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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the critical differences and dynamic overlap between leadership and management in ministry. He debunks common myths, explores why both disciplines are vital for organizational success, and shares practical stories illustrating how leaders drive change while managers make those visions a reality.
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What is Lead On Podcast?
Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
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Welcome to the Lead On podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. If you remember last week on the podcast, I told you that I was struggling with Tennessee pollen and other irritants that have caused me to have some, voice challenges this summer. You may be thinking, wow. That's amazing that that has lasted so long.
Jeff Iorg:Well, here's a podcasting secret. Especially during the summer when I'm trying to take some time off, I do two podcasts at a time when I do them. And so, no, I'm not suffering from the interminable allergies of living in this part of the country. Just happened to do two podcasts on the same day, and you happen to hear them two different weeks. So that's some podcasting, back room trivia for you, but that's why I'm gonna give you the same apology this week that I gave you last week, and that is patience, patience, patience as I cough and wheeze and otherwise make weird noises through this podcast.
Jeff Iorg:And my wonderful producer friend will try to cut out those and make this as smooth as possible, but if the podcast seems a little choppy again this week, that's the reason
Jeff Iorg:why. I wanna talk today on
Jeff Iorg:the podcast about the issues of leadership and management and how they relate to each other. This came out of a question that I was asked on a panel discussion recently. Someone asked me, did I consider myself more of a leader or a manager, and did I, and how did I see those two things relating to each other? And it was a great question because quite frankly, in one of my leadership presentations in the teaching that I do on this subject, I have a section on leadership and management and sort of how they go together and why they're both important and what what they both look like and why they're different than each other. So let's talk about that today.
Jeff Iorg:Do you consider yourself more of a leader? Do you consider yourself more of a manager? Have you ever really thought about there being a difference between those two things? And if so, what's the value of them and how do they relate to one another? So let's start by blowing up three myths about leadership and management.
Jeff Iorg:The first myth is this,
Jeff Iorg:leadership is good, management is bad. Leadership is special, management not so much. Leadership is superior, management is inferior. Myth, myth, myth. The truth is leadership is good, management is good.
Jeff Iorg:They are not superior or inferior to each other. They are two different disciplines that both have high value. So myth number two, leaders are more important than managers to organizational success. Again, myth, myth, myth. Leaders and managers are both important to organizational success.
Jeff Iorg:The mutuality, the commonality, the complementary nature of their work means that both leaders and managers are essential for organizational success. Here's a third myth. Leaders never manage. Managers never lead. In other words, these two disciplines as they are represented in people never connect.
Jeff Iorg:So leaders lead, managers manage, but they never come together. Well, myth again. Myth, myth, myth. Actually, leaders often manage, and managers occasionally lead. And sometimes there's
Jeff Iorg:a blending of these two disciplines so that it's really hard to sort out, am I leading or am I managing? So don't think of this as a binary, putting things on the extremes, but think of them instead of two things that often come together. Think of a diagram where you have two circles that overlap each other for a portion of that diagram, and you shade in the part where there's overlapping. Well, if one of the circles was leadership and the other circle was management, as they come together and there's some blending over of them, you would say, maybe you're doing a little bit of both. So we've started out by blowing up three myths about leadership and management.
Jeff Iorg:Leadership is good, management is bad, leaders are more important than managers, and leaders never manage, and managers never lead. Three myths blown up. They're simply not true. Now the next thing I wanna do is try to define leadership and management for you and then draw some distinctions between these two. Now if you've heard me on the podcast before talking about a definition of leadership, or if you've been to any of my leadership conferences, you know that I like an academic definition of leadership developed years ago by a man named Joseph Ross, and his definition is this.
Jeff Iorg:Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real change according to their mutual purposes. Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real change that reflects their mutual purposes. That's an academic definition of leadership that I like a lot. I could spend a lot of time unpacking it for you and help you understand why every phrase, in fact, every word is vitally important to understanding the concept of leadership. But now in this same book, the same author, Joseph Frost, defines management, and he defined it this way.
Jeff Iorg:Management is an authority relationship between at least
Jeff Iorg:one manager and one subordinate who coordinate their activities