Barnabas File

Leaders will often say that the people in their organization are its most important asset.     Many probably believe this.     As I have been thinking about the development of clergy leaders, I wonder if lay and denominational leaders believe this.     Is there sufficient investment in retaining, developing, and maintain clergy leaders?      In his book  The Systems Leader , Robert E. Siegel suggests that investing in staff should be a priority concern. Let’s look at his observations and apply them to our church and denominational settings.   First, Siegel observes that it is cheaper and easier to retrain that replace. He writes, “Studies show that it often costs less to reskill a current employee than to recruit, hire, and train a new one. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, finding and training a new employee can cost as much as six to nine months of their salary.”    This means reskilling existing pe...

In our coaching and coach training, our focus is usually on the partnership between the coach and the client.  In this process, the coach leads the process with the client providing the agenda—the subject for discussion, resource discovery, action plans, and achievement.    In an online presentation, Professor Peter Hawkins suggested a new perspective for the coaching relationship. His presentation on “From Ego to Eco Coaching:  Creating Value Beyond the Client” offered a challenge to place the coaching relationship in a larger context.  How can the coaching relationship benefit the organization, society and the world? Hawkins outlines the change in perspective in this way:   For the coach it means moving “from facing the person you are coaching as your client, to going shoulder to shoulder with them as your partner, jointly facing what their world of tomorrow is asking them to step up to.”   For the coach and client, the new orientation...

Sunnie Giles’   The New Science of Radical Innovation   is a remarkable book, but it is not an easy read.     Drawing from the fields of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, quantum mechanics, systems theory, psychology, sociology, and business (among others), Giles provides important insights for successful leadership in a VUCA--volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous--world.    Her breadth of research and knowledge about our present context is a bit overwhelming. The author’s theme is that radical innovation is mandatory for organizations to be effective in the current environment.  Giles identifies six distinct competency groups necessary to implement this type of innovation:  self-management, providing safety, creating differentiation, strengthening connection, facilitating learning, and stimulating radical innovation.  These form a pyramid of tasks, one building upon the other. The bottom two layers are about safe...

Leaders in every field either fear, anticipate, or attempt to create the future.  Change is inevitable and those with the right skills will be able to thrive within a changing reality.  In The New Leadership Literacies , Bob Johansen identifies the literacies--combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews--that will be needed to lead in a VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Johansen is a futurist with both a Master of Divinity degree and a PhD in sociology.  He writes, “While I don’t claim to be an expert in the present I have been pretty good at listening for and foreseeing the future.” Johansen’s goal is that by “looking out ten years [one] can look backward from the future and provoke, not predict.”  He sees a future where everything is distributed with the potential for both positive and negative results. The author’s approach suggests five leadership literacies:  Looking Back from the Future, Vo...