Cultural Intelligence and Gospel Communication
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CulturalIntelligenceandGospelCommunicationTEXTBOOKS.docxTEXTBOOK 1) LEADING WITH CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE Chapters 6-7 The Real Secret to Success SECOND EDITION © 2015 [David A Livermore (2019).
Chapter 6
CQ STRATEGY: DON’T TRUST YOUR GUT
CQ STRATEGY: How should I plan?
Strategizing and making sense of culturally diverse experiences
Profile of a leader with high CQ Strategy Leaders with high CQ Strategy develop ways to use their cultural understanding to develop plans for new intercultural situations. These leaders are better able to monitor, analyze, and adjust their assumptions and behaviors in different cultural settings. They are conscious of what they need to know about an unfamiliar culture.
My attempt to find out whether Dr. Jones in Liberia was a crook (as described in Chapter 1) was rooted in my North American orientation toward direct and explicit communication. I have little tolerance for dodging the elephant in the room, and though I surely value diplomacy, I prefer to address conflict directly and swiftly. When I arrived at the Monrovia airport, I was able to step back and see that Tim, the Liberian American visiting for two weeks, and his porter were not connecting. I could listen to the stories of my breakfast companions’ mishaps with baby food and medical shipments. But I failed to take the time to think about how my direct, “name the elephant in the room” approach would shape my own success in Liberia.
If you had asked me about some of the values found in Liberian culture, I could have quickly talked to you about the high level of loyalty and commitment given to relationships. I think I even could have described the value of saving face for a friend and colleague above the value of providing accurate, shameful information to a stranger from another country. But I failed to use my cultural knowledge to effectively accomplish what I needed: a clearer understanding of whether we should partner with Dr. Jones and Madison College. Only as I stepped back and reflected on what had happened, as well as Moses’s commentary, did I begin to better understand that I was putting Dr. Harris in what felt to him like an impossible situation. He comes from a cultural orientation that places less value on being straightforward and crystal clear than on keeping the honor of others intact while delivering the message. This conversation could have been more helpful if I had spent more time planning how to approach Dr. Harris with a contentious issue—something addressed by the third capability of cultural intelligence, CQ Strategy.
The next day, Moses and I were with another Liberian who used to teach at Madison College and, consequently, he also knew Dr. Jones, the alleged embezzler. Having spent some time thinking through the previous day’s interactions, this time I used a very different approach. I began by asking what this Liberian leader perceived as some of the strengths of Dr. Jones and his school. At one point during the meeting, Moses, my host, excused himself to take a phone call, so I used the opportunity to ask the leader with whom we were meeting, “What might a school like ours find challenging in partnering with Dr. Jones’s school?” I couched the question so he could offer feedback that wouldn’t have to be considered a negative assessment of Dr. Jones and his school. The leader offered several points of caution, many of which closely aligned with the kinds of criticisms Moses had been offering. His critique was still indirect but the message between the lines was clear.
CQ Strategy is how we use the understanding we gain from CQ Knowledge. It helps us go beyond the surface and dive into the subtle but powerful issues that often make or break our leadership. As a result, CQ Strategy is the key link between our cultural understanding and behaving in ways that result in effective leadership.
One way to understand CQ Strategy is to think about the different ways we approach driving in various places. When I drive in places familiar to me, I’m prone to multitasking. If possible, I turn on the cruise control, listen to the radio, and often use the time to catch up on phone calls or talk with my passengers. But when I drive into a new city and need to find a destination, I slow down, turn off the radio, and minimize my conversation. Driving in a new place requires much more attentiveness. This is especially true if I’m in an area where motorists drive on the other side of the road. I feel more confident driving in new locations when I’ve planned ahead and looked at the directions for where I’m going. Sometimes the GPS directions don’t account for unexpected construction. So even when I plan ahead, I have to remain alert to see whether I’m moving toward my destination. This is what CQ Strategy does for leading across cultures. It requires turning off the cruise control to become more conscious and alert about our surroundings;
this in turn allows us to develop an appropriate strategy for a new cultural situation. The three subdimensions measured in assessing a leader’s CQ Strategy are planning, awareness, and checking.[1] These subdimensions offer important ways for applying the third capability of cultural intelligence: CQ Strategy.
HOW TO DEVELOP CQ STRATEGY
Plan cross-cultural interactions.
Become more aware.
Check whether your assumptions and plans were appropriate.
Key question: What do I need to plan to do this cross-cultural assignment successfully?
Plan Cross-Cultural Interactions
The first part of CQ Strategy is using our cultural understanding (CQ Knowledge) to plan for an interaction or project taking place in a different cultural environment. Most of us do a number of leadership tasks on autopilot. Pitching an idea to a client, addressing conflict on your team, or conducting a performance review are things that many of us have done numerous times as leaders. With experience, most leaders can do these tasks effectively without a whole lot of planning. However, when the cultural dynamics change, we’d be wise to spend time thinking about how we may need to alter our approach as compared to our default strategy. It’s surprising how often leaders spend thousands of dollars to travel twenty-four hours to the other side of the world without having spent any time planning how to make the most of their time there.
I remember how amazed I was when I first learned that many introverts prepare for a cocktail party by planning possible conversations ahead of time. Anticipating who will be there, questions to ask, and remembering various details of people’s lives is a coping strategy used by many introverts before heading to a social engagement. All personality types would be well served by using this kind of approach cross-culturally.
If you know you’re going to be interacting cross-culturally, spend some time thinking about what and how you should communicate. This can be as simple as spending three minutes before a one-on-one meeting to consider the most effective approach. Ask yourself:
What kind of small talk, if any, is appropriate for a person from this culture and for this individual?
Who should initiate the transition from small talk into business?
How will I get to action steps in this meeting?
How much direction should I provide?
It’s difficult to answer these questions without a growing measure of cultural understanding. Good CQ Strategy requires enhanced CQ Knowledge. By referring to the material covered in the previous two chapters, you’ll at least have a decent hypothetical plan. Your cultural understanding serves as your GPS for navigating new terrain.
The first few times I had to drive on the left side of the road, unfamiliar territory for me, I had to remain very alert. But now that I’ve done it numerous times, even if I’m driving in a place new to me, it’s easier than it was in the beginning. I’ve developed a few basic strategies for keeping track of what side I’m supposed to be on. Each new place brings with it new rules and challenges to my driving, but the more I drive in different places, the more adept I become at using heightened awareness to get to my destination. Ironically, the strategies I use in foreign places sometimes begin to change the ways I go about driving back home too. I find the same thing when leading across cultures.
Some of us have spent enough time leading cross-culturally that even the adaptations we make have become something we can do on autopilot. If that’s the case, stop to consider how others on your team might not have the same level of experience and intuitive insight. Things as simple as avoiding the use of words such as fall and spring when communicating with someone from a different hemisphere or adjusting the level of formality used in writing an email (e.g., “Dear Dr. Wang” versus “Hi, Anne”) are the subtle but powerful cues that demonstrate whether someone leads with cultural intelligence or not.
The real goal of CQ Strategy is to reflect on the lessons learned from one situation and accurately apply your insights to future situations. I will probably always experience disorienting and confusing encounters like the one I had in Liberia with Dr. Harris and Moses. But CQ Strategy and planning reduces the frequency and helps me learn from these situations so that I can better negotiate and lead in future interactions.
A leader with high CQ Strategy will actively create new strategies or adapt existing ones to deal with the new and unique aspects of an environment. This kind of leader is able to incorporate various observations and interpretations to create new strategies for new situations.[2] Most contexts provide ambiguous and often misleading cues about what is happening in an unfamiliar environment. We see familiar behaviors but the meaning is different. With planning, we’ve already primed ourselves to be more conscientious about whether a behavior means what it seems to mean. And that leads us to the next essential dimension of leading strategically across borders: awareness.
Become More Aware
The ability to be aware—of one’s self, others, and a situation—is what really makes the difference between those who lead with cultural intelligence and those who don’t. And the higher you go in the leadership ranks, the more difficult it becomes to be aware. Many CEOs are surrounded by people who laugh at their jokes, praise their ideas, and bite their tongues, even when they think an idea is stupid. It requires a very conscious effort to be a leader who remains aware and in touch with what’s truly going on.
Plans and strategies can be dangerous if not coupled with awareness. Have you ever expected a leader from a particular organization or ethnicity to behave one way only to find out he was not at all like you anticipated? The goal is to hold our hypothetical plans very loosely and become aware of what’s going on in the midst of the interaction to see whether the plan is appropriate. This requires slowing down long enough to become consciously aware of what’s going on internally and externally as we lead in a multicultural world. Awareness is stepping back from what we’re doing and reflecting on it. It’s disciplining ourselves to see what we otherwise miss. Awareness is one of the primary tools that enables us to discern between the three levels of the iceberg (see Figure 4-1): What’s universal, cultural, and personal? Awareness results in better decision making and overall performance.
Managing across cultures is rarely as simple as figuring out how a German and an Indian are going to interact. It’s how this German woman from BMW is going to interact with this Indian man from Tata and vice versa. Some of the behavior may be typical of what you would expect from their respective cultures, but other aspects may just as easily be a reflection of the individual personalities and the situation at hand. By becoming aware, you can begin to discern whether the behavior you observe is typical for these individuals or whether they’re actually adapting to you based on how they presume you want them to behave. Cultural adaptation doesn’t just go in one direction, nor should it. The time you devote to becoming a more mindful leader will directly correlate with your development as a culturally intelligent leader, particularly in this area of awareness and leading strategically across cultures.
Becoming aware is an active process of drawing on the plans we develop using our CQ Knowledge and tuning into whether those plans suit particular situations. It’s shutting down our semiautomatic impulses, suspending our assumptions for a period of time, and remaining aware throughout our cross-cultural experiences.
Look at the picture in Figure 6-1. What do you see? Take a moment to come up with an explanation for what’s going on in this photo.
Figure 6-1. What Do You See?
Photo used with permission from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2347221/Drivers-park-named-shamed-Facebook-leaving-cars-precarious-positions.html.
This can be a fun exercise to do with your team. Ask them to view the photo and describe what’s happening. You’ll quickly see how strongly people believe in their interpretation of why the car is parked like it is. Many people who look at this picture will be confident that the car was parked by an inconsiderate, entitled executive who either didn’t pay attention to the lines or thought he deserved multiple spaces. Others might suggest it was parked by a hurried parent who didn’t have time to park within the lines or needed extra space to get a child out of the car because it is a two-door model. And some who live in snowy climates might think the car was parked this way because the parking lot was snow covered at the time and the person couldn’t see the lines. The question is, To what extent are you certain your explanation of the picture is accurate? Without more information, we don’t really know the story behind this picture. But our brain immediately rushes to interpret what’s going on. And a great deal of interpretations stem from our own experiences and assumptions.
As leaders, we’re often forced to read a situation quickly and interpret what’s happening. It’s risky doing that anytime, but it’s particularly risky when different cultures are involved. For example, leaders who aren’t used to someone sitting “silently” during a conversation may erroneously interpret that behavior as confusion or boredom. On the other hand, leaders from a culture where silence is often used as a form of respect may erroneously conclude someone is simply being respectful when, in fact, the person might be sending a message that she is bored or confused.
Awareness prepares us for the kinds of adaptations needed in most cross-cultural settings. When I walk into an organization’s office for the first time, I observe what’s on the wall, the office setup, the way employees are dressed, and the titles used for various positions. Who gets invited to the meeting to discuss our proposal? Who holds the power? Who are the ultimate decision makers for this project? What are the vested interests behind the parties sitting at the table?
CQ Strategy is the way we answer the why questions behind what we experience and observe. Why does negotiation seem to consistently involve these dynamics here? Why is the leadership of this organization structured this way? Why is the office decorated like this?
When we’re in a familiar environment, this process occurs with little effort. We know how to greet a business colleague as compared to a close friend. We can sell something on the fly or express empathy to a subordinate without much conscious effort. If we have some level of emotional intelligence, we know how to approach conflict and how to communicate in a familiar context. But with heightened awareness, we realize all these things might need to be done differently in a new cultural context. The sarcastic humor that seems to enhance informality and collegiality in one organizational culture might erode trust in another. Turning down a dinner invitation could be a deal breaker in one cultural context and inconsequential in another.
Self-Awareness
In Chapter 3, we considered the importance of being honest with ourselves about our interest in cross-cultural work (CQ Drive). A similar kind of honest introspection is important for developing CQ Strategy. Because organizations have better understood the importance of self-awareness for effective leadership, many human resources departments offer a variety of tools and assessments for becoming more personally aware as a leader. The discoveries we make through resources like these can help us grow in CQ Strategy. For example, my top strength on Gallup’s StrengthsFinder is “Achiever,” a characteristic of one who finds great satisfaction in hard work and productivity.[3] It’s helpful for me to bear this in mind when I’m working in more laid-back cultures where relationships take priority over tasks. Through awareness, I have a better understanding of the personal frustration that often ensues when I feel like I haven’t had a very productive day. I can also temper some of my frustration by redefining productivity in relational terms when working in more relationally driven cultures. With a heightened sense of awareness, we transcend merely being defined by our irritation or frustration and seek to understand what’s behind it.
The degree to which we’re self-aware partially stems from our understanding of own cultural contexts. And as we become aware of how our own behavior is shaped by culture, and of how others are likely to perceive us given our cultural background, we can begin to consciously accommodate for those perceptions. For example, it’s one thing to understand that war and Baywatch are two predominant images many people around the world associate with Americans. But with awareness, U.S. leaders can look for cues as to whether the non-American with whom they’re interacting has that perception.
Self-awareness offers us greater control over the many hours and dollars we invest in working with affiliates around the world. Burnout and fatigue are among the top negative consequences leaders associate with the growing demand to work across myriad cultures and time zones. Self-awareness is a key strategy for fending off a great deal of the frustration, burnout, and fatigue that occur in cross-cultural work.
Other-Awareness
As we gain an understanding of what’s going on internally, we need to apply that same kind of awareness and understanding to others and to the environment around us. In my research on the experiences of North Americans who volunteer overseas for short periods of time, I have found that one of the critical gaps is an absence of awareness. Most of these volunteers travel to developing countries where they help with disaster relief, build medical clinics, teach English, or engage in religious mission work. Of all the comments made by these travelers on their return, the most common statement is something like, “Even though those people have so little, they’re so happy!” There’s something endearing about hearing a group of North Americans express their amazement that people with so little can be so content. My question is, Are the people they observed really happy? I’ve asked several hundred of these volunteers, “What makes you think they’re happy?” They most often respond, “They were always smiling and laughing. And they were so generous to us. They fed us better than they themselves eat.” Having observed these interactions firsthand myself, I agree that the locals typically greet foreign guests with big, warm smiles. But what do these behaviors really mean?
First, if you don’t speak the language and you’re just meeting someone for the first time, what do you do? After a few feeble attempts at saying things like “Hola!” or “Ni hau!” there’s often laughter in response. It’s really awkward. The locals in our example might be expressing happiness or their smiles and laughter might simply be a nervous response. This behavior in many cultures is as much an expression of embarrassment and nervousness as it is joy and happiness.
Then add that in places like Thailand there are twenty-three different smiles, each of which communicates something different. And in one small, extremely polite community in New Zealand, smiling is a way that people express their feelings that they have been deeply offended.[4] As I’ve continually said, the point isn’t to learn every possible meaning of a behavior. But with heightened awareness of others, an individual will realize that although smiles might reflect genuine happiness, they just as well might be a nervous response that indicates little about the other person’s level of contentment.
Awareness informed by CQ Knowledge will help us make more accurate interpretations. When anthropologists go into a civilization for the first time, their guiding mantra is “Hmm. I wonder why that is?” This is an excellent approach for us when observing the behavior of our team members and clients from different cultural backgrounds. Rather than too quickly assuming you know why someone always follows up a conference call with a lengthy email, ask yourself, Hmm. I wonder why that is? When you experience people in one particular region consistently arguing with you about any new initiative, again, use this mantra to guide your thinking on why this is happening. Eventually, you have to interpret the behavior and make a decision. But slow down how quickly you do so when cultural differences are involved.
Here are some other ways to become more aware of a diverse workforce and customer base:
Spend at least 50 percent of the time you have with your direct reports listening. This is good advice anytime but particularly with staff who come from a different cultural background than you.
Make regular appointments with your global partners just to hear their insights.
Ask sales associates in various places what’s selling (and what’s not). Don’t miss out on their frontline observations.
Seek varied sources of input. Check online sources and see what people are watching from various parts of the world.
Check out a variety of newspapers. What are the bestselling books and movies in London? In Dubai? In Moscow?
Keep your eyes peeled for new trends in art, film, and theater.
Look for unfamiliar behaviors (e.g., receiving your change with two hands) and see if it’s consistently done by others. Ask a cultural coach if this is a norm.
These practices can serve us well in our own environment too, but they’re particularly valuable for becoming more aware in different contexts. Awareness isn’t something that needs to take a great deal of time. It’s a strategy we can learn to use on the fly as we move in and out of various meetings, trips, and conversations. The simple discipline of seeing what we might otherwise miss is one of the best ways to develop CQ Strategy.
Check Whether Your Assumptions and Plans Were Appropriate
One more important way to develop CQ Strategy is to seek out information so you can determine whether your plans fit with what you are observing as you interact with people in other cultures. One time when I was doing some work in Manila, I arranged a dinner meeting with a Filipino man who had been asking for help in putting on a global leadership conference. Given my understanding of Filipino culture, I planned to make our meeting primarily social so that we could get to know each other. Based on how things went during dinner, I’d decide whether to talk about the conference near the end of dinner and formalize some next steps.
No sooner had we sat down at dinner than my Filipino counterpart asked me, “So what is this going to cost me?” I was a bit taken off guard. I wouldn’t even expect such an abrupt, direct question from most Westerners. I wasn’t sure whether this was my Filipino counterpart’s typical way of interacting or if he was simply adapting to how he perceived a North American would want to interact. I wanted to test this a bit further so I responded, “Dinner is on me tonight. Please order whatever you like.” He immediately replied, “I don’t mean dinner. I mean if we bring you in to speak at this conference and if your center helps us with the planning and promotion.” I decided to check one more time whether this was truly his preferred way of doing business, so I said, “We can certainly talk about that. But my goal tonight was to finally meet in person so we can get to know each other. And then we can figure out if and how to make this conference work.” Then he retorted, “Well, it’s wonderful to finally meet you, but if I don’t have an idea of what kind of finances are involved, there’s really no sense in discussing this any further.”
I had developed my culturally intelligent plan based on my understanding of Filipino culture: Build relationships and allow the business transaction to flow from that. When I began to receive cues that my Filipino guest wanted a different approach, I checked my interpretation a couple more times. But by this point, it was clear that the Filipino norms didn’t apply to this guy, at least not in this situation. I changed direction and we got down to business. Six months later I was honored to speak at a phenomenal conference he put together.
Checking, the final dimension of CQ Strategy, is looping back to reconsider whether the plan we have developed for a particular situation works. I often talk with midlevel Asian leaders working for Western multinational companies who perceive they can’t break through the glass ceiling into upper levels of management. The reason they often cite is that they are perceived as lacking the confidence needed to be in senior leadership. Most of the Asian leaders who do break through have developed a plan for how to speak up more than they might typically do, given the value that many Western executives place on individual initiative for those promoted into senior leadership positions. On the other side, Western leaders need to be aware of when and how to speak up during meetings with Asians. Those with high CQ Strategy will observe the interactions and communication style of their Asian counterparts, such as turn taking, and will plan how and what to say before speaking up. Once they do so, they will work hard to monitor how their input is being received.[5] Whatever direction you adjust, when you gain the ability and confidence to function at this high level of cognitive processing, it’s highly rewarding and results in some of the best intercultural practice. The three-part process of being aware, planning, and checking often happens almost simultaneously. The goal is to get more and more adept at planning ahead of time and remaining aware of what’s going on in yourself and others as you interact, and to monitor whether your strategy is working.
