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In this episode of The Ron Edmondson Leadership Podcast, Ron and Nate discuss why people are not leading now.
In my experience, there are people sitting in every church who should and could be leading, but they simply are not. Why is that? What keeps them from leading? How do we find them and attract them to positions of leadership?
Working with dozens of pastors every year, a top need they experience is attracting new leaders. Therefore, recognizing this fact, attracting new leaders has been a key focus over the years on my blog. I have spoken about the issue at conferences and with church ministry teams. I do not believe it has to be as complicated as we sometimes make the issue. We can find the leaders we need for our churches.
Ron and Nate try to get practical and helpful in every podcast. If you need new leaders – and you likely do even if you are not aware of that yet – we hope this episode will give you some fresh ideas.
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I had to go back and listen to this and the previous podcast again. There is so much great content here. There is an overlap area between your first and last points in this podcast that outlines a principle of mine:
First Point: Some people don’t lead because they haven’t been given anyone to lead.
Last Point: Some people don’t lead because they don’t think they have the authority to lead.
Overlap: Some people don’t lead because they haven’t been given the authority to lead.
A principle that I operate under is that I don’t assume authority that doesn’t belong to me. I know that some leaders rise to the top because they assume authority, either from other leaders who aren’t leading well in their areas of authority or by competing against other leaders subversively in order to acquire their authority. I don’t play those games. If I’m in a structure of authority that is established and maintained by someone else, then I don’t subvert their structure. Rather, I want fellow leaders within that structure to succeed. (If I created and am maintaining that structure, then that’s a different story. I have the authority to change the structure.)
This does necessitate walking a fine line between propping up a bad leader who needs to be exposed and making him successful through my own efforts. This is especially difficult if that other leader is my own boss. I may never get recognition for making the organization function since I am fulfilling an area of authority that belongs to someone else. There’s another fine line that can be difficult to walk: seeking recognition that is due and not seeking it in the pursuit of humility. Relative to the previous podcast in where to find leaders, you may have leaders in a position of very little authority who are quietly propping up leaders who are in a place of higher authority who are being eclipsed by the higher leader.
Thank you for listening and for taking time to offer feedback. So appreciated.