Five Essential Functions of Effective Leaders

Effective leaders, in any organization, are those who can provide the leadership functions their systems need of them. This concept puts on its head any personality-based notion of leadership (charisma, intelligence, gender, race, ethnicity, pedigree, beliefs, looks, confidence, etc.). In other words, leadership is a function of the system, not a product of personality. The counter-intuitive reality is that healthy organizations have strong leaders—conversely, it is not always the case that strong leaders have healthy, or effective, organizations. The question then, is, “What function will I need to provide to be an effective educational leader?”

Reviewing the literature on leadership yields five essential functions of leaders. These five essential functions have appeared in different forms over the years, but they consistently comprise the "top five" on lists about what effective leaders do. They are:

1. Having a vision and communicating it well

2. Articulating goals and identifying strategies

3. Creating an adaptive culture open to change

4. Monitoring progress

5. Providing necessary interventions.

All leaders need to provide those essential functions--whether in a congregation, school, non-profit organization, or business. However, there’s no one best way to provide them. WHAT a leader needs to provide is clear; HOW a particular leader chooses to go about it is a product of both context and personality.

The challenge of the complex nature of the job of leaders, with the multi-faceted dimensions and demands of an organization, calls for an astonishing wide-ranging skills set: from interpersonal relational skills to high-level analytical and intuitive-interpretive skills. Organizational leaders, in whatever role, need to cultivate and apply a wide repertoire of cognitive styles in order to carry out the job, sometimes, in the course of a single day! They need often to switch from abstract, symbolic perspectives to a concrete, realistic perspective from one moment to the next. They may start the day with internal vision-casting in a Zen-like state while driving to the office, only to be engulfed in managerial problem-solving within twenty minutes of sitting at the desk, then, end the day dealing with interpersonal conflicts in the midst of emotional reactivity.

Effective educational leaders do well to remember that in the midst of the urgency and the press of the daily triage, there are only five functions that will ultimately determine their effectiveness. Five things make the difference, for they are the essential functions that the system needs of its leader. It is not much of an overstatement to say that, at the end of the day, all else is distraction. In fact, what dysfunctional systems are very good at is distracting its leader from focusing on and providing the essential functions!

To what extent are you providing the five essential educational functions of a dean?

What things distract you from investing time, thought, and effort on the five essential functions?

Are you stronger in providing one function over others? Which functions do you need to work on increasing your competence?

Dysfunctional systems are adept at sabotaging a leader’s focus on the five functions. Are you able to identify ways your system and context inhibits your effectiveness in one or more of the five essential functions?

Israel Galindo is Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning at the Columbia Theological Seminary. Formerly, he was Dean at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. He is the author of the bestseller, The Hidden Lives of Congregations (Alban), Perspectives on Congregational Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.

Truisms worth remembering during times of acute anxiety

All systems experience episodes of acute anxiety but systems manifest it differently. Relatively stable, resilient and high-functioning systems seem able to respond to episodes of acute anxiety. In contrast chronically anxious systems which lack resilience will tend to be reactive in the face of acute anxiety. That is, they have little tolerance for challenges, lack capacity for self-regulation or for imaginative responses to handle times of acute anxiety.

Chronically anxious systems share the following characteristics:

(1) They make someone in the system responsible for someone else's functioning

(2) They are structured to inhibit the effectiveness of its leaders

(3) They develop reactive, rigid, and predictable patterns for dealing with anxiety

(4) They tend to spawn anxiety triangles. 

While it is more helpful to assess the emotional process at work at the systemic level it can be helpful to observe how symptomology is being played out in the individuals in the system. When facing reactivity at the systemic level congregational leaders will need to respond to how it affects the individuals in the system. Needless to say, those individuals in the system who have a low capacity for self-differentiation and for managing their own anxiety will tend to be the most symptomatic (i.e., the ones who "act out").

Symptomology in Anxious Systems

Here are some truisms worth remembering when dealing with reactive individuals in a system going through acute anxiety:

Some people just need to be mad. They want their pain.

It’s a waste of time to try to dialogue with an angry person.

Some people just need to be “right,” regardless of the cost.

A chronically anxious system in the grips of acute anxiety has a tremendous capacity for self-sabotage. There will be no lack of volunteers willing to lead the way.

Anxiety spawns triangles—-even over distances.

Anxious people lose the capacity to practice grace and will assume the worst of others.

Persons who are "stuck" will believe what they want to believe. No amount of earnestness or data will convince them otherwise.

It only takes one willful anxious person to kick up the reactivity in an anxious system if the healthier ones in the system do not respond.

A leadership vacuum leaves a system with little resource for self-regulation or vision.

Anxiety spreads like a virus in a system that lacks immunity provided by leadership.

During times of acute anxiety emotionality trumps rationality, even in a system full of “smart” people.

Immature people will take any opportunity to work out their unresolved issues if given a forum.

Trust is a gossamer thread; once severed it’s almost impossible to regain.

Systems that are in reactivity tend to lack a capacity to hear the message or follow the leaders it needs.

People are hooked on the myth of information—the notion that if one has all the information it will make a difference to what needs to be done; or that more data will bring insight.

While information reduces anxiety, but for anxious people, so will misinformation.

Chronically anxious systems facilitate regression if unchecked.

No matter how hard you think you’ve tried to communicate process, most people will not hear most of it.

When people give in to paranoia, guilt by association carries more weight than observable facts.

When people lack data, they’ll fill in the blanks.

Perception is people’s reality. And most people will see things only from their frame of reference and from their position in the system.

The job of a leader in a system caught up in acute anxiety is twofold: first, self-regulation, and second, being attentive to the emotional process in the system and providing the function it needs of its leader.  Depending on the circumstance, the function of the leader can be anything from providing a corrective to acting out behavior; re-framing the issues from a principled, values, and missional perspective; empowering the calmer, more mature, more centered persons in the system; or merely providing the presence of the leader in the system (staying visible and emotionally connected). 

The good new is that acute anxiety, and the reactivity it engenders is episodic. Its shelf life is as long as the length of the crisis. Leaders can be encourage, also, by the fact that every system has some elements of health and maturity even in the midst of acute anxiety and crises. When the leader is able to focus on those, she or he can be surprised at the capacity for some in the system to step up to leadership or be a resource to the system. 

Israel Galindo is Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning at the Columbia Theological Seminary. Formerly, he was Dean at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. He serves as faculty coach for the  Leadership in Ministry Workshops, a clergy leadership development program from a systems perspective.  He is the author of the bestseller, The Hidden Lives of Congregations (Alban), Perspectives on Congregational Ministry (Educational Consultants), and A Family Genogram Workbook (Educational Consultants), with Elaine Boomer and Don Reagan. Galindo contributes to the Wabash Center's blog for theological school deans.