift to occur, Stegner knew that he’d have to convince his bosses. He also knew that they’d never embrace such a big shift unless they believed in the opportunity, and for the most part, they didn’t.

Seeking a compelling example of the company’s poor purchasing habits, Stegner assigned a summer student intern to investigate a single item—work gloves, which workers in most of the company’s factories wore. The student embarked on a mission to identify all the types of gloves used in all the company’s factories and then trace back what the company was paying for them.

The intrepid intern soon reported that the factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves! Furthermore, they were using different glove suppliers, and they were all negotiating their own prices. The same pair of gloves that cost $5 at one factory might cost $17 at another.

At Stegner’s request, the student collected a specimen of every one of the 424 different types of gloves and tagged each with the price paid. Then all


the gloves were gathered up, brought to the boardroom, and piled up on the conference table. Stegner invited all the division presidents to come visit the Glove Shrine. He recalled the scene: What they saw was a large expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked high with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minute. Then each said something like, “We really buy all these different kinds of gloves?” Well, as a matter of fact, yes we do. “Really?” Yes, really. Then they walked around the table. . . They could see the prices. They looked at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55. It’s a rare event when these people don’t have anything to say. But that day, they just stood with their mouths gaping.

The gloves exhibit soon became a traveling road show, visiting dozens of plants. The reaction was visceral: This is crazy. We’re crazy. And we’ve got to make sure this stops happening. Soon Stegner had exactly the mandate for change that he’d sought. The company changed its purchasing process and saved a great deal of money. This was exactly the happy ending everyone wanted (except, of course, for the glove salesmen who’d managed to sell the $5 gloves for $17).

Let’s be honest: Most of us would not have tried what Stegner did. It would have been so easy, so natural, to make a presentation that spoke only to the Rider. Think of the possibilities: the spreadsheets, the savings data, the cost-‐cutting protocols, the recommendations for supplier consolidation, the exquisite logic for central purchasing. You could have created a 12-‐tabbed Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that would have made a tax accountant weep with joy. But instead of doing any of that, Stegner dumped a bunch of gloves on a table and invited his bosses to see them.

If there is such a thing as white-‐collar courage, surely this was an instance.

Stegner knew that if things were going to change, he had to get his colleagues’ Elephants on his side. If he had made an analytical appeal, he probably would have gotten some supportive nods, and the execs might have requested a follow-‐up meeting six weeks later (and then rescheduled it). The analytical case was compelling—by itself, it might have convinced Stegner’s colleagues that overhauling the purchasing system would be an important thing to do . . . next year.

Remember that if you reach your colleagues’ Riders but not their Elephants, they will have

direction without motivation. Maybe their Riders will drag the Elephant down the road for a while, but as we’ve seen, that effort can’t last long.

Once you break through to feeling, though, things change. Stegner delivered a jolt to his colleagues. First, they thought to themselves, We’re crazy! Then they thought, We can fix this. Everyone could think of a few things to try to fix the glove problem—and by extension the ordering process as a whole. That got their Elephants fired up to move.

We don’t expect potential billion-‐dollar change stories to come dressed up like this. The change effort was led by a single employee, with the able help of a summer intern. It focused on a single product. The scope of the presentation didn’t correspond in any way to the scope of the proposal. Yet Stegner’s strategy worked.

That’s the power of speaking to both the Rider and the Elephant.

What Looks Like Resistance Is Often a Lack of Clarity

It’s true that an unmotivated Elephant can doom a change effort, but let’s not forget that the Rider has his own issues. He’s a navel-‐gazer, an analyzer, a wheel-‐spinner. If the Rider isn’t sure exactly what direction to go, he tends to lead the Elephant in circles. And as we’ll see, that tendency explains the third and final surprise about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

Two health researchers, Steve Booth-‐Butterfield and Bill Reger, professors at West Virginia University, were contemplating ways to persuade people to eat a healthier diet. From past research, they knew that people were more likely to change when the new behavior expected of them was crystal clear, but unfortunately, “eating a healthier diet” was anything but.

Where to begin? Which foods should people stop (or start) eating? Should they change their eating behavior at breakfast, lunch, or dinner? At home or in restaurants? The number of ways to “eat healthier” is limitless, especially given the starting place of the average American diet. This is exactly the kind of situation in which the Rider will spin his wheels, analyzing and agonizing and never moving forward.

As the two researchers brainstormed, their thoughts kept coming back to milk. Most Americans


drink milk, and we all know that milk is a great source of calcium. But milk is also the single largest source of saturated fat in the typical American’s diet. In fact, calculations showed something remarkable: If Americans switched from whole milk to skim or 1% milk, the average diet would immediately attain the USDA recommended levels of saturated fat.

How do you get Americans to start drinking low-‐fat milk? You make sure it shows up in their refrigerators. And that isn’t an entirely facetious answer. People will drink whatever is around the house—a family will plow through low-‐fat milk as fast as whole milk. So, in essence, the problem was even easier than anticipated: You don’t need to change drinking behavior. You need to change purchasing behavior.

Suddenly the intervention became razor-‐sharp. What behavior do we want to change? We want consumers to buy skim or 1% milk. When? When they’re shopping for groceries. Where? Duh. What else needs to change? Nothing (for now).

Reger and Booth-‐Butterfield launched a campaign in two communities in West Virginia, running spots on the local media outlets (TV, newspaper, radio) for two weeks. In contrast to the bland messages of most public-‐health campaigns, the 1% milk campaign was punchy and specific. One ad trumpeted the fact that one glass of whole milk has the same amount of saturated fat as five strips of bacon! At a press conference, the researchers showed local reporters a tube full of fat—the equivalent of the amount found in a half-‐gallon of whole milk. (Notice the Elephant appeals: They’re going for an “Oh, gross!” reaction.)

Reger and Booth-‐Butterfield monitored milk sales data at all eight stores in the intervention area. Before the campaign, the market share of low-‐fat milk was 18 percent. After the campaign, it was 41 percent. Six months later, it held at 35 percent.

This brings us to the final part of the pattern that characterizes successful changes: If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-‐clear direction.

By now, you can understand the reason this is so important: It’s so the Rider doesn’t spin his wheels. If you tell people to “act healthier,” think of how many ways they can interpret that— imagine their Riders contemplating the options endlessly. (Do I eat more grains and less meat? Or vice versa? Do I start taking vitamins? Would it be a good trade-‐off if I exercise more and bribe myself with ice cream?

Should I switch to Diet Coke, or is the artificial sweetener worse than the calories?)

What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. Before this study, we might have looked at these West Virginians and concluded they were the kind of people who don’t care about their health. But if they were indeed “that kind” of people, why was it so easy to shift their behavior?

If you want people to change, you don’t ask them to “act healthier.” You say, “Next time you’re in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, reach for a jug of 1% milk instead of whole milk.”

Three-Part Framework for Change

Now you’ve had a glimpse of the basic three-‐part

framework, one that can guide you in any situation where you need to change behavior:

n Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance

is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-‐clear direction. (Think 1% milk.)

n Motivate the Elephant. What looks like

laziness is often exhaustion. The Rider can’t get his way by force for very long. So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side—get their Elephants on the path and cooperative. (Think of the cookies and radishes study and the boardroom conference table full of gloves.)

n Shape the Path. What looks like a people

problem is often a situation problem. We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the “Path.” When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.

