View this Page’s Table of Contents
THE BENEFIT TO YOUR CHURCH
“This Assessment helps your church staff build highly effective ministry teams, dynamically leading your ministry ventures as they represent the Godhead whom they serve.”
Overview: Leadership Style Assessment©
The Leadership Style assessment identifies your leadership gifts along a continuum ranging from entrepreneurial and task-oriented to relational and process-focused.
Understanding your leadership tendencies helps you recognize your strengths as an influencer, navigate team dynamics, and step confidently into leadership and service roles tailored to your style.
In a simple but powerful team-building tool, the assessment plots each individual on a continuum, ranging from entrepreneurial and task-focused on the left side of the report, to relational and non-task-oriented on the right side of the report. The continuum plots a graph over six functional roles:
Understanding Leadership Types
The Pioneer type is a visionary leader who excels at developing new ministries.
Likewise, the Strategic Planner type is a systems designer who excels at creating plans and organizational structures.
Then the Administrator type serves the detail person who excels at managing daily responsibilities of any project or organization.
Now the Team Leader type is a motivational person who can assemble and motivate a team to accomplish a noble mission.
Additionally, the Pastor type is a nurturing person who cares about how larger groups of people feel. They also focus on the overall spiritual health of those under their care, more than the details of any missional project.
Finally, the Encourging type is similar to a Pastor, but excels at analyzing and understanding a small pool of people.
Role Convergence
Role Convergence means some roles serve in similar functional positions, depending on the status of a missional project’s development or the service role intensity required.
The Pioneer often serves as the Team Leader during the early phases of new ministry development. However, as the new ministry stabilizes, the Pioneer needs to be free to begin another new project and should turn over the leadership of the current project (and its people) to a Team Leader.
Similarly, a Strategic Planner may serve as the project Administrator in the very early phases of new ministry development. However, once the ministry project or organizational structure stabilizes, the Strategic Planner will desire to turn over administrative duties to an Administrator.
The final convergence roles are the Pastor and Encourager. Together, these roles comprise the “Shepherding” functions within any ministry team. The choice of one over another for placement upon a team is generally determined by the level of inter-relational intensity required. Encouragers tend to prefer 1-on-1 and very small group interaction. Pastors may also value 1-on-1 interaction, but generally excel when working with larger groups of people.
The Three Strand Cord Leadership Model
The Bible does not support “Lone Ranger” leadership models. Jesus sent his disciples out two-by-two, the head of the church in Jerusalem was led by a council, and the Apostle Paul appointed elders to govern the churches he established. It is clear from these and other New Testament examples that God’s ideal is team-based leadership.
A basic leadership team should be comprised of three foundational positions:
1.) A Team Leader to motivate and direct the missional team.
2.) A Team Leader to address all the details associated with the missional team.
3.) A Shepherding Leader to nurture and care for the emotional and spiritual welfare of all members who comprise the missional team.
A missional ministry team that incorporates these three foundational positions will likely thrive over extended periods of time due to a balanced leadership structure that provides broad-based practical and spiritual support, along with built-in accountability for each leader. So, as Ecclesiastes 4:12 states: “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
A Theological Model for Leadership Style
As you can see from the image to the left, the specific mix of profiles will vary, depending upon the purpose of the team. How are these leadership types identified? Well, if you turn the three-strand chord so that you look straight toward the strands, this is what you see.
The first Christian temperament models were based on the idea that people are different, yet each of us shows part of God’s image. God is one being, but He is shown in three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each one has a special personality and a way of relating to people. They also show different traits in how they act and work with humankind. So, let’s now take a closer look at these differences….
I) God the Father, The Administrative Manager
Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer to address our needs to God the Father, our Provider. When humanity displays administrative functions, they do so because they emulate God the Father’s nature. This is by design, not accident.
In our Leadership Style Assessment©, we call this category “MANAGERS”. Managers may assess as either Administrative Leaders (i.e., focus on tasks, programs, or systems) or Team Leaders (i.e., focus on people-mobilization and people-management).
II) God the Son, The Creator of All Things & Founder of Our Kingdom Mission
God the Son shows both creative and missional qualities (see Colossians 1:16–20). The Bible says that everything was made through Him. He is missional because He came to earth to teach us, die for our sins, and give us eternal life through His resurrection. While we are still on earth, Jesus has given us a job—to share His message and help others become His followers. He also promises to always be with us as we do this important work (see Hebrews 13:5, John 14:8, Matthew 28:20).
In our Leadership Style Assessment©, we categorize entrepreneurs, missional people, and creatives, as “BUILDERS”. Builders may be divided into two broad categories: Pioneering Leaders, and Strategic Planners.
