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Monday, March 24, 2008

Is the business world discovering the truth? Redux

Related: http://redemptivecommunities.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-business-discovering-right-model.html

Came across some reading on leadership styles within business, and some modern theories basically say there needs to be a mix of five styles of leadership with different balances needed during different phases of a business's life cycle.

1) The entrepreneur, the groundbreaker and strategist who initiates
2) The questioner, who disturbs the status quo and challenges a business to move differently
3) The recruiter, who takes the organization's message to the outside and sells it.
4) The humanizer, who cares for those inside the organization
5) The systemizer, who articulates the structure and company policies etc to those inside the organization.

Interestingly, the apostle Paul wrote about five roles of those equipping the church, which could be defined as:
1) The apostle, who pioneers new missions and oversees their initial development
2) The prophet, who discerns the spiritual reality of a situation and communicates them in a timely fashion to prompt needed change
3) The evangelist, who communicates the gospel message in a way to prompt response
4) The pastor, who cares for those in the church.
5) The teacher, who communicates the teachings of Christ.

In both cases and in many ways, these are functions more than offices or roles, and some may contribute to more than one function at times.

Interesting the obvious parallels?

Most traditional churches in the West, however, seem to have suppressed the apostle, prophet, and evangelist roles in favor of the pastor and teacher roles. Many of the APE roles are to be found functioning, it seems though, outside the church, in parachurch ministries.

Businesses that don't have the balance of leadership appropriate for their phase of the life cycle are typically ones in trouble. ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would be curious as to how those new roles came about? It sounds like someone took the biblical roles and translated them to business to create a new model to sell but that may just be my pessimism.