In this process, it’s really important for us to expect to misunderstand some things that happen as well as remain confused about others. At the very least, even a leader with extremely high CQ will encounter specific events and behaviors in a new cultural context that will not be immediately understood. In such cases, the leader delays judgment by suspending assumptions and sits with the uncomfortable state of not knowing. CQ Strategy includes accepting confusion and maintaining a willingness to not know something, which will lead to a better evaluation of the situation. That, in turn, will lead to eventual, and more accurate, understanding.[6] When we have that kind of understanding and strategy, we’re poised for a level of culturally intelligent behavior that offers a competitive edge beyond what typically happens in the management of culturally diverse leaders—simply doing “business as usual” and leading from the gut. Though my way of getting information about Dr. Jones in Liberia was flawed, the input from my colleague Moses, combined with the intentional time I spent reflecting on the interaction and planning an alternative strategy, moved me beyond my initial impasse. My subsequent conversation was more planned and simultaneously monitored how the Liberian leader I was questioning responded to my approach and questions. In many regards, it made the difference between my trip being a waste of time and actually accomplishing one of my primary objectives.
Given the vast number of intercultural encounters experienced by most of us, it’s unrealistic to know precisely what’s going on at the deepest level of the iceberg for most of the individuals we encounter. That’s a difficult process even with our intimate others. As the only male in my house, I regularly misunderstand what’s going on around me with my own family. But at the very least, putting out our antenna to monitor the appropriateness of our assumptions and plan will enhance our cross-cultural leadership. Checking helps us confirm or disconfirm whether our interpretations are true and whether our subsequent plans are effective and strategic.
Conclusion
We ended up not partnering with Dr. Jones and Madison College in Monrovia, and I recently heard that Dr. Harris resigned from his teaching role at the college. I am, however, still using insights I learned from that situation. I’m currently in the midst of developing a strategic partnership with a few different organizations across China. We’ve received conflicting counsel about a particular Chinese leader and his business. Some advisers say we can’t move forward in this region without this leader’s involvement. Others caution us against any kind of partnership with him. Doing this kind of due diligence never becomes easy, but CQ Strategy is assisting me in developing a plan for how to get the information we need. China and Liberia are vastly different places. But some of the strategies I learned from my work in Liberia can be adapted for this current challenge in China.
Once you learn the skills for CQ Strategy, you can apply them to all kinds of relationships and situations. You can even look at a Goth teenager and ask yourself, What’s behind the black clothes, piercings, tattoos, and music? rather than jump to conclusions about Goth teenagers in general or about that individual. Or you can ask yourself, What’s behind the response I get when I use that same joke in that context as compared to when I use it at the home office?
CQ Strategy is critical for a number of reasons. First, the conscious planning of your approach for a different context invokes creativity and innovation rather than simply relying on the same old practices that work in your familiar context. Second, the conscious attempt to be aware promotes active thinking about whether your plan was appropriate for a particular situation. And checking helps you continually revise and innovate as you monitor the effectiveness of what you’re doing.
CQ STRATEGY PRACTICES
Practice the “Why, Why, Why?” strategy. By repeatedly asking ourselves “Why?” (five is a good rule of thumb), we get to the deeper levels of an issue.[7] It might look something like this:
We still don’t have a contract from Japan. Why?
They wouldn’t sign it before we left. Why?
They’re uncomfortable that Susan is no longer managing the account. Why?
Trust among Japanese leaders takes a long time. Why?
Because trust is built on relationships, not just signed documents. Why?
Beware of asking others the “why” question because it can make them defensive. But using it personally can be very effective.
Keep a journal of your intercultural reflections. It can be as basic as writing and checking your explanations for something like the picture in Figure 6-1. Or it can be a matter of describing your cross-cultural interactions and listing the corresponding questions and insights. Go back later and reread what you wrote. Do this with some of your colleagues and discuss the insights together.[8]
Examine cross-cultural situations in what you see and read. When reading professional journals and newspapers or simply watching a movie, observe intercultural scenarios and think of ways you would work through those situations. Don’t try to resolve them too quickly but practice becoming aware, developing a plan, and then finding ways to check the appropriateness of your plans.
Engage in active planning. When you take on a new assignment that involves a high level of intercultural engagement, think about how your approach will differ from how you would do this assignment with people from your own culture. Find someone to run this by who can offer informed input.
Find cultural guides. When working extensively with a particular culture, find someone to be your coach. Select guides carefully. Some things to look for are as follows:
Can they distinguish what’s different about this culture from others?
Do they demonstrate self-awareness? Other-awareness?
Are they familiar with your culture, including your national culture and your vocational culture (e.g., engineering or health care)?
Have they worked across numerous cultures themselves?
Do they ask lots of questions or simply “tell” you?
Can they articulate what kinds of personalities often get most frustrated in this culture?
A cultural guide with a good measure of multicultural awareness will serve you well. One of the greatest things a guide can do is help you know what kinds of questions you should ask of yourself and others as you move into an assignment. [David A Livermore (2019). (p. 153). Leading with Cultural Intelligence:
Chapter 7
CQ ACTION: BE YOURSELF, SORT OF
CQ ACTION: What behaviors do I need to adjust?
Changing verbal and nonverbal actions appropriately when interacting cross-culturally
Profile of a leader with high CQ Action Leaders with high CQ Action can draw on the other three capabilities of CQ to translate their enhanced motivation, understanding, and planning into action. They possess a broad repertoire of behaviors, which they can use depending on the context.
Two years ago, Simon left his role as a CEO of a growing company in Chicago and became president of a small, private liberal arts college in New England. The college has enjoyed a long reputation for offering an excellent liberal arts education but has been at a plateau for the last decade. The organizational structure is inflexible, enrollment is in decline, and the college has very little ethnic diversity among its faculty, staff, and students. Simon and the college seemed like a perfect match. Education is something Simon has always valued, not the least of which is evident from his PhD in business from the University of Chicago. He thrives on coming in and reinventing an organization. He’s an innovator, a charismatic leader, and naturally curious about different cultures given his own Chinese American heritage. I met Simon when he agreed to be part of my research on cultural intelligence among academic leaders. Simon describes himself as a Type A, obsessive-compulsive leader. He’s a fitness buff, his clothes are always neatly pressed, and his office is meticulously tidy. His magnetic smile matches his contagious personality.
Simon described his first two years at the college as the hardest assignment he had ever been given. This was no small statement coming from him. The last company he led filed for bankruptcy just before he arrived. In less than three years, he led a turnaround resulting in the company’s most profitable year over its twenty-five-year history. And the business he led prior to that was also in crisis before he came in and quickly gave it a bright, new future. But Simon had met his match. There were way too few results from his first twenty-four months leading the college. Although the financial picture was more sound and enrollment had at least held steady, that was far from the kind of performance Simon was used to.
Simon had a decent understanding of the academic subculture. He knew he couldn’t just apply the same kinds of leadership approaches at the college that he used in the corporate world. And although the New England community where he was now living had less ethnic diversity than he had ever experienced in his life, he had always been able to adapt to new cultural surroundings. Simon was highly motivated to see the college thrive, and he drew on his understanding of business and education to develop a plan for turning around the college’s flat numbers. But there was something that kept him from feeling like he was really leading effectively, which was unlike anything he had ever experienced as a leader.
While I was visiting Simon at his college, he invited me to sit in on a personnel meeting in which he was giving an update and casting vision for the future. Just a few minutes into Simon’s presentation, I was captivated. His content was substantive, he offered some humor, and he communicated an inspiring vision for the college. I was almost ready to ask him for a job! I looked around and began to wonder why there were so many blank stares. The faculty and staff couldn’t have looked more bored and disengaged. If I had been speaking, their glassy eyes would have sucked the life out of me. But Simon kept at it. If anything, his charisma and delivery seemed to become more ramped up the longer he spoke.
Possessing the motivation to run at a challenge like the one facing Simon is extremely important (CQ Drive). Furthermore, having knowledge about the various cultures where you lead is essential—including the organizational culture and the various national and ethnic cultures represented (CQ Knowledge). And it is a must to have the ability to draw on that understanding to plan and accurately interpret what is going on (CQ Strategy). But, ultimately, you need to ask yourself, Can I effectively lead in this context? Can I motivate this group toward a shared outcome and can I do so effectively and authentically? Our individual leadership is ultimately judged based on whether or not we bring about results.
The final step toward cultural intelligence, CQ Action, is where the rubber meets the road. Do we know what someone is talking about? Are we able to communicate effectively? Can we lead people respectfully and adjust our behavior as needed while still remaining true to who we are? CQ Action is the extent to which we appropriately change our verbal and nonverbal actions when we interact across cultures. The goal is to be yourself while figuring out which behaviors need to change in order to accomplish your objectives. As noted at the beginning of the book, one of the revolutionary aspects of the cultural intelligence model is the emphasis on inward transformation in our perspective and outlook rather than just trying to master the “dos” and avoid the taboos. Artificial attempts to modify behavior invite inflexibility and fall short of giving us a sustainable approach to leading cross-culturally.[1] The degree to which we continue to change internally will be seen in the impressions we leave on others through our actions.
Ironically, the most effective way to adapt our behavior is through the other three capabilities of CQ. CQ Action is primarily the outcome of our CQ Drive, Knowledge, and Strategy. In one sense, this whole book is about CQ Action because our behavior is really the only way someone will know whether we’re culturally intelligent. But there are a few specific leadership behaviors we need to be able to adapt when necessary. CQ Action includes three subdimensions: speech acts, verbal behavior, and nonverbal behavior.[2] These subdimensions inform the ways we can develop our CQ Action as leaders. CQ Action can be enhanced by adapting our communication, adjusting our leadership performance, and knowing when to adapt and when not to adapt.
Adapt Your Communication
In Chapter 4 (CQ Knowledge), we noted the importance of language for effective leadership. Whether casting vision, building trust, giving directions, or addressing conflict, a great deal centers around whether we can get the message across effectively, clearly, and respectfully. Communication is not only about saying the right thing. It’s about the right thing being understood. Nearly every book on leadership includes a section on the importance of communication. For me, Simon’s communication was lucid and compelling. But it appeared that the faculty and staff he was leading didn’t receive his message the same way I did. As I interviewed some of them, I found they weren’t nearly as inspired by Simon’s vision casting as I was. The recurring response from faculty when asked to describe Simon’s leadership was that he was an outsider who was trying to turn the college into a business. Several professors were unnerved by the way Simon continually used words such as bottom line, enterprise, and capitalize. This was proof to them that Simon didn’t understand the academic world. And given that he often referenced stories from his corporate background and frequently cited University of Phoenix as a success story, his impassioned, articulate presentations made little impact on them.[3] Some of the staff had responses similar to those of the faculty, but a more common theme in their feedback was their perception that Simon’s constant enthusiasm was inauthentic. Most of the staff members at the college were native to New England, and listening to a public speaker with so much energy and charisma caused them to feel like Simon was trying to sell them something. They couldn’t get beyond the sense that his delivery was a contrived performance rather than just a talk with them as colleagues. One woman even characterized him as a “used car salesman,” a derogatory slur to suggest Simon was trying to swindle and manipulate the collegiate community. The cultural realities of this New England college were in conflict with the ways Simon had always communicated as a leader. We often miss the cultural differences that exist right within our own borders. No one at Simon’s college referenced his Asian background as a roadblock. But his corporate, Midwest background seemed to be a huge roadblock for them.
HOW TO DEVELOP CQ ACTION
Adapt your communication.
Lead differently.
Know when to adapt and when not to adapt.
Key question: What behaviors should I adapt for this cross-cultural project?
The ability to communicate effectively in a new cultural context demonstrates how CQ Action becomes the natural outgrowth of the other three CQ capabilities. A level of motivation and energy (CQ Drive) is needed to relearn how to communicate in ways that build trust and motivate people in a new context. A great deal of understanding (CQ Knowledge) is also needed to know what cultural systems and values are utilized and the words to use and avoid. And a heightened level of planning, awareness, and checking (CQ Strategy) is necessary to actually communicate relevant ideas. There are three communication behaviors that most need our attention when communicating in a different cultural context: word usage, delivery, and nonverbal actions.[4]
Word Usage
The very words that create vision and expectation in one cultural context can elicit distrust and suspicion in another. I can think of several people from many contexts who would have listened to Simon’s presentation and found it inspiring and right on the mark. But that’s not how it was received by his college personnel. It doesn’t really matter if I was inspired by Simon. His team wasn’t!
There are a few different ways to think about how we use words when we lead cross-culturally: topics, requests, apologies, and compliments.
TOPICS
Appropriately adapting our behavior involves learning what topics of discussion are appropriate in various settings. Although this applies to work-related conversations, it’s most apparent in more informal, social interactions. Earlier, I noted that the after-hours drink with someone from a different cultural background is often far more challenging than interactions revolving around work. Yet these informal interactions are often the more important ones.
Sometimes people from other cultures have asked me during an informal conversation how much money I make or how much my home costs, questions that would be considered off limits even among close friends in my cultural context. And I’ve been with colleagues who have been told they’re looking very “fat,” a description I’ve taught my kids to never use in reference to anyone. But these topics might not be considered disrespectful at all in other cultures. In fact, being told you’re fat in many African cultures is a real compliment. It’s evidence you’re wealthy and successful. Other times I’ve been the one who has come across as rude. I’ve asked single friends from other cultures about their love lives only to learn I was being too forward according to their cultural norms. Or I’ve neglected to ask about their families or share more about mine.
There are many other examples. Religion and politics are typically seen as off limits among North American colleagues unless there’s a clear invitation to discuss these subjects. But many Germans value overt expressions of opinion on these kinds of topics in order to have a good argumentative exchange. For Germans, getting to know someone means finding out what the other person’s positions are on different issues and debating them as a means of interaction. In contrast, when Chinese individuals meet for the first time, their approach for getting to know each other is usually quite different. Instead of heated dialogue and debating each other, you usually start by talking about your family background and asking others about theirs. Only after that kind of rapport is developed is it appropriate to discuss social and political issues. North Americans and Japanese often talk about business long into the dinner hour but British individuals tend to think shop talk needs to stop once the workday is over. Different conventions for selecting conversational strategies and topics are an area of behavior we may need to adapt.[5]
Few things demonstrate the cultural variance of conversational protocol more than humor. Jokes and things we find funny often depend on an assumed understanding and history. I was recently on a flight sitting next to a Chinese American businesswoman. She travels regularly to China to translate for English-speaking corporate trainers who conduct seminars there. She commented on how most of the U.S. and British trainers with whom she works start their presentations with a joke or humorous anecdote. This is an approach that seems to work well for them in their own context. But my seatmate told me that when they do that in China, instead of translating what they’re saying, she says to the Mandarin-speaking audience, “Our presenter is telling a joke right now. The polite thing to do will be to laugh when he’s done.” Humor is deeply rooted in cultural assumptions, whether used in public speaking or interpersonal conversation.
Culturally intelligent leaders understand that topics discussed, particularly in social, informal settings, are embedded with cultural values and assumptions. Discernment in how to use words begins with considering appropriate conversation topics and effective use of small talk.
REQUESTS
Helen Spencer-Oatey, a renowned linguistic researcher, describes the cultural variances in how we make a request of someone. Individuals coming from cultures where indirect communication is valued, such as China, will often use the power of suggestion to make a request. However, people from the United States or Israel will usually be more direct with orders and requests. Think about the progression from a very direct to a very indirect approach to asking an employee to run a budget report:
“Run the budget report!”
“I want you to run the budget report.”
“How about running the budget report?”
“Can you run the budget report?”
“Wouldn’t it help to have a budget report?”[6]
Leaders have to learn the level of comfort individuals and cultures have with direct versus indirect orders and requests and adjust accordingly. There’s further variance in how this communication practice relates to a culture’s value of power distance. A culture that values indirect communication may also be a place where senior leaders give explicit and direct orders to subordinates if there’s a high level of power distance (e.g., a Chinese boss is likely to be very direct with an assistant about running a budget report). But a subordinate would be expected to use extremely indirect communication to make a request of a superior. Peers are expected to use indirect communication with one another lest it seem one is taking on an authoritative role over the other. You need to learn where you’re perceived in the hierarchical structure to gauge the appropriate level of directness to employ.
Suzanne, a North American expatriate working in France, discovered the importance of how she made a request when she went shopping in Paris. Suzanne is fluent in French but that didn’t mitigate the challenges she felt in communicating. Early on during her sojourn in France, she couldn’t seem to get beyond her perception that French people disliked Americans in general. Whenever she asked for something specific of a shopkeeper, such as “Where can I find the lipstick?” she received a curt, abrupt response. One day, a French friend suggested, “Try starting with something like this when you walk into the store: ‘Could you help me with a problem?’ And if they say ‘Yes’—which they more than likely will—then ask for help finding the lipstick.” Suzanne tried it and she couldn’t believe how well it worked. It changed the whole disposition of the shopkeepers because now she was posturing herself as someone in need rather than someone making demands. She began to apply the same kind of strategy with her colleagues and subordinates at work. She was amazed at how this simple adjustment altered the way her requests were received. Simply understanding some basic shifts in language can make all the difference in achieving our objectives, whether it’s to purchase lipstick or to launch a full-orbed initiative.[7]
The most important phrase I try to learn in the language spoken any place I visit is “I’m sorry, I don’t speak ______. Do you speak English?” It postures me as being in need rather than presuming everyone would be happy to help in English. Even if I can’t say it in the local language, asking first whether someone speaks English demonstrates that I don’t simply assume they should and instead, postures me as a foreign guest who needs help.
APOLOGIES
Another communication challenge is knowing when and how to apologize. People in most cultures would agree that an apology of some sort is needed when an offense occurs. The question is, What’s considered offensive and what’s the most appropriate way to express regret for an offense?
Growing up in a Canadian home, “Sorry” was something we said all the time, given a predominant thrust across Canadian culture to never impose upon others. I’ve often said “Sorry!” for bumping into people in places like Brazil only to have them look at me as if to say, Sorry for what?! To invade one’s personal space is a violation in my culture but close proximity and sharing personal space is a part of life for many Brazilians. It’s important to learn when and how you should apologize to a colleague given his or her culture. An individual coming from a polychronic culture might see little offense in being an hour late to a meeting, but a culturally intelligent individual will understand that keeping someone from a monochronic culture waiting for an hour requires an apology. In the mind of most people from monochronic cultures, to keep others waiting for an hour is to have wasted their time and disrespects them. On the other hand, abruptly ending a conversation with someone from a polychronic culture in order to get to an appointment may be something that requires an apology. And in cultures where hierarchy is important, a lower-status individual is expected to offer deference and an apologetic posture to someone with higher status, even if no great offense has occurred. An outsider need not mimic all these behaviors, something we’ll address later in the chapter, but we’d be wise to understand the importance of these kinds of communication practices.
Korean advertising through email often begins with the sentence “I am sorry to send you spam.” A spam message with an apology is deemed more credible in the Korean context but would be seen as a position of weakness to a North American audience. Learn when and how to apologize to the people in the cultures with which you regularly work.
In 2001, a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet collided over the South China Sea. The next several days resulted in heated arguments between U.S. and Chinese diplomats over whether the U.S. government should apologize. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that the U.S. government accept full responsibility. Viewing the aggressiveness of the Chinese fighter jet as the reason for the collision, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to issue an apology. His response aligned with the typical U.S. view of apologies. An apology is rooted in a pragmatic understanding of who is at fault. The emphasis of an apology is in looking for responsibility for something done. The
Chinese view is oriented around harmony and a bigger view of the circumstances. The emphasis is on a willingness to acknowledge the unfortunate event rather than precisely who was at fault. The Chinese were angered not so much by the incident of a U.S. plane being in their airspace but in the unwillingness to issue an apology.[8] As we become more aware of cultural values (individualism versus collectivism, or particularism versus universalism), CQ Strategy helps us translate that understanding into appropriate ways to give and receive apologies.
