• Leaders: Accommodate #9
Leaders: Accommodate (or Chameleon Leadership) #9
This might sound like a strange way to talk about leadership—referencing a Chameleon. Just as chameleons change their skin color in response to light and ambient temperature, children’s ministers must also change their leadership styles in response to leadership styles around them. This is not a statement about being a “turn-coat” leader, it is rather about accommodating your leadership style to fit or work best with those leadership styles around you. For example, how about a woman CP who works with an all male staff? How about a process-oriented person working with a result-oriented person?
One of the most difficult areas of leadership is how to altar your leadership style to accommodate the leadership style of others. There is great advantage to this “chameleon-like” adjustment. Frankly, the truth is the better I understood my own style, and the style of leaders I worked with, the easier it was for me to adjust my style to accommodate their leadership style.
I took some course work while receiving Church Growth Consultant training. There I was given a number of tests. This was a real-eye opener for me. For the first time I had names for my own leadership issues and those leaders that I wanted to serve. So I began seeing the value of testing, it was personal at first, then it become more corporate. I was becoming aware of just how useful testing could be for my ongoing ministry. This is one of the reasons I use testing devices in my Kidology Coaching Program.
This is admittedly hard work and does not happen over night, but if you take these ideas seriously, it could move your leadership to a whole new level.
Here are my My Ten Tips to help you work on Leadership Accommodation…
1. Take as many leadership tests that you can to learn about yourself and your leadership issues.
2. Study the leaders styles that are not your own so that you are so familiar that you can recognize leadership traits in others.
3. Try to evaluate and assess leadership styles of your co-workers or staff.
4. Test out your understanding of their leadership traits on others to verify your observations.
5. Create a list of variables on how to successfully work with different styles.
6. Read and study The Delicate Art of Dancing with Porcupines: learning to appreciate the finer points of others.
7. Determine to be a “style specialist” by mastering the differences in styles of those around you.
8. Experiment with recruiting persons to do things for you based upon an approach that is compatible with their leadership style and yours.
9. Be more aware of leadership styles of your volunteers and coworkers by making written observations, at first.
10. The more you master the insights of leadership styles, the faster you will be in accommodating those leaders with whom you relate.
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