In the summer 2010 issue of Leadership Journal, Pastor Eugene Cho discusses the importance of communication in leadership. Pastor Cho’s church is strongly evolved in seeking justice and showing compassion. Through the churches focus on justice the organization One Day’s Wages (ODW) was born. The organization fights poverty by inviting people to donate “one day’s wages to the cause. Pastor Cho assumed that when he started to commit more time to ODW the church leaders and members would understand. He did not communicate what he was doing, and people stated to wonder if he was still committed to being a pastor. Lack of communication caused fear and confusion. Pastor Cho saw and corrected his error. He admits that much stress and anxiety could have been avoided had he communicated better with his leadership team and the church.
One of the most important things that any leader can do is communicate. It’s doesn’t matter what ones leadership style is, one must communicate. From my perspective the first thing that a leader must communicate is vision. Your people need to know were you are coming from. The next thing that must be communicated is expectation. People must clearly understand what you expect from them. Over time vision and expectations may change, when this happens it must be communicated. Pastor Cho’s vision didn’t change, but it expanded. His expectation for the team did change. He assumed that they would understand and respond. If one communicates vision and expectations, and makes sure that others understand one can remove a lot if not all ambiguity.
Going to comment on this one.
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Franklin, while I agree with you that communication is one of the most important aspects of leadership, I might argue that sharing the vision of a leader that has been given by God, may not always be the best thing to do, especially in the beginning. A lot of it has to do with whether or not the leader is new or has already been established. The reason I state this is because if one is newly assigned to lead a church, there is no telling what damage has been done by the previous pastor. My point here is that there has to be a time of assessment, possibly healing and a time of building trust. What we face, as we are thrown into or appointed to, will ultimately determine how transparent we can be as leaders to the congregation. In regards to sharing vision, I think that it depends on the situation. Depending on the situation, will determine whether or not the leader can share the entire vision or just share small steps of the vision that will allow a direction to be taken and a chance for trust to be established. It ultimately depends on the situation.
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