Non-Linear Leadership
Nancy Ortberg on leading well and building healthy ministry teams.
Christian Leadership Alliance president and CEO Frank Lofaro recently interviewed Nancy Ortberg, noted author and former teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Illinois. She is a consulting partner with Patrick Lencioni (best-selling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) and a founding partner of Teamworx2, a business and leadership consulting firm that provides fast-paced, practical, and compelling sessions for leaders of businesses, schools, nonprofits, and churches. Ortberg also provides direction and oversight to the team at Open Door Church San Mateo, a campus of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, where her husband John serves as senior pastor.
Ortberg has led a staff team in the recruitment and mobilization of thousands of volunteers, and has spoken internationally and domestically on leadership and the creation of corporate culture. With more than 22 years experience in sales, service, and the healthcare industry—including 18 years in leadership roles—she is passionate about improving personal and organizational effectiveness. Ortberg believes that teams are the most dynamic way to produce those results, and is interested in analyzing and catalyzing the flow of energy and strategy in healthy, dynamic leadership teams. She is the author of Looking for God: An Unexpected Journey through Tattoos, Tofu, & Pronouns (Tyndale House, 2008) and Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership (Tyndale House, 2008).
What are some keys for leading today’s Christian ministries well?
I like the words "today’s Christian ministries” because culture has shifted in significant ways. I think the ability to contextualize ministry in our current culture is really important.
We talk about the rapidity of change, but the gap between the church and the secular culture is enormous. Leaders should think in contextual ways very much as Jesus did. He slipped into one culture and told stories that resonated with people of that day. Being able to contextualize ministry for today’s demographics is critical for both relevancy and effectiveness.
I like something that David Gibbons writes about, the idea of "liquid leadership.” Christian leaders must be flexible, able to adjust in the moment and not get so locked into things that they can’t respond to what are the winds of the Holy Spirit.
Leaders must also learn to manage tensions rather than just solve problems. Solving problems is important, but for leaders, the majority of your work is going to be in managing tensions and recognizing the difference between those two. When something continues to show itself and you get frustrated, either it’s a problem that you didn’t solve well or it’s just a tension that you’re going to have to lead through.
In Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands, you say that leadership is both inward and outward. How so?
Leadership is transformative. It’s not just a role that you fulfill. It is a crucible for spiritual formation. The best leaders constantly look inward and outward. They do the work of leading others but the toughest person they will ever lead is themselves. The key is growing in self-awareness. There are many ways to do that, but self-awareness comes through knowing who I am, who I’m not, my strengths and my weaknesses, how I rub people the wrong way . . . always being a learner and a student of those kinds of things.
In any organization, the farther up you go, the less truth you hear. Leaders should invite truth-telling people into their lives and then do the work of filtering that feedback. For leadership to be the inward journey that it’s supposed to be, it will involve going through a lot of pain, both personally and corporately, and navigating that in an authentic way with your team. I was just in a meeting with a team and some of the top leaders shared that they had dropped the ball. That vulnerability remarkably impacted the tone and texture of the team. Nobody likes to work for an omnicompetent leader very long. But people will walk through fire for a vulnerable leader.
In the book, you talk about "non-linear lead?ership.” What is that?
Many aspects of leadership are linear, and many leaders are linear thinkers. But there’s a non-linear kind of leadership where it’s not just about getting A, then B, then C done. It’s not just about a strategic plan. Non?linear leadership involves the creation of culture. How do you build a culture in an organization that unleashes energy? To me, that’s really at the core of what it means to be a great leader.
How do I create a culture where there’s collaboration, innovation, low fear, and where people give each other feedback on the spot rather than wait for the one year, 360?degree review? How do I build an environment where there’s trust between teams and not a lot of silos? How do we create an energetic culture where people wake up in the morning excited about coming to work, where the organization’s ethos fuels the strategies we’re working on?
Do linear leaders have a harder time building such cultures?
Yes. But the good news about that is we really need each other. I’m a much better leader when I partner with a linear leader, and we’re fighting through how we work together, bringing the gifts of both to the organization.
What are some keys to building healthy ministry teams?
