Healthy Leaders | Issue 25
How do leaders motivate the people to move?
Welcome to Issue 25 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue, we explore four kinds of power that leaders use to motivate their followers.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation1 on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.
It’s a safe assumption that many of you are leaders in some capacity. You have followers, and you expect them to follow you. The question we’re asking today is: Why? Why should your followers follow you?
Do you have the power to punish them if they don’t?
Do they genuinely like you and follow you because they want to?
Do they recognize and respect that you have been appointed as their leader?
Are they following you for the reward you are offering them – either from you or from God?
Are you the most qualified person in your context for this task of leadership?
These reasons constitute the five essential ways that leaders influence others to move – the kind of power they use in leadership.
We’re going to go in depth on these today. Here’s Malcolm explaining the first two, coercive and reward power:
Take a moment before we move on to the next two kinds of power.
In what ways do you use coercive or reward power?
In what ways have your own leaders used them to motivate you?
“Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” (Psalm 32:9)
Now let’s look at the next two, positional and expert power.
We’ve created a tool that provides a cost-benefit comparison for each of these kinds of power. You can download it here.
Many leaders today — in churches, ministry organizations, or businesses — use some combination of these four kinds of power to motivate their followers to do what they ask of them.
As we’ve seen, in certain situations and for the right reasons, all four of these kinds of power are appropriate and useful. However, an over-emphasis on them leads to abusive leadership.
In Malcolm’s recent article, “Choose Character Over Giftings,” he reminds us that that Holy Spirit’s purpose in coming to us is to bring about union with Christ and life transformation. That is what we must be leading our people toward! But there’s a problem.
“… today, many in the Church pursue gifting because they want wealth and fame. Moreover, our Church culture often mirrors the fallen world with the high value we place on gifted celebrities — whether pop stars, movie stars, sports heroes or business icons.”
Supernatural gifting can be used as a means of influence upon followers instead of a means to serve God and serve those we lead.
In such cases, leaders wield their gifting to gain positional power, stating that such a gifting indicates their high position in God’s estimation. Or they may use it to elevate their expert status, as one wise in the ways of the Spirit. The reward power associated with supernatural gifting — those twin pillars of wealth and fame — is a powerful motivating force. And what follower wants to deal with the potential consequences of saying no to a leader who has such a gifting?
And this is not just the case in supernatural giftings, but also in natural giftings such as preaching or teaching. Many a pastor has divided the Word with excellence while his life remains untouched by it, and has used his gifting as a teacher as a weapon to get people to go along with him.
The consequences of valuing gifting over character, however, are deeply troubling.
“Many men and women of God have been destroyed because they allowed, and sometimes even encouraged, people to put them on a pedestal, and their hearts were lifted up with pride. Then, when leaders are destroyed by their sin, they often take many others with them. Meanwhile, the world looks on with disgust at such superficiality and hypocrisy and they are further confirmed in their hardness and unbelief against the Gospel.”
Malcolm points us to God’s real goal, which is more focused on Galatians 5:22 than 1 Corinthians 12:
“We must return to His central priority of seeking union with Christ and life transformation, rather than gifting.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
In our next issue, we’ll look at the fifth kind of power — the kind that Jesus Himself used.
What about you?
What are some positive ways you (or leaders you know) have utilized coercive, reward, positional, or expert power in your own leadership? What are some negative ways? Let us know!
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Leadership, by Malcolm Webber
Burst Leadership Podcast: The Opposite of Abusive Leadership
For more resources, visit our new website.
Thanks to our friends at Fifty-Four Collective for putting together a comprehensive set of video courses for growing healthy organizations, starting with this series of courses on leadership by Malcolm. We’ll be using some of their videos and some of our own. Be sure to check out what they’re doing!
Thank you for sharing.