The Toughest Place to Lead

The toughest place to be a leader is in the church. Well, any non-profit, mostly volunteer organization. Why, you may ask.

Because, in a church, community group, or any other non-profit organization that depends on volunteers to do most of the work the leader has very little leverage over the followers. In a paid employment organization, the leader/manager has various incentive and consequence tools he can use to influence his subordinates. In most volunteer organizations on the other hand there are very few incentives or consequences a leader can use to influence those he leads. Thus, the toughest place to lead is in a church.

Most pastors I know do not receive nearly the recognition they deserve for being successful leaders. Our society rewards leaders who build giant companies, lead Superbowl or World Series winning teams, or attain the highest political offices in the land. While these are all noteworthy accomplishments--and some of my favorite leaders come from the arena of business, sports, and politics--they are possibly easier to attain than to lead a church. For the reason mentioned previously, but also because essentially a pastor leads his parishioners to do things that are antithetical to their own self-interest. Pastors regularly ask congregants to give up time on a weekend to serve others--such as teaching, driving people to church, assisting the elderly, providing childcare during services, preparing food, and a myriad of other duties. Then, not only does the pastor ask people to give up their free-time, he has the audacity to ask people to give up some of their income to help feed homeless people, send Bibles to far away countries, pay for poor children to attend summer camps, and to keep the electric and the heat on in the church facility.

I say again, pastors are far underrated as leaders. They typically work for far less pay than their peers or even those with less education, they are expected to "be there" whenever a crisis occurs and they do not have regular working hours.

If you want to find a successful leadership role model, this coming weekend attend a church service. While not all pastors are good leaders, many, many are better than most of us think.

If you are leader in business, sports or politics, try leading in an all volunteer organization and see how well you do. If you succeed, then maybe you are as good or better than you thought. If you fail, take it as a lesson learned in leadership.