We created this framework to be useful for

people who don’t have scads of authority or resources. Some people can get their way by fiat. CEOs, for instance, can sell off divisions, hire people, fire people, change incentive systems, merge teams, and so on. Politicians can pass laws or impose punishments to change behavior. The rest of us don’t have these tools (though, admittedly, they


would make life easier: “Son, if you don’t take out the trash tonight, you’re fired”).

As helpful as we hope this framework will be to you, we’re well aware, and you should be, too, that this framework is no panacea. For one thing, it’s incomplete. We’ve deliberately left out lots of great thinking on change in the interests of creating a framework that’s simple enough to be practical. For another, there’s a good reason why change can be difficult: The world doesn’t always want what you want. You want to change how others are acting, but they get a vote. You can cajole, influence, inspire, and motivate— but sometimes an employee would rather lose his job than move out of his comfortable routines. Sometimes the alcoholic will want another drink no matter what the consequences.

So we don’t promise that we’re going to make change easy, but at least we can make it easier. Our goal is to teach you a framework, based on decades of scientific research, that is simple enough to remember and flexible enough to use in many different situations—family, work, community, and otherwise.

To change behavior, you’ve got to direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path. If you can do all three at once, dramatic change can happen even if you don’t have lots of power or resources behind you. For proof of that, we don’t need to look beyond Donald Berwick, a man who changed the face of health care.

Saving Lives: A Story of Change

In 2004, Donald Berwick, a doctor and the CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), had some ideas about how to save lives—massive numbers of lives. Researchers at the IHI had analyzed patient care with the kinds of analytical tools used to assess the quality of cars coming off a production line. They discovered that the “defect” rate in health care was as high as 1 in 10—meaning, for example, that 10 percent of patients did not receive their antibiotics in the specified time. This was a shockingly high defect rate—many other industries had managed to achieve performance at levels of 1 error in 1,000 cases (and often far better). Berwick knew that the high medical defect rate meant that tens of thousands of patients were dying every year, unnecessarily.

Berwick’s insight was that hospitals could benefit from the same kinds of rigorous process improvements that had worked in other industries. Couldn’t a transplant operation be “produced” as consistently and flawlessly as a Toyota Camry?

Berwick’s ideas were so well supported by research that they were essentially indisputable, yet little was happening. He certainly had no ability to force any changes on the industry. IHI had only seventy-‐five employees. But Berwick wasn’t deterred.

On December 14, 2004, he gave a speech to a room full of hospital administrators at a large industry convention. He said, “Here is what I think we should do. I think we should save 100,000 lives. And I think we should do that by June 14, 2006—18 months from today. Some is not a number; soon is not a time. Here’s the number: 100,000. Here’s the time: June 14, 2006—9 a.m.”

The crowd was astonished. The goal was daunting. But Berwick was quite serious about his intentions. He and his tiny team set out to do the impossible.

IHI proposed six very specific interventions to save lives. For instance, one asked hospitals to adopt a set of proven procedures for managing patients on ventilators, to prevent them from getting pneumonia, a common cause of unnecessary death. (One of the procedures called for a patient’s head to be elevated between 30 and 45 degrees, so that oral secretions couldn’t get into the windpipe.)

Of course, all hospital administrators agreed with the goal to save lives, but the road to that goal was filled with obstacles. For one thing, for a hospital to reduce its “defect rate,” it had to acknowledge having a defect rate. In other words, it had to admit that some patients were dying needless deaths. Hospital lawyers were not keen to put this admission on record.

Berwick knew he had to address the hospitals’ squeamishness about admitting error. At his December 14 speech, he was joined by the mother of a girl who’d been killed by a medical error. She said, “I’m a little speechless, and I’m a little sad, because I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine.... But, I’m happy, I’m thrilled to be part of this, because I know you can do it, because you have to do it.”

Another guest on stage, the chair of the North Carolina State Hospital Association, said: “An awful lot of people for a long time have had their heads in


the sand on this issue, and it’s time to do the right thing. It’s as simple as that.”

IHI made joining the campaign easy: It required

only a one-‐page form signed by a hospital CEO. By two months after Berwick’s speech, over a thousand hospitals had enrolled. Once a hospital enrolled, the IHI team helped the hospital embrace the new interventions. Team members provided research, step-‐by-‐step instruction guides, and training. They arranged conference calls for hospital leaders to share their victories and struggles with one another. They encouraged hospitals with early successes to become “mentors” to hospitals just joining the campaign.

The friction in the system was substantial. Adopting the IHI interventions required hospitals to overcome decades’ worth of habits and routines. Many doctors were irritated by the new procedures, which they perceived as constricting. But the adopting hospitals were seeing dramatic results, and their visible successes attracted more hospitals to join the campaign.

Eighteen months later, at the exact moment he’d promised to return—June 14, 2006, at 9 a.m.—Berwick took the stage again to announce the results: “Hospitals enrolled in the 100,000 Lives Campaign have collectively prevented an estimated 122,300 avoidable deaths and, as importantly, have begun to institutionalize new standards of care that will continue to save lives and improve health outcomes into the future.”

The crowd was euphoric. Don Berwick, with his 75-‐person team at IHI, had convinced thousands of hospitals to change their behavior, and collectively, they’d saved 122,300 lives—the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to every man, woman, and child in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This outcome was the fulfillment of the vision Berwick had articulated as he closed his speech eighteen months earlier, about how the world would look when hospitals achieved the 100,000 lives goal:

“And, we will celebrate. Starting with pizza, and ending with champagne. We will celebrate the importance of what we have undertaken to do, the courage of honesty, the joy of companionship, the cleverness of a field operation, and the results we will achieve. We will celebrate ourselves, because the patients whose lives we save cannot join us, because their names can never be known. Our contribution

will be what did not happen to them. And, though they are unknown, we will know that mothers and fathers are at graduations and weddings they would have missed, and that grandchildren will know grandparents they might never have known, and holidays will be taken, and work completed, and books read, and symphonies heard, and gardens tended that, without our work, would have been only beds of weeds.”

The Framework Applied Big changes can happen.

Don Berwick and his team catalyzed a change that saved 100,000 lives, yet Berwick himself wielded no power. He couldn’t change the law. He couldn’t fire hospital leaders who didn’t agree with him. He couldn’t pay bonuses to hospitals that accepted his proposals.

Berwick had the same tools the rest of us have. First, he directed his audience’s Riders. The destination was crystal clear: Some is not a number; soon is not a time. Here’s the number: 100,000. Here’s the time: June 14, 2006—9 a.m. But that wasn’t enough. He had to help hospitals figure out how to get there, and he couldn’t simply say, “Try harder.” (Remember “act healthier” versus “buy 1% milk.”) So he proposed six specific interventions, such as elevating the heads of patients on ventilators, that were known to save lives. By staying laser-‐focused on these six interventions, Berwick made sure not to exhaust the Riders of his audience with endless behavioral changes.

Second, he motivated his audience’s Elephants. He made them feel the need for change. Many of the people in the audience already knew the facts, but knowing was not enough. (Remember, knowing wasn’t enough for executives at Jon Stegner’s company. It took a stack of gloves to get their Elephants engaged.) Berwick had to get beyond knowing, so he brought his audience face-‐to-‐face with the mother of the girl who’d been killed by a medical error: “I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine.” Berwick was also careful to motivate the people who hadn’t been in the room for his presentation. He didn’t challenge people to “overhaul medicine” or “bring TQM to health care.” He challenged them to save 100,000 lives. That speaks to anyone’s Elephant.


