Council for Health and Human Service Ministries

Word and Deed: Thoughts on Faith-Based Leadership

Five Fruitful Attributes for Servant Leaders

Each year at CHHSM's Annual Meeting, we award the Diakonal Minister credential to executives and senior managers of CHHSM ministries who have completed the year-long Faith-Based Leadership Institute (FBLI). This year seven leaders from the Class of 2005—the ninth class to be honored— will join more than 100 other Diakonal Ministers from CHHSM organizations throughout the country.

The Diakonal Minister certification course of study augments managers' professional and subject-area job skills with study in eight areas that research has identified as essential to successful leadership of faith-based health and human service organizations. Among the eight areas of interest is spiritual integrity, an idea that is succinctly captured by James A. Autry in his book titled The Servant Leader. Autry introduces five basic attributes of leadership and expands upon each as a way to draw readers toward an unswerving attitude of service—the most meaningful expression of your spirituality at work:

  1. Be Authentic. Be the same person in every circumstance. Hold to the same values in whatever role you have. Always be your real self. Know yourself. Be yourself. Help other people learn to be themselves. Honor what is good and unique about those you are mentoring.
  2. Be Vulnerable. Being vulnerable means being honest with your feelings in the context of your work, being open with your doubts and fears and concerns about an idea, an employee's performance, or your own performance, and being able to admit mistakes openly, particularly with your employees. Being vulnerable takes a great deal of courage.
  3. Be Accepting. The art of acceptance does not imply that you accept everyone's ideas without critical analysis, discussion, and judgment -only that you accept the ideas as valid for discussion and review, and that you focus on the ideas themselves, not on the person who presented them. Accept others without judgment, just as they want to be accepted, without the need for approval or disapproval.
  4. Be Present. Being present means having your whole self available at all times, especially to be available to yourself as you try to bring all of your values to bear on the work at hand. It also means being available to others as you respond to the problems and issues and challenges of team members, colleagues, managers, employees, vendors, and customers.
  5. Be Useful. Managers and leaders work to assure that people get the resources they need to do the job. To be a leader who serves, you must think of yourself as - and indeed must be - their principal resource. The most important thing you can be as a leader is useful.

Shirley Nelson

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