What Pastoring Taught Me About Leadership

Some of the best leadership lessons I have learned did not come from a classroom, a seminar, or a leadership book.

They came from being a pastor.

Pastoring has a way of teaching you very quickly that leadership is not really about titles, positions, or having all the answers. It is about people. And people are rarely as simple as an organizational chart makes them look.

People bring their lives with them.

They bring their struggles, personalities, expectations, disappointments, families, finances, grief, hopes, and sometimes even their anger into the room with them.

If you are going to lead people well, you have to understand that.

One of the biggest lessons pastoring taught me was the importance of communication.

Not simply talking more.

Communication is about being clear, being honest, and sometimes being willing to say what needs to be said even when you know it may not be what someone wants to hear.

Trust is built when people know where they stand with you.

That does not mean they will always agree with you. It does mean they should never have to guess whether you are being honest with them.

Pastoring also taught me that serving people does not mean giving everybody what they want.

That is something I think we sometimes get wrong when we talk about servant leadership.

Serving people does not mean avoiding difficult decisions. It does not mean keeping everybody happy. And it certainly does not mean allowing people to do whatever they want simply because you do not want conflict.

Sometimes serving people means making a decision they do not like because you believe it is the right decision for the organization, the church, or the people involved.

Leadership requires the ability to care about people without becoming controlled by their approval.

Another lesson is that people watch what you do far more closely than they listen to what you say.

You can preach integrity every Sunday, but if people do not see integrity in the way you live, the words eventually become meaningless.

The same thing is true in business and nonprofit leadership.

You cannot expect accountability from other people while refusing to be accountable yourself.

You cannot demand communication and then disappear when difficult conversations need to happen.

You cannot ask people to sacrifice while making sure you are never inconvenienced.

Leadership by example is not complicated.

It is simply being willing to live by the same standards you expect from everyone else.

Pastoring also taught me that leadership can be lonely.

There are moments when everyone is looking at you and there is no perfect answer.

You gather the information you have. You listen to the people around you. You pray, think, ask questions, and then eventually someone still has to make the decision.

That is part of leadership.

You will get some decisions right.

You will get some wrong.

The goal is not to become a leader who never makes mistakes. I am not sure that leader exists.

The goal is to become the kind of leader who is willing to make the decision, take responsibility for it, learn from it, and keep moving.

Whether you are leading a church, a nonprofit, a business, a department, or a small team, the principles really are not that different.

Communicate clearly.

Serve people without becoming controlled by them.

Lead by example.

Make the difficult decisions when they need to be made.

And never forget that leadership is ultimately about people.

Because strategies matter.

Systems matter.

Budgets matter.

Policies matter.

But at the end of the day, none of those things lead themselves.

People do.