Third, he shaped the Path. He made it easier for the hospitals to embrace the change. Think of the one-‐page enrollment form, the step-‐by-‐step instructions, the training, the support groups, the mentors. He was designing an environment that made it more likely for hospital administrators to reform. Berwick also knew that behavior was contagious. He used peer pressure to persuade hospitals to join the campaign. (Your rival hospital across town just signed on to help save 100,000 lives. Do you really want them to have the moral high ground?) He also connected people—he matched up people who were struggling to implement the changes with people who had mastered them, almost like the “mentors” found in Alcoholics Anonymous. Berwick was creating a support group for health care reform.

Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at

large, you’ll get there by making three things happen. You’ll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.

Resources Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change

Things When Change Is Hard. New York: Broadway, 2010.

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Switch Your Organization: A Workbook. Download from http://heathbrothers.com/resources

Switch Podcasts: 1) Managers, 2) Marketers, 3) Social Sector, 4) Personal Change (http://heathbrothers.com/resources)

Switch Website: http://heathbrothers.com

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard Chip Heath and Dan Heath (New York: Broadway Books, 2010) Switch asks the following question: Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle, say the Heaths, is a conflict that's built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched,

decades-‐old medical practice that was endangering patients. The home-‐organizing guru who developed a simple technique for

overcoming the dread of housekeeping. The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-‐support team

into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-‐driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.


A Guide to Facilitating Change

Use the process developed by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch to develop a plan for preparing to implement a new project (how you would use each step) or to conduct an evaluation of a new project that you have already implemented (how you did or did not use each step). For practical checklists for each step of the process download Switch Your Organization: A Workbook at http://heathbrothers.com/resources.

The Switch Framework 1. Direct the Rider (the conscious mind), eliminating what looks like resistance but is more often a lack of clarity by providing crystal-‐clear direction

Ways to use this in your project Following the bright spots: investigate what’s working and clone it.

Script the critical moves: don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors.

Point to the destination: change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it.

2. Motivate the Elephant (the subconscious), eliminating what looks like laziness but is more often exhaustion by engaging emotions to get people on the same path as you

Ways to use this in your project Find the feeling: knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something.

Shrink the change: break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant.

Grow your people: cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.

3. Shape the Path (the situation), eliminating what looks like a people problem but is more often a situation problem, by making the environment more conducive to the change you seek

Ways to use this in your project Tweak the environment: when the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation.

Build habits: when behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.

Rally the herd: behavior is contagious. Help it spread.

LeaderLoop/Huffard 2016

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LeaderLoop Theory: Following—Leading—Mentoring

Evertt W. Huffard, PhD

Harding School of Theology

Memphis, Tennessee, USA

The church provides us a rich and necessary environment for spiritual formation

and for living out our calling in service to God. A healthy church can give much more

to the world than the sum total of the ministry that individual Christians could possibly

offer. The health of that spiritual body depends upon the constant emergence of new

leaders to provide direction, spiritual influence, godly examples, encouragement,

guidance, and spiritual resources. Without these leaders there will be no mission;

without mission there will be no growth of the church. Without growth there will be no

honor for God. It is the sobering reality that churches seldom, if ever, rise above their

leaders that motivates me to seek ways to develop more effective leaders within the

church.

Where do we start?

For the past thirty years, I have asked students in my spiritual leadership class at

Harding School of Theology to participate in a very easy exercise. We generate a list of

problems they have experienced with church leaders. The critique flows fast and freely.

The most common responses include the lack of many things, such as: spirituality,

organization, commitment, direction, vision, mission, communication, trust,

consistency, discipline, stability, visibility, mentoring, new leaders, and preparation.

However, in the past couple of years, I have adjusted the assignment to also include

problems they have experienced with followers or as followers. To overlook the

challenges of following undermines the foundation for leading, so I have come to

believe we have started in the wrong place. The answer to the question of how to develop

more leaders really begins with how to develop stronger followers of Christ. Where do we

start—with leading or following? With both!

John Gardner observed two matters of failure of followers that can apply to

churches.

First, there are qualities such as apathy, passivity, cynicism, and habits of

spectator-like non-involvement that invite the abuse of power by leaders. . .


2

Second, there is the inclination of followers in some circumstances to collaborate

in their own deception.1

The first point makes sense. When members fail to step up as active participants in a

church and follow their leaders, the leaders are forced into more autocratic styles and

peace keeping missions rather than evangelism and shepherding.

We may need a little help with his second point. To illustrate the second point, Gardner

notes that from our political process we can learn that when a population wants to be

lied to they will have liars as leaders. When members of a church refuse to accept

challenges to trust in God and their leaders, they will have leaderless leaders. In fact, I

have seen roles are actually reversed in churches where the members take on the

leadership role and the leaders become the followers. This is not a new phenomenon.

Remember Korah and the 250 leaders of Israel? They appointed themselves to lead

when they told Moses: “The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the

LORD is with them.”2 So they proceeded to let Moses know that they would follow

themselves and not him.

One wonders how a Bible-based church could have anything less than strong

followers and leaders with so much about both in the Bible. Almost every book of the

Bible yields insights about leaders, followers and situations in which both failed or

succeeded. With over thirty different types of leaders mentioned in the Bible, several

thousand leaders mentioned by name, and twenty books that speak directly to

leadership, Bible study should produce great leaders.3 But this has not always been the

case. Maybe one of the reasons for the disappointing success rate of leaders finishing

well in the Bible may be the same today—human will struggles to submit to God’s will.

Leaders missed a fundamental spiritual step in their development. Active followers,

true disciples, submit their lives to God. To become a leader and skip this step leads to

spiritual, moral and institutional failure. Good followers (disciples, servants) make

good leaders.

1 John W. Gardner, On Leadership (Free Press, 1990). 2 Numbers 16:3. 3 See J. Robert Clinton, The Bible and Leadership Values: A Book by Book Analysis (Altadena, CA: Barnabas,

1993) 46-48, for a list of the top 20 books.


3

Part of our problem may be in the questions we ask—or don’t ask. If we

approached the Bible with more questions about developing leaders, what would we

find? Of the leaders we know enough about their life to determine the outcome, only

about thirty percent finished well. You will also find positive and negative examples of

transition. For example, the transitions from Moses to Joshua, Elijah to Elisha, Barnabas

to Paul, Jesus to the apostles, and Paul to the elders at Ephesus provide great examples

of passing the baton to emerging leaders.4 However, the transition from Eli to his sons,

Saul to David, and David to Solomon should alarm us to the consequences of dropping

the baton.5

This discussion could seem impractical for many small young churches in Asia

and Africa where the urgent need is to train leaders, not pass leadership to the next

generation. It could take decades to raise up new leaders. In so many cases the future

seems rather hopeless as churches struggle to survive. If so much training and maturing

is needed but the opportunities and resources are extremely limited, why think about

the development of leaders? What can a church with very limited resources do?

The Challenge

Ask a seasoned preacher or missionary to reflect on forty years of ministry to

name the one thing they would do differently if they could start over. Many will tell

you they would spend more time developing leaders. Any seasoned minister can name

churches that have died simply because no one developed leaders or the leaders failed

to bring the next generation or two into leadership.6

The long-term health of a church depends on developing leaders. I am not aware

of many churches that give priority to developing leaders and I wonder why. Beyond

4 Rickie D. Moore, “The Prophet as Mentor: A Crucial Facet of the Biblical Presentations of Moses, Elijah

and Isaiah,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15:155-172, provides a theological framework for mentoring

through “spiritual succession” and the expectation that discipleship is “more about being and being with

someone than knowing what to do” (p. 172). 5 See J. Robert Clinton, Leadership Perspective: How to Study the Bible for Leadership Insights (Barnabas, 1993),

100-103. 6 Kennon L. Callahan, Small, Strong Congregations (Jossey-Bass, 2000), believes some church leaders hold

on to power because they worked so hard to seize the power and do not think the younger generation is

“ready for it” (p. 228).


