In Part 1, I introduced the Great Man Theory, Thomas Carlyle’s 19th-century argument that basically history is comprised by exceptional individuals, and that leadership is essentially a superpower you’re either born with or you’re not. John Maxwell brought it into church leadership culture with the memorable line, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”
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Maxwell isn’t wrong. And he does talk about teams. But the weight of his framework, the gravity of it, lands on the individual. The lone leader. The exceptional person. And when you emphasize the individual that heavily, even with a chapter on teams, you create a culture that functionally ignores the team and idolizes the leader. 

Maxwell isn’t wrong. It's just incomplete. 

And incomplete ideas, applied at scale, produce real consequences. I’ve been flying around the country (and the world for matter) for about three years, lecturing on economic development and sitting across the table from scores of pastors, and I’m seeing a pattern. And it’s ugly. Now, I’m not a leadership scholar. That’s more of my wife’s field. Jennifer flies all over the northeast training engineers who move into management and want to be leaders. I just shake my head. (Wow. OK, focus.)

Look, as a researcher, here’s what I see and what the data confirms: the consequences of the Great Man theory are showing up not only in organizational charts. They’re showing up in bloodwork. Pastoral health is in trouble.

Let me make the human argument first:

​Take a 27-year-old woman with an MBA. Sharp. Talented. She’s run an equity fund or a tech startup or something that required her to outthink rooms full of very smart people. She feels called to ministry. She reads theology for two years, does the work, earns a degree. Gold.

And then a Bishop places her in a church in rural Iowa, West Virginia, an urban environment, or a church nobody wants. Typical move. Prays over her and says, “Go win. The Spirit will empower you.”

And then the Bishop goes home.

She’s standing in a church she’s never pastored, in a town she doesn’t know, with no network, no staff, no donors, and a $40,000 salary. The denomination has handed her a building and a benediction and called it a deployment strategy.

That’s not a leadership challenge. That’s a resource failure dressed up as a leadership expectation.

I can already hear the rebuttal. “Well, if she’s a good leader, she’ll know how to gather and galvanize people and resources.” Yeah. Not to be cynical, but to be cynical, here’s the thing: the person who said that probably already bought their house. They’ve got a network, a title, a salary that didn’t require them to build something from nothing in a town of 4,000 people. And if they did, that was a completely different era. That’s not leadership wisdom. That’s cost transference dressed up as encouragement. It’s Darwinian. The survival of the fittest. And if by the grace of God she actually produces something, we call it God’s blessing. What it actually is, is someone operating in an unhealthy and unsustainable structure.

And frankly? It’s irresponsible. (I’m just say’n.)

​Here’s what the Great Man framework produces when you apply it without a support structure: it takes talented, called, capable people and quietly sets them up to fail. And then when they burn out, leave, or get sick, and the data says they do get sick, we say it wasn’t the right fit. 

We don’t say the system failed them. We say they failed the system.

A Few Thoughts 

I've been thinking about this stuff for years. I don't do alot of writing on leadership. That's kind of my wife's space, Jennifer leads an amazing leadership foundation that trains on emotional intelligence as a practical skill set and her work is pretty incredible. So I try to stay out of that lane. 

With that being said, leadership is always a practice that executives have to learn as well as some core management skills. Leadership and management are different. At the church and the foundation most of my work is in economics and theological leadership. It's really strategic thinking and practical application for other leaders. I tend to answer the question how do we make their vision possible,  that's real strategy. Taking an idea and making it work.

Over the past year when I've been traveling, I've seen two things that I think we really need to bring our attention to as leaders. And frankly, I think we need to abandon them.  They are what's called the Great Man Theory of Leadership and the Rule of the 49%.

Before we get into this, let me directly think out loud -- I am fully aware that these two types of leadership traits are of a boomer (I know ya'll tend to get picked on alot, so sorry) era of leadership. So overcoming them is probably gonna be a real challenge.

Here's what I hear all the time -- "There's not a pipeline of leaders coming behind the senior leaders." Well that's not true. All the church planting conferences, training symposiums and funding applications are all going great guns. So what's going on? The reality is there's a pipeline of younger leaders they're just not gonna work for the Great Man and live with the Rule of 49%. Sorry. They ain't working for you, or  me for that matter. But they might work alongside ya?

The Great Man Theory of Leadership
 
In the 1800s, Thomas Carlyle who was a Scottish historian and intellectual is widely known as arguing that, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." This has given us the idea that, “Everything rises and falls on leadership”, marketed from John Maxwell’s pithiness who ultimately finds his intellectual roots in Peter Tufano and John Kotter of Oxford and Harvard respectively. 
 
When we think about following leaders, I think we simply need to abandon the theory of, “We need to find the right guy.” and adopt a “Who is the best member of the team?” mindset. I'm thinking it would be better if we would strategize away from the “great man” to the idea that he/she would be a “great team” leader. 
 
In practice, leaders need to be collaborative rather than directive.  
 
I understand fully that the great man theory is the prevailing cultural milieu in our churches. I also understand that even some Gen X and Millennial leaders lead that way. Why? That's what was taught and modeled for them.  Let's stop and think for a moment,  can we admit that the collective experience has shown us that we need a new animated leadership theory for the Babylonian era that we now live in. Simply put, the old wines skins won’t hold the new wine.
 
The Rule of the 49%

The Rule of the 49% is an observation that I made during my time as a campaign manager for United States Congress, District 7 located in the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey. 

I call it the Rule of the 49% is when leaders tell you 49% of the truth in order to retain power by not giving all the information. 
 
As an example, when a leader is asked a direct question not all of the information is devolved rather just enough information is given so that one has enough information in order to get in to action. Team members are not given context to make a solid decision. Rather team members on making decisions based on partial information of which they have partially interpreted so they have partial understanding toward partial outcomes. (In church life it's mostly simply to drive numbers for the weekend experience.) 

This 49% is not an outright lie, but it is the conscience and deliberate decision to withhold information. 
 
Let me be direct,  it seems we would all be much healthier if we just abandon this era of leadership. Simultaneously, I do understand that the higher level of leadership, the more level of confidentiality. To this there is no argument. 
 
In order to provide uber clarity, collaborative leadership would provide answers like:

“At this point, I really don’t know what to do so I’m going to rely on my team.”
“Is the answer in the room?”
“That is a great question, but I am in conflict with myself.”
“What do you think?”
“That’s a great question and I have several moving parts that I’m not at liberty to really say anything at this time. I’m sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear but that’s just kind of where I am as a leader.” 
 
I am observing that it is time for a more collaborative leadership style rather than a directive, and one that shares appropriate level of information.

I've got a couple other leadership thoughts as I begin to work with large swath and styles of leadership in different kinds of context so I'll have some more thoughts in the next couple weeks.

Thank you so much for reading and leave me your thoughts below.