COMPLIMENTS
The giving and receiving of compliments is another communication exercise that requires cultural intelligence. When complimented, should you acknowledge it or is it better to deflect it to avoid seeming self-congratulatory? And when you want to encourage a colleague or subordinate, is it best to compliment the individual publicly, privately, or not at all? Is a compliment best expressed through words, gifts, or another approach? In many Western cultures, it’s largely agreed that the best way to respond to a compliment is simply to accept it. However, the reverse is true in many Eastern cultures. Rejection or denial of a compliment is deemed more appropriate in places like Japan and China. Of course, this is another example where there are plenty of individual differences among people who share a culture depending on their personality and family upbringing, hence the need for awareness, planning, and checking (CQ Strategy) as we compliment and affirm individuals.
A leader might presume a compliment will motivate a subordinate to continue good work; but if the individual perceives a boss as being too personal and reflecting more intimacy in their relationship than appropriate, it might actually play a demotivating role. And leaders from individualist cultures often single out high-performing staff members and publicly acknowledge them. But that can bring about embarrassment and shame for someone in a collectivist culture who has been taught to never stand out. On the other hand, leaders in collectivist cultures who offer little personalized affirmation and encouragement to colleagues and clients from individualist cultures can be seen as ungrateful.
Leaders can’t expect to master all the norms for appropriate compliments for every culture they’ll encounter. But they’d be well advised to understand and practice basic adaptive behavior in how they can offer encouragement and praise to people from different cultural backgrounds. An overall posture of respect and suspended judgment will help leaders grow in knowing the appropriate way to communicate gratitude and affirm success.
Effective leadership is highly dependent on the exchange of words. The greatest challenge exists when different languages are spoken in the same work environment. Leaders who are willing to learn new languages or learn to use translators are needed. But anytime we communicate cross-culturally, even when there’s a shared language, basic communication behaviors like those covered will play a strong role in how we lead.
Delivery
As important as words are, it wasn’t only Simon’s words that made the faculty and staff at his college uncomfortable. It was also the way he delivered them. Even when appropriate words are chosen, how the information is delivered can cause a great deal of mis-communication. Culturally intelligent leaders will learn what communication is best offered in writing, when to pick up the phone, and when to communicate face-to-face. They will gain confidence in knowing the appropriate level of enthusiasm, pace, and style to use when talking to different audiences. Although leaders in low power distance cultures can use the same style of communication when interacting with an administrative assistant as with a vice president, that isn’t so in high power distance cultures. We’ll explore several of the nonverbal dimensions of communication separately in just a minute, but it’s important to specifically address the manner in which words are spoken, or the delivery.
Many native-English speakers fail to alter their delivery when communicating with individuals for whom English is a second language. This is something I’m continually working on myself. Growing up in New York, I was socialized to speak quickly, get to the point, and express enthusiasm when appropriate. I have to continually work on slowing down, especially when speaking publicly to non-native English speakers. Here are several strategies for enhancing communication when addressing an audience including non-native English speakers:
Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. Slllllloooooowwwwww d o w n.
Use clear, slow speech. Enunciate carefully.
Avoid colloquial expressions and idioms.
Repeat important points using different words to explain the same thing.
Avoid long, compound sentences.
Use visual representations (pictures, tables, graphs, etc.) to support what is being said.
Mix presentations with a balance of story and principles.
Hand out written summaries.
Pause more frequently.
Most of these same strategies apply to small-group and one-on-one communication too. We have to find the delivery style that is most comfortable to us so it appears natural and authentic. But we also have to learn what kinds of alterations to make to our “natural” style when addressing various audiences. Simon needed to find a way to use the public-speaking style most comfortable to him while also adjusting for the New England, academic subculture where he was leading. Then, as we learn to alter our delivery, we have to continually check for understanding. It’s not enough to simply ask, “Are you with me? Does this make sense?” Instead, we have to create questions and activities that will reveal the level of understanding among those listening, or find a cultural coach to help us check whether our plan worked.
Nonverbal Actions
We’ve all heard it said, “You cannot not communicate.” Although words and delivery are an important part of the communication exchange, as much and possibly more gets communicated through other nonverbal behaviors. It’s important to note a few of the ways culture affects nonverbal behavior, including distance, touching, body position, gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact.
DISTANCE
Many of us have felt the discomfort that comes from someone violating what we consider to be appropriate personal space. Culture plays a huge role in what we view as appropriate distance. The average conversation distance preferred by most in the Anglo cluster is fifty centimeters (twenty inches), whereas for the Latin clusters it’s closer to thirty-five centimeters (fourteen inches) and for the Arab cluster it’s twenty-five centimeters (ten inches). When Arabs overstep the preferred personal space of Anglos, it’s often viewed as intrusive or aggressive, and when Anglos keep their distance, Arabs often perceive this behavior as cold and aloof.[9] The amount of space between seats when conducting a training session, the way an office is set up, and the way a boss interacts with staff are all ways distance influences the ways we behave cross-culturally. Be alert regarding how social distance affects your interactions and be prepared to modify it.[10]
TOUCHING
The handshake, though most widely used in Western contexts, has been broadly accepted in professional settings around the world as an appropriate greeting. But the degree of firmness, the appropriate duration of the contact, and the individual who initiates it vary widely from one cultural context to another. In many settings, it’s considered rude if you don’t shake the hand of each person standing together—beginning with the person of highest status. And putting a hand on another person’s back or shoulder is appropriate in some professional settings and not others. It is important to consider different levels of authority, gender, and age when determining appropriate touching. For example, individuals from many high power distance cultures have expectations about how handshakes should occur between individuals according to their status. When greeting someone with higher status, the lower status individual is expected to support his wrist with his left hand while shaking hands. Many African cultures use a more gentle handshake than is commonly used in Europe or the United States but linger while holding the other person’s hand. Such cues are important for leading in many situations. Pay attention to these actions when observing others as well as in your own interactions. It’s generally agreed that cultures with the lowest amount of touching are found in North America, Northern Europe, and Asia. Cultures with a high amount of touching are found in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. As always, beware of individual differences that exist among people in various contexts.
BODY POSITION
There are unwritten, often even unconscious cultural rules that govern the degree to which individuals sit, stand, and bow. In some contexts, people’s gender, age, and level of authority all determine where they should position themselves in relation to others. And bowing is a key nonverbal behavior used in many contexts like Japan, Korea, and Thailand. The unwritten rules about bowing in places like these are complex and very difficult for an outsider to master. Rather than become overwhelmed by this, the culturally intelligent leader knows that certain body positions are best reserved for those who practice them. But we’re wise to consider which of our postures should be altered.
GESTURES
People often use gestures to accompany things they’re saying. It’s especially difficult to understand gestures if you don’t understand the language. And gestures are one of the most highly individualized forms of communication. So although there are some cultural norms, CQ Strategy is needed to discern whether a gesture is a reflection of a culture or of an individual. Watch for cues. For example, notice how someone uses a gesture such as pointing. Then observe whether others from the same cultural context use this gesture. I’ve inadvertently sent the wrong message by placing my hands in my pockets during an international presentation, implying an overly casual or even disrespectful posture to some cultures. Test your assumptions and be very cautious before enacting new gestures just because you’ve observed them in others.
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Facial expressions can be highly misleading, as evidenced by international volunteers who assume smiling faces by poor people mean they’re happy. On the other hand, I’ve often heard Westerners look at a photo of an Indian family and ask why everyone is so serious and no one is smiling. Review the differences described in Chapter 5 between neutral and affective cultures and practice saying the same thing with varying levels of facial expressiveness. Accurately understanding the meaning behind others’ facial expressions is one of the most subjective challenges we’ll encounter. Use extreme caution in making judgments about what a facial expression means when observed cross-culturally. But try some slight adjustments in your own levels of expressiveness as you interact from one culture to the next.
EYE CONTACT
The final important nonverbal behavior to adapt is eye contact. Different cultures have various norms about when and how long eye contact is appropriate. This becomes further complicated because most cultures have unwritten rules about how to use eye contact according to gender, age, and status. One day I talked to a manager who said everything about a job candidate suggested she should hire him. But he wouldn’t look her in the eye, which made her distrust him. I asked her what his cultural background was. “He’s Saudi,” she said. Though Arabs often have conventions of longer eye contact than some other cultures do, many Saudi men have been socialized to avoid direct eye contact with women. Most Arabs, Latinos, Indians, and Pakistanis have conventions of longer eye contact, whereas Africans and East Asians interpret too much direct eye contact as conveying anger or insubordination and prefer to avoid it.[11]
Many people want a simple list of the dos and don’ts of behavior for any culture in the world. To rely on such information can be risky because of the many subjective elements that go along with behavioral practices (e.g., the gender, age, or status of the person involved; whether an individual is like his or her cultural background). However, if you’re encountering a culture for the first time, this kind of information can be a useful starting point. The bestselling book Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands by Terri Morrison and Wayne Conaway provides helpful information, but use it carefully, lest you resort to stereotypes. The best book I’ve read on a more culturally intelligent approach to adapting behavior is Andy Molinsky ’s Global Dexterity. I highly recommend adding both of these books to your library.
As you know by now, the goal isn’t to become an expert on the perfect word, delivery, or nonverbal behavior for every situation. Instead, the key is the ability to accurately observe the behavior of others, reflect on it, and learn when to modify your actions in response.
Lead Differently
Throughout the book we’ve been talking about how to adjust your leadership based on the cultures involved. But what does it look like to have high CQ Action as a leader? Rather than describe this generically, let’s look at one specific task that nearly all of us are required to do as leaders—negotiation—as an example of CQ Action applied to leadership. Whether it’s negotiating with the board, government officials, staff, or customers, effective negotiation is a crucial leadership skill used on a daily basis. Regardless of the cultural context, the objective in negotiation is for people to reach an agreement that mutually satisfies their respective interests, both personally and organizationally. Effective negotiations usually include offers and counteroffers with concessions and compromises along the way before reaching an agreement.[12]
The cultural values we reviewed in Chapter 5 directly influence how negotiations occur. Jeswald Salacuse, author of The Global Negotiator, draws on this material and his own research to suggest ten questions to consider when negotiating across cultures.[13]
1. Negotiating Goal: Contract or Relationship?
For some cultures, partnering implies building a relationship, whereas for others it’s primarily a contractual transaction. Determine the goal as soon as possible. If you’re trying to partner with relationally driven negotiators and you are highlighting most your ability to deliver a low-cost contract, it can cost you the deal. For those who primarily want a contract, trying to build a relationship may be viewed as pandering and wasting their time.
2. Negotiating Attitude: Win-Lose or Win-Win?
Many negotiation books presume everyone is after a win-win; however, some cultures and organizations are driven by an approach that assumes one side wins and the other side loses. Win-win negotiators see deal making as a collaborative, problem-solving process, whereas win-lose negotiators view it as confrontational. Your CQ Action will come through in your ability to deal with either kind of negotiator.
3. Personal Style: Informal or Formal?
Some cultures prefer a formal style of negotiation that emphasizes titles and avoids discussions about personal matters. For example, Koreans are typically described as having a much more formal negotiation style than North Americans. North American negotiators often try to start the discussion on a first-name basis and to put everyone at ease by engaging in small talk. It’s easier and safer to begin with a more formal approach and move toward a more informal one when it becomes evident that the culture and situation allow for it.
4. Communication: Direct or Indirect?
In cultures that rely on indirect communication, such as many of the Confucian Asian cultures, an initial meeting will rarely disclose a definite commitment or rejection. Indirect negotiators are wise to recognize that their direct counterparts may not accurately understand what’s occurring if it isn’t explicitly stated. Without cultural intelligence, negotiations that involve direct and indirect communicators often result in direct communicators interpreting the behavior of indirect counterparts as passive aggressive and unable to make a decision, and indirect communicators perceiving direct negotiators as aggressive and pushy.
5. Sensitivity to Time: High or Low?
Different perceptions regarding time is typically the area of greatest conflict in intercultural negotiations. In many Asian and Latino cultures, it’s impossible to conceive of reaching an agreement without spending significant time getting to know each other. In these cultures, building relationships requires that negotiators take time to learn about the people with whom they are negotiating. Ways to do this include going out for dinner or drinks, visiting national landmarks, playing golf, or going to a cricket game. This type of ritual socializing is vital because it represents an honest effort to understand as fully as possible the needs, values, and interests of the other side. In contrast, many Western European and North American cultures value expediency in reaching a deal. For these individuals, vast amounts of time socializing can seem like a disregard for the value of one’s time. McDonald’s took nearly a decade to negotiate with Russian leaders in Moscow before selling burgers there. Adjust your expectations and approach for the amount of time and type of relationship required to negotiate. It almost always takes longer to negotiate across borders.
6. Emotionalism: High or Low?
To what degree should negotiations involve wearing people down emotionally? Affective cultures (described in Chapter 5) such as Latin Europe are more likely to show their emotions at the negotiating table, whereas neutral cultures such as the Dutch and Japanese are unlikely to disclose their feelings toward the deal. Start more neutral and follow your counterpart’s lead.
7. Form of Agreement: General or Specific?
Cultural variations will influence the way both parties believe the deal should be written. North Americans typically prefer detailed contracts that anticipate all kinds of circumstances so that the contract can be used to handle any kind of situation that arises. However, a lot of other cultures, such as with many Chinese, prefer a contract in the form of general assumptions and guidelines, believing that the agreement is primarily the relationship between two parties, not an abstract document. Using this more general approach, the parties should look primarily to their relationship, not the contract, to solve unexpected problems.
8. Building an Agreement: Bottom Up or Top Down?
Whether the value for the other side is in starting with agreement on general principles (top down) or with specifics (bottom up) needs to be determined in intercultural negotiations. Salacuse suggests that the French prefer to begin with agreement on general principles, whereas North Americans begin with agreement on specific deliverables and develop the general principles based on those deliverables. An organization’s culture and the individual personalities involved also play a significant role in whether a bottom-up or top-down approach works. As you apply your CQ Action to negotiation, you’ll be better served to negotiate in familiar cultures too.
On a related note, Salacuse distinguishes between “building-up” and “building-down” negotiation styles. He states:
In the building down approach, the negotiator begins by presenting the maximum deal if the other side accepts all the stated conditions. In the building-up approach, one side begins by proposing a minimum deal that can be broadened and increased as the other party accepts additional conditions. According to many observers, Americans tend to favor the building-down approach, while the Japanese tend to prefer the building-up style of negotiating a contract.[14]
9. Team Organization: One Leader or Group Consensus?
Any effective negotiation requires learning who ultimately makes the decisions and how the authority structure works. But this isn’t always easy to determine when negotiating across cultures. Many collectivist cultures will have large groups show up for a negotiation meeting while many others not at the table may also be involved in reaching consensus. And many individualist cultures expect that one or two key individuals will ultimately be the ones who make the decision. Don’t assume you know who the decision maker is. Use your CQ Knowledge and Strategy to figure it out.
10. Risk Taking: High or Low?
Finally, you’ll want to understand where the organization and individuals fall on the uncertainty avoidance dimension. Those from high uncertainty avoidance cultures such as Israel and Japan will often want much more information and detailed processes to help alleviate uncertainty. In contrast, those from low uncertainty avoidance cultures may feel distrusted and frustrated if there’s an overemphasis on endless “what if” scenarios.
As you listen and negotiate, beware of an overreliance on cultural stereotypes. As always, they’re a good first guess, but they can derail your entire negotiation process when applied too broadly or mindlessly. You have to use the awareness of CQ Strategy to get below the surface of the iceberg and attend to the specific individuals and organization involved. Simultaneously, you need to remain alert to how you’re being viewed. What kind of preconceptions do the people you are negotiating with have given your cultural background or previous experiences? How will you need to compensate for those perceptions?
Once you have a negotiation plan in mind, hold it loosely and be ready to adapt. Anticipate ahead of time where you are willing to adjust. You don’t want to make concessions you’ll later regret but you also don’t want to lose the deal because of inflexibility. In the midst of the negotiation, draw on the skills developed in CQ Strategy to stay alert to what’s going on behind the scenes in the negotiating process. I wouldn’t even consider entering a cross-cultural negotiation without a cultural broker to help me interpret what’s going on. Find someone you trust who can help you make sense of what various tactics mean.
Negotiation exemplifies how CQ Action influences leadership performance. It requires an ability to adapt without abandoning the interests of yourself and your organization. Negotiation across borders requires all four CQ capabilities. Be ready to adapt the way you negotiate as you work in various contexts.
Know When to Adapt and When Not to Adapt
Should we always adapt to the other culture, and who adapts to whom? Too much adaptation can generate suspicion and distrust, yet inflexible behavior is a sure death wish for most twenty-first-century leaders and organizations. When should we alter our strategy, and when should it remain unchanged? When is it okay to pass on eating something that turns our stomach, and when should we eat and pray, “Dear God, help me keep it down”? As we broaden our repertoire of cultural understanding and behavior, we’ll become more attuned to knowing which response is appropriate.
Learning if and when it’s appropriate to adapt our behavior to another culture is a complex area. It’s more than just knowing the behavior of people from other cultures. It requires drawing on CQ Knowledge and CQ Strategy to anticipate what people from other cultures expect of us as well as the consequences of adapting or not.
There are some situations in which the best option is to not adapt at all. Adjusting to the behavior of another culture is a double-edged sword. Some level of adapting to communication styles and patterns cross-culturally is usually viewed positively because it leads to perceptions of similarity. However, high levels of adaptation are viewed negatively. Extensive mimicry can be seen as insincere and possibly even deceptive.[15] Individuals who “go native” and try to entirely strip themselves of their own culture can be seen as trying too hard. Uncritically accepting everything in a new culture and turning one’s back on one’s own birth culture is not culturally intelligent behavior.
I’ve sometimes observed adults overadapting when working with adolescents. Youth are usually grateful for adult teachers and coaches who try to understand and respect their interests. But that doesn’t mean they want their teachers to start dressing like them and going to the same concerts. There’s nothing worse than seeing a fifty-year-old coach dress and act like a fifteen-year-old. Likewise, in most places, it’s viewed as humorous and downright silly when outsiders try to wear native dress. Women dressing more modestly than they might at home or men dressing more or less formally according to the cultural norm is appropriate. But going fully native in our dress isn’t usually the way to go. Similarly, if you’re invited to participate at a conference in Japan, most Japanese will be favorably impressed if you’re courteous, polite, and somewhat reserved. But they don’t expect you to master the intricate social skills of Japan such as bowing in all the appropriate ways. In fact, if you try to mimic cultures like these too much, at best your behavior will be seen as amusing, and more likely it will be seen as offensive.
How do we know whether to adapt or not? I always ask two primary questions when trying to decide whether to adapt:
Is this a tight or loose culture?
“Tight versus loose” refers to how strong the social norms are within a given culture. Tight cultures are places where there are very prescribed expectations of how people should behave. Places like Saudi Arabia and Japan are very tight cultures because there’s a predominant view on what kind of behavior is and isn’t appropriate. Loose cultures are typically more cosmopolitan, and in order to absorb the heterogeneous makeup of a place, these societies are less dogmatic about what kind of behavior is acceptable. Nations like Thailand and the Netherlands are loose cultures.[16]
If you’re a woman traveling to Saudi Arabia, you need not spend much time wondering whether or not you should adapt to wearing an abaya. You should—it’s the law! As a tight culture, there are very clear standards about how you should dress and behave. And while Japanese culture might not be quite as tight as Saudi Arabia’s, veering from the protocols of acceptable behavior will be a much bigger deal in Tokyo than in London, a loose culture.
Will adapting compromise my organization or me?
I have a set of values and convictions that I’m not willing to compromise just to fit in with another culture. I suspect the same is true for you. Some people would be compromising their health or religious beliefs by participating in the excessive drinking that sometimes occurs at Chinese business dinners. And some companies, such as Bloomberg, forbid employees from accepting gifts of any kind, including having dinner paid for, lest it compromise journalistic integrity. That policy runs against the grain of the cultural values of hospitality and gift giving in many places around the world.
But cultural intelligence is not simply play acting and performing based on others’ preferences and expectations. It has to be rooted in a strong sense of yourself. You need an inner compass to help you discern when adapting goes beyond your core values. Rather than simply mimic the behaviors you observe, you need to base your decision to adapt on the knowledge of the other culture, the expectations of the people, and the objectives that need to be accomplished.