4

the spiritual issue this raises, I believe the suburbanization of the church could partially

explain this phenomenon in the USA. In Africa and Asia it might be just the opposite

reason—inadequate resources and training opportunities.

As suburban churches went through a phase of rapid numerical growth in the

USA, they became lax in developing leaders because transfer growth brought mature

men and women into the church who provided instant leadership. Transfers from rural

to suburban churches have almost stopped. Now leaders are searching for emerging

leaders and discover they should have started developing leaders decades ago. When it

comes to leadership in the church, we suffer for the sins of the fathers—at least the ones

who were too short-sighted to invest time and resources into intentionally developing

leaders for the church today. Unfortunately we carry on the tradition and fail to

develop leaders for tomorrow. How do we learn to pass the leadership on to others

when it no longer seems to be a natural thing to do?

If a generation forgets how to develop strong leaders, they adapt by lowering

their expectations of leadership and failing to learn how to follow. The temptation for

churches under the influence of western values, consumerism takes on more power. As

volunteerism declines, the demand for more paid staff in churches increases in order to

maintain a minimal level of ministry; but never enough to meet the demands of the new

consumers. As members morph into consumers, they expect the church to serve them.

What follows is a very strange phenomenon where the followers become the leaders

and the leaders abdicate their spiritual authority and responsibility to plan ahead, to set

a direction and to hold the church accountable for doing God’s will. Why then would

anyone want to be leaders in a context where so few are willing or able to follow? This

begs the question for training in followership. Until we become good followers we

cannot be good leaders. How do we become better followers?

God placed every church in a community for a purpose. If that church turns

inward and fails to fulfill its mission, it dies. Followers need direction and organization.

Someone needs to interpret the context and discern what God is calling the church to

do. Without a clearly defined and intentional mission, we see no need for real leaders. I

only need to point out the stress many churches encounter when they try to develop a

mission statement. It takes months to do this when the mission has not been determined

and the leaders lack vision and purpose. In this instance, the mission statement gets no

further than a mantra in the weekly bulletin where no one really sees it or understands


5

how it can guide the ministry of the church. How do we, as a church, discover and

identify our mission from generation to generation without effective leaders and

willing followers?

Reference to leaders will probably bring to your mind thoughts of preachers,

elders and deacons. These are not the only leaders in the church. In this paper, my

reference to spiritual leadership is really to spiritual influence more than to a role or

position in an organization. I know men and women with great spiritual influence in

their church who have no assigned role or appointed position. I also know the reverse

to be true. Spiritual influence incorporates a much larger percentage of Christians into

the equation. How do we develop more followers into leaders with spiritual influence?

When a congregation realizes the need to develop more leaders (often too late!)

the natural response is to start a class, a series of sermons or a program on leadership.

Such efforts have limited success. They might raise the awareness for the need. Ask an

elder in a mature congregation in the USA about the last time their church appointed

new elders and you will hear about the same thing: “It has been a long time.” He might

also say they identified a few good, qualified men to serve but they declined. So as the

church (especially the leaders) continues to grow old, it can actually skip a generation in

the eldership. The elders get stuck in the immediate challenges of managing a church,

keeping the peace, and the tyranny of the urgent without empowering new leaders or

passing the baton to anyone. When the elders finally resign or die, they leave a hole too

large to replace and a generational gap too great to span. A few of these good men take

a lot of wisdom and experience to the grave. Some withdraw to the degree that they

become followers, barely functional. What a loss! This is how and why churches grow

old and die. Yet the challenge of replacing leaders reaches much deeper into the church.

The larger the church becomes, the more challenging it is to staff various ministries, be

it outreach, Sunday school, nursery, or teens. How do we pass the desire to lead on to

others? How do we create an environment to develop more leaders in the local church?

These challenges motivated me to chart a path for the transition of followers to

active involvement and leadership in the church. My passion for church renewal keeps

taking me back to this basic reality: unless more followers become active followers and

leaders, there can be no lasting renewal.


6

LeaderLoop Theory

The process of developing leaders can be confused with the process of

appointing leaders within the organization of the church. Churches are impatient and

demanding. They may know what they need but do not want to take the time to get

there—especially when it comes to leading. Like a married couple who fail to maintain

a budget because it takes too much time and keep on adding to their debt, so churches

continue to bankrupt their leader pool for lack of discipline and planning.

Plans to develop leaders in the church often start with attempts to move

followers into leadership positions in a short amount of time—like 6-9 months--and

assume elders can learn to lead on the job. These premature attempts to develop leaders

usually focus on public roles and positions of the church, such aslike worship leading or

a position in the organization of the church.

The anxiety brought on by the absence of effective, healthy leaders tempts the

church to seek quick solutions. I have seen this in churches that take a year or two to

find a preacher. They become so anxious that they take shortcuts, only to find

themselves in another preacher search in a few years. They operate with a false sense of

security by assuming their leadership

is adequate if all the traditional

organizational positions are filled.

They disregard the fact that some of

the members with the most spiritual

influence in the church are not in the

public eye or in an official role. Jesus

made a clear distinction between the

function of leaders in the world and

those in the church.7 So, how do we

change this? Where do we start? The

natural response might be to start

with followers. How can we have

good sheep without a shepherd?

7 Mt. 20:20-28.

Figure 1. LeaderLoop Model


7

LeaderLoop Theory proposes a path or paradigm for the development of

spiritual leaders within the family of God that is neither gender specific nor limited to

public or official roles. Simply stated, LeaderLoop theory assumes that the

development of emerging leaders in a church begins with leaders mentoring

followers to become active followers and leaders.

This shift in function (from leader to mentor) requires an intentional strategy

along with the ability to cope with the stressful consequences of the transition. The goal

of spiritual influence in a church shifts from maintaining and “filling” positions (for a

long time) to mentoring as many as possible to become active disciples and leaders

who use their gifts to the honor of God.

When leaders overcome the temptation of being stuck at the top of an

organizational pyramid, making all the decisions, carrying all the responsibility, and

handling all the pressing urgent needs, they will value the opportunities to mentor

others to serve and lead.8 They will shift their priorities to passing the baton to

emerging leaders by mentoring those who pick up the new responsibility or use their

gifts to develop new ministries. Empowerment unleashes God’s people to use the

resources God has given them to transform lives, communities and the world. This is

missional more than institutional.

Figure 1 illustrates the LeaderLoop process. Each arrow represents a dynamic

function or process. The focus of LeaderLoop Theory concentrates on the process (the

arrows) not the positions. It gives priority to the process of developing leaders rather

than to positions that need to be filled. It is empowering and transforming.

While most attempts to develop leaders start with followers (A), LeaderLoop

Theory starts with leaders (C). When leaders mentor followers to become active

followers and leaders, a process begins that can replicate itself (a loop). To start with

followers is like starting with sheep without a shepherd to lead them and care for them.

In the real world of raising sheep, we start with the shepherd, then add the flock. Sure,

it takes much more time, but it addresses core competencies for becoming the kind of

8 Another reason leaders could be stuck can be attributed to the assumptions of an older generation.

Richards and Hoeldtke wrote a book on Church Leadership: Following the Example of Christ (Eerdmans) in

1980 with no reference to mentoring or coaching.


