Your True Competitor
"I don’t doubt I can learn to lead change, Tod. I wonder if I can survive it." Senior pastor of a large church
Early in my coaching career, in a meeting with a church leadership consulting firm the principal of the company said to me: "Our competitor is not other consultants but the pastor who thinks he can do it himself." My wife, Beth, who has been a therapist, corporate consultant and executive coach with pastors says this is ABSOLUTELY SO. Pastors really believe that we are SUPPOSED to be the expert and when we are not we feel emotionally vulnerable.
They don’t seek support early enough. In fact, they wait too long, are too cautious, and put on a façade when they should be teachable. What this means is that almost every pastor looks for assistance and almost every church I know brings in a consultant to help them lead change at the very moment that is practically guaranteed to fail. Our coaching aims to change this by focusing attention on helping leaders develop adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is the personal and organizational ability to apply and wisely adapt their core values so that their organization will both maintain integrity and continue to thrive in a changing context. This adaptive capacity in leaders means that they must be able to experience the vulnerability of leadership that comes from entering into an uncharted territory and developing the resilience to lead the learning, attend to the losses, and navigate the competing values that often lead to resistance from the very people who called them to lead. It is the capacity to learn, face and help others face losses, and manage the kinds of thorny competing values that tend to polarize even people who are "members of one another" as St. Paul describes the Church. Building on the work of Canoeing the Mountains: Leadership in Uncharted Territory and Tempered Resilience: How Leaders are Formed in the Crucible of Change, adaptive capacity coaching is based on the convictions that leaders are shaped in leading, require vulnerable self-reflection, safe relationships, and formative practices in order to lead a process of discernment, experimentation, and learning. We believe that a good coaching relationship is like an anvil in a blacksmith shop, in the same way that it creates a secure surface to hold the heated steel for shaping, a coaching relationship provides a safe place for a leader to honestly and This enables them to lead a process of corporate transformation for facing their biggest challenges; a process of leading that not only moves the church or organization through change but, in turn builds the congregation’s capacity—and the LEADER’S capacity--to make the difficult choices needed to fulfill the mission that God has called them.
Learn how to get started with AE Sloan Leadership: HERE
