Relational, Organizational, Or a Plot Twist? A Mash-Up of Leadership Styles
Do you love to be with people? Or do you gravitate towards systemic and organizational aspects of leadership?
Or… perhaps you are a mashup! Or maybe just confused.
Sometimes when you feel frustrated or weary from leading, it’s because your job is hard. And other times, it’s because you’re trying to be what you’re not.
I’m not talking about imposter syndrome but rather a feeling deep down that you are a fish out of water and that the natural areas towards which you gravitate are not really what your job is about.
Carey Nieuwhof’s blog "10 Ways To Tell If You Are An Organizational Or Relational Leader” greatly intrigued me because it articulated what I have learned over the decades — that for much of my ministry career, I tried to be one kind of leader. Over time I realized I just kept spending a lot of energy, attention, and enthusiasm in the wrong direction.
If you are a reader of this website, it will be no great surprise to you that I am an organizational leader as described by Neiuwhoff. I love systems. I like to organize things. I have a passion for organizations to function well.
But most of my life I tried to be a relational leader. Don’t get me wrong — I love people and I love being with people. My relational side is more natural and easy one-on-one and my cup is full when I feel like I’ve had time with deep and meaningful connection with an individual. But I notice that when there is a problem to resolve, I naturally jump into a strategic response.
I wish I had learned this a lot earlier and freed myself from the guilt of feeling like I wasn’t doing a good job when my role was primarily about pastoral care. Although I did feel empathy, I could see many people were far more gifted and natural at relational care than I was.
As I have pondered more about the difference between relational and organizational leaders, of course, a diagram pops into my mind, and I turn to my favorite place to find examples — the Bible!
SHEPHERD
On one end of the spectrum are those who veer towards relationship. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call the relational leaders Shepherds.
Shepherds have a desire to care for people. They love to know people and be known by others. Their idea of a good time is personal interaction and being with people. Even introvert shepherds care for people, perhaps not as intensely as an extrovert, but introverts care for others in their own ways.
An example of a Shepherd is Ruth — a shoutout to my fellow women in the Bible!
Ruth cares so much for her mother-in-law that she follows her to a foreign country with no hope of a future to herself (Ruth 1:16-17). She leaves everything and everyone she knows to go to a strange land. She treks out to the fields every day and works in the hot sun to bring home the bacon — er, wheat — so Mom can eat (Ruth 2:23). It is very evident that Ruth has a caring, relational heart of a Shepherd.
Strategizer
On the other end of the spectrum is the organizational leader. This is someone who is drawn to systems.
They know that if something has to sustain over time and scale, it needs a system. They either make the system themselves or lead others to make the system, but they have a strategic mind that thinks through the importance of establishing structure for growth and impact. Organizational leaders think about systems, scaling, structures, and strategy. Let’s call these leaders Strategizers, using the word “strategy” loosely as the idea of valuing and advancing organizational elements for effectiveness.
A Strategizer? Abigail (1 Sam 25).
Abigail hears about her husband’s faux pas insulting David and that David and his armed men are coming full force to her home. Click, click, click, her brain goes into gear, she does scenario planning and realizes the outcome is pretty dicey. She considers alternatives and lands on the principle that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
She rummages in her pantry and comes up with a spare two hundred loaves of bread (it’s a bit of speculation here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not like they had time to let bread rise bake them with such urgency going on!) and assorted food elements to feed an army. She organizes her servants to go out and placate the hangry men. David is appeased, and peace is made!
Abigail doesn’t seem particularly strong on empathy — after all, she calls her own husband a fool.( But I guess he kinda deserved it.) Probably the speed-dating wedding thing with David afterwards was not part of Abigail’s scenario planning, but hey, there’s nothing better to Strategizers than when a plan works out better than expected!
Shepherd-Strategizer
As we know, life is not black and white and neither are people. The reality is that most of us are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Some lean over on the Shepherd size more. They are Shepherd-Strategizers.
Although their primary bent is caring for people, they realize the importance of a good system and support those who move forward that way or take this on when needed.
Queen Esther is an example of this kind of leadership style.
Esther is relational. When she is called into the harem and is to meet the king, she has no strategy for getting married. She doesn’t plot in advance what she is going to do. She respects and listens to the chief eunuch and does whatever he says.
Her Shepherding heart is very evident in how she cares for Mordecai when she learns he is walking around in sackcloth and ashes. The Bible says she is distressed at her cousin’s condition (Esther 4:4). She orders wardrobe replacements, which Mordecai rejects. Which piques her interest enough to find out what the issue is and to seek details.