8

person people will follow. Attempts to develop leaders without addressing the need for

inner life, life maturing, and ministry maturing, sets the church up for failure.9

If these phases were sequential and overlapping, a natural process for

developing leaders could emerge that gives more attention to becoming a leader

someone could follow rather than politicizing the body of Christ by placing the wrong

personj in a position without adequate spiritual authority. According to this theory,

anyone could be at any point (A-D) at any given time. LeaderLoop challenges the notion

that once someone is a leader in some role of the church, he or she should be a leader in

everything. Leaders in one area are not leaders in all areas. This is a reason for the

plurality of elders; they also follow each other. In reality, an elder is still a sheep! In

developing leaders in a small church, Callahan argues that leaders learn to love, listen

and learn before they lead.10

This reminds me of the story I read about a telecommunications company that

hired attorneys to work in teams on deregulation issues. They looked for people who

could lead and follow but very few applicants could do both.11 Leadership in the church

requires both.

LeaderLoop theory relies heavily on defining our ministry by our spiritual gifts

and spheres of influence. When a few leaders do all the work, something is seriously

wrong. To resolve this gridlock, leaders have the responsibility to transition to

mentoring while passing the baton to an emerging leader in their area of ministry. To

do so, leaders will have to overcome the tyranny of the urgent to focus on the

important—mentoring others to lead. The Pareto Principle (20% of the people do 80% of

the work) challenges every church to take on mediocrity and empower more members

to be active followers.12

9 See J. Robert Clinton, The Making of a Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development

(Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2012) for a guide to inner life maturing (chapter 3), life maturing

(chapter 7) and ministry maturing (chapters 4, 5, 8, 9). 10 Kennon L. Callahan, Small, Strong Congregations: Creating Strengths and Health for Your Congregation

(Jossey-Bass, 2000), 214. 11 Stephen C. Lundin and Lynne C. Lancaster, “Beyond Leadership: The Importance of Followership.”

The Futurist 24 (May-June, 1990): 19. 12 Gary McIntosh, One Size Does Not Fit All: Bringing Out the Best in Any Size Church (Grand Rapids:

Fleming, 1999): 121.


9

Strategy and Stress

As illustrated in Figure 1, attempts to develop leaders, especially transitioning

from A to B to C to D, will require a more intentional strategy and will create stress.

These two factors may offer primary reasons why C and D are exceptions; it takes

training and increases stress in a system already stretched to the max. Keeping it simple

and quick will keep you at “A” for a long time. Greater intentionality (strategy) and

higher energy (stress) will be required to move leaders into mentoring (D) than to move

followers to active followers (A). At “A” the tension will be personal; at “D” the head

winds will be institutional and organizational.

By the end of the 20th Century, large growing churches in the USA began to shift

their strategy in developing leaders from a program-based approach that sought people

to fill positions to a person-based approach or a “relational discipleship approach.”13

This shift involved a strategy that would incorporate members in small groups and new

ministries.

From Followers to Active Followers (A)

In 2004, Kent Bjugstad conducted a book search on the Amazon.com website for

books on leadership and followership. He discovered 95,220 titles on leading and 792

titles on following—a 120:1 ratio.14 One reason given for the imbalance can be attributed

to the misconception that leaders are more important than followers.15 In the following

section, I will introduce the dynamics of the transitions of the LeaderLoop.

When Jesus called men along the shores of the Sea of Galilee to “follow me,” he

spent three years developing good followers before he launched them into leaders. In

the modern church, it is so easy to skip this step (A) in developing leaders, probably

13 Gary McIntosh and Daniel Reeves, Thriving Churches in the Twenty-First Century: 10-Life-Giving Systems

for Vibrant Ministry (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 2006), 101. 14 Kent Bjugstad, Elizabeth C. Thach, Karen J. Thompson, and Alan Morris, “A Fresh Look at

Followership: A Model for Matching Followership and Leadership Styles” (Institute of Behavior and

Applied Management, 2006), p. 304;

http://ibam.com/pubs/jbam/articles/vol7/no3/JBAM_7_3_5_Followership.pdf. Accessed on the web March

15, 2012. 15 Ibid, p. 305.

http://ibam.com/pubs/jbam/articles/vol7/no3/JBAM_7_3_5_Followership.pdf


10

because we assume too much and want too much too quick. The leaders who have

failed, who did not end well, likely skipped the process of becoming an active follower

before they assumed leadership roles. Their church may have pushed them into these

roles too quickly, or their ego may have driven them into premature leadership.

Whatever the case, effective leaders in the church come from the pool of good disciples.

The believer’s next step will always be active discipleship, not leadership.

Called to Serve

In Be My Witnesses, Darrell Guder convincingly argued the case that every

Christian needed to answer two questions: “Am I saved?” and “Am I useful?”16 These

two questions set the boundary between a follower and an active follower. The active

follower, the disciple of Christ, can answer both questions with clarity and confidence

but the passive follower will not grow past the first question.

Active followers of Jesus respond to the call to serve. It is possible to believe in

Christ and be redeemed by the blood of Christ without becoming an active disciple—a

hearer of the Word but not a doer of the Word.17 This transition demands spiritual

formation and inner life maturing: a maturing process that takes time, commitment,

experience, accountability, a desire to serve, and mentoring.

Willing to Serve

Possibly the most un-American text in the Bible is Ephesians 5:21—“Submit to

one another out of reverence for Christ.” Here lies the base line for a disciple, an active

follower of Christ. A follower, a believer, will submit to Christ, but not necessarily to a

church. An active follower submits to Christ and his church. This also identifies the

threshold for spiritual influence. How can one possibly lead and mentor others when he

or she cannot submit to anyone else? Leadership in the kingdom of God depends on

influence, not commands. The foundation for effective spiritual leadership is the ability

to be an active follower. Spiritual leaders can take responsibility in one area of his or her

giftedness (thus exercising spiritual authority) but in all humility follow someone else in

their area of giftedness. As Standish concludes in response to the question of whether

leaders can be humble: “Humble leaders motivate people to follow God’s vision. In

16 Darrell Guder, Be My Witnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985): 59. 17 James 1:19-25.


11

contrast, conventional leaders motivate the people to follow the leader’s vision.”18 This

is why an elder would submit to the leadership of his fellow elders. This is the Sunday

school teacher that submits to the leadership of the church in developing a curriculum

that fits the direction of the church. This defines a ministry leader who is willing to

collaborate with other ministries, because an active follower knows the value and

power of team work.

Understanding this difference, even distance, between a follower and an active

follower helped me realize how easy it has been for me to skip this step in developing

leaders. I assumed a follower was a follower. However, a follower was really a seeker

who became a believer in God, reconciled to God through the redeeming blood of

Christ. As a new believer, he or she needs to feed on the milk of the Word to grow into

mature service. I also know many followers who, for decades, never took the next step,

even though they attended worship services every Sunday. They camped on the fringes

of the congregation and for a host of reasons lived in the shadows of the fellowship that

could have richly blessed their lives. For many years I have been lacked a clear strategy

to move more of these followers into the light of active involvement in the body of

Christ.

Involved in a Ministry

So how do we define an active follower? I will venture to define active followers as

disciples of Christ who use their spiritual gift(s) in at least one area of ministry. Call it a

“spiritual job description.” Two examples that provide a base line for an active follower

would be the willingness to assume responsibility for the spiritual welfare of others in

some way and the willingness to follow spiritual leaders.