After answering these two primary questions, it’s a matter of anticipating the consequences of adapting or not. You have every right to refuse to adapt to the cultural norm of after-hours binge-drinking sessions with prospective clients, but given the importance of that routine for some cultures, you’d better think about ways you can work hard to adapt in other ways (e.g., eating whatever is put in front of you). I respect Bloomberg’s policy to refuse anyone treating you to dinner, but there should then be an understanding that this might make guanxi (the connections and resulting obligations between two individuals) harder to establish.
With experience and growing levels of cultural intelligence, our sense of if and how much to adapt may become so well developed that we adapt naturally without much conscious thought. That’s the goal. We want to get to a point where this high level of thinking and action happens as naturally as the thoughts and behaviors enacted in our familiar cultural contexts. And getting there might be as simple as trial and error. Try adapting a bit and see what happens. Test it in lots of different situations. Ask a trusted peer who understands the cultural context how adapting or not adapting will be perceived by others. Then ask someone else. Then ask yet another person.
Behavior is ambiguous. The same action can have many different meanings depending on who does it, where, and with whom. But by walking through the four capabilities of CQ, we can better discern which behaviors to adapt and those not to adapt.
Conclusion
My two daughters are very different from each other. Emily has always been a homebody who loves to hang out, read, talk, and share a long meal together. Grace, on the other hand, is continually moving. She’s happiest when there’s a lot going on. She wants to go for a bike ride, kayak on the lake together, and get coffee, maybe all in the same hour. I want to relate to my kids in ways that express my love for them. So I interact with them differently according to their unique personalities. I’m not being a chameleon. I simply want them to experience my love in ways that are meaningful to each of them.
We can’t possibly learn the individual preferences of all the people we encounter in our work. But learning the cultural norms of different groups of people helps us behave more effectively and respectfully. That’s why cultural intelligence is so important to me. It’s an essential skill set for me as a leader to treat others with dignity and respect. And it allows me to adapt my behavior to accomplish my objectives.
CQ ACTION PRACTICES
Learn what practices and taboos are most important for the key regions where you work. Knowing when and how to exchange a business card, the protocols for gift giving, and whether or not to use the left hand are a few of the specific behaviors worth mastering. Though you can’t master all the practices and taboos, you can learn which ones will most enhance or deter effectiveness.
Look for consistent feedback. Encouragement as well as corrective feedback is essential for developing CQ Action. Look for ways to get an honest assessment of your work. Both positive and negative feedback will help you to effectively enhance your ability to flex your behavior.
Go together. When you have a meeting or a trip that involves cross-cultural work, bring someone along. Processing the challenges and rewards of cross-cultural negotiation and work jointly is much more effective than doing so individually.
Assess for CQ Action in all key management hires. Hiring an increasingly diverse workforce is a vital and strategic choice, but it’s not enough to simply hire more underrepresented populations. Every management position, even, and especially, positions held by individuals coming from the dominant culture, should be held by people with culturally intelligent behavior.
Develop a zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate jokes and language directed toward any specific cultural group (including socio-ethnic, sexual orientation, and religious). Encourage diversity by allowing flexibility in dress and behavior as long as it doesn’t interfere with your organizational objectives. [David A Livermore (2019). (p. 183). Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success, Second Edition. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]The Real Secret to Success, Second Edition. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
2) LEADING CROSS-CULTURALLY Chapters 8-13 Covenant Relationship for Effective Christian Leadership Sherwood G. LINGENFELTER © 2008 by Sherwood G. (2019)
8
Power-Giving Leadership
To Control or to Concede? A Case Study
In the first three years of his ministry, Pastor David sought to implement a program of radical change in his church, launching new programs and bringing in new associates to lead them. He did not seek advice from anyone in his congregation but relied on his own insights as to how this congregation might experience revival and growth. His personal ambition, fueled by his perception of the expectations of the search committee who appointed him, became the driving force of his ministry.
At first the elders of the congregation supported his leadership, but gradually David’s forceful leadership style began to alienate them. David believed that a good leader exercised strong control over the direction and implementation of ministry in his church. And during his first year of ministry, his predecessor told him, “If you want to be effective, and accomplish the vision God has given you, you must lead with an iron hand. The elders will oppose you, but you must challenge them forcefully.”
Pastor David viewed his elders as enemies, people who would block his ministry and renewal in the church. As a consequence, even though at heart he was a gentle person, he created conflict and opposition in his relationships with his lay leaders. The tension in his ministry ultimately exhausted him emotionally and spiritually. And this congregation proved much more difficult than his first pastorate. His wife and children also suffered from the constant pressure.
David also struggled to build a new pastoral team. One of his earliest decisions was to release the three men who had served the previous pastor as associates. He met with them shortly after he took office and informed them that they needed to begin immediately seeking other appointments. However, he would not fire them but would give them time to find a new position. Although one found a position in the first year, the other two hung on for three years until they were able to move. During this time they found it very hard to work enthusiastically for David. And building teamwork in the congregation was nearly impossible.
In the fourth year of his ministry, with his new associates now in place, David planned a fall retreat for prayer and renewal of vision for the ministries of the church. The day before the participants’ planned departure, a severe storm poured heavy rains and snow that made travel to the mountain retreat center extremely precarious. A group of women elders came to David and asked him if they could hold the retreat at the church instead of at the mountain setting. Indignant that these women would be bold enough to question his plan, David’s initial reaction was to reject it. Yet, in listening to his people over the past year, he had sensed that his leadership created more pain than progress, and he personally longed for more peaceful relationships with his elders.
As he debated internally the dilemma of appearing weak versus making a foolish decision to force his people out on a potentially treacherous journey, he could not reach a decision. He saw clearly the danger of forcing his plan, yet he dreaded the thought of weakening his leadership authority. Further, giving in to the women elders seemed a greater weakness than conceding to the men. Wracked by his fears and indecision, he turned to seek direction from the Lord. As he prayed, the Holy Spirit urged him to trust God and to trust his people. He was reminded of the Scripture—he who seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. He decided to concede to the request of these women.
The impact of his decision to accept the counsel of his women elders was profound. First, the men and women expressed their gratitude and renewed excitement about the retreat. Then, through prayer, worship, and seeking direction from God, pastors and elders for the first time began to listen carefully to one another. At the end of the retreat, pastors and elders felt a new sense of trust for one another and a readiness to move forward together in ministry.
To his amazement, David found that his concession to the women elders had actually strengthened his leadership. After the retreat, all the elders seemed more committed to him and to his vision. These reactions forced him to struggle inwardly with his philosophy of leadership. How much should he listen? When is compromise more important than clarity of direction? How is God leading, and why and how will people follow? Out of this experience he resolved to alter his leadership so that he listened more to his elders and associates and worked with them to construct a unified vision and direction of ministry.
Power as Control
Control is the basis of power. People who seek to control their circumstances, their jobs, their relationships with others, and their effectiveness in their work are all seeking power. Pastor David, like most people, did not like to think of himself as engaged in power relationships with others. We, like him, prefer to reflect on and describe our activities as motivated by an interest in quality, the desire to assure that things will be done well, to protect those who are unable to protect themselves, or to fulfill our responsibilities. Such activities are not understood as being power-seeking or power-exercising activities. Yet, as Pastor David illustrated well, such actions at their core are intended to control the outcomes of an event in accord with the interests of the person retaining control.
Marguerite Shuster, focusing on the human psyche and power as a dimension of personal identity and action, defines power as “the ability to produce intended effects in the world” (1987, 156–57). As soon as a child is old enough to understand that communication produces intended effects, the child will seek power in his or her relationships. Shuster suggests that a person’s existence becomes linked to the kinds of things that one produces. Some find significance in work, others in the multiplicity of relationships, and still others in wealth. A person who does not find his or her life leading to at least one significant end feels impotent and even hopeless. Shuster also suggests that Pastor David and all the rest of us find our meaning and existence linked in a large degree to our sense of power to exert our wills in our world.
Richard Adams takes a social and economic approach to power (1975, 9–20). He contends that people have power to the extent that they control elements of the environment, material or immaterial, sought by others. Adams argues that power differences are an inherent characteristic of all social relationships. For example, in the opening case study, Pastor David controlled the jobs of his three associates; he controlled the location, the content, and the schedule of the retreat that he required his men and women elders to attend; and he controlled the decision process and outcomes for his elders and staff.
Control of the environment occurs in all ministry activities. A church or mission employer controls the amount and kind of work and the compensation that an employee is given for his or her labor; the Bible “translator” controls the choice of text, the exegesis of meaning, and the compensation for a national-language “helper” working on a Bible translation. In each of these relationships, one person controls concrete aspects of the environment that are valued by others. Adams suggests that “power transactions” are those reciprocal exchanges between persons of unequal power that result in each obtaining some measure of self-interest.
Both Adams and Shuster help us to understand that power has significant implications for one’s identity as a person and for one’s interest as one engages in social relationships. Pastor David was terribly anxious that a concession to the women in his church would ruin his reputation as a leader and destroy his ministry. Our natural inclination is to seek power to assure that we have meaning and significance in our lives. Further, our personal interests motivate us to engage in reciprocal exchanges with others that satisfy our mutual interests and our need to control events to achieve desired ends.
Power Exchanges and Will
If Adams is right and all social relationships have embedded within them power distinctions, then the normal course of social life results in numerous power exchanges. A power exchange occurs when someone who controls something of importance to another uses that control to obtain compliance or conformity of the other to his or her will. For example, Pastor David used his power to fire the three associates of the former pastor, while giving them time to find other positions. Often these exchanges are so routine that people do not recognize the implicit issues of control. For example, a pastor tells the music leader the topic of his sermon and assumes that the music leader will select songs that support the topic. The music leader tells the worship team and the organist/pianist what music will be sung and played in the service on the next Sunday and expects them to be prepared to perform as instructed. In each of these relationships, one person controls some aspect of the environment that is of significance to the others. Although the musicians control their skills and performance, the pastor decides what content and even perhaps which selections will be performed. If the music leader rejects the pastor’s guidance, the pastor may withdraw support for the music leader and act to remove that person from the worship team. And so it is with each of the other relationships. The structuring of power relationships as Adams describes them is a normal part of the social structure of society. We can hardly avoid these power differentials, nor should we try to do so. They are an essential part of how we work together in society.
While Adams is correct in his assessment of the inherent material basis of power relationships, Shuster helps us to understand that our exercise of power in these relationships ultimately focuses on an aspect of our inner person, our will (1987, 94–95). All people bring will to bear on their relationships with one another. Our will emerges from inner motives, often from our personal need to seek power or to avoid impotence. The case study of Pastor David reveals a man fearful that he will lose his power to lead.
Shuster suggests that evil is a result of “disruptions of structure and/ or will—the Devil spoiling what God has made” (1987, 140). These disruptions lead people to distort the structures of human relationship and exercise their personal will in the pursuit of power. Perversion of the structures of relationship most often comes from our obsession to achieve a particular good, such as a biblically sound church. In view of that good, we may construct false paths (keeping control in our hands) to achieve the desired end and make our way the absolute and only way to that end. As we saw clearly in the case study of Pastor David, when we accept the deception of sin and pursue a good in the wrong way, the end is misery both for us and for the people we seek to serve. The disruptions of will flow from our choices of lesser goods (e.g., my vision for ministry instead of obedience to God), rigid adherence to our worldview, and blindness to and rejection of others.
Each of these distortions—perversion of structure, false paths, lesser goods, rigidity—leads us into destructive patterns of behavior and relationship. When our will is thwarted, as in the case of Pastor David, we seek to punish others and reassert our control. In our arrogance, we limit options to those we know and opt for choices we believe are secure, rather than take the risks that obedience to God demands.
What Is Power-Giving Leadership?
Following Shuster’s understanding, I will first argue that we must put Jesus “in the place of power as a proper source of healing and will” (1987, 209, emphasis mine). We must understand that power cannot be the source of our meaning and significance if we are to be the people of God and leaders who follow Christ. Shuster suggests that “giving fallen humanity power only magnifies their potential for wickedness” (1987, 201). Human structures become tyrannical, human will becomes self-serving, and the quest for power leads people to all kinds of temptation and evil.
To restore our human psyche and relationships to the will and purpose of God, Jesus must become the center of who we are and replace our quest for power. Only as we are motivated by the Holy Spirit and through the living Word of God can we relate to one another within the structures of human society to accomplish the purpose of God. Yet Shuster notes that it is impossible for us alone to make the radical changes that would have the Word replace the quest for power in our lives (1987, 202). The only possible way that this can occur is through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastor David found this grace as he prayed for direction from the Holy Spirit in his difficult decision to yield. It is precisely this grace and focus on the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit and the transforming power of Jesus, the Living Word, that enables us to shift from power-seeking to power-giving leadership.
Walter Wright identifies the second essential principle: power-giving leadership is in its essence relational, rather than positional (2000, 2, emphasis mine). Instead of focusing on authority and responsibility, the Christian leader works to build relationships that influence others to follow Christ. Jesus demonstrated such leadership, investing his life in a few unlikely disciples, challenging them with his vision of the kingdom of God, and thereby transforming their Jewish world and culture. Jesus became their friend and mentor; he visited their workplaces and families; he invited them to join him in proclaiming good news and healing to the broken. The fruit of the Spirit in his life modeled service to others and values that challenged the cultural establishment with its power-seeking leadership.
The centrality of relationship means that people are more important than authority and control. This then affects the kind of exchanges that take place between leaders and followers. In the typical power exchange, the leader exercises control in such a way that the will of the leader is done, often at significant cost to the follower. One of my colleagues tells the story of how his mission leader demanded that he do exactly what the leader instructed and that he do it without question, even at the cost of his personal integrity. In this pattern, the follower is servant, and the leader is served. Wright suggests that relational leadership reverses this exchange, and the leader is servant, seeking the “growth and nurture of the followers” (2000, 13). Instead of powering outcomes, the relational leader builds trust and influences followers through integrity of character and depth of relationship. Pastor David discovered, to his astonishment, that his decision to yield to the women elders transformed his relationships with the men and women elders of his church and greatly enhanced his leadership among them.
In the pages that follow I present several essential practices for mission and church leaders that place Jesus in the position of power and give relationship priority over authority and control. Contextual leadership is premised on the acceptance and empowerment of others. To achieve contextual leadership, the missionary, who so often controls resources and knowledge, must intentionally surrender control and trust Jesus to accomplish his purpose in those he has called to ministry. When we obey his command to love first, relationship takes priority over control, and contextual leadership becomes possible.
Paul, Philemon, and Power-Giving Leadership
The letter of Paul to Philemon in the New Testament provides one of the few fully developed case studies of a relationship between a leader and one of his followers in the New Testament. This relationship is also a cross-cultural relationship. Paul, as we know, was a very devout Jew, and early in his career he rejected anything associated with the Gentiles. After his dramatic conversion documented in the book of Acts, Paul became an advocate for Gentiles and a zealous missionary proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ to urban Greeks.
From the text in Philemon, we know that Philemon was a wealthy Greek slaveowner from the city of Colossae in Asia Minor (Col. 4:7–9) and the leader of a church that met in his home. Paul has many good things to say about Philemon. He calls him a “friend and fellow worker” (Philem. 1). He commends him for his faith and “love for all of God’s people” (v. 5). Philemon was apparently also a significant leader in his own right in the church community. Paul comments that in his service Philemon “refreshed the hearts of God’s people” (v. 7).
To understand Paul’s leadership, it is important to recognize his current situation and status in life. Paul is a prisoner in Rome, so when he introduces himself as “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” (v. 1) he is speaking both figuratively of his relationship with Christ and literally of his current condition under house arrest in Rome. Paul also calls himself “an old man” (v. 9), and in the story he appeals to Philemon as a younger “partner” (v. 17) in ministry.
The crux and dilemma of this story is that Onesimus is a runaway slave belonging to Philemon. Although it is uncertain how Onesimus and Paul established a relationship, the letter makes clear that this runaway slave has become a deep, personal friend of the apostle. As Paul writes to Philemon, he says that Onesimus “became my son . . . in chains” (v. 10). Paul has deep affection for this man, and from the letter it seems evident that Onesimus has cared compassionately for Paul in his imprisonment and perhaps failing health. However, by the legal standards of Roman society, Paul should return Onesimus to his master, who owns him and has the freedom to punish him in whatever way he deems appropriate. For Paul this creates both social and spiritual dilemmas.
The spiritual dilemma seems more critical to Paul. He can deal with the social problem by reminding Philemon of his significant debt to Paul, but the spiritual issue cannot be resolved so easily. The fact is that two brothers in the Lord, Philemon the master and Onesimus the slave, both apparently converts of the apostle, are not reconciled with each other. Further, Paul has deep friendships with both men. In his grief at this discovery, Paul realizes that he cannot rest until he has taken steps to bring about their reconciliation.
The power of this letter lies in Paul’s candid description of his emotions and his struggle with his own selfish desires. He openly declares, “I appeal to you for my son Onesimus,” who was formerly “useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me” (vv. 10–11). Table 8.1 summarizes Paul’s words as he reflects on the choices that are open to him. In one set of options, he talks about how he could use the power available to him to get what he wants. For example, Paul says, “I could be bold and order” (v. 8). He goes on to say, “I would have liked to keep him . . . so that he could take your place in helping me” (v. 13), and concludes, “He is very dear to me” (v. 16). In all of these expressions, Paul is identifying his own emotional attachment to Onesimus and the sense of obligation that he feels Philemon has toward him. He recognizes that he has the power just to tell Philemon to forget it and forgive Onesimus and leave him with Paul.
Table 8.1 Paul’s Power-Seeking or Power-Giving Options
Power-Seeking Option Power-Giving Option
• I could order, v. 8 • Your consent, v. 14
• I want to keep him . . . so he can help in your place, v. 13 • Separated that you might have him back for good, v. 15
• He is very dear to me, v. 16 • Dearer as a fellowman and brother, v. 16
But Paul does not follow through with his own selfish motivations. Instead he takes the power-giving as opposed to the power-seeking option. He states, “I did not want to do anything without your consent” (v. 14), and he notes that he would prefer Philemon to act spontaneously and not out of coercion. As Paul reflects on the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus, he surely must consider the possibility that Philemon will not return Onesimus to him. Onesimus is still a slave, the property of his friend Philemon. In his former service he was apparently a useless slave, behaving badly, and then running away. As Paul reflects on this, he concludes that possibly Onesimus should return to Philemon and make good all those bad years in which Philemon has endured the useless servant. At the same time Paul emphasizes that Onesimus is, at this point, better than a slave; he is a dear brother in Christ. And so he encourages Philemon to receive this transformed slave as someone who has become dearer, “both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord” (v. 16).
A dramatic moment in this text occurs in verse 8, when Paul engages in what Dallas Willard (1998) calls the “ask, seek, and knock.” Although Paul could make some assumptions about how Philemon might respond, and he could try to argue with Philemon about those possible responses, he instead asks Philemon to extend grace. Paul begins by pleading, “I appeal to you on the basis of love” (v. 8 NIV), love for “an old man” and “also a prisoner of Christ Jesus” (v. 9). He then moves directly to the main question of his letter: “I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains” (v. 10).
I confess that the language that Paul uses here has often irritated me, even to the point of thinking Paul was being petty and almost coercive in his relationship with Philemon. Even though he states that he does not want to do anything without Philemon’s consent, he uses language that places tremendous emotional pressure on Phi-lemon to return Onesimus—“you owe me your very self” (v. 18), or “confident of your obedience,” or “knowing that you will do even more than I ask” (v. 21). Paul is reminding Philemon of some deep obligations to Paul, and I have interpreted Paul’s words as leverage to get Onesimus back.
But after reflecting on this text again, I am inclined to be a bit more gracious in my judgment of Paul’s action. In spite of Paul’s words, one key fact cannot be denied. Paul sent Onesimus back. This was a very painful act for him, and yet he did it. His pain is evident in his words, such as “you owe me” (v. 19) or “I do wish . . . some benefit” (v. 20). The critical fact of this letter is that Paul released his control over Onesimus. He had control, he could have kept control, but he gave it up.
