Oh, the joy of controlling leadership. It’s highly under appreciated.
Oh, I know, this appears to be a change of tune for me. This blog has been critical of controlling leadership as a very poor leadership style. I apologize. I should have recognized the benefits in controlling leadership before now. Thankfully, there’s still time in my leadership career. Hopefully I caught you in time too.
Controlling leadership, if done well, offers some powerful contributions to the organization.
Here are 7 benefits of being a controlling leader:
You keep things small. Small is so easy to manage. Growing is so overrated.
New ideas are stifled. New always translates to different…you know…how we’ve done things before now. Different can be messy. Keep things neat and tidy and life is more comfortable.
Change is minimal. Change is hard. Unpopular. Challenging. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
There are fewer misunderstandings. Everything is clear. You’re the boss and no one questions your authority. There. Take that.
You get all the credit. You can even blame others for mistakes. Because, after all, you’re in control.
Risk and fear is minimized. (Or so it seems at the time.) If you can control things, you can keep things from getting away from you. It’s. safer. (At least it seems.)
People don’t grow. You know what happens when people grow. They start developing their own leadership skills. Pretty soon they start thinking they could do things on their own. Perhaps even better than you can do them. They may even leave searching for another opportunity. They may leave. Stop that. (And that’ll keep ’em with you forever, right?)
See how cool this is. Right now you’re probably thinking you should’ve thought of this controlling leader deal years ago. You can thank me later.
But, you controlling leaders better quit reading this post. Someone is waiting on you to make a decision. You make all of them around there…don’t you? It’s what you do best.
What other benefits have you seen to controlling leadership?
This is a satirical post. It is intended to be funny. But, if you’ve ever worked for or been a controlling leader…you know it’s not funny. Don’t you?
What do you do when that controlling leader is your very own husband in a so called ministry…. And it seems like he can't see it , even after we has been told !!… He will make excuses left and right for why he is right.!!!!… He will get angry and sometimes says mean things!!!… After years of this, I'm getting really tired… Then I'm told I'm not really praying hard enough that I should feel this and that way…
I'd write a sincere, heartfelt and truthful letter. I blogged on how to write one of those. Just search top right of my blog for “how to write a letter”
Thanks for the advice but just about 2 days ago I found out the real reason he was so controling.. The situation was a lot deeper then I thought. It was due to his unfaithfulness and he was trying to cover it… He needs help because this has not been the first or second or third and plus more…
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Twitter: kmac4him
says:
Yes, I do! Controlling leadership was how I started out my Christianity. It was very hurtful and it was early in my Christianity so I did not know any better until it was too late and I got hurt really badly by this pastor, set me back for years. I had two small toddlers, I was on staff at the church and he said: “If you don’t go back to school and get a degree, not only will you not be welcome to advance on my staff, but you will NEVER amount to anything good. Controlling was his lifestyle and we had nicknamed our staff meetings: “Black Thursday” because he just beat us up every Thursday and as hard as we worked and as best as we tried, it was never good enough. My opinion is that leaders don’t have to control others when they set up an atmosphere of respect. Respect and Honor God 1st, Respect and honor your leadership, respect and honor those you work with. Respect is a key element that is eroding quickly in our society and our culture is saturated with disrespect. Respect needs to be propped back up in our churches, we need to develop our AWE of God, our respect of HIM, His Authority, His Leadership, His people! Respect is sooooooooo very important and we need to model it for the world.
Very transparent. Thank you
You get to pastor the church the way you want to. It will be “your church” and nobody else’s, certainly not the previous pastor’s. So what if its supposed to be God’s church and those are God’s people. You know what’s best!
That too!
I get all nervous and twitchy whenever I think about the controlling leaders I've known. Knock it off, would ya?
Ha! Me too.
You don't have to worry about building relationships with others, nor focus on your own family, because you are so wrapped up in controlling the "important" stuff. Whew! I was wondering how I could avoid that kind of awkwardness. (I like how you had to point out that your post was satirical.)
Ha! But to know I had to. Literal readers abound.
Twitter: bryankr
says:
You get to use your very own, self-made, cloak of humility! On the off chance that something actually does work, and people do start coming, people are baptized, you get to slip it on and proudly proclaim it wasn't you, it was God!
Ha. True that.