Paul called the brethren in Thessalonica to the core competencies of discipleship

in caring for others. Passive followers look around and see others like themselves who

are just consumers, shy about their faith, and weak. In 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18, active

followers (healthy disciples) step up to participate in the spiritual maturation process by

warning the idle (= followers), encouraging the timid (= followers) and helping the

weak (= followers). They assume spiritual responsibility for others by taking the

18 N. Graham Standish, “Whatever Happened to Humility? Rediscovering the Misunderstood Leadership

Strength.” Congregations 33 (Sp 2007): 25.


12

initiative to use their spiritual gifts to influence an idle, timid, weak or high

maintenance brother or sister.

And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help

the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for

wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful

always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will

for you in Christ Jesus.19

Active followers also imitate the faith of their leaders and obey their leaders. In a

poignant contrast between the temple as the center of faith (temple consumers) and

Christ who never changes, believers were urged to “go to him outside the camp” and to

“continually offer a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.” Active

followers (true disciples) “do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with

such sacrifices God is pleased.” 20 Passive followers wrap their faith around a temple;

active followers of Christ express their faith in service and ministry outside the temple.

This contrast between the temple and Christ (13:9-16) is bookended by base line

behavior of active followers:

Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the

outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same

yesterday, today and forever. . .

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as

men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a

burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.21

In the individualistic, consumer driven, western culture a Christian can be

tempted to reject any spiritual authority and detest the word “submission.” These

words challenge the motivation for planting new churches to be free to do church as

they like, attending mega churches to hide in the crowd while enjoying multiple

ministries, or to stay marginal in a small church to avoid criticism. It also explains the

phenomenon of a generation our churches are losing who say “yes” to Jesus and “no”

19 1 Thessalonians 5:14-18 (This and all other biblical quotations come from the NIV, 1984). 20 Hebrews 13:13, 15-16 . 21 Hebrews 13:7, 17.


13

to church—any church. The spiritual reality at the core of Paul’s admonition would call

for a process of inner life development and spiritual formation to be able to value the

spiritual guidance of leaders.

Many Christians are so stuck in the believing phase that movement toward

discipleship, to being an active follower, will require a strategic process and generate

new areas of stress for everyone. The easiest thing to do is leave them where they are,

which I have been known to do. McIntosh and Reeves identified the goals of gifts-based

ministry as moving members into active discipleship. “Everyone is encouraged to be in

a group or a team as soon as possible, with few if any prerequisites.”22

From Active Followers to Leaders (B)

Theories on the development of leaders have long debated the degree to which

leaders are made or born.23 Robert Clinton proposed a theory of leadership

development (Leadership Emergence Theory) that evolved from comparative studies of

hundreds of leaders. The theory traces the development of a leader over a lifetime

where divine sovereignty and providence shape the leader so that “the lifetime of

learning involves the intervention of God.”24

Context also influences the development of leaders. If leadership in small

churches resides in a few key families, in committees in medium size churches, and in

select leaders in larger churches, then the path of that development will vary

accordingly.25 John Maxwell would call this the “law of process” where leadership

develops daily, not in a day.26

Israel Galindo, in The Hidden Lives of Congregations, moves the paradigm of

leadership in churches from an individualistic to a corporate focus.

22 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 101. 23 J. Robert Clinton, A Short History of Leadership Theory (Barnabas, 1992), 28-38. The “Great Man Era”

(1841-1904) argued for leaders being born, followed by the “Trait Era” (1904-1948) which assumed

specific traits made a leader. Both theories have been challenged by the complexity of leadership. 24 J. Robert Clinton, Leadership Emergence Theory (Barnabas, 1989), 27. 25 Gary McIntosh, 50-53. 26 John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (Thomas

Nelson, 1998), 21-32.


14

The insight that a congregation is an organic relationship system with hidden life

forces dictates that what effective congregational leaders provide for the church

are the specific functions for the systemic relational processes in the

congregation. More specifically, leadership in the congregational context is

primarily a corporate function, not an individual one. It has more to do with the

leader’s function in the system than it does with the leader’s personality or even

with the ability to motivate others.27

He gives theological and practical reasons to shift from a pastor system to shared

leadership. For him, congregations need more leaders, not managers. From my

experiences in consulting, churches tend to be over managed and under led. When

leaders mentor, more focus will be given to developing leaders, to the influence of

culture on the church, to their influence through relationships, to empowerment, to the

process of how people function, to coaching/consulting the most mature, and to the

mission of the church.28

Leaders Learn

I have often wondered if the assumption that leaders are born and not made has

influenced the lack of leadership development in churches. Should we also debate the

issue of whether followers are made or born? Not as debatable, is it? It seems easier to

observe how followers are made (transformed, sanctified, grown) than how leaders are

made. Few scholars accept the assumption that leaders are born.

Kouzes and Posner, like Clinton, share the accepted norm that leaders emerge

through a process to develop a set of skills and abilities.

What we have discovered, and rediscovered, is that leadership is not the private

reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use

when they are bringing forth the best from themselves and others. What we’ve

discovered is that people make extraordinary things happen by liberating the

leader within everyone.29

27 Israel Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations: Discerning Church Dynamics (Alban Institute, 2004),

138. 28 Galindo, p. 185-204. 29 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (Jossey-Bass, 2002), xxiii.


15

And any skill can be strengthened, honed, and enhanced, given the motivation

and desire, the practice and feedback, and the role models and coaching.

It’s very curious—and revealing—that no one has ever asked us, “Can

management be taught? Are managers born or made? Why is it that management is

viewed as a set of skills and abilities, while leadership is typically seen as a set of

innate personality characteristics? It’s simple. People assume management can be

taught. 30

If we adapt managing and leading to the biblical language of oversight and

shepherding, the same assumptions exist in churches. Why would church leaders be

more open to consultants coming to their church for help in managing the church but

seldom seek guidance in shepherding the church? For example, the elder with the least

management skills often wonders what good he is doing and why he is an elder.

LeaderLoop theory urges leaders, especially elders, to move beyond managing in order to

develop mentoring and shepherding skills (C and D) so they can be effective at

mentoring disciples (A). They still manage (oversight) but not at the expense of good

shepherding. In doing this, they reap the joys of ministry. One such joy comes from

helping release the gifts of others. It can be a reliable way of overcoming the stagnation

of churches.

Of all the life-giving systems, none creates more satisfaction than a mentoring

process. It is, in fact, needed to produce consistent, balanced and healthy growth

in people. Not only is a mentoring process easily transferable across ministries, it

identifies giftedness and then challenges people to place themselves accordingly

within the body of Christ.31

We can assume a certain level of inner life maturity and life maturing as one

transitions from an active follower to a leader in some area of ministry. To skip “A” and

appoint a follower to a leadership position usually ends in failure for the individual and

the church. Yet it happens too often, because the emerging leader had no mentoring or

guidance. A new believer will be given a leadership role with the assumption that he

will rise to the level of expectation—only to find that he or she burns out trying to

30 Ibid., 386. 31 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 98.


16

please everyone or is crushed by the criticism. A successful businessman meets the

minimum requirements of being an elder, yet never established himself as an active

follower. Everyone suffers when he has a moral failure and will not submit to the

spiritual influence of his fellow elders or those who were close to him. Their spiritual

authority in his life could redeem his soul and spiritual influence.

I had a young, energetic couple share their plans with me to plant a new church

or become missionaries so they will not have to “mess with elders.” That did not sound

good. They wanted to be at “B” and skip “A.” This principle finds support in the

admonition not to appoint a recent convert as an elder.32

Malphurs and Mancini call attention to the “M-myth” in developing leaders.