In those days of travel on foot and by ship, the separation that Paul endured because of this decision was not a trivial matter. The journey for Onesimus from Rome to Colossae in Asia Minor involved no less than two or more months’ journey on land and sea. Under these circumstances, Paul might never see Onesimus again. To release Onesimus to go to Philemon was, in fact, to say, “I might never see him again.”
Power-Seeking versus Power-Giving Leadership
Paul’s actions in this letter illustrate, in a profound way, the difference between power-seeking and power-giving leadership. Christopher Flanders (personal communication, 2006) notes:
The very existence of the letter tells us that (a) it was a serious matter for Paul, and (b) there was a good chance that Paul’s requests might go unheeded. Otherwise, the letter makes no sense if it was simply a “slam dunk” kind of request. This highlights the difficult and challenging nature of power-giving leadership, even for an apostle of Christ such as Paul.
Leadership always occurs within a context of pressures and expectations, which in this case included a letter read in public; Paul’s intended visit; the theological rationale for Onesimus’s return; the precedence of Philemon’s character.
We must consider other possible outcomes. Wasn’t Paul within his “rights” to keep Onesimus? How could Paul have rationalized such a move? What would be the implications of doing such?
The power-seeking leader is preoccupied with control. The power-seeking leader uses control to assure the “best” outcome and releases control over resources only when he or she is certain of the intended outcome. If Paul had exercised power-seeking leadership, he would have kept his control over Onesimus, a significant resource person to both Paul and Philemon. For Paul that benefit included service and companionship. For Philemon that benefit included the return of a lost investment, the resumption of service as a slave, and/or punishment of a runaway to protect his reputation as a man of wealth and standing in the community. Each man certainly struggled with internal desires to secure his investments in this young man.
The power-seeking leader uses position and authority to exert mastery over others. In this situation, Paul used a letter to engage in a power exchange with Philemon. He had Onesimus in his custody, and he could have easily written a different letter that would have asserted Philemon’s obligations to him and induced Philemon to release Onesimus to Paul without ever letting Onesimus out of his sight. Paul understood that if he took that tactic, it would be a false path to acquire something that he desired. He would pervert the relationship that God had given him with Philemon, using his position as the senior brother in Christ to advance his own selfish interest. In doing this, Paul would have, in fact, undermined Philemon’s faith and the work of the grace of God in their relationship together.
By returning Onesimus to Philemon, Paul refused to retain the immediate benefit of Onesimus’s company and service in hopes of the greater benefit of reconciliation between a master and a slave. Paul understood that reconciliation could not happen until Philemon and Onesimus met face-to-face. Philemon and Onesimus must confront each other, and Onesimus must ask for forgiveness for his sins against his master, Philemon. Without this personal encounter, any form of reconciliation would be incomplete.
Empowering for the Mission of God
How does this case study contribute to the focus of this book, leading cross-culturally? To reflect again on the definition, leading cross-culturally is inspiring people who come from two or more cultural traditions to participate with you in building a community of trust, and then to follow you and be empowered by you to achieve a compelling vision of faith. The case study of Paul and Philemon focuses on two fundamental issues of our definition: building a community of trust and empowering others to achieve a compelling vision of faith.
Paul chose to follow God’s will in this matter and place reconciliation and restoration of trust between Philemon and Onesimus as the very first priority. By sending Onesimus back, Paul surrendered control over their relationship to the power of God and to the will of each man to be reconciled to each other. Through this significant act, Paul granted both Philemon and Onesimus true freedom.
Flanders suggests that power-giving leadership can occur only with the willing participation of others in the relational equation (personal communication, 2006). The story makes it clear that Onesimus sought freedom and risked running away to achieve it. His return to Philemon placed everything he had sought in jeopardy. If Paul had forced Onesimus to return, that would have been another form of power seeking. The text infers that Onesimus willingly returned, reflecting his new identity in Christ and a desire for reconciliation. Paul sought to persuade Philemon to also become a willing partner in this reconciliation. Flanders notes, “Giving Philemon the freedom to choose is also a vision to grow (‘I know you’ll do even more than I ask’). Part of empowering leadership is to remind people of who they are and the way their (potential) actions are consistent with their identity in the Lord” (personal communication, 2006). Paul’s words to Philemon emphasize his duty in the Lord to both Onesimus and to Paul, and by fulfilling this duty freely, Philemon will grow in his own power-giving leadership.
But perhaps even more important, Paul is always focused on the mission of God. His desire is that the gospel of Jesus Christ be proclaimed, and that believers be faithful in their witness to Christ by word and deed. He reminds Philemon at the beginning of the letter, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ” (Philem. 6 NIV). Tom Wright highlights Paul’s focus on partnership, correctly noting that fellowship has less to do with warm feelings and personal affection and more to do with coordinated activity in shared life together (2004, 198). Wright explains that he is “praying the partnership which he and Philemon share in the gospel will be productive, will have the effect it’s meant to” (2004, 200). Paul’s passion is larger than his relationship with both men; he desires the personal reconciliation in Christ that embodies the very nature of the gospel.
Flanders suggests that the story is about “meaning making,” Paul framing these events into divinely inspired, redemptive relationships and identities (personal communication, 2006). To pick up the themes of chapters 5 and 6, Paul is teaching Philemon and Onesimus what it means to live out covenant community in Christ. Flanders cites Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, who argue that “the name ‘Onesimus’” is equivalent to the Greek term for “‘bad,’ ‘wicked,’ ‘shameful,’ ‘painful,’” and that this letter creates a new identity for him, a slave who has been redeemed, set free, and empowered to willingly return to his former master and submit to his authority and wishes (Barth and Blanke 2000, 339). Further, Flanders notes, the metaphors that Paul uses for himself—“mother, friend, partner, prisoner, old man—all explicitly de-emphasize structural authority and power.” Flanders concludes, “This is not necessary when leaders rely on structural power. Those given to raw use of power do not have to justify or explain their power moves. To give power assumes that leaders provide other rationale, explanation, and motivation that frame the issues and requests. This Paul does masterfully throughout the letter” (personal communication, 2006).
Through this story Paul illustrates the attitudes essential for power-giving leaders. When leaders follow the command of the Lord to love one another and to esteem others better than themselves, that obedience changes the nature of all human social interactions, including those of leadership. We have no assurance in this or any other text that Onesimus was, in fact, able to return to Paul. The story is incomplete. We don’t know if Philemon and Onesimus were reconciled to each other. All of that is left in the hands of God. We do know that Paul chose to relinquish the power he had in order to seek the reconciliation of these two men and offer a more compelling witness of the transforming power of the gospel to everyone who knew them. This is power-giving leadership.
In the chapters that follow we will explore pathways to empower others to take up the burden and responsibilities of leadership. Chapter 9 focuses on how to mentor broken young people like Onesimus and take the essential steps to empower and release them for ministry. Chapter 10 examines the question of how one can give away power and still produce the necessary and intended results of ministry. Chapter 11 asks how leaders can effectively exercise power, which they must do, and yet avoid the traps of power-seeking leadership. [Sherwood G Lingenfelter (2019). (p. 119). Leading Cross-Culturally (Wordsearch Version): Covenant Relationships for Effective Christian Leadership. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
9
Empowering and Mentoring
Mentoring from Weakness: A Case Study
A few years ago the director of a European mission gave a young missionary named Gerald the responsibility of leading several community churches on a Pacific island. The mission had worked in these islands for thirty years, and a series of earlier missionaries had planted churches, translated the Bible into the vernacular, and established regular programs of worship, Sunday school, adult Bible studies, and youth ministry. Gerald and his wife had come to the islands to direct the youth ministries and had done that successfully for four years. When his senior missionary colleague left on extended furlough, the supervision of the local mission and its diverse ministries fell to Gerald, including preaching each Sunday and training national leaders to continue the work.
Gerald found the weekly preaching particularly difficult, for he was still struggling to learn the local language and was decidedly less gifted in language than the colleague who had preceded him in this ministry. As he pondered how best to minister to these local churches, he prayed and asked God to lead him to men who could assist him in the ministry of preaching. Stepping out in faith, he asked a few of the local men in these congregations for assistance.
Over the next year, Gerald developed relationships with several men as they served as his interpreters. One man, Joshua, had an alcohol problem and was struggling in Christ to be free. Gerald and Joshua agreed to work together, each knowing they could not go on without the other. They agreed to call each other “fifty-fifty,” knowing that neither could do the work alone. Gerald would prepare his weekly sermon in English and then meet with Joshua on Saturday to review the sermon. Together they discussed the meaning and implications of each aspect of the message. Through such conversations, Gerald and Joshua prepared their messages for Sunday morning worship services.
As these two men worked together over the next three years, Joshua gained increasing skill in understanding the text and translating the messages into the local language. As they discussed the Scriptures, they found illustrations to apply each text to the life of people in the island congregations. One day Gerald asked Joshua if it was necessary for him to give the message in English. He suggested that they continue to prepare the text together, develop illustrations, and have an appropriate outline and application for the sermon, but that Joshua preach the message without an obvious missionary presence. Joshua agreed but was quite nervous about preaching alone.
When Sunday morning came, they prayed together for the power of the Spirit to guide Joshua in delivering God’s Word. With renewed courage, Joshua delivered his first solo sermon so effectively that the people in the congregation expressed their joy and appreciation. From that time on, Gerald assisted Joshua and others in these local congregations to prepare Sunday messages, and gradually he stepped aside as the Holy Spirit led them to be the “up-front” leaders in the worship services. By the time that Gerald left for furlough three years later, Joshua was witnessing to his family, ordering Christian books, and studying more and more of the Bible.
What Gerald had seen as a weakness, his lack of language fluency to preach, had actually become a strength. When his colleague had left the church four years earlier, there were no local men capable of preaching in his absence. When Gerald left at the end of the four years of his leadership, Joshua had become a faithful and effective leader and preacher, and four other local men were equipped to effectively study, teach, and preach the Word of God.
Empowering the Impotent
The focus of power-giving leadership is to follow Christ and, in so doing, to lead others to follow Christ. In the patterns of “normal” cultural life, our power and skills may produce leaders but probably won’t produce followers of Christ. People will certainly imitate us, and if we effectively demonstrate our skills and act to produce socially desired outcomes, they will do the same. The effect, however, is disastrous for the kingdom of God. The history of the church is littered with the tragic stories of powerful leaders who not only failed to bring about the kingdom by force but caused great damage to the church.
In the case study above, Gerald illustrates how to lead out of a position of weakness. Assessing clearly his own giftedness, he recognized that he was unable to carry on the kind of ministry that had been the pattern of his predecessors. At the same time, he also understood the importance of leading these island people to follow Christ. Although he was anxious about his ability to do so, in his weakness he succeeded in training and empowering local church leaders to conduct the ministries of the church.
One cannot raise and empower leaders without creating opportunities for them to lead. Alan Weaver in his study of church leaders in Hungary noted that every leader who mobilized others did so by creating opportunities for them to lead within their congregations (2004, 149–53). These men understood that unless they created roles and new ministry opportunities, their training of leaders to lead was flawed at the outset. When Gerald surveyed his congregation to discern to whom God might be speaking and then invited several to join him in this venture of the weekly preaching ministry, he created new ministry opportunities.
One obstacle that people often cite in arguing not to empower others is that these others lack qualification. Some use this argument as an excuse for retaining control and refusing to turn ministries over to others. In fact, very few people are qualified in the beginning for service in the kingdom of God. Gerald discerned correctly that the most important qualification was the calling of Christ in the life of a person. In the case study of Gerald and Joshua, previous missionaries had rejected Joshua as unqualified. Joshua had a problem with alcohol, a common problem in these islands that disqualifies many people from serving in ministry. However, Gerald saw that Joshua did not want to be the prisoner of alcohol. As they worked together, God gave Joshua victory over the alcohol abuse, and Joshua became an effective preacher and leader in his local congregation.
What are the essential qualifications for the work of ministry? Every kind of ministry requires certain mental and technical skills. However, we often give these skills higher priority than they deserve. The most important qualifications involve one’s commitment to Christ, their intention to continue growing in spiritual life and character, and the willingness to use the gifts that God has given to the person, gifts that can be nurtured for the particular ministry in mind. When God calls a person and provides the appropriate giftedness, that person may achieve the essential skills through mentoring and training.
One of the most important principles of empowerment is to release people to do the work, always within a context of discipling them, and at the same time to resist the temptation to intervene to assure the correct results. Gerald illustrates this principle in his equipping and mentoring of Joshua. In the beginning they prepared the message together; then Gerald preached and Joshua translated. As Joshua’s study and preaching skills improved, Gerald observed that Joshua, although he lacked confidence, was able to prepare and preach effectively without him. When that day came, he released him to study, prepare messages, and set his own course, but he did not withdraw his support as mentor.
The most important part of empowering new leaders is to support them in the early stages when they need help and to release them as soon as they can walk in the ministry by themselves. Consider the analogy of a toddler learning to walk: as soon as the child takes steps alone, we encourage the child to keep going. Some people are very cautious about releasing young leaders; this is a serious mistake. To release is not to abandon but to let the young leader learn to walk. It is vitally important that we allow young leaders to take halting steps, allow them to stumble, even fall, and then, as mentors, encourage them to get up and try again. We can always support them and help lift them up after they have fallen. But they will never be successful leaders unless we release them to play the game, to do the work for which we have equipped them.
Mentoring Missional Leaders
The case study of Gerald and Joshua shows that Joshua became effective because Gerald carefully mentored him over an extended period before releasing him to ministry. This mentoring required Gerald to spend significant personal time with Joshua. Mentoring involves much more than just training people to preach sermons or to translate Scripture or to perform some other task. Mentoring engages the mentor and the disciples in an ongoing personal relationship that helps each of them to grow deeper in his or her walk with Christ.
The mentor must see his or her role as servant of Christ, participating in the life of the new leader in a way that strengthens and builds that person up as a follower of Christ. This requires the mentor to ask questions about any alcohol problem, about personal disciplines in walking with Christ, about sexual behavior, and about the areas in which the disciple may be struggling. At the same time, the mentor must be a source of encouragement, never of condemnation. Mentors who condemn and judge their followers will never be effective in raising them up as leaders.
A mentor who is discipling the young woman or man to be a leader in a community must understand that listening, learning, and empathizing is the first step, but the second is speaking truth in love. The mentor must help the younger leader in the same way that Christ helped his disciples. Jesus did not hesitate to confront Peter when his values were contrary to the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus did not hesitate to confront James and John about their ambitions to be first. It is essential that a mentor confront the disciple by speaking truth and helping that person grow in her or his walk with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Mentoring for mission is the most important aspect of this process, but unfortunately we too often focus on programs rather than mission. The case study of Gerald and Joshua illustrates a program-focused ministry—Gerald inherited worship, Sunday school, adult Bible studies, and youth ministry programs, and the responsibility to keep them going. His mentor and mission director expected Gerald to nurture and grow a form of church framed in the Reformation that emphasizes preaching on Sunday as the method of making disciples of the people of God. When Gerald had completely transferred preaching responsibility to these local island leaders, he had achieved a very important transition in this ministry, equipping local leaders to teach and preach. But Joshua and these other men had not yet acquired a vision for mobilizing their people for the mission of God.
From the perspectives developed in this book, Gerald’s program-focused mission reproduced churches and people who proclaimed what Darrell Guder calls a “benefits salvation” gospel (2000, 120), a reduction of the gospel and the church to what they can do for their members. Gerald and his mission leaders focused on building local worshiping communities, yet these communities lacked a sense of vision and mission within and beyond the island community. Although Gerald grasped the basic principles of reproducing leaders, these leaders became effective teaching and worship leaders for an expatriate model church. We do not see in the case study that Gerald encouraged Joshua to mentor others to teach and preach, as he had been mentored. Without a compelling vision to reproduce leaders on mission, Joshua did not replicate Gerald’s mentoring, and the island churches continued the program-focused pattern of the Reformation churches of Gerald’s home community.
Mentoring to Manage or to Lead?
The challenge of equipping new leaders is to decide whether we will mentor them or manage them. When we focus on managing, we are intent on controlling the ministry to be sure that things happen in the way we want them to happen. Robert Banks and Bernice Ledbetter note that managing is a process whereby we seek to bring consistency to our work and processes (2004, 18). Managing new leaders then means that we keep them focused on the results that we desire, we control the resources that we give them so that they do things the way we want them to, and we generally channel their work toward the specific goals that we have in mind. The result of this kind of mentoring is that we produce not leaders but rather people who serve us, working to achieve the objectives that we have defined for our purposes.
Management is essential to all complex organizations, and I do not wish to suggest that management itself is in any way wrong. However, mentoring for management is not mentoring for leadership. If we in fact want to produce leaders who can work in multicultural contexts and bring teams together to focus on the work of the kingdom of God, then we must mentor them to be leaders and not simply the people who will implement our plans.
Again in the case study of Gerald and Joshua, we find Gerald’s focus on managing the operations of the mission and the church. Faithful to his training, Gerald understood his work as a missionary to be managing the services of the local church, supervising the upkeep of the mission and church property, overseeing the programs for youth and children, and training local leaders to do the same. Gerald served faithfully and effectively to carry out this agenda, and he did it well. Joshua learned from Gerald how to do the same things—but this is not a compelling vision and does not fulfill what we understand to be the mission of God.
Mentors Release Control
If we aspire to develop new leaders, then we need a different focus—a focus on the mission of God and following Jesus to make disciples of the nations. This is an immense vision and defies mere management strategies. Banks and Ledbetter suggest that “leadership activity is aligning people” by translating vision and values “into understandable and attainable acts” (2004, 18). Working from this perspective, we see that the essence of leading is to help people align their gifts and energies for mission, and then, once they understand the action required, to release them to do the work.
Jesus illustrates this focus and process. When he sent out the Twelve, “he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:1–2). These twelve men were certainly not qualified to do these things. They brought no special character or gifts for any of these tasks; they were men whom most people would consider insignificant members of the larger society. The only distinction they could claim was that they had been watching and following Jesus.
Jesus did not train these men to conduct synagogue services or to maintain the routines of the synagogue. His mission was to the multitudes of harassed and helpless that he encountered in the villages and towns. Jesus focused all his energy on the mission of the Father, and he sent his disciples out on the same mission, two by two. He didn’t go with them; he didn’t control them; he didn’t try to make sure they did it “right.” In fact, he insisted that they go with as few resources as possible, “no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt” (Luke 9:3). We learn that they followed his instructions and imitated his practice, and their ministry gave them, and Jesus, much joy and satisfaction.
We might ask, was Jesus leading or managing his disciples? I suggest that Jesus was leading them, defining the vision of the kingdom of God that was before them, empowering them to make decisions on their own, and then motivating and inspiring them to follow his lead.
Reflecting on the case study of Gerald and Joshua, we realize that although Gerald himself was charged to manage the established ministries of his mission, he understood and embraced the pattern Jesus employed to make disciples. Mentoring out of a position of equality— he and Joshua were “fifty-fifty”—and even weakness, Gerald over time equipped Joshua so that he no longer needed Gerald to hold him up. By the time Gerald had completed his missionary term, he had released and empowered Joshua to carry on the preaching ministry of these congregations. However, Gerald’s missionary successors liked preaching, took back the preaching role, and reduced Joshua and others to interpreters once again.
For Gerald, releasing these young men was an act of faith and trust. He understood the key principle that the work and the outcome of that work are God’s and not the mentor’s. Gerald released the responsibility of these congregations to others and entrusted them to carry on this ministry without his guiding presence.
We may conclude then that a mentor who has the goal of multiplying leaders must not focus on managing, unless the goal is to produce managers who can help a leader accomplish the leader’s purpose. A mentor who wants to equip leaders must focus on equipping these leaders to do the work and then release control. Releasing control requires our sacrificing the right to ensure the intended outcome of a ministry. The mentor must take the risk of letting go and trusting that God will accomplish the purpose.