III) God the Holy Spirit – The Comforter, Encourager, Teacher & Guide
The Holy Spirit has been called, our ‘Paraclete’. Theologically, this term has come to be understood also as the One who comes along side of us, our Comforter, our Nurturer, and our Guide. Highly social and empathetic people emulate the third person of the godhead, the Holy Spirit.
Within the Leadership Style Assessment©, we categorize such people as “NURTURERS”. Nurturers fall into two distinct types: Persons who like to care for groups of other people (i.e., Pastoral Leaders), or persons who prefer to care for other individuals (i.e., Encouraging Leaders).
Sample Member & Admin Report
INSTRUCTIONS: The Leadership Style Global Reports have a bar graph that shows how many people have completed each profile, and a table report with two interactive features. To learn about these features, click or hover over the “INFO-Button” next to each one. A video will pop up. Click the play button to watch the video.
Leadership Style Reports
Leadership Style Profile Blends
In our image of the Trinity, the three circles overlap, representing areas where trait blends may exist between members of the godhead. Certainly, these trait-blends exist within humanity….
Natural Blends
Our assessment highlights these Natural Blends when a dominant score, like in our example of the Pioneering Leader to the right, aligns closely with a secondary score from a near-related profile-type across the continuum. We refer to these as ‘Natural Blends‘. As our assessment plots each person’s scores across the leadership style continuum, someone scoring high as a Pioneer, and yet secondarily assessed as a Strategic, would be considered a Natural Pioneer/Strategic Blend. Refer to the graphic below for a visual representation…
Unnatural Blends
A common Unnatural blend: Although the Pioneering Leader in the above example scores high in “Encouraging“, it doesn’t mean they possess true Encouraging Leader traits. The combination of “Pioneering” and “Encouraging” is termed an ‘Unnatural Blend‘ because these leadership styles are not closely related on the Leadership Style continuum.
Pioneering Leaders excel in articulating a grand vision, and often can identify the many types of people needed to execute it. This ability makes them adept recruiters and mobilizers of people into ministry service. This kind of support often generates a strong score in the “Encouraging” category.
In contrast, true Encouraging Leaders possess strong relational and empathetic abilities. Whereas, Pioneering Leaders are task-driven with the singular goal of transforming their vision into a reality. They can be relational within the context of helping people accomplish the ministry vision, but they are not naturally social. Learn more about implementing the Leadership Style Assessment© by reading Made for a Mission, authored by our systems designer, David A Posthuma.
Intentional Succession Planning
How your church leaders formulate leadership teams is determined by asking: “Will this leadership team create NEW programs, systems, or churches? Or, will they manage EXISTING programs/churches?”. Accordingly, the team construct will look like one of the following…
Succession Planning for New Ministry Development
- A Pioneering Leader to cast vision, recruit people, and manage the project.
- A Strategic Planner (or Administrator if the Pioneer has Strategic skills) to design the project blueprint and manage details/tasks.
- A Pastoral Leader to provide spiritual/emotional care for team members, and for the people they serve.
Succession Planning for Established Ministry Management
- A Team Leader succeeds a Pioneering Leader to manage the people and the established program or church.
- An Administrative Leader succeeds the Strategic Planner to address the ongoing management details.
- A Pastoral Leader remains to provide ongoing spiritual/emotional care for team members, and for the people they serve.
Succession planning means intentionally preparing for a leadership change. This should usually happen about three to five years after starting a new ministry or church. Pioneering Leaders do best in big, exciting projects. They can lead longer when the project is large, but may start to feel frustrated when everyday administrative tasks take over and the original vision-momentum slows down. At that point, they often want to move on to start something new.
Good church leaders can see this coming and talk about it at early stages with everyone involved. They help people understand that a new leader will be a good thing for the ministry and for everyone in it. Succession planning should follow this same thoughtful process.
- Pioneering Leaders are usually followed by a trained Team Leader who is good at working with people and helping the ministry grow more slowly and steadily so it can become stable.
- Strategic Planners are replaced by a trained Administrative Leader who can take the ministry’s plan and handle the daily work that keeps it running. Strategic Planners are like architects—they enjoy making the big vision and plan, but they don’t like dealing with the day-to-day management once it’s in place.
- In most cases, Pastoral Leaders stay on the leadership team as Nurturing Leaders, helping everyone adjust to the changes and keeping things peaceful during the leadership transition.
Leadership Style Overview Video
Our Philosophy of Ministry
To learn more about our philosophy of ministry, please visit our Ministry Philosophy page for greater details.