They argue that mature and mobilized believers as well as “ministry masters” may not

be leaders. Good people can be put into leadership roles but not become good leaders.33

In small or smaller congregations, where the informal structures share the

organization of the church, a domineering personality can create a very unhealthy

environment—one in which the potential leaders give up and leave. Callahan

recommends a good three-step process in this situation: commit to develop and

encourage competent leaders, add new people to the leadership team, and advance a

shared understanding of congregational leadership. He offers four stages to developing

competent leaders: picture accomplishing something, match strengths to goals, mobilize

a team to accomplish goals, and “let the leader and the team come to their own.”34

A Baseline for Leaders

What sets the baseline for being a leader? We do not find in scriptures the

expectation that everyone will be a leader in the church. Not everyone has the gift to

lead.35 However, expectations that everyone will seek to be an active, mature, authentic

disciple of Christ seem clear.36 Every disciple is expected to have spiritual influence.

32 1 Timothy 3:6. 33 Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini, Building Leaders: Blueprints for Developing Leadership at Every Level of

Your Church (Baker, 2004), p. 191-192. 34 Callahan, p. 221. 35 Romans 12:8. 36 Colossians 1:28-29; Hebrews 5:11-14.


17

Paul describes leaders as people who “work hard among you, who are over you

in the Lord, and who admonish you.”37 What prepared them for this seems to be their

maturity as disciples or active followers who had experience in warning the idle,

encouraging the timid, helping the weak and learning to be patient with everyone.

So what core competencies do we develop in our lives to become leaders? I will

suggest a few.

Responsible for others: Leaders in any ministry show concern and love for

others. They build trust in caring for those who follow them. They manage their

time well enough to balance the priorities of immediate tasks with the

importance of relationships.

Initiates structures: Leaders can begin new ministries or expand existing

structures to serve the church. Followers can demand such high maintenance

that they literally drain the energy out of a system (church or ministry).

Followers will often be heard saying: “Well, no one asked me to do that” or “It

did not appear that anyone else cared about this as much as I did so I quit

trying.” Active followers will be advancers, stepping in and marshalling

resources to get a task done or to meet a goal. Leaders see the need for a ministry

and initiate the structures to get the task done. They are forward-looking.38

Copes with criticism: Consumers demand so much that church leaders find

themselves catering to and even sidetracked by the complaints of followers.

Developing leaders in any area of ministry within the church requires continual

training in coping with criticism. Leaders know how to discern the legitimate

feedback from the criticism of those followers who make no contribution to the

growth of the church or resolving problems.

Seeks to do what is right: Paul exercised good leadership skills in the collection

for the poor in Jerusalem by asking the church to appoint someone to help him

take the money to Jerusalem. As an apostle he did not have to work with his

hands or limit how he did things to avoid criticism—yet he did. He wrote: “We

37 1 Thessalonians 5:12. 38 Kouzes and Posner, 136.


18

want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift. For we are

taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the

eyes of men.”39

Attracts followers: A deep reflective question we all might ask is “why would

anyone follow me?” The common scenario in the church for developing

followers starts with the respect and credibility one gains as an active follower.

Their involvement in the life of the church and their commitment to the Word

earns the respect of other active followers to the point that active followers ask

them to lead a ministry, to serve as elders, or seek their guidance.

Ability to exercise spiritual authority without dominating or manipulating

others. Through our experience, knowledge and relationships people will follow

us. However, we must first know ourselves well.

Learning to lead is about discovering what you care about and value.

About what inspires you. About what challenges you. About what gives

you power and competence. About what encourages you. When you

discover these things about yourself, you’ll know what it takes to lead

those qualities out of others.40

In weak and unhealthy churches, church leaders can’t seem to get past being

active followers. Elders suffer paralysis from the inability to lead the church through a

crisis or cope with any conflict. They may be loved but not followed because they do

not know where to go. Their lack of courage or wisdom may have cost them credibility

to lead. Leaders can get stuck between “A” and “B” (see Figure 1) and only appear to

lead. I know, that did not sound right—they should be between “B” and “C.” The same

dissonance can be felt at churches where leaders should at least function at “B” but

have slipped back to “A” at a time when “C” is really needed. When a deacon takes no

risks, makes no commitments, and simply maintains status quo in his ministry, he fails

to step up as a leader. When a “ministry leader” waits for years for someone to create a

new structure for his/her failing ministry while blaming the leaders for the

39 2 Corinthians 8:20-21. 40 Kouzes and Posner, 391.


19

ineffectiveness or inactivity of that ministry, the “ministry leader” has slipped back to

“A.”

If leaders and followers are made—not born—then how can they be developed?

Teaching and preaching may point the way, but it is no substitute for personal coaching

and mentoring. The evidence continues to point me to the necessity of more leaders,

especially elders and preachers, shifting their priority to mentoring, knowing that such

a shift will not be easy.

From Leaders to Mentors (C & D)

Because we have no presidents, prime ministers, or popes as leaders in the New

Testament church, no leadership role would be viewed as “top of the mountain.” When

one becomes an elder he has not “arrived” to the highest point in the church. That place

is reserved for Christ alone. Is there something beyond—not above—being an elder or a

leader in the church?

Consider the ministry of Christ. He emptied himself and took on the form of a

servant. How do leaders do that in the church today? LeaderLoop theory suggests leaders

do this in mentoring relationships. Old leader-follower structures, where the position

and title define authority, will no longer work in contemporary western society. Good

leaders create more leaders, not more followers. They find ways to turn loose of

responsibilities in such a way that will bless those who accept these responsibilities. The

ability to initiate and engage in mentoring relationships has been considered the “one

indispensable skill set for leadership development. . . Church leaders’ doing so enables

those around them to release others in exhilarating, reproductive ministries.”41 These

relationships require the skill to enter and exit relationships in a healthy way.42

What Do Mentors Do?

Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, identified five practices of good

leadership based on several decades of research. These five practices of exemplary

41 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 90. 42 Ibid., 96.


20

leaders are: model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others

to act and encourage the heart.43

They’re available [the five practices] to anyone, in any organization or situation,

who accepts the leadership challenge. And they’re not the accident of a special

moment in history. They’ve stood the test of time, and our most recent research

confirms that they’re just as relevant today as they were when we first began our

investigation over two decades ago—if not more so.44

They give several case studies to illustrate these practices. One example came from

Lindsay Levin of Whites Limited. She made a commitment to training people 16 hours a

month—10% of their time.

She admits that it is expensive and that pulling people off the job is not always

popular, but it’s a long-term strategy that pays off in two directions. One is that

skills transfer is a reality and the people who have been on training courses

(covering both technical and people skills) go on to train others on the job. The

other is the bottom-line effect, where revenue and growth have more than

doubled, contributing to many awards both inside and outside the industry.45

In LeaderLoop theory, these five practices start with active followers. Just imagine

the impact on a church culture in which every leader devotes 10% of his or her time to

training others. As this case study shows, when leaders mentor followers, the

mentoring loops around and the mentoree mentors others. I find in this a convincing

illustration of a core competency for mentoring (“D”) and modeling the way—a model

of service that can start as an active follower.