The Risk of Releasing Control
A brief review of mission history shows that most mission agencies and missionaries have a great deal of difficulty releasing control. As Tom Steffen has noted in his classic study Passing the Baton: Church Planting That Empowers (1997), most mission agencies do not have a plan to release control and leave. Steffen argues that this is a significant flaw in mission strategy and ultimately keeps the people whom they have mentored from carrying on the ministry and being a self-sustaining, self-supporting church.
Missionaries who give their lives to career mission service often understand their role to mean that they will be in control until they leave their ministry. This is tragically the wrong perspective on the empowering of God’s people and the expansion of the work of the kingdom of God. Again Weaver’s study (2004) in Hungary is a wonderful case in point. The Hungarian leaders who were effective in empowering others continually multiplied their ministries and released them to the people they had trained. Weaver notes that these pastors gave significant time and investment to the biblical training of these men and women and provided personal support to help them be effective in their ministries. They did not abandon them, but they released them to do the work, foregoing control in order to encourage the expansion of ministry and to achieve a vision focused on the mission of God in their city.
The most essential act in empowering others to achieve a compelling vision of faith is that of releasing control. For many of us, this is the most difficult act of will. When we release control, we entrust others to act in ways that may not fit with our idea of how they should act. We take the risk that whatever task or responsibility we have released will not be done in accord with our design, and in the worst case, we are willing to accept failure on the part of others with all its consequences. By releasing control, we are saying that we will relinquish our right to assure that the desired effects occur, and we do so in faith that God, working through people, will accomplish the divine purpose. That is, we decide to trust both the Holy Spirit and the people God has called and is using.
The risk of letting go is great. Some may judge us to be inept because we have not controlled outcomes that seem essential to process and progress. We ourselves will feel anxiety and stress because the things that we believe are important may not happen in the way that we desire. The disciplines we think are essential to success may not be followed. The outcomes may be disastrous for the group and for the individuals involved.
Releasing control then is a significant act of faith and trust, both in God and in the person(s) released. The leader who decides to relinquish power is placing trust in the empowered person and in God that the power given will be used to accomplish God’s purpose. This is why power giving is an act of faith and grace; the outcome rests in the power and grace of God. Only by faith in the power of God and in the power of the living Word can we let go of our desire to control and place the responsibility for outcomes in the hands of others and of God. Jesus’s act of releasing the leadership of the church to the Twelve is the penultimate illustration of this principle. In spite of their failures before and after his resurrection, Jesus trusted them and many others, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to do his work and establish his church. [Sherwood G Lingenfelter (2019). (p. 120). Leading Cross-Culturally (Wordsearch Version): Covenant Relationships for Effective Christian Leadership. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
10
Responsible-To Leadership
What Are Marta’s Responsibilities? A Case Study
Marta was a European missionary working in Indonesia with her international mission organization (IMO) and a local mission affiliate (LMA). Her director assigned her to provide oversight for the literacy and leadership training staff of the local mission, to pay these local workers from IMO funds, and to keep the accounting records for her mission. Marta had three local literacy teachers on her team: Bizu, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
Marta was always frustrated with the way the local mission director supervised his local workers. As the accountant for the IMO, she saw that the local mission director kept no records and provided no accountability to the local workers. She often complained to her IMO director about the sloppiness of local leadership and responsibility. In the local mission culture, monthly support was not related to work; money involved having a position and income to supplement gardens and other jobs. The local mission did not expect its staff to work full time. Work reports were not required, but Marta’s best teacher, Ezra, gave them over the radio regularly. Marta also sent the local director reports of plans and progress, something she started when she took this assignment. Before that nobody had asked or commented about the work or the productivity of the local team.
Bizu gave Marta the most difficulty. She noticed that when Bizu worked with her in the office, minor things just disappeared. After two years of work, he became critical, and the quality of his work deteriorated. One day he said that he was tired of correcting Marta’s mistakes on the literacy lessons she printed for him. When she asked what was wrong, he said there was no problem. However, Bizu lied about his work; he drew his food and travel allowance for a week, but worked only one morning and then went to another island to sell his cash crop. While there, he was caught stealing money by the police.
When the news reached the local church, they suspended him from his teaching position for one year. When the suspension was over and the local mission director did not approach him to resume his work, Bizu announced in a district church meeting that if the mission did not rehire him the entire literacy program would stop. This threat was directed toward his national colleagues. At first the local area director did not want Bizu back, but because Bizu insisted on having regular monthly pay, he was granted a new position as adult literacy and Bible teacher. Marta, in her pain about this man and his lack of responsibility, took the opportunity in another church meeting to recite all of Bizu’s failings to the whole congregation. To her surprise Bizu apologized in a roundabout way, saying he was sorry about the good and bad things he had done. When she asked other people to clarify what he meant, Nehemiah said that Bizu had not acknowledged any of his wrongs.
Marta was deeply frustrated and discouraged about this situation. She felt that she had no authority to do the work assigned her, and she was deeply discouraged about her relationship with the local mission. She did not feel that her director in the IMO supported her when she reported to him the mismanagement of the local leader and staff. Although Ezra and Nehemiah were good workers and a source of encouragement to her, she could not understand why the local director and the church did not fire Bizu. Further, she was deeply hurt when the LMA director told her that she had no authority regarding Bizu’s accountability or work performance. After six years of work in this area, she felt responsible for all these problems; although she faithfully reported to her director and the local director, she could not understand why they failed to act on her reports.
Responsible-For or Responsible-To?
Many years ago I sat with my family in a group counseling session with a psychologist at Liebenzell Mission USA, where we were contributing to candidate orientation for ministry. As the psychologist explored with me and other members of my family our relationships of power with one another, he discerned quickly that my daughter and I were emotionally wrestling over power issues. After engaging both of us with some pointed questions, he turned to me. “Sherwood, do you feel responsible for your daughter?” I had to confess that, indeed, I did feel responsible for her. He then made this statement, which I have never forgotten: “Sherwood, you must be responsible to your daughter, but you cannot be responsible for her. She is responsible for her own actions.”
The core issue here was my emotional attachment and my felt need to assure that my daughter did not do things that would be harmful to her or to the family. Responsible-for thinking and emotions led me to use power and control to assure my teenage daughter’s security and appropriate behavior. This kind of thinking assumes that the other person is unready and inadequate to act responsibly without my intervention. It also assumes that I know best, and that if I keep control, the results that I seek will be secured.
Responsible-to thinking and emotions begin with emotional detachment. I no longer see myself as the agent responsible for the behaviors of my daughter, but rather I see my daughter as the agent, and I, her father, must act responsibly to her as a person who will determine her own thinking, actions, and outcomes. This kind of thinking assumes that the other person is responsible, adequate, and will decide what the best course of action will be to achieve the results desired. It also assumes that I, her father, still have a role to play, granting authority and providing counsel, freedom, and accountability.
I recall an incident from my teenage years that illustrates how my father used emotional detachment and responsible-to leadership in mentoring me. Working alongside my father, I learned as a young teen how to wash and wax automobiles. When I was about fifteen years old, our next-door neighbor invited me to wash and wax her car. I accepted with enthusiasm and worked more than five hours to complete the task. When I was finished, I went to my father and asked him to come and inspect the job. He asked, “Did you do a good job?” I replied, “Yes!” He then said, “Are you satisfied with how it looks?” Again I said, “Yes!” He then said, “That’s all I need to know,” and he refused to accompany me to look at the car. I was angry and disappointed. I wanted him to look and to tell me my work was good. Instead, he taught me that I was the best judge of the quality of my work, and that if I was satisfied with the results, he had nothing more to add. This action shifted the focus of our relationship, so that from this point on he mentored me from a responsible-to, rather than a responsible-for, relationship. Less than a year later, he invited me to preach my first sermon during our Wednesday evening prayer meeting, granting me the authority, providing counsel when I asked, and giving me freedom to prepare and speak as I felt led by the Holy Spirit. After I had presented that message, he affirmed the positive result of my preparation and delivery and invited me to further disciplined study and preaching, which has become a lifelong work of ministry.
Responsible-For and Responsible-To Leadership
Responsible-for leaders demonstrate emotional attachment to their role and results, and they exercise power and control to achieve results and assure quality. In contrast, responsible-to leaders demonstrate emotional detachment from their role and results, and they grant authority, responsibility, and freedom to other people, whom they then counsel and hold accountable to achieve results and quality. Responsible-for leadership cannot relinquish control, since the leader is emotionally attached to both his or her role and to the achievement of results. A responsible-to leader places responsibility for results on the members of the team (which ideally is committed to covenant community) and trusts God for the wisdom to provide the counsel and accountability essential for each member.
In the case study above, Marta has a clear sense of responsibility for the operations and the results of the ministry that she is doing in partnership with a local church and the indigenous mission organization (LMA). That sense of responsibility comes first from her default culture, learned as a child in her family in Europe, and then from the socialization and attachment to the roles assigned to her by the IMO, the LMA, and the members of her team. How she approaches that responsibility is part of her personality and what she has learned about how to play her roles. Her emotions at the time of the story are of deep frustration with her directors and her team and disappointment in herself and her team members. She feels that she is not managing effectively either the operations or the results of her team, and that her directors are not supporting her. Having lapsed into criticism and condemnation of her local colleague Bizu, she also feels that she has failed spiritually.
Marta does not have a leadership role. She is clearly a middle manager, assigned by her mission to manage a project and to provide financial and progress reports in partnership with the local mission and the ministry team selected by the local church. Many Christian workers find themselves in middle-management roles and experience similar frustrations. As managers they must define goals for the project, plan and budget project activities, organize the work to get it done, control spending, and focus on achieving the anticipated results. They have not been given responsibility for defining vision or for motivating and inspiring people to work to fulfill the vision. Like Marta, they often feel unsupported by their leaders, responsible for things they cannot control, and frustrated by the poor performance of others with whom they work.
Marta finds herself in the same emotional situation I experienced years ago in my relationship with my daughter. Marta feels responsible for the funds allocated to the project, for the implementation of a work plan that the IMO asked her to create, and for proper management of funding distributed through the local mission director and the local church. She has found that all these responsibilities are out of her control and has deep anxiety and discouragement about them.
Responsible-For Behaviors
To illustrate the dilemma of middle managers on this topic, I will examine in depth the issue of accountability for funds in the case study of Marta and her ministry partners. Marta disclosed to her IMO supervisor that she felt responsible for what local mission and church leaders did with project funds, and that she had little control over LMA expenses and team performance (table 10.1). Lacking other power, she complained to her IMO supervisor and to the local director about the fact that Bizu and other workers saw the money as pay for the position and not the work, and as a consequence, the work was not done. Angry that Bizu, after he had received project funds, did not do any evident work, she confronted the local director about Bizu’s behavior. Her suspicions about Bizu were confirmed when he was caught stealing in the port town.
Table 10.1 Responsible-For and Responsible-To Behaviors
Marta's Job Responsible-For Responsible-To
1. goals 1. define goals 1. shared vision, goals
2. work plan 2. organize work 2. discern gifts, match work
3. supervision 3. manage employees 3. mentor teammates
4. budget 4. set budget 4. facilitate budget
5. expense report 5. control expenses 5. facilitate reporting
6. results report 6. assure results 6. affirm results
7. liaison IMO/LMA 7. assure LMA quality 7. interpret LMA values
8. meet IMO goals 8. interpret IMO goals
9. report team results
She was also deeply frustrated by the local director. When she complained to him about Bizu, he rebuked her and told her that the local church, not Marta, was responsible for disciplining her coworkers. She noticed how her coworkers took project materials without asking, how they used project time for personal activities, and she reported these things to the local director. Again, he reminded her that project work was part-time and that these men had to provide for their families. This did not relieve Marta of her internal sense of failure.
Marta was very pleased with Ezra, who actively prepared the reports she had requested in the project plan. She reminded the local director that Ezra and Nehemiah were faithful in their work, and Bizu was not. At the same time, she obliquely complained that she and they never received feedback on their reports and did not know if the local mission was satisfied with the progress they had made in their literacy and Bible-teaching work.
Finally, Marta expressed her displeasure that the local director had invited Bizu to rejoin the team after his suspension by the church. In her eyes Bizu was irresponsible and used his relationships in the church to demand a job for which he did little work. She felt that Bizu undermined her ability to manage the project and achieve the outcomes for which she felt responsible to the IMO.
Responsible-To Behaviors
As we reflect on Marta’s feelings and actions, we need to ask Marta the same question the psychologist asked me: “Marta, do you feel responsible for the team and the project?” As we reflect on the data, we realize that Marta could benefit from the same advice I received. “Marta, you must be responsible to your team and directors, but you cannot be responsible for them. They are responsible for their own actions.” How would this change Marta’s thinking and behavior? And would these changes have any impact on the operations and results of her project?
First, Marta must cope with her internal emotional attachment to her role and results and agree that the local mission leader and her team members are responsible for their own choices and actions. Marta is responsible to the local leader and to her team to tell them what IMO leaders expect and desire with regard to budgeting and expense reporting, and she must work with them to create a budget and a process for reporting that they can actually use (table 10.1). Marta is also responsible to her IMO leaders to explain to them what she thinks has actually happened. Given their conflicting cultural values about work and compensation, Marta is not responsible for deciding if they did right or wrong. God is the only one who can judge “right or wrong” as a matter of heart. She may believe that they (the local leaders) did not do what the IMO leaders wanted or expected. If this is the case, she should ask the local director or her team members if her interpretation is true, or if they see it differently. It is very important that Marta understand, inasmuch as they are willing to tell her, how the local director and project workers see and understand their actions.
Marta should employ the “ask, seek, and knock” strategy (Willard 1998) in her relationships with these men. “Here is how I understand what has happened. Please correct me, or help me explain to my IMO supervisors how these funds have been used, and why. I want to support you and will do so if you help me to understand this more clearly.”
If for some reason Marta thinks that this explanation is not satisfactory, she may say: “I will report exactly what you have told me; but you should know that they expect . . . , and what you have done does not meet their expectations. You (local leaders) are responsible for the use of these funds. I will report what you have done and your explanation of that. The IMO leaders will decide if they are satisfied.”
Responsible-to behavior assumes that others are responsible for their own actions. The leader or manager must then act with integrity and love toward others on a team. The first requirement is that one is faithful in one’s actions and responsibilities. The second is that one is faithful to our brothers and sisters in Christ, as participants together in covenant community.
Transforming a Dysfunctional Team
Marta’s situation is unfortunately all too common in cross-cultural ministries. As we reflect on this case study, we realize that nearly everything that could go wrong has. Perhaps the most critical aspect is the absence of a community of trust that shares a common vision and commitment to mission. As Marta describes the situation, the vision that led to the establishment of the team has either been forgotten or was never shared by her local director and village associates. The villagers see the work of the team as a salaried position, gained through the church, that gives them financial benefits. Bizu seems to have no commitment to a vision or the work of the team, and Ezra and Nehemiah do the work, but we see no evidence of mission and purpose.
As a middle manager, Marta can and should be a leader. She is one of the faces of the original vision to this local community, and if she does not do her part to share and carry that vision, it will be lost. We do not know the history of the vision for this team, so we can only conjecture about its loss and recovery. Surely someone in the local church was partner to the original vision that led to the founding of the team. Likewise, the IMO director and the local director have some knowledge of the vision. When vision is lost, teams and projects become dysfunctional management nightmares of the kind that Marta has experienced. Marta is responsible to share the vision that brought her to this place. She is responsible to engage her team members around this vision and invite them into relationships of prayer and discussion that renew the vision for the whole team.
The second area of grave dysfunction on this team is the absence of attention to covenant community. Marta does not trust her directors and the members of her team. Likewise, they do not trust Marta. Although Marta does not have a position of leadership authority that empowers her to convene and engage people in building trust, she does have the responsibility to build trust with her coworkers. However, Marta has defaulted to responsible-for behaviors, focusing her energies on constructing project plans, defining work schedules, protecting the project materials, and producing project reports. Ezra has pleased her, because he has produced the kind of work that helps Marta feel successful as project manager. Nehemiah failed to please Marta in the early months of his work, but she now defines him as a “good worker.” Marta has missed the Lord’s priority for “loving our neighbors” and for “making disciples,” an opportunity open to her in her relationships with Ezra, Nehemiah, and even perhaps with Bizu. Bizu’s negative response to Marta has focused primarily on her concern about things and schedule, which grate against his default culture and personality.
Marta is handicapped in her role as a middle manager, feeling responsible for the good and the bad of the team, yet without authority and empowerment to lead or manage. In this her directors from both the IMO and the local mission have also failed as cross-cultural leaders. Neither has supported Marta in the work of sustaining vision and missional focus in the work of these local teams. Neither has encouraged or supported her in the work of creating a community of trust within their organizations. The agenda of each mission agency seems to lack focus on the essential elements of the mission of God and covenant community. Marta does not have the authority to inspire and empower her team to achieve a compelling vision of faith. As a manager caught between two organizations, she has only her influence as a committed follower of Jesus Christ to move people in this way. Her organizational leaders have failed her in a very significant way.
But Marta also has responsibility here. She is responsible to her directors to tell them that the vision has been lost in the local community, and that she needs their leadership to renew the vision and mobilize the local church and local mission staff to build the trust essential to be a missional community. Marta can play a key spiritual role in this very difficult and challenging situation; she can pray diligently for her leaders, asking God to renew their vision, and she can invite her team members to pray with her about the issues of vision and community. She can also quietly work with those in her sphere of relationships to share the vision God gave her to come to this place, and to invest her time, resources, and energy to build trust among her team members, their families, and the local church community. If Marta and these mission leaders would commit to building covenant community teamwork, they together would see profoundly improved results from this ministry.
Resisting the Urge to Give “Expert” Help
Because we are by nature power seekers, it is almost impossible for us to resist giving good advice to people whom we have empowered for ministry, especially when we believe it will make the work more effective and improve results. I frequently fall into this trap, and so did Marta. She saw her team and the local director making mistakes, she felt responsible for them, and she intervened by correcting their mistakes and offering unsolicited advice and direction, which she knew would make things work better. As we might expect, her local director and team members felt that Marta’s advice was condemnation. When we intervene in this way, more often than not we alienate the very person we are trying to help. We push our good things on those we think need them, in hope of producing our intended effect in the world, using our power to bring about the things that will give us significance. Power-giving leadership resists the urge to do what Dallas Willard calls “condemnation engineering” (1998, 228).
How can we, the educated, the experienced, avoid this unfortunate liability of imposing our expertise to improve the work of others? First, we must learn the importance of waiting until we are asked, or, seeing a teammate in difficulty, we ask permission to offer help. Second, in giving advice we must learn to suggest options—two or three ways of solving a problem—so that those we wish to help can choose a solution rather than rely on our “correct” answer. And when we are asked, we must resist the temptation of doing the work for them or of showing them how by our expert performance. Our expert performance will only discourage the weak and dismay the novice. Our virtuosity must inspire but never demoralize. Thus if you are a great teacher, you should teach only in contexts where you are not displacing some lesser teacher. If I am a great organizer, I should limit my organizing to those circumstances where it is my responsibility alone to organize; and I should empower others in their sphere of responsibility. Is this absurd? Should we not use our gifts for the kingdom of God? Of course. But our primary role should be to encourage, not to dominate. Encouragement is a spiritual gift. Domination is not.
The key lies in building relationships that lead to trust, influence, and encouragement for the work and purpose of God. If our desire is to truly foster followers of Christ, then we must submit our concern for results to the Lord and surrender our powers of teaching, organizing, and leading to those we are mentoring. When we place Jesus, rather than the quest for power and results, at the center of our being, we will look to the Spirit and Word of God to guide us. By setting an example as followers of Christ, we encourage those we mentor to develop their obedience to the Spirit and grow in skills of service as they also follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Responsible-To: Leading in Covenant Community
Leadership is always about results. The question is, who is responsible for the results? If we commence with the assumption that ministry teams must begin with God’s priorities, that assumption changes how we answer the question. In chapter 5 I argued that God’s highest priority is that we be and live as the people of God. The second priority is “striving together with one accord for the faith of the gospel” of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:27). God then is the one who is responsible for results, and we are responsible to “strive together with one accord” as members of the body of Christ. It is my argument here that responsible-to leadership enables the body to serve and God to work in that body to accomplish God’s results.
