The war in Ukraine has reminded us all of the vital importance of such things as morale and effective leadership. If there are factors that are causing severe damage to the military ambitions of the Russian army (and navy) in Ukraine, it is partly as the result of extraordinary failures in these two areas. We are all witnesses to the incompetence and disastrously low morale among the Russian forces. They are often demoralised, disorientated and increasingly ineffective against a Ukrainian army buoyed up by international support and a keen sense of the rightness of their cause. As we ponder the reported drunkenness and brutish behaviour of ordinary Russian troops in Ukraine, we are also aware of the serious deficiencies of their political and military leadership right across the board. All institutions suffer if those in charge have such a deluded and distorted grasp on reality. Here the situation has been made worse by the high numbers of deaths among the officer class in the Russian army. We are told that one legacy from Soviet days is the way that junior officers are not permitted to make decisions or use personal initiative on the battlefield. A flexible response to a new situation cannot easily be put into effect without a confirmatory order from a senior officer. He may be absent a long way from the front line. This makes for a fighting force burdened by delays and slow reaction-times.
I begin my reflection on leadership in the Church by looking at how this one institution, the Russian army, is being failed by an inflexible and inadequate style of leadership. What would good military leadership look like? Beyond noting the extraordinary lack of preparation for war by the Russian political leadership, I have nothing particularly useful to offer to answer this question. I would merely note that if you allow endemic corruption to exist within any institution, you destroy the possibility that the ordinary people in the organisation will have confidence in what they are called on to do. Decades of corruption, grift and political interference have crippled the Russian fighting efficiency and capacity to wage war. One hopes that similar handicaps are not allowed to interrupt the fighting potential of the armies in democratic nations. In armies and other organisations, we depend on trained professionals to lead and guide members to run things smoothly and efficiently. Leadership skills are necessary wherever groups of people are being organised to work together to achieve a common purpose. Good leadership contributes to material and human productivity while bad leadership results, as in the Ukrainian conflict, in human misery and institutional failure.
Before I make some comments about leadership in the Church, I want to sketch out some of the things that we look for in all leaders, whether for businesses, political institutions, or religious bodies. The first thing that comes to mind, as I consider the task of a leader, is that every leader should embody the values of the institution. A leader in a manufacturing company will not spend a lot of time on the shop floor with the workers, but the relationship between leader and led will be enhanced if the leader has made it his/her business to understand as much as possible of the technical details of the institution’s output. This familiarity with technical detail is not simply good for public relations. It also helps when the leader must make some decision which affects all the workers or subordinates. Good relationships with the workforce have a moral aspect. By this I am indicating the importance of there being trust on the part of the shopfloor in the absolute integrity of the person making decisions affecting their lives.
Leadership, I would maintain, demands morality to be built into the desired relationship with those who are led. If any sense of the leaders behaving without scruple is felt, the morale of those led is affected. The other aspects of leadership, efficient administration, productivity, and charisma are all vitally important, but the need for moral behaviour by a leader stands supreme. It has been instructive to note the rapid decline in the fortunes of Hillsong Church around the world. What failed were not changes of doctrine or the quality of the worship, but the upholding of moral integrity by the leaders. When Hillsong was attracting famous pop stars and celebrities to its numbers, it must have felt very ‘happening’ and on trend. Once the stories of misbehaviour began to leak out, the things that appeared to be glamorous overnight become seedy and repellent. I make no predictions about the future of Hillsong, but it is hard to see the ‘brand’ surviving for the long term.
The Church of England, and the groups linked with it, are currently facing their own problems with leadership. We look to such church leaders to provide guidance both to individuals and to our national political institutions. For the Church to speak truth to its followers or those who hold positions of power in society, it needs to be confident that its own moral integrity is unblemished. There are a variety of current problems in the Church at present which raise serious issues of trust. From time to time promises are made by those in authority to the wider church. Then after a couple of years, someone reminds everyone that the promise has somehow been lost to sight. Two examples of as-yet unfulfilled promises in the safeguarding arena come to mind. The first is the promise made by Archbishop Welby a year ago to survivors of the evil activities of John Smyth, that every member of the clergy who knew about Smyth’s activities would be ‘investigated’ by the NST. There are about 30 individuals who knew the events beforehand but nothing has emerged to indicate that this promise to investigate has been activated. Another promise, that was put forward at a General Synod over a year ago by John Spence, a member of Archbishop’s Council, was a promise that ‘funds would be found’ for redress as required. This was a matter of justice. Last week, to considerable fanfare, increased allocations of money for the next Triennium (up to 2025) were announced in a press conference by the two archbishops. Support of parishes and parish clergy were announced but no provision appears to have been made for the redress scheme. Has it been quietly forgotten, like so many other promises connected with safeguarding?
In the past, before the days of the internet, statements could be made by those in authority which then might become quickly forgotten. Today the same thing is no longer true. The records of Twitter, newspapers and even blogs like this one are lodged for ever on the net and can be recovered by any diligent researcher. If promises are made and then apparently forgotten, there are those who are ready to point this out. In short, the days of making promises to church members, and then ‘forgetting’ that the promises were ever made, are over. Senior church leaders also make promises of the timelines of reports and enquiries. Every time these reports are delayed, and deadlines fail to be met, the sense of confidence in the quality of leadership in the church is chipped away. Followers of this blog and of the history in the Church of England will be keenly aware of when feelings of disappointment and disillusionment are felt by ordinary church members over failed promises.