Pat Lencioni says we drastically underestimate both the power that teamwork ultimately unleashes in an organization and the painful steps required to make it a reality. I think that often leaders come to work thinking about the wrong things. From a teamwork perspective, your number one job every day is to ask, "What is the quality of your team and how can I support it?” I’m constantly thinking about the people on my team, how they work together, what they need, what obstacles are in their way. How can I help develop them as leaders?
How do you build trust?
Trust can feel ethereal but there are actually concrete ways to build trust. Most leaders don’t come to work every day thinking, "What’s the condition of trust on my team, how fragile is it, how can I help build it?” They assume trust, especially in Christian organizations, and that’s dangerous. A lot of nonprofit organizations and churches aren’t doing a good job of building trust and engaging in the healthy conflict necessary to make great decisions and hold each other accountable.
Trust actually boils down to three things: character, competency, and an area where Lencioni has done some really fresh work, vulnerability.
Maybe there’s a monthly time in team meetings where we tell our stories and share our backgrounds, struggles, joys, as well as what’s currently frustrating in our work and what’s going well. Over time, we know each other better. That can come out of the work that we do as well. But I think that maybe once a month we should ask questions like: "What was the most challenging thing for you growing up in your family? What was your birth order?” You know, different ways of just unpacking knowing. When you know somebody, you build your ability to trust them.
Giving each other a steady stream of feedback is also a way to develop trust. If people on your team know what you are really thinking/seeing in them, both the positive and the negative, over time, done well, that will deeply build trust.
It’s also as practical as hiring practices. How do you hire for character and competency? If somebody were to hire me as their chief financial officer, they would have sufficient reason not to trust me—not because I’m an untrustworthy person, but simply because my core competency isn’t in finances. So, what questions are we asking and what filters are we using to ensure that we get people of good character and high competence in the right places?
Vulnerability takes the team to a whole different level of trust. When you work with a vulnerable leader, you feel as if there’s a reason for you being around that circle. You’re not just executing their vision. The vision is collaborative.
If you as a leader spend the next month thinking every day of how to build trust, it will make a huge difference on your team.
When there are layoffs and budget cuts, how do you keep team morale intact?
I would ask, "How transparent is the process?” As you go through the really painful and difficult task of down?sizing, is there communication with everyone so that people understand the reason for the decisions and the pain it involves? Or are you using spiritual happy talk, or not saying much of anything, so that people feel even more scared during the process? Transparency goes a long way.
There is a wish to just do this easily and quickly, but there is no magic wand. It will take a level of leadership that most of us aren’t leading out of right now. What got us here won’t get us to the future. We must lead differently, and that takes a lot of courage and hope.
What hiring advice would you give to today’s ministry leaders?
The first thing seems really obvious, but I’m amazed at how few organizations—especially churches—check references and check them well. I’ve had people who I’ve let go for pretty significant reasons that have gotten other ministry jobs quickly and nobody ever called for a reference. Make the phone calls. Ask the hard questions. Push for strengths and weaknesses. Ask for examples.
In an interview, I always ask the person, "What do you feel like your spiritual gifts are and why?” If it’s a leadership role, and I don’t hear "leadership,” that will give me at least a little red flag. Then I often ask for examples of their having led well and then some examples when they have not led well and what they learned from that. If I don’t get a good answer, that’s a little red flag. If I hear too many, "Well, I’m really a workaholic and I work too hard,” that’s just not a good answer. There’s a problem if somebody can’t say, "I really messed up here, and looking back on it, here’s what I would do differently.”
One other simple thing—if I am getting serious about a hire, I will often include going out for a meal together. Observing how they treat the wait staff is an education in itself.
What are the keys to leading volunteers?There are three keys to developing volunteer leaders: 1) Give people an opportunity to serve in their area of giftedness; 2) Give people challenges so they’re stretching; and 3) Give people a relationship with a leader who knows them and works with them side-by-side.
Nancy Ortberg will lead a full-day intensive training session entitled "Teamwork: Unleash its Power!” at the 2011 Christian Leadership Alliance National Conference in Dallas, April 26-28 (
claconference.org).
