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Dan Hotchkiss
65 Bourne Street
Middleboro MA 02346

508-951-3178

Listening and Leading

by DAN HOTCHKISS

Seminary students like to discuss the mystery of "ministerial authority" — which is a mystery because it is so nearly nonexistent. Ministers may have authority, but not because of being ministers. Ministers must earn authority by listening patiently, showing up consistently, and responding to challenge gracefully and without running away. In time trust grows

Therapists know this process well, and traditionally spend months or years building a relationship before beginning to suggest changes in their clients’ thinking or behavior. Through empathic listening, reassurance, and faithfulness to the therapeutic contract and its limitations, eventually the therapist moves past the initial wary cordiality to "therapeutic alliance," in which therapist and client no longer occupy opposed positions, but look together at a common issue.

This shift from opposition to collaboration is central to church leadership. Because we have so little power to compel cooperation, we lead by attraction. Because we seek not only the compliance, but the transformation of our followers, we need them as full partners in the dance of leadership.

I have not always handled this process very patiently. Instead my pattern (and I think I’m not alone) has been to learn lessons in one place and apply them in another. At best, this is the wisdom of experience. At worst it is the hammer that makes everything look like a nail. Experience can make patient listening difficult; still listening is required if we are to appreciate each situation in its full uniqueness.

My first ministry was in the jolly, sociable retirement city of Boca Raton, Florida. Filled with retirees who have abandoned family and friends to enter paradise, the epidemic pastoral issue in Boca is loneliness. The church in such a setting is a social center, supplying intellectual depth, spiritual values, but above all friendliness. At some point in my ministry I suggested that the congregation hold hands during the sharing of joys and concerns. It worked perfectly, and people loved it. For more than a few, it was their only human touch all week. For most, it was a cathartic symbol of escape from loneliness. It somehow preserved the special tone of sharing and prevented it from sliding into more announcements. It expressed, as words could not, our wish to stand together through inspirations and the losses of the week.

When I moved to my next church, I suggested that they try the same experiment — and found that New Haven, Connecticut, is not Boca Raton, Florida. New Englanders, relatively speaking, do not touch. One man in New Haven actually avoided handshakes whenever possible — the intimacy of touch was overwhelming to him. Even people willing to touch hands with spouses or close friends were aghast at my suggestion of promiscuous, dermis-to-dermis contact with one stranger after another every week. I would say one of the most significant pieces of ministerial leadership I exercised in that church was to back off from my resolution to hold hands.

I could tell many stories of my own errors stemming — as I see in retrospect — from the naïve belief that I knew what was needed, and did not need to forge a compact with my followers before I started leading.

We commonly imagine leadership as something one person does, and that a group receives or rejects. We assess "leadership qualities" in individuals as though it were possible to be a leader all alone. But leadership is not really a skill or trait; it is an agreement, in which the leader discerns wishes and needs and then frames a platform or direction that the followers accept. If there is no fundamental match between the leader’s platform and the wishes of the group, there will be no followers, and therefore no leader.

No doubt the platform of a successful leader will be drawn on principle, and with integrity. There will be an admixture of challenge, even of "knowing better" what the people need. But looking at it from the followers’ perspective, the mixture usually seems to consist of nine parts "what I wanted all along" and one of "what I know I ought to want." Only a leader who has spent plenty of time listening and discerning can achieve this kind of mix.