In his letter to Philippian believers, the apostle Paul highlights several principles that I deem essential for responsible-to leadership. First, God does the work, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). Second, the responsibility rests on the members of the body, “whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together” (Phil. 1:27). Third, the body must work together, “being one in spirit and of one mind. . . . In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Phil. 2:2–4).
In this context Timothy is Paul’s middle manager, delegated to visit these people, get a report of their ministry, and encourage them. Paul affirms Timothy’s authority, responsibility, and readiness to serve: “I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel” (Phil. 2:20–22). If I may reflect on the story about my father and me and waxing the car, my father concluded that I had proved myself, and he no longer needed to check my work and refused to do so. Here Paul is affirming an even greater trust in Timothy and his utmost confidence in Timothy’s leadership and service, forged in their partnership as father and son together for the gospel.
Finally, Paul speaks the truth in love and calls upon a local leader and the community to help together to resolve an internal conflict. “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers” (Phil. 4:2–3). Paul’s plea here is for responsible-to intervention in a situation of conflict. We are given no other details, except that Paul encourages them to stand firm in the Lord and then gives thanks for their generosity and sharing in Paul’s time of trouble.
When we act as if we are responsible for, we take power into our hands, and we use it to try to accomplish our outcomes, the results that we desire, in effect becoming power seekers. By being responsible to, however, we focus on the covenant community and empowering all the members of the body of Christ to produce the results that God intends for his church. The act of being responsible to involves asking appropriate questions, investing time in the building of relationships, and speaking truth in love at times when God directs us to do so. All members of the body have gifts and roles for service, and leaders encourage all to act responsibly and in obedience to Christ. The results belong to the Lord. [Sherwood G Lingenfelter (2019). (p. 142). Leading Cross-Culturally (Wordsearch Version): Covenant Relationships for Effective Christian Leadership. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
11Exercising Power, Asking for Correction
Exercising Power in Thailand: A Case Study
Sam, an official from a Swiss foundation, came to Thailand to investigate and fund projects to assist economically disadvantaged people. Learning of a multicultural team working with urban homeless people, he contacted Sarah, one of the team members, and invited her to submit a proposal. In consultation with Marcus, the team leader, Sarah submitted a proposal for $55,000 to build six small houses that homeless people could use for temporary accommodation. During an interview, Sarah described the conflict that arose between the team and the team leader over these houses:
We were all so thrilled when the application was successful, and the foundation transferred the full amount of $55,000 into our team account. We found a good team of builders, who built six lovely houses. The whole team got involved in painting and wallpapering, and the houses looked great! But then Marcus, our team leader and chief fundraiser, returned from an overseas trip. He said the houses were way too luxurious for temporary housing for the poor. He didn’t like the wallpaper we had put up and gave orders to roughly paint over it. After agreeing that trees could be planted around the houses at a cost of $1,000, Marcus then changed his mind and insisted the trees be removed. The whole team was so frustrated and upset that resources were being wasted. Personally, I was really embarrassed. I’ve been avoiding writing to Sam, because it’s my credibility and integrity that’s questioned if we misuse the funds donated by his foundation.
Marcus had formed this homeless ministry by gathering several wealthy Thai Christian believers together and sharing a vision to assist economically deprived people in Thailand. He had a particular concern for women and children, who, because of financial pressure, often drifted into prostitution. Motivated by Marcus’s passion to make a difference in the lives of these people, the Thai Christians promised to help him financially when he put together a team to do the work. Building on their commitment, Marcus gathered several Thais, Sarah, and another Asian expatriate to organize and carry out diverse ministry projects.
From the beginning Marcus led this team by employing a Thai patron-client power model in which the leader often makes unilateral decisions and even reverses the decisions of those with less power. The team had the same vision but very different values underlying their decisions. As reported by Sarah, Marcus delegated decision making to them but then countermanded their decisions and forced them to destroy some of their work. Sarah and her Singaporean colleague expressed deep frustration, and the Thai team members, who accepted the patron-client model of leadership, felt a loss of face in the way Marcus countermanded their work. During Lorraine Dierck’s visits to this team, several team members expressed frustration, stating that the team had become totally ineffective in meeting their ministry goals (adapted with permission from Dierck 2007, 167–69).
Exercising Power to Achieve Results
One may have presumed from the earlier chapters that leading should not employ the exercise of power. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I stated in chapter 9, power exchanges pervade nearly all relationships, and the exercise of power is an essential part of leading and following. Leaders and followers have power, and they must learn how to use their power constructively in covenant community and to accomplish kingdom work. Marcus failed this test on two measures: he did not exercise his power constructively, and he did not invest in building covenant relationships, perhaps lacking understanding of how to lead in covenant community. As a consequence he impaired his team, and the results of their work fell far short of their potential. A leader must use power in such a way that the team is motivated to higher levels of achievement.
Richard Wood suggests that one of the most important functions of a leader is to keep the team or organization focused on its mission (2006, 218). In the case study above, we see that Marcus has been partially effective on that count. Thais and expatriates alike are deeply committed to their ministry to the urban homeless. But vision alone cannot create unity of purpose, and conflict about decisions and their implementation has created a crisis that at best has demoralized the team and compromised its mission. Marcus has acted arbitrarily, overruled decisions made by team members, and forced them to destroy work they had completed. He has wasted the time and resources of his team in what seemed to them to be capricious acts of power.
Although Marcus might argue that he is acting in an appropriate Thai “patron” role, he has misunderstood the Thai hierarchical exercise of power. Marcus has not learned either the important Thai value for consulting with one another nor what Richard Mouw calls “shared leadership” founded on New Testament teaching about our sinfulness and the diversity of gifts given to us in the body of Christ (2006, 129). Lorraine Dierck (2007) reports that Thais place very high value on consultation together before a decision is made; after that consultation has taken place, Thais recognize and accept the right of a leader to make the decision. But it should be done in such a way that the people involved do not lose face. Marcus violated both of these cultural principles, failing to consult and causing his whole team to feel compromised and lose face.
Marcus has also failed to exercise what Mouw, taking his cue from James MacGregor Burns, calls “transforming leadership [in which] both leader and follower are raised to higher levels of motivation and morality, so that each is changed in the process” (2006, 126). Mouw goes on to explain that, while positional authority is legitimate in Christian community, it must be tempered to assure that all members of the body are able to exercise their gifts effectively (2006, 129). This means that a leader must delegate authority to others with different gifts and then release control, entrusting others to use authority and power appropriate to their roles in the community and the body of Christ.
What if this team had been organized around a different social game, such as the egalitarian game? Would that have solved the problem of the abuse of leadership authority and the exercise of power? The group, or strong members of a group, has all the potential to misuse power that we see in this patron-client team (Koeshall 2008, 265–66). Further, Wood notes that “servant” (power-giving) leadership cannot be effective without an appropriate use of the “powers of office,” even and especially in organizations that seek to operate on the basis of consensus (2006, 216). Wood observes that teams accustomed to making decisions by consensus are often held hostage by one strong member, who blocks the group and may actually dictate the decision by the act of resisting consensus.
In his discussion of how egalitarian Quaker meetings are “biased toward inaction,” Wood suggests that one of the most important powers of a leader is to “require dialog.” He goes on to say, “To use power to require dialog or suspend the status quo is to lead from vulnerability, for it involves taking the risk in opening an issue without controlling the outcome. But it also frees the assigned leader to be a participant in seeking a new solution” (2006, 219–20). I concur with his observation and would extend its application to all the social games of work and leadership.
The exercise of power for the common good of the covenant community is a responsibility of those assigned leadership roles. Anita Koeshall (2008, 268) argues that leaders and followers live in community together as “redeemed agents,” and as such they each are responsible both to lead and to follow. When leaders exercise “redeemed power,” they engage in “self-emptying for the sake of others” (2008, 260), rather than acting to increase their authority, control, and “power distance” (Hofstede 2001). When “redeemed agents” lead and follow in covenant community, they create a “dynamic asymmetry . . . that critiques both oppressive hierarchy and competitive, controlling egalitarianism” (2008, 268).
Leading for results is at its best when leaders and groups understand how and when to use power and when to give it away. Mouw clarifies how an effective leader delegates responsibility and power to others in the body, thus sharing leadership and strengthening the team or organization by increasing its capacity to serve with the full range of spiritual and natural gifts. Wood helps us understand the critical importance and power of dialogue to build effective communication and empower others to exercise their creative gifts to advance the mission. When a leader focuses on the common good, delegates responsibility and power to others, and employs the power of dialogue and effective communications, that leader motivates and enables a team to achieve its maximum potential and results.
Asking for Correction
Over the course of our consulting ministry with mission organizations in Africa and Asia, my wife and I have found that missionary and national leaders are frequently involved in conflict with each other. As we explore more deeply the causes of those conflicts, we find that each group of leaders has proceeded to decisions and action based on their own understanding of the situation without significant dialogue with others. Like Marcus, who reached decisions in isolation from his team members about the housing project, many project leaders we have observed present a decision as an accepted fact to their colleagues. Although they may not have the power to order the others to do what they have decided, they have failed in precisely the same way that Marcus has failed.
One of the most common flaws of leaders is their failure to ask for correction, and when they receive it, to accept it and learn from it. In his discussion of Jewish doctrines of leadership, Elliot Dorff declares that people must learn “to evaluate their leaders’ performance so that they can be justly criticized, corrected, and in the extreme, rejected as a leader. . . . To be a mature leader or follower requires a keen sense of judgment; without that the followers become infants, the leaders become gods, and following them becomes an exercise in idolatry” (2006, 17–18). According to Dorff’s insights, effective leaders encourage and empower followers to evaluate effectively their performance. This must be built into our understanding of covenant community and social game. Regardless of, and appropriate to, the social game employed, a team must plan and implement processes that check and correct its leaders.
The work of designing process and empowering followers and leaders to participate in feedback is a complex agenda. In a situation where a single person, such as Marcus, is organizing a team, that person must act intentionally to create an open door for correction while in the process of forming covenant community. In a situation where two groups are seeking to partner, or two or three expatriates are seeking to bring two or three language communities together around common interests, the question of feedback and correction must be faced at the very beginning of negotiating relationships. If the leaders are going to give covenant community priority in these relationships, the feedback process is the obvious place to begin.
Pathways to Correction
While teaching and learning the core biblical values of community, leaders and followers must ask how to speak “truth in love” to one another. What is an acceptable process—confronting face-to-face, one person to another, or storytelling about a third-person outsider, or sending a mediator, or a periodic team meeting to ask, “how are we doing?” or a periodic survey, or “time out” for crisis dialogue? Identifying one or more acceptable processes will be contingent on the default cultures of the people involved and the social games they are most comfortable playing. Whatever the process or processes adopted by a team or partners, the followers must learn how to appropriately use them and be invited and encouraged by the leaders to do so.
Followers must have means to challenge leaders that are consistent with biblical commands to love one another and at the same time to question without condemning. Reflecting on the case study of Marcus and Sarah, we see that Sarah disagreed strongly with his decision to paint over the wallpaper and remove the trees. She also was embarrassed by his decisions on behalf of the team and afraid of what Sam might think about how they had misused funds. We know that the team operated as a corporate group with a strong patron-client bent. Marcus felt free to override team decisions. If Marcus had anticipated such conflict and wanted his team to be a covenant community, how would he have prepared Sarah and others to respond to such a situation?
Table 11.1 offers alternative ways of addressing these issues, depending on the emotions and reasoning of followers. Marcus, as leader, is responsible for training his team to confront him in ways that will motivate him to listen and help him to make wise decisions and correct his errors. He and the team are more inclined to respect and love one another if they learn how to confront in love. If Marcus had encouraged Sarah to let him know when she was hurt or embarrassed, she would have had more courage to speak to him about his decision to paint the wallpaper. If he had given his team permission to say, “We don’t agree with this decision,” they may have had the courage to tell him that his decision to remove the trees was unwise and could actually hinder future funding from the Swiss foundation.
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Table 11.1 Challenging Leaders through Covenant Relationships |
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Covenant Community Emotions |
1. We are hurting (for others). |
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2. We are disappointed. |
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3. We are embarrassed or ashamed. |
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4. We are angry. |
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Covenant Community Thinking |
1. What is not working? |
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2. Help us understand. |
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3. We disagree. |
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4. Could we discuss other alternatives? |
The social-game values of team members limit the options for confrontation open to them (see table 11.2). If they are Thais, they will be very reluctant to challenge someone who is of higher status and in a leadership position. To confront a leader is impossible for them, unless the leader invites them to participate in a discussion about a decision before it is made. Once the leader has made a bad decision, they will passively accept it and grieve quietly about the loss of face. In a weak corporate environment such as the one Marcus created, the only way he might discern people’s anguish is by observing their silence and withdrawal. This is a sure sign that something is wrong, and he should ask them gently to tell him what has gone wrong. He could also ask Sarah, who may serve as a mediator for them, and with her Western values is more able to tell him openly why they are silent.
Sarah and her other Asian colleague may feel more free to report to him the feelings of the team, if he is willing to ask. If Marcus had prepared them during their training to share their concerns and emotions about his leadership, they would have been more likely to tell him either face-to-face or in a note or e-mail that team members were grieving about his decision to paint over the wallpaper. Sarah comes from a cultural background that permits confrontation but seldom uses it. Her Singaporean colleague also comes from an Asian culture that is more accepting of confrontation.
The case study suggests that Marcus had failed to empower his team members to confront him in any way. He expected them to do what he told them, and he did not welcome any negative feedback. As a consequence, he treated the team as servants, not understanding God’s call for him to be accountable to the body of Christ in which he served. He failed to be either a servant or a transforming leader; he instead used his power to control and achieve the lesser goods of satisfying his own values and objectives and somehow to feel good about ministering to the poor, but not to the body of which he was an integral part.
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Table 11.2 Social-Game Strategies for Challenging Leaders |
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Individualist (Weak Group) |
1. Face-to-face confrontation |
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2. Group-to-group confrontation |
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3. Public argument |
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4. Public negotiation |
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Collectivist (Strong Group) |
1. Observation of withdrawal behavior |
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2. Indirect storytelling |
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3. Letters or e-mail |
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4. Group discussions |
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Corporate (Strong Group) |
1. Letters or e-mail |
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2. Mediation |
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3. Focus-group discussions |
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4. Compensation |
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Bureaucratic (Strong Group) |
1. Informal, private confrontation (letter, report to supervisor) |
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2. Formal, open confrontation |
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3. Focus-group listening |
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4. Survey |
Correction as Power Giving
The ultimate act of power giving, even more important than acceptance, is inviting others to critique one’s work and decision making. Because missionaries and mission organizations, who control key resources, hold a structural power relationship with national churches, they may and often do make decisions that have a negative impact on the church without inviting any feedback. When we engage others in such a way as to solicit their reflection, feedback, and interpretation of our decisions, we create an environment of humility, empowering them to help us be more effective in our ministry.
Power-giving leadership invites others to critique one’s work and decisions. By patiently listening and intentionally hearing what others say, we may correct our own structural rigidity and thereby become better able to work together for the purposes of the kingdom of God. The goal is to engage others in such a way that we empathize with their critique, build mutual understanding, and commit to a community relationship with them. By inviting them to critique our decisions and work, we open the door for greater understanding. By being willing to adjust and change what we do to better minister to them, we in fact create deeper community in Christ and greater capacity to love one another.
12
The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Leadership
As we reflect on the case studies presented in this book, we see leaders struggling to be effective in their particular ministry settings. Some of them failed utterly in leading their multicultural teams. Others were only partially successful. All of them in some way or another failed to achieve their personal goals for leadership and ministry and the ideals that we set forth in the definition of leading cross-culturally at the beginning of this book. In the pages that follow, I will again reflect briefly on the question, why is leading so difficult?
Once again, leading cross-culturally is inspiring people who come from two or more cultural traditions to participate with you in building a community of trust, and then to follow you and be empowered by you to achieve a compelling vision of faith. What then are those challenges that keep us from fulfilling our vision and aspirations as God’s servants, to lead cross-cultural or multicultural teams, extending God’s healing reign in our broken world?
Playing with the Team God Gives You
Leadership on any team is only as good as the people whom God provides for that team. Returning once again to the analogy of sports, I noted in chapter 1 that in the summer of 2007 the Philadelphia Phillies professional baseball team achieved a landmark of ten thousand losses over their one-hundred-year history, more than any other professional sports team. Part of the challenge of leading the Phillies has been the need for each leader to play the game with the players that the owners hired. As we consider their record of ten thousand losses, it is clear that the Philadelphia Phillies teams for that one-hundred-year period consisted of people who were not the best baseball players in America. For some who accept leadership, a weak team becomes a very difficult challenge. I remember during my early years as provost and senior vice president of Biola University, I complained to God about some of the people on my team. I asked God, why this person, and why not someone who is more effective? I remember praying, “Please remove this person from leadership and give me someone else who can do the job more effectively.” God’s answer to this prayer was, “Absolutely no; don’t you understand my work?” I learned over a period of time that God loves weak people and that God intends leaders to work with the people whom God gives to them. I was challenged when I read the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 17:
I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. . . . While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. . . . My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
(vv. 9–10, 12, 15)
Through reflection on Jesus’s prayer, I at last understood that Jesus valued every one of the disciples whom the Father had given to him and was rejoicing that none of them had been lost. Examining what the Scriptures said about each disciple, I discovered that they were indeed a motley group of characters with many different flaws and weaknesses. Peter had denied him, Thomas doubted him, Philip questioned him, and each of them in his own way challenged Jesus regarding who Jesus was and what he was doing. It suddenly dawned on me that the people whom God had given me were my gift and my glory. My responsibility was similar to that of the Jesus whom I sought to follow—to keep them, treasure them, help them to become all that God intended for them, and pray for them to be effective in the world and not removed from it. I repented of my prayer asking God to remove people from my leadership team.
At the same time, leaders have the challenge of weak people and occasionally bad people. In the case studies recounted in this book, weak people have certainly been part of all the different multicultural teams, and a few teams have had one or two who may have been a destructive presence. Such is the nature of teamwork and leadership. As we seek to follow Christ, we must search the Scriptures to discern how Jesus and the apostles dealt with bad people and with weak people and must follow Jesus in this process.
As we reflect on the case studies in this book, we see that each leader struggled with emotional and irrational responses by people on their team. Again, this is part of the work of leadership. I remind students in my classes that we are first emotional creatures and only secondarily rational. As we respond to crises or stressful situations in leadership, we rarely operate based on reason and rational processes. When things get tough, we first respond emotionally—frustration, anger, fear, disappointment, and betrayal. These emotions often get the best of us, leading us to seek power to protect ourselves, which in turn undermines the will and purpose of God. Knowing our emotional makeup, the evil one attacks us through our undisciplined emotional life. Working on teams, we must understand that our responsibility in the body is to practice spiritual disciplines and community fellowship that enable us to mediate our emotional responses in Christ.
Westerners, educated to trust the power of reason and rationality, assume that people will act responsibly and rationally. This is a false assumption. Most of us, if we are honest in our self-assessment, will recognize that we often act first from our emotional being. The natural consequence of this attribute of human experience and response is that leading a multicultural team always involves irrational and emotional relationships.
The practice of judging and condemning is another canker afflicting teamwork. As a leader, I must acknowledge that this problem is “my problem,” and it is also the problem of the people with whom I work. We make assumptions about others’ motives, and if we do not agree with what they are doing or if their motives seem suspect, we fall into the sin of judgment and condemnation. Even though we know that Jesus has absolutely forbidden this practice (Matt. 7:1–12), we resort to it regularly in our leadership and teamwork. This practice of judgment and condemnation is one of the most destructive practices of human life. People in cultures around the world use it on a daily basis to control the behavior of members of their communities. A quick review of the case studies in this volume will show that judgment and condemnation are at least a small part of every case. This is an endemic part of pastoral failure, mission leadership failure, and team leadership failure. It is also a pervasive problem in teams trying to work cross-culturally.
