Engraining Leadership Development in Your Culture

One of the most important things a leader can do for his or her organization is build a leadership development culture.  How well has your church or organization done with making leadership development a part of your culture?  Take the following assessment, then discuss your next steps for making necessary changes. 

Rank each statement 1-5

• 1- Not true of us at all
• 2- Rarely true of us
•  3 – True of us
•  4 – Very true of us
•  5 – We are models in this area
    

1. _____ The senior leaders are supportive and involved in the leadership development of our church.
2. _____ Leaders at every level are expected to be involved in developing new leaders.
3. _____ We have a specific leadership development strategy we are promoting consistently in our culture.
4. _____ We cast vision for leadership development on a regular basis.
5. _____ We have developed a language around our leadership development efforts that has found its way into our culture.
6. _____ We are using simple and specific systems in our leadership development efforts.
7. _____ We are providing accountability by measuring the results of our leadership development efforts.
8. _____ We celebrate the successes of our leadership development efforts on a consistent basis.
9. _____ We have one central person championing the cause of leadership development at our church.
10. _____ We have a mentality that “we are in this for the long haul”.

TOTAL SCORE: ___________
 
SCORE
45-50    STRONG LEADERSHIP DEVELOMENT CULTURE
You already have a very strong leadership development culture. You need to focus on fine tuning the details and consider doing some outside the box thinking for the future of leadership development at your church. You also need to consider how you can help other churches improve their leadership development processes.

39-44 HIGH POTENTIAL FOR a LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CULTURE
Your church is close to having a leadership development culture. You’re doing a good job in some areas of leadership development but are likely to have some weak spots that are keeping it from truly being engrained in your culture. It is likely that some people in your organization have bought in, while others still do not see “leadership development” as a part of their job.  You need to choose the one or two areas that are lagging and find ways to maximize your efforts there.

33-38 GOOD POTENTIAL FOR A LEADERSHIP DEVLEOPMENT CULTURE
Don’t be discouraged, you have some strengths you can build on. While it may be important to you, others in the organization dont’t see leadership development as a priority.  Make sure everyone in the organization understands what is going well in the area of leadership development and then cast a vision for taking it to a new level. The fact that you are doing some things well will help your current leaders easily get excited about improving leadership development in your culture. Choose one or two areas you feel are most important to begin improving, gather a team of people who can help you make the necessary changes.

27-32 NEED MUCH IMPROVEMENT TO REACH A LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CULTURE
While your church or organization may be growing and doing good things, it may be in danger of losing effectiveness in the future unless you raise your leadership development efforts. It will be important that senior leadership begin to emphasize leadership development as a priority. Leadership development has not been a part of your culture and it is going to take some hard work and patience to begin to build it into your culture.

0-26 SERIOUS NEED TO CHANGE YOUR CULTURE
This is a strong indication that your church may be in decline or is built upon a dynamic-charismatic leader. You are facing an uncertain future and the senior leadership team needs to begin to have some serious talks about the future of the church. You may need to bring someone in from the outside to coach you in the initial steps of building a leadership development foundation in your church. Top leadership need to begin to study the importance of leadership development and begin to make it a priority in their own day to day practices.

What are our next steps?