I am conscious of numerous other ways that the integrity of those in senior levels of the Church of England and among the senior members of semi-independent groups has been questioned. It serves little purpose to raise further more shameful examples here. But what we have in the Church is a generalised sense of unease and an increasing decline of confidence that everything is being done in the best way for the future. The overall accusation is that church leaders and leaders of Church factional interest groups are acting, not in the interests of integrity and truth, but in a way that preserves power, privilege, and the interests of this institution or group. Often the challenge for an organisation like the Church is not just to correct misapprehensions on the part of a watching public, but also take active steps to anticipate the impression of bad faith that is being circulated in the public domain. This is not a job that that can be handed over to communications experts. Indeed, the publicity firms that the Church employs have sometimes made a situation of moral failure seem even worse than it in fact is. What is needed is active contrition on the part of leaders. Such contrition must seem to be genuine and heart-felt. It needs to reflect the highest values and beliefs of the organisation. So far we have not seen examples of this quality of penitence in the world of safeguarding. The path towards resolving all the issues left over from the abuse crisis in the Church of England will require, not just financial redress, but active and sincere expressions of sorrow from the institution as well as the individuals that perpetrated and collaborated in such terrible evil. This will be, for the time being, one of the most pressing challenges to be faced by leaders of our national Church.
I think that one of the 20th/21st century heresies is that management is an art or science which can be practised regardless of any knowledge of what is being managed. Using your analogy above, the manager who takes time to engage her/his workers/staff, who has a real knowledge of the service/ product being offered and in addition has real experience of working at the shop floor and a varying levels over a period of time is likely both to be a better manager, have a greater understanding of the environment in which s/he and the organisation operates and have the respect and appreciation of those s/he manages. This will lead to both better leadership and a wider understanding of the issues which may face the organisation and its people.
It strikes me that there are too many in the leadership of the CofE, both lay and episcopal, whose knowledge of the real world , and indeed the church at the grass roots of the parish, is seriously limited. That bishops can be appointed whose pastoral experience is limited to a single curacy must be a nonsense, especially if that person doesn’t bring anything else to the table. That we have few or no bishops of significant theological abilities also shows just how managerialism has eclipsed any other attribute. It’s no wonder that they are held in such little regard and at the same time are both ineffective and often seriously mistaken.
I entirely support this description of the modern management heresy. Indeed, I’d challenge the comment in the article “A leader in a manufacturing company will not spend a lot of time on the shop floor with the workers”. I knew the MD of a manufacturing company with about 800 employees who visited the shop floor every day, and it was both a harmonious and a profitable enterprise. But of course that isn’t management, it’s leadership.
Having spent quite a lot of time thinking about what constituted leadership at work, I’m pretty sure that there’s no one form of leadership, though.
I think it’s dangerous believing the church is an institution: it may have been once, but since 1997 it has been on the road to becoming a distinct organisation. It is becoming an entity; identifiable, quanitifable and capable of being owned, controlled and managed by a very small group at a considerable distance – both physically and spiritually – from the front-line business of running parishes. Every development since the introduction of the Archbishops’ Council has steadily eroded the sense of independent yet interlinked ministeries being exercised in neighbouring parishes and dioceses, under the independent authority of a diocesan bishop.
In an age where every diocese has its own (usually excruciatingly bad) slogan underpining its visible corporate, comic sans identity; pointing to seperate yet identikit mission, ministry, development and renewal re-imagining and re-envisioning ‘action plans’ and upbeat press releases complete with pictures of beaming bishops, it’s difficult to pinpont exactly where and when the Church of England lost its soul, but it undboubtedly happened and both church and country are the poorer for it.
Not trying to be awkward, but what is the significant difference between an institution and an organisation? In what way is this distinction important?
There’s no real mechanism for change in the Church. Inertia is structured-in. Observers of conventional leadership will often be found scratching their heads as to the non-leadership going on. For example there’s little in the way of accountability for promises made, and no consequences for those not delivering on them. Ordinarily good leadership is about change. But in this case the Church doesn’t want to change, so those in charge have a different agenda, which is to maintain the institution, and the comfort of those at the top. Recall, that the Church still rests on vast reserves.
To be clear, I have no doubt that there are many hard working and effective ministers on the ground, often mightily demoralised but just about keeping their heads above water. But they have no say or control over the glacial institutional ways.
The status quo is aided and abetted by corporately deaf congregations and parishioners who would rather not hear about the scandals at mothership and the growing clerical misdemeanour catalogue. And I don’t blame them per se. But the cries of the hurt are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Stephen is right about the growing web based transparency about such things, and this is one steady way of creating change. Many have distaste for this, calling it gossip, but it’s a lot more to do with justice, and I believe a truly Christian responsibility.
Change occurs in quanta, with each new scandal carrying its own momentum. For example, the Percy case has lead to public calls to stop funding disingenuous bullying claims by withholding individual giving (or perhaps diverting it to more worthy causes if you’re worried about not paying your tithe). If I’d said this, no one would have heard, but the quantum effect is initiated by someone of Percy’s weight suggesting it, coupled with the strong response of his numerous and influential followers.
Expect more such quanta, but note that these influences are only from outside the Church.
My uncle, who was a director of Pountney Pottery in Bristol, was always there at 0730 when the men turned up to start the day, greeting them all. Working relations there were good as far as I know.
Jesus spoke of lazy brutal leaders getting drunk in some of his later parables. He had no illusions. Interesting.
A senior leader has taken advantage of my blindness to dismiss my allegation that another senior cleric is guilty of ignoring my formal complaint. Apparently if you are unable to fill in the required form to file cdm, and say you wish to file cdm and ask for the necessary assistance which must, under the Equality Act be given you, the cleric to whom you complain is justified in ignoring you. It is not misconduct to take advantage of a person’s disability and inability to use a system which disenfranchises you. So it is now open season to abuse and harass those people who cannot fill in a form, because the church will take advantage of your disability in order to preserve the reputation of those it wishes to protect.