Again, Marguerite Shuster points to the way of Christ (1987, 237–43). We are called not to the way of power and condemnation but to the way of prayer and praise. We are only capable of working effectively when we are willing to confess our sins to one another and pray together in team relationships, allowing the power of God to transform us from judgment and condemnation to forgiveness, acceptance, and unity. The Scriptures repeatedly remind us that we are to pray for peace, we are to overcome evil with good, and we are to forgive even as the Lord has forgiven us. The only way that we can achieve this kind of teamwork is through a commitment to confessing our sins to one another and to praying for and with one another. Only after prayer, acceptance, and praise to God may the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and in our teamwork.
What If They Don’t Fit?
The question of fit is complex, involving every aspect of human life— personality, spiritual gifting, social values, worldview, relational congeniality, maturity, family obligations, motivation, ambition, and so on. As we reflect on the case studies in this volume, we see a variety of these factors at work. Pastor David (chapter 8) made a decision almost as soon as he was appointed to dismiss the three associate pastors on his staff. We can only conjecture as to why, but perhaps he feared they would be loyal to the former pastor, or that they were rivals for his position, or that they did not fit his vision for the ministry of the church. The story makes it clear that this decision created team conflict over a period of three years until each of these men found other ministry opportunities. Pastor David did not consider these men to be God’s gift to him, and in that I believe he erred.
How do we know God’s will in these situations? The Scriptures provide counsel and guidelines for us, if we are willing to listen and put them into practice. For example, in the case of Pastor David, I would counsel him to begin with a season (two or three months) of prayer for and observation of these three men. What is God doing through them in the congregation? How are they responding to support the elders and David in their ministries? What are their spiritual and ministry gifts, and how is the Holy Spirit working through them in the congregation? During this time Pastor David, as leader, must proactively demonstrate his love and acceptance of these men in their ministries. If they sense they are on trial or not accepted, that will provoke anxiety and resistance.
After watching and listening to the Holy Spirit, Pastor David may take the initiative to sit down with each man and begin a conversation about his calling, giftedness, and aspiration for ministry. By this time David has observed the strengths and weaknesses of each and the investments they have made in ministries, and he has a better understanding of how each might contribute to the vision that God has given him. I would counsel Pastor David to assume that God has each of these men serving in this local church for a purpose, and that David is part of God’s ongoing work in their lives. David then must prayerfully ask, “How, Lord, may I serve your purpose in the life and work of each of these men?” The issue is not “my team” but rather the “body of Jesus Christ” and my role to minister to that body.
Pastor David may in fact find that God is calling one or all of these men to serve in other ministries, and that he is able to mentor and encourage each one to take the next step at the right time and for the right purpose. But he may also find that God brought one or more of these men to this church to support him and enhance his ministry. He cannot discern this unless he is willing to watch and pray, and to prayerfully engage each person on issues of calling, giftedness, and commitment to this team and ministry. I have found in my own leadership that when I take the time and effort to prayerfully help people understand their gifts and calling, our decision to not renew a contract, while still painful, becomes an opportunity to explore further God’s will and purpose in their lives.
What If They Drag the Team Down?
Marta, the middle manager serving to facilitate a local literacy and translation team (chapter 10), had a deep relational and emotional conflict with Bizu, one of three national team members. Bizu did many things to frustrate Marta, so many that she despaired for the ministry and her ability to continue serving the team. She struggled with Bizu’s work habits and values about work, money, materials, and productivity. She was uncomfortable just being around him, and his habits and behaviors often seemed unethical by her standards of morality. Bizu had family and financial pressures that Marta did not understand, and he used church and community relationships to coerce her and the team into concessions that she believed were detrimental to their ministry. Marta wanted to get rid of Bizu, and she prayed that the LMA or the local church would refuse to allow him to return to the team after his time of discipline had ended. Was God’s will thwarted when the local director and the church restored Bizu to his position?
Marta’s struggle with Bizu is more complex than Pastor David’s situation with his three associates. Bizu is a member of the body of Christ, yet from Marta’s perspective he is a carnal believer, whose selfish actions are destructive to her, the team, the project, and the church. What alternatives do we have when a person seems so destructive to the work of a team?
The principles of covenant community relationships must be the foundation of our leadership practices. I have been in situations very similar to Marta’s and have found them painful and often impossible to resolve. When I have yielded to the temptation to use my power as a leader to impose a solution, the consequences have proven as painful as or worse than the troublesome situation. So my first counsel to Marta is to begin with prayer and reflection on Scripture and to keep praying until she has peace from the Lord about a plan of action to follow.
In a confrontation with the “Bizu” on my ministry team, I was prompted by the Holy Spirit to begin with the question, “I have observed your pain and frustration to the point of anger over the last several weeks. Why are you so angry with me and others on the team?” And then I listened. Soon it became apparent to me that my Bizu had been hurt many times by others on the team, over a period of several years. These hurts, without any resolution, had accumulated to the point that my Bizu felt angry most of the time. In my role as leader, I understood that my first task was to acknowledge that I and others on the team had wronged this Bizu, and I further promised to correct as many of these wrongs as possible at that time. Then I asked for forgiveness, which my Bizu granted.
One of my colleagues, Janice Strength, notes that saying “I was wrong” is far more powerful than saying “I am sorry.” She notes that we often push children to say “I am sorry” when they and we know they are not. To acknowledge “I was wrong” is to take responsibility for the action we have done. In the confrontation with my Bizu, my acknowledgment of our wrongs and my assurance of action to correct many of them created an openness in this relationship that had not been present previously. At that point, I felt free in the Holy Spirit to move to confrontation (Gal. 6:1–3) about the pain this Bizu was causing in the team. I then spoke about my Bizu’s pattern of judging and condemning other members of the team; I acknowledged that this was sometimes with good cause, but that in the body of Christ, it was not the way we should confront one another. In gentleness, I stated that I could no longer allow this pattern to continue, and if my Bizu refused to stop this condemning behavior, I would take further disciplinary action, such as suspension or dismissal from the team.
Pain—Schoolmaster for Change
The sad fact of human life is that people rarely change until they have experienced pain severe enough to force them to consider alternatives. The apostle Paul faced as much internal conflict in his newly planted churches as we ever experience on ministry teams. The churches at Corinth and Philippi were wracked by internal dissent and bickering. His letters to these churches plead with these believers to focus on their mission, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to be of one mind (Phil. 2:1–5), considering others better than themselves. Yet, the evidence is that they too resisted change and persisted in living by the demands of the “flesh” rather than the gift of the Spirit.
People such as Bizu often have problems in their families, work, and other relationships; in their weakness they stumble, fall, and sometimes resort to destructive, sinful behaviors that damage them and the body of Christ. As leaders we have the responsibility to love them—acknowledging our own wrongs—to confront them, and to invite them to repentance and forgiveness. If they refuse to respond as a member of the body, then separation may be the appropriate next step.
We have seen in the case studies throughout this book that leaders and followers alike create significant pain for one another. If we are willing to consider that pain a warning and turn to the Scriptures for correction in our leadership and relationships, the Scriptures assure us that those who “walk by the Spirit” will inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:13–25). For leaders and multicultural teams, this is a promise that in the midst of our pain and difficulties, we will indeed accomplish the mission of God. [Sherwood G Lingenfelter (2019). (p. 152). Leading Cross-Culturally (Wordsearch Version): Covenant Relationships for Effective Christian Leadership. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
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The Hope of Cross-Cultural Leadership
Several years ago Paul Locatelli, president of Santa Clara University, speaking to a large assembly of academic leaders in California, challenged these leaders with a statement that I will paraphrase as follows: “The primary question is not, are your values eroding? Values are always eroding. The primary question is, what are you doing to renew your values?” As I reflected on Locatelli’s words and my leadership at Biola University, I recognized that the core values at Biola were routinely eroding, and as a leader I had not focused actively on how to renew those values. The same thing is true of the work of multicultural teams in mission. The task and the routines of daily work always erode our mission and vision for the ministry. They also erode our spiritual values. The question is not whether our values are eroding; team values are always eroding. The question is, what are we doing as leaders to renew our sense of mission, to restore our vision, and to renew the values that are critical for multicultural teamwork? Our hope for effective leadership and ministries lies in aligning ourselves with the mission and work of God in a lost and broken world.
Renewing Mission, Vision, and Values
As we reflect on the case studies and discussions in this volume, we conclude that one of the first things lost in multicultural teamwork is a focus on mission and vision. The case of the church planters, Galen, Kate, Henry, and Myra (chapter 1), documents how this wonderfully gifted team pressed so hard to achieve their goal of planting a viable church that they failed to accomplish their vision of equipping local leaders to plant churches. The viable church and the laudable creation of an Internet café business to provide work and evangelistic contacts for new Christians became ends in themselves. After eight years of work, this team despaired that their vision was lost.
In the pressures that we all experience from our respective constituencies, we become preoccupied with goals and accountability. Team leaders are often frustrated by the team’s failure to reach goals in the time frame expected or to use funding or to be accountable in ways deemed appropriate by the constituency. As we saw clearly in the struggle between Sarah and Marcus in their ministry to the homeless in Thailand (chapter 11), frustration provokes us to focus inwardly and vent our emotions on one another. When we give in to the pressures of time, constituency, funding, and accountability, and they replace our sense of mission and purpose, we lose perspective on why we are working together and the vision that God has for this ministry as a team.
Every leader who expects and hopes to be effective in leading cross-culturally must give repeated attention to the mission, the vision, and the values that are essential to kingdom work. Every team meeting should include some intentional renewal of mission, vision, and/or values. As soon as that component of the team is lost, the mission and the vision will be lost to the routines and the pressures of doing our daily work. Every case study that we have considered here has suffered because of a loss of mission, vision, and/or values among the people who were part of the multicultural team process.
The Work of Renewal
The work of renewal must be intentional and become part of the routine agenda of a team or ministry group. After hearing Paul Locatelli’s address, I returned to Biola and asked others, and myself, when did we last give attention to our mission and core values? Although we had spent considerable time reflecting on our mission in the community, I realized that a core value of our undergraduate program was a required year of biblical studies. During the eight years of my leadership as chief academic officer, we had hired more than forty new faculty members, and we had never had a conversation in the community about that core value and curricular requirement. Having heard many complaints about the Bible requirement among arts and science faculty, I knew that I had failed to address this erosion in our core values.
I met with the faculty who taught the undergraduate Bible curriculum and explained the situation. I asked them if they would do two things—first, discuss and articulate together the content and rationale for the curriculum in its current state, and then, in the next academic year present that curriculum as a proposal to the whole faculty, which we would then discuss in four open faculty meetings, revise, and finally approve collectively. The Bible faculty at first complained that they did not have time for such a long process and expressed their fears that the wider faculty might not reaffirm the existing requirement. I insisted that this was a risk we had to take. If the full faculty did not support this as a core component of our mission, then we would have failed in our responsibility to demonstrate its central value. The process demanded even more work than the faculty had anticipated, but in the end, they made significant improvements in the curriculum, and the wider faculty endorsed the revised program as a core component of Biola’s undergraduate education.
At Fuller Theological Seminary we have faced similar challenges, and the president and the faculty engage annually in conversations that focus on the core values and mission of the seminary. A few years ago the faculty became deeply concerned about the distortions they heard from students about the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the academic year 2003–4, the faculty held a yearlong conversation around the question, what is the gospel? The next year the same faculty members each prepared a message for seminary chapel on the same theme. Renewal must be intentional, it must become part of our regular work, and it must continue over a substantive period of time.
“Body” Work—The Hope of Leadership
The essence of effective leading for multicultural teams may be summed up in the phrase “body work,” or “being disciples to make disciples.” We cannot expect to be effective in the ministry of the kingdom of God if we are not following Christ. We must begin by being disciples if we hope to be able to make disciples and make a difference in our world. Again, as we reflect on the teams in the case studies we have discussed, the conflicts within them all are the result of a failure to obey Christ in relationships with one another. None of these teams had a commitment to covenant community. Team leaders did not focus on covenant community as a key component of the work of the team.
“Body work” is always messy—good, bad, beautiful, ugly. The members of D-Team (chapter 7) divided over their values for hierarchy and equity. Tawat clung so tenaciously to his values for hierarchy that his egalitarian team members refused to work with him. Brian, the leader, was so frustrated that he at times did not even consult his team, and this proved to be his undoing. Yet Brian and leaders like him are not without hope. Although the process of confronting one another in prayerful love is painful, when we commit to pray, seeking the direction of the Holy Spirit, and then confront in Jesus’s way, God works on our behalf. Unity is the result of intense testing and struggle, in which people experience first the acceptance and love of the leader and then learn to accept and love one another in spite of their differences.
Tawat was absolutely a challenge for Brian; would he ever relinquish even a small part of his hierarchical identity to meet his egalitarian teammates in unity? Brian and Tawat must begin with a conversation about being the body of Christ and loving one another within that body. They need to explore together what that means and how we cannot hope to do the work of the kingdom unless we obey Christ in this matter. Brian and Tawat must talk together about hierarchy and equity and explore how their common identity in Christ might minimize these conflicts.
If we examine the other multicultural teams in Lorraine Dierck’s (2007) study in Thailand (chapter 7), we see that they all faced inherent conflicts of hierarchical values versus egalitarian values among their teams’ members. One of those teams (C) adopted the corporate hierarchy social game, framed around Thai values and expectations, and worked effectively together. Another team (E) adopted the egalitarian philosophy of their expatriate members, and, with some adjustments in consideration of their Thai members, they worked effectively together. Each of these teams listened to their members, and after some discussion and adjustments over time, they agreed to a structure and values that served their members and the work of the ministry. However, four of the teams in Dierck’s study failed to reach a compromise, and although they carried on their work, they struggled, like Brian and Tawat, with conflicting values and division among team members.
Brian must place his hope in the work of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God to speak to him and his teammates. Brian does not have the power to change the minds of any of his team members—but he does have the authority to pray for them, and with them, and then to engage them around the issues of uniting together as the people of God on the mission of God. They need to dialogue together about the pain of disunity and the frustration they all have experienced in the long meetings that have led to separation and discord. They need to discuss their differences about social structure, values, and decision making and continue asking how they might find a common ground for ministry.
In the end the work of the kingdom depends on our obedience to the King. God cannot rule in people who are disobedient and in conflict with one another. God rules as we obey God and love one another. As a leader, Brian must commit his energy to obeying the command to love God and to love his team members as himself; in so doing he will have begun the work essential to building an effective multicultural team. While the process will be difficult, with periods of intense testing and struggle, building covenant community is a process of refocusing from doing what we want to being the people of God.
The Cross—The Defining Metaphor of Leadership
David Bennett’s book Metaphors of Ministry (1993) notes that the writers of the Gospels and the Epistles in the New Testament rarely use the “rule over” words and metaphors that are a part of Greek New Testament culture and common in our own society today. As we think about leading cross-culturally, we employ many metaphors in our organizations that promote the “rule over” relationships engrained in our societies. Missions have CEOs, field directors, or superintendents. Teams have team directors or team leaders. Functional hierarchies are very often defined in the leadership structures of teams. This vocabulary and these metaphors are embedded in the social games (chapters 3, 4, and 5) and worldviews that structure our relationships in life and community.
As we reflect on the kind of leadership essential for leading multicultural teams, Bennett helps us to refocus our thinking away from the “rule over” metaphors that pervade our cultural life and work toward the metaphors used by Jesus and the apostles as reported by the writers of the Gospels and the Epistles in the New Testament. I suggest that in this context the cross is the defining metaphor for leadership given by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “Those who would be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23–24). How does the metaphor “to take up their cross daily” define the practice of leadership? As we consider covenant community and empowering others as discussed in this book, we recognize that we cannot accomplish the work of the kingdom of God by using the power structures of our society and our culture and by seeking our own fulfillment and recognition. This is precisely the conversation that must happen in the D-Teams, divided and discontented, in Thailand. The people on these teams, who have blocked consensus on structure, values, and unity, must come together at the cross. Whatever their disagreements, the message of the cross is “lose your life for my sake.” The challenge for leaders and members alike is to relinquish those positions that seem precious, to listen to one another, and then in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to find the place of unity where they can move forward together.
Our work is intended to fulfill the kingdom vision that Jesus brought to his disciples and to proclaim to a broken world that the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus makes it very clear that to accomplish that vision we must take up the cross—through sacrificing our quest for power, our emotional needs for acceptance and recognition, our obsession to have “my will” implemented—thereby denying ourselves and following him. Pastor David discovered the power of this truth when he listened to the women elders in his congregation and in fear and trembling agreed to their request to change his plan for their prayer retreat. By surrendering his will, he opened the channels of trust and communication with his elders, and that act transformed his ministry.
As a power-giving leader, I must begin at the cross. As members of multicultural teams and as leaders of multicultural teams, we all together must begin at the cross. Jesus’s death on the cross is the metaphor repeated over and over again in the New Testament. Peter reminds us that Jesus left us an example that we “should follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). As he spells out the details of that example, we see Jesus tolerating insults and abuse and not retaliating in any way (v. 23). We see him suffering, being threatened, and not threatening in return. We see him going to the cross and giving up his life on our behalf without rebuke or recrimination.
Marta, middle manager of the literacy and translation team, and Brian, from D-Team in Thailand, have each faced team opposition that has paralyzed their ministries. Bizu criticized Marta, misused materials, took pay without work, and generally undermined Marta’s leadership and credibility. Tawat challenged Brian’s wisdom, judged him naive, and undermined his decisions. What would it mean for Marta and Brian to go with their teammates to the cross? Peter notes that Jesus tolerated insults and abuse and did not retaliate in any way. This is the first change that Marta and Brian could make. Each had retaliated in specific ways against their colleagues. Marta in particular was hurt, and in her pain she acted against Bizu on several occasions. The second change they could make is to sacrifice themselves, or some significant aspect of their ministry, for their brothers. Marta may have more opportunity to do this than Brian, as Bizu is clearly a needy person, struggling both economically and spiritually. Brian may need to find some way to show Tawat how much he is willing to sacrifice on his behalf. Neither Tawat nor Bizu seems to understand the scope of the cross and the profound significance of the work of Jesus in their lives.
Worship at the Cross—Motivation for Change
“Taking up the cross” is an act of worship. We fall on our face at the foot of the cross, confess our sin and shame, and express our gratitude for the unfathomable grace of God’s acceptance and forgiveness. In worship we submit our will to God and relinquish our quest for power and control and our need to ensure the outcomes that we want so desperately to achieve as leaders of multicultural teams. We acknowledge our powerlessness, that we cannot change one person or effect one ministry achievement apart from the grace of God. In worship we ask the Holy Spirit to replace these old obsessions with a new obsession to obey Jesus Christ.
Leaders in particular must surrender their obsession to control and achieve, through worship at the cross. Of all the cases we have considered, Marcus (chapter 11) struggled most obviously with an obsession to control. He overruled his teammates, insisted that things be done in his way, and embarrassed his coworker Sarah to the point that she dreaded reporting to the donor for their project. If Marcus were willing to go humbly to the cross, relinquish his power, and honor and love his teammates, God would transform the team and this ministry through the power of his grace.
The act of worship at the cross and surrender to the Holy Spirit enables us to release the control of our lives, teams, and work into the hands of God. We discover freedom through faith to be about the work of the kingdom of God. When we insist on reasserting our control, of managing the outcomes to accomplish what we believe God wants, we have stepped away from the cross and moved back into a position where we see ourselves as king instead of worshiping and following the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
When we worship and live in obedience to the King of kings, God transforms leaders, teams, and every form of social game into covenant communities, called out for the mission of God and working together in unity to fulfill their divine purpose. When we worship at the cross, we learn to take the path of weakness rather than of power, to extend mutual forgiveness rather than condemnation, and to submit to one another rather than seeking power and the subjection of others to our will in our relationships and teamwork. [Sherwood G Lingenfelter (2019). (p. 163). Leading Cross-Culturally (Wordsearch Version): Covenant Relationships for Effective Christian Leadership. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.lifeway.com]
