Wanted: Church ‘Insultants’, the title of a post on Monday Morning Insight really caught my attention. Usually the authoritarian and totalitarian style of leadership creates an ivory tower around them. Most of the key staff is either “yes men” who will only say what leadership wants to hear, or the staff is too scared of leadership to be really honest. In addition, this style of leadership does not allow feedback from customers or members, either. This protects leadership’s absolute need for control and/or insecurities about losing control. Most of the time this type of leader is unconsciously driven to make decisions based on their need for control rather than doing what is right or what will be effective.

I know I have pointed to this post by Tony Morgan a few times, but it is so good it is worth repeating again. Taken from: 6 Deal-Breakers of Leadership Development

John Maxwell challenged us in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with this statement:

“When a leader can’t or won’t empower others, he creates barriers within the organization that people cannot overcome. If the barriers remain long enough, then the people give up, or they move on to another organization where they can maximize their potential.”

He went on to explain,

“Only secure leaders give power to others.  In other words, failure to empower other leaders is a sign of insecurity.”

Usually leadership is blind to their insecurities and most believe they initiate a healthy environment of feedback. Of course, they are in an Ivory Tower.

In the MMI post it states:

As a leader in your church, do you have people who will tell you what you need to hear? You know, straight shooters who tell it like it really is, challenge you, and tip you off when things are straying off course?

McFarland calls these types of people ‘insultants.’ They’re willing “to ask the tough questions that cause a company (or a church) to think critically about its fundamental assumptions. The value of insultants is that they will go to great lengths to get their [church] to reevaluate a position or adapt to a changing environment.”

Do you have any church insultants? According to McFarland’s research, 90 percent of business CEOs believed they did. However, only 60 percent of their direct reports believed the same companies had a culture that insultants could have input.

What’s the value of a true insultant? According to McFarland, “Often authority figures are wrong, and if an organization doesn’t have a strong insultant culture, errors are likely to be propagated throughout the [church].”

Taken from a post I wrote a few months back: A marketplace flop – how do you deal with failure?

I once read a study I found on churchrelevance.com by The Concours Group and VitalSmart that 85% of all project failures can be attributed to “organizational silence.”

• 90% of employees know far in advance when projects are doomed but feel incapable of speaking up

• 81% say approaching a key decision maker about the project is nearly impossible

• 78% say they are personally working on a “doomed” project right now

• 71% say they try to speak up to key decision makers but don’t feel they are heard.

In the post I reference a story told to me by my step-father and a story about the US Coast Guard’s I saw on 60 Miniutes that really dramatizes the point and you can read here! I also go on to give some guidelines for middle managers and directors:

As leaders we must keep the channels of communication open so employees can voice concerns. Of course, they may or may not be accurate, but if our people are scared to approach us, openly and honestly, we may not hear the early warning that failure is coming. The people we lead are doing the actual hands on work and have vital knowledge that we may not.

As employees we need to be very responsible and respectful when approaching leadership with issues. There are good and bad ways to communicate and timing is crucial. Also, if we are always going to leadership with small issues they may turn us off. Kind of like the boy that cried wolf. Make sure what you want to bring to their attention is very important for the success of the organization. It also has to be an issue that will make the organization better; not your world better. 

As middle managers or directors of a department we have a very important responsibility to speak up, respectably, to upper-management, however, it is vital that we also surrender to the decisions handed to us. Even more important when we go to the people we lead we must support, without question, the decisions our leadership gave to us. Never can we say or show to the people we lead that we disagree. We simply and successfully must encourage our team to do their very best to make the project happen. I know in my life I have been wrong more then I have been right and the times when I was wrong – I learned a valuable lesson. There is great wisdom is surrendering to your leadership, but surrendering alone is not enough – you must support their decisions always!

If you are in leadership you might want to take a long moment and look around. Are there people on your staff that will be completely honest with you? Do you create a culture that allows for straightforward feedback or do you create a culture of fear? What is preventing you from truly empowering others?

***Even in our everyday lives we create Ivory Towers. We all perceive the world the way we want to see it and through filters that protect our individual reality. Personally, I value my closest friends who have the courage to be honest with me – especially when I don’t want to hear the truth, because it hurts.  All of our perceptions get whacked. We need people to mirror off of, to correct our distorted perceptions! But that requires courage, discipline and the capacity to be honest with ourselves.  Our own families usually love us so much they will either give us biased input that may not be the real truth, or they are so close to our world their perceptions match ours and are also off.   Although science fiction, I always found the movie The Matrix to be very spiritually insightful because not everyone is ready for reality.  Genuine and honest truth has to be vigorously and persistently sought after even in the face of pain– but the real truth is well worth the cost!