7 Leadership Styles* & How They Impact Your Ministry: #2 POWER

There are times when each of us functions from a place of power. There are those of us, however, for whom power is our primary personality Advantage**. If this is you, you seen as confident and self-assured. You have definite opinions and beliefs and easily share them. This often leads to others seeing you as authoritative. Most of the time you are willing and even desirous of input from others on important issues. Still, you can easily sift through the information and opinions you receive and seem to come to a decision rather quickly. You usually have well planned goals and work towards accomplishing those goals. You are not one to sit back passively either in a discussion or when it comes to taking action in your ministry. 

Confidence!

A couple of words of caution are in order. When you become excited about an idea or program and believe that it’s the best one for your community, if you do not carefully consider all the input from others, even when it’s not favorable to what you want, you can be perceived as being too pushy. If this happens with some regularity, then you could be seen as authoritarian rather than authoritative, or even as a bully, demanding that you must always have your way. Another word of caution is to remember to share the goals that you have for your ministry and your community with others. This might need to be done periodically. It will also be easier for people to buy in to those goals if they feel they have a say in forming them to begin with and/or modifying them along the way.

The Apostle Paul reminds us (Romans 12 & 1 Corinthians 12) we are each a member of the body of Christ. Each part/member of the body has gifts to offer to the whole. No matter what our part is, we are not the whole of the body and cannot go it alone. Whatever your primary Advantage is, those whose dominant Advantage is Power have a gift from God. May you use your dominant Advantage in gratitude to God and for the blessing of those you serve. May you also value the gifts that come from those who have Advantages that differ from yours. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Notes: * This material is based on the work of Sally Hogshead from her book, How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination, ^©2014.

** Through her research, Sally Hogshead has identified 7 personality types, which she calls Advantages. We each have all 7 of these, but there is one that we use most often. It’s our dominant Advantage. This article looks at one of these 7 Advantages.