Sure, leaders had operational and strategic plans. But the examples they gave

were not about elaborate designs. They were about the power of spending time

with someone, of working side by side with colleagues, of telling stories that

made values come alive, of being highly visible during times of uncertainty, and

43 Kouzes and Posner, 13. 44 Kouzes and Posner, 14. For further research on the theory and evidence behind the five practices see

http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131362.html. 45 Kouzes and Posner, 5.

http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-131362.html


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of asking questions to get people to think about values and priorities. Modeling

the way is essentially about earning the right and respect to lead through direct

individual involvement and action. People first follow the person, then the

plan.46

Where in our churches do leaders spend time, work side by side, tell stories and

ask questions? Several times, as an elder, I saw elaborate plans with no one to execute

them or the wrong person wanting to execute them. For example, large suburban

churches can make two or three false starts to a small group ministry or to multiple

services. Most plans focus on everything but the credibility and influence of the people

leading the change, and fail. Granted, a much greater issue is the shortage of active

followers!

The most common phenomenon in churches where 80% of the work is done by

20% of the members means that the leaders will assume most of the work load and

make most of the decisions, but seldom, if ever, develop new leaders.47 They cannot free

themselves from the burden of their responsibilities long enough and often enough to

spend the time it takes to mentor someone else. Like Moses, they keep wondering when

the Lord will send someone to help lead the people, ignoring the fact that Joshua and

Caleb were at his side!48 Without a strategy and the maturity to cope with the stress, it

will be very unlikely to find a church culture naturally developing leaders at every

level. We will also find a church with a “shortage” of volunteers because leaders take a

program-based approach where it seems more emphasis has been given to the program

than to the persons being recruited.49

A Baseline for Mentoring

If no one seems to gravitate to a leader for mentoring, McIntosh and Reeves

would conclude that they are in the “pre-mentor stage of their effectiveness.”50 Thus, a

baseline for a mentor (“C”) would be at least one or two people seeking a mentoring

relationship with the leader in transition to being a mentor.

46 Kouzes and Posner, 15. 47 McIntosh, One Size Does Not Fit All, p. 121; see the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule where 20% of the

efforts yields 80% of the results. 48 Exodus 33:11-12. 49 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 100. 50 McIntosh and Reeves, Thriving Churches, 92.


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According to John Maxwell, reproducing generations of leaders would be a good

leader’s lasting contribution. It is the true test of a leader to develop other leaders, not

to see how many followers he can find.

Those types of leaders have no idea how much they are limiting their own

potential and the potential of the people around them. As I have said before, a

leader who produces followers limits his success to what his direct, personal

influence touches. His success ends when he can no longer lead. On the other

hand, a leader who produces other leaders multiplies his influence, and he and

his people have a future.51

Maxwell would set the baseline for being a leader as a desire to lead, relational

skills and practical leadership skills.52 Baseline competencies for mentoring begin with

the ability to balance leading and managing the urgent and the important, setting

priorities, connecting people to the mission, and coping with the increased complexities

of matching people to ministry. To become a mentor, a leader will spend more time

with fewer people.53 As I see it, all the expectations of Paul for active followers/disciples

at Thessalonica required some form of mentoring. How else would one know how to

warn the idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone, be kind to

others, find joy in everything, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances

without a guide on the side helping one exegete life? I would assume a relationship

would be necessary for this spiritual growth to take place. Paul wrote I Thessalonians as

a mentoring more than an apostle issuing commands. His guidelines were general,

assuming the Holy Spirit would help the disciples fill in the gaps.

If we define leadership as influence in relationships, mentoring will be a natural

process.54 Two of Maxwell’s “laws of leadership” illustrate this point: “only secure

leaders give power to others” and “it takes a leader to raise up a leader.”55

51 John C. Maxwell, Developing the Leaders Around You: How to Help Others Reach Their Full Potential

(Thomas Nelson, 1995), 197-198. 52 Ibid., 199-200. 53 McIntosh and Reeves, in Thriving Churches (p. 90) suggests the mentor adopt a good screening process

“for selecting those with the highest aptitude and desire.” 54 Kouzes and Posner, xxviii. 55 Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws, 121-142.


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Lawrence O. Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke wrote Church Leadership in the 1980s,

long before the contemporary focus on mentoring. They made a distinction between the

tasks of the “body leaders” and the “institutional leaders.” They took what seemed to

be an extreme position, that elders do not accept responsibility for ministries or

mission—it is done by those who own the ministry. However, they raise the issues a

leader needs to think through to move beyond leading (“C”).

If we are a body, and Jesus is head over all things for us, then policy making,

goal setting, organizing, decision making, and all the other roles of management

cannot be the responsibility of the human leadership of the body.56

Spiritual leaders need to encourage members of Christ’s body to accept

responsibility for the achievement of those tasks Jesus wants to accomplish in

our world through His body. Spiritual leaders in the church should not accept

responsibility for, or take control of, task-focused ministries or missions, as

though these could be “church programs.” Spiritual leaders in the church must

recognize that they are body leaders and that the “church” cannot be shaped to

accomplish any task/produce/service objective.57

If leaders moved beyond making decisions for the church or a ministry, what

would they do? They would mentor followers to become active, and active followers to

be leaders. Peter Senge identified five roles the mentor fulfills: facilitator in connecting

gifts to ministry, appraiser of performance and actions to improve, forecaster of new

developments, advisor to give support in the face of obstacles, and enabler in developing

a strategy and network.58 These factors describe the functions I have experienced as a

mentor over the past thirty years. They cannot be done in a classroom. They require the

mentoring relationship Leith Anderson describes as “teachers-friends-influencers who

shape our lives and leadership more than anyone else.”59

56 Richards and Hoeldtke, Church Leadership, 90. 57 Ibid, 203. 58 Adapted from Caela Farren and Beverly L. Kaye, “New Skills for New Leadership Roles,” in The Leader

of the Future, ed., Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (San Francisco: Jossey-

Bass, 1996): 179-180; quoted in Gibbs, LeadershipNext, 214. 59 Leith Anderson, Leadership that Works: Hope and Direction for Church and Parachurch Leaders in Today’s

Complex World (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1999), 185.


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Eddie Gibbs observed, in 2005, that mentoring was still a novel concept in

churches but vital to leaving a legacy. Mentoring enhances spiritual and ministry

formation. He urged churches to make the training of mentoring a priority since there

are so few doing it. “The most significant test of leadership is not present performance

but the legacy that the leaders leave behind them.”60

A LeaderLoop Response

At the beginning of this paper I raised the following questions:

1. How do we learn to pass the baton when it no longer seems to be a natural thing

to do?

2. How do we become better followers?

3. How do we, as a church, discover and identify our mission from generation to

generation without effective leaders and willing followers?

4. How do we develop more followers into leaders with spiritual influence?

5. How do we pass the desire to lead on to others? How do we create an

environment to develop more leaders in the local church?

We become better followers when leaders loop back around and start mentoring

followers to be active followers—like themselves. Through personal story telling and

shared reflection, it will become clear that the mentor is both an active follower and a

leader—because a leader did not become a leader and cease to be a disciple. As

mentoring increases (D), leaders will become more aware of what God is doing through

the church and empower members to use their spiritual gifts. The percentage of

followers growing into active followers, with this process, will grow exponentially with

the multiplication of leaders who engage in consistent mentoring and empower new

ministry. Mentoring reaches into the heart to give both the desire to lead and the

confidence to lead, knowing the journey will not be taken alone or without support. A

heart shaped for leading will naturally touch other hearts—as the LeaderLoop goes on

and on.

60 Eddie Gibbs, LeadershipNext: Changing Leaders in a Changing Culture (Downers Grove, IVP: 2005), 214-

216.

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