Learning and Leading in Ministry: Chapter Twelve

Leadership Basic Tasks: Teaching, Coaching, Training

Learn how to help.

Authentic leadership comes from actually helping people. A true leader does not accept his or her position as a resume enhancement or the surest path to a golden parachute. Leaders worth their salt actively engage their followers in real, life-changing, difference-making relationships. Three basic leadership tasks give rise to meaningful relationships between leaders and followers: teaching, coaching and training. They may all look the same, but big differences exist among them.

Teaching: Non-academic teaching operates in a different context than the school environment. In the real world, teachers do not enjoy a master-to-scholar positional leverage. Instead, they must actually impart knowledge or skills that followers either lack or do not know how to use. In church work, members who have been around for a long time may know as much theology or tradition as the new pastor, but the pastor may have better skills in communication, organization or methodology. Effective teaching in the mature world only occurs when the learner is convinced that the teacher actually knows what he or she is teaching. The lazy, unfocused teacher who presumes on positional authority to get the job done will fail.

Coaching: All coaching involves teaching, but the main job for coaches is to motivate their followers. Coaches have to get closer to the human side of those with whom they work in order to effectively guide them to the highest levels of capability. Coaches see errors in performance and work to correct them. Coaches see lapses in effort and inspire their workers or players to generate more intensity. Coaches get a feel for bad attitudes and target them for change. These observations require empathy, sensitivity and understanding. They also demand an inner strength that dominates the workers or players natural resistance to conform. Coaching is probably the most rewarding and enjoyable aspect of leadership.

Training:  Leaders who dedicate themselves to training stand to gain the most mileage from their leadership efforts. It takes a huge amount of dedication, because few proactive tasks of leadership demand more work, cause more grief or catch more flak than training. The trainer hears all the bitter complaints. The trainer gets up early, puts in long hours and goes to bed exhausted. The trainer makes people do what they don’t want to do and talks them into painful exercises and deprives followers of fun because he or she understands the exponential gains that rigorous training eventually yields. Tough, mean and unsympathetic, the trainer takes away the pleasure of the moment in exchange for the joy of a lifetime.

Without these elements, leadership ceases to work. But, when leaders learn how to teach, coach and train, they end up helping people live better lives.