A Tool for Shared Leadership
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Shared leadership is hard. Full stop. Even in the church, most of us are wired to get shit done as efficiently as possible - and have probably worked for leaders who had a "get with the program, or get the f*ck out of my way" mentality. At Highlands Church, every year we welcome a new cohort of volunteer leaders to our Leadership Council (elder board). And every year, we revisit WHY on earth we would ever lead in a shared leadership model when it is so much slower, sometimes painfully so, than if we had a top-down model. It feels necessary to prepare our new leaders for the frustration they will inevitably encounter as some decisions take longer to make, and we choose not to rush through hard feelings with each other, but stick it out, doing the hard work of relational re-building.
I'm not gonna lie - there are times when I wish I could 'pull rank' as the co-pastor, and make the decision I feel is the correct one, consensus be damned. I feel the temptation to manipulate the group, pull the strings, politick the process.
There are two things that keep me from this temptation. The first is what we call "Our Community Covenant." It's a set of relational agreements we (leaders) at Highlands make to each other. It functions more like the Enneagram does, as a mirror to our own behavior, rather than a way of policing others. When we opt in, what we're saying to the group is "I will aspire to live according to these values and practices. And, you have my permission to gently and gracefully help me see if I am missing the mark."
I swear to you, this Community Covenant is the ONLY way shared leadership has survived - and thrived - over these last 15+ years. Because every single one of us - at times of frustration - will absolutely default to our personal ways of manipulating power in order to get things to go the way we want them to. We all make up stories about why others aren't doing things "right" - why they've hurt us - why our "way" is better. It's just human nature. The Covenant calls us to something higher.
The second thing that keeps me moving forward in shared leadership is the accumulated trust I now have in the process. We've been practicing shared leadership for so long now, and with so many different leaders, both paid and volunteer, that I truly believe in its ability to deepen wisdom and provide space and power to more and more people. The trade-off of decisions sometimes being made more slowly is worth it when I get to see how voices that might not have otherwise been considered have influence. It has become one of our most important expressions of our deepest belief in the sacred dignity of all people.