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One of the best summaries of the characteristics of good leadership is in David Lundy’s book Servant
Leadership for Slow Learners. He sets out eight key characteristics (and they are summarised here with
kind permission).
Accessibility
Good leaders are available to their people. This availability communicates value … you value them and
their work enough to take time from your own schedule to be available to them. Another aspect of this is
that in spending time with your staff you can be modelling to them Christian life and leadership.
Affability
Good leaders need to be able to get on with people ‐ what Viv Thomas calls being relationally‐rooted.
People (more in mission than many other spheres of work where there are greater resources of
infrastructure, technology or other tangible non‐human resources) are vital to the work we do and leaders
need to be able to relate well, listen well and work with and in their team. A key part of leading the team
and empowering them to do the job at hand is affirmation. As a leader you need to know them well
enough to know how and when to affirm, encourage and build them up.
Vulnerability
Your team (followers to use a managerial phrase) traditionally would have only seen you as a strong
successful leader, they would not see your struggles, failures and frustrations. To show these was
considered poor leadership ‐ what would they think, how could they have confidence in you if you admitted
doubt. Now though, particularly with the advent of Generation Xers, honest leadership is greatly
respected. It also communicates to your team that, just as you need grace to make mistakes occasionally,
so you will give them space to make an occasional mistake as they grow and learn.
Vitality
Leaders spend their time giving out and as we have said so far, they have to do that generously to gain a
good return. They can only do this if they themselves are topped up spiritually, physically and mentally.
They must invest time in “sharpening the saw” as Lundy calls it (p 116). If you do not set aside time and
resources to invest in yourself, Lundy suggests your leadership will inevitably move from an empowering
servant style to an authoritarian controlling one. Certainly there is a growing volume of research that
supports his theory ‐ good high performing leaders have a good work‐life balance (see chapter 19).
Teachability
A leader needs to be continually learning, developing and improving his skills be that physical, mental or
spiritual. This means standing against any temptation to believe ourselves invincible or infallible. It means
not asserting, “God has told me” or “the Spirit is leading us …” Spiritualisation often covers manipulation.
It means consciously remaining open to learn from others, including those that we usually lead or teach.
One aspect of this is understanding the potential benefit of conflict; that out of tension, discussion and
conflict can often come ideas that are creative, refined and full of potential.
Impartiality
Biblical leadership is as much about power as secular leadership, but Lundy explains that it is radically
counter cultural by modelling leadership that gives away power to enable others rather than hoarding it to
maintain position or status. Leaders are called to treat people equally. They are called to avoid the ‘perks
of power’, the titles and privileges that seek to set them apart from those they serve. He also challenges
leaders to avoid the success measures that the worker would seek to apply. The important measure is the
faithfulness with which the leader serves ‐ the result of the service is God’s concern. The only biblical
partiality Lundy allows for is an emphasis on the poor.
Identifiability
Rob Hay, Redcliffe College, 2006
Lundy starts his book with a plea for situational leadership ‐ the recognition that, to use a Kenneth
Blanchard phrase, “different folks (and organisations) require different strokes”. Here in his list of key
characteristics he goes further ‐ leaders need to culturally contextualise and to do that they need to be able
to understand and identify with the people they lead and environment they lead in. For all mission leaders
that usually means country contexts, but it also inevitably means an organisational context and each
organisation has a culture. I have interviewed many people who say they struggled much more with
adjusting to an organisational culture than a national one when they became a missionary.
Of course, as Christians, we must always doubly contextualise ‐ reconciling the work and the word.
Stickability
The leader’s number one calling is to finish well. That should not be measured by a traditional secular
yardstick but by being a faithful servant. This involves bearing pain ‐ to display the other characteristics
outlined, Lundy suggests, makes pain inevitable for the leader but in an age where, in large chunks of the
world, pain is seen as something to be avoided at all costs, this is radically counter‐cultural and will need to
be taught. Part of the willingness to bear pain is discipline. Alongside discipline is patience. Contrary to
much of the world’s pattern, leadership is a long‐term job ‐ you cannot do a good job of developing these
characteristics overnight.
Rob Hay, Redcliffe College, 2006