When she is challenged by Mordecai to step up and lead instead of saving herself, suddenly we see the Strategizer emerge. She makes plans, she organizes people for prayer, and she develops a multi-part progressive dinner elaborate scenario on the principle that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (hmmm…. I am sensing a theme here). That’s systems-thinking — seeing how all the pieces tie together — and Esther performs it in the time of crisis.
Strategizer-Shepherd
The counterpart is the Strategizer-Shepherd. This person is normally drawn to organizational tendencies, but values getting to know people and caring for relational needs when needed and sometimes the relational side can take over.
An example of a Strategizer-Shepherd is King Solomon. Talk about a Strategizer in spades. The guy is hands-down a systems guy. He builds palaces and a temple and roads and cities and armies and altars and ships and slave labor forces to make it all happen.
But his weakness? His wives! His many, many wives and concubines. He cares for them immensely, building them places to live and even high places for idol worship. Okay, this is not a very good example of stellar leadership. But hopefully you get what I mean — his wisdom and systems abilities are overpowered by the strong relational leaning in his heart.
Plot twist!
And now comes a plot twist! Sometimes leaders swing another direction and are effective in the other area. Sometimes it is because there are unexpected gifts hidden that experience has not yet pulled out. And other times, it’s because of an intentional shift that a leader makes when their priority or call changes.
And this time we have one person who embodies both styles!
Strategizer-Turned-Shepherd
Moses is the example of one who starts out as a Strategizer and makes a swing to the other side.
I realizing I am extrapolating a bit from Heb. 11:24-27 about how Moses rejects his upbringing to be aligned with God and God’s people. As the son of Pharaoh, Moses would have grown up with training for leadership of a very very very very large organization, i.e. a nation that was a primary global force at that time.
But he abandons it all for relationship — to defend a fellow Jew. The unfortunate result is that he is a bit too overenthusiastic, he kills an Egyptian, and thus he needs to run away into exile. Very unstrategic to compromise his entire career for one person. Out in Midian, he ends up getting married and taking care of sheep. Shepherd. Literally.
Strategizers-Turned-Shepherds are leaders who lead organizationally and after a while, feel a call to do something else.
I had a friend who was a pastor for many years and had experience as a church organizational leader. After many years of God working in His heart, he felt the call to help others explore their own spiritual journeys and became a spiritual director. These types of stories show how people sense a shift in call over time.
Shepherd-Turned-Strategizer
Moses again. After he leads the Israelites out of Egypt, his good-hearted father-in-law sits him down and has a heart-to-heart chat about systems (once again, food is involved, Ex. 18:12), and Moses creates a massive org chart (18:26).
From this point on, he never looks back. He even raises up a mentee who will someday take his place. He’s thinking the long-term good of the organization, beyond his demise. Moses has turned into a Strategizer.
This one is my story. My early ministry years were hanging out with people with doing some systems work as needed. I was very pastoral, leading small groups, meeting people one-on-one and valuing relationship above anything else.
But over time as I gained more experience and moved through different organizations, I was asked to help organize things. People saw the natural tendency I had to create plans, spreadsheets, and mobilize people, and I started getting involved in strategic conversations and planning.
Earlier in pastoral ministry, I took a Strengthsfinder inventory and theme (or strength) of Strategic was dead second-to last on the bottom of my list. Ten years later, it had jumped to the top five. My understanding is this is not supposed to happen, but in my case I think it was because when I first took the test, I had never had any strategic experience. But after ten years of being in the trenches doing strategizing and systems work, it quickly became evident that it was a gifting and a calling and thus now sits in my top 5 Strengthsfinder themes.
Now, one of my joys is helping churches and organizations succeed. I love how healthy systems reduce stress, increase the impact of a mission, and enable Christ’s life-transforming power to redeem a broken world!
Food for thought
Which kind of leader are you?
Where on the spectrum do you gravitate naturally?
Which side of the spectrum can you take on but you find you get drained if you do it too long?
In what ways is the Spirit tugging at your heart in either affirming where you are or where you could be heading?
Where you currently operate on the spectrum, how much of it is due to uncontrollable environment factors? What may be in your agency to influence to move your leadership to where you gain more life (such as talking to your supervisor, or talking to your board (if you’re the leader of the organization), or making some kind of plan for relief or assistance?
I’d love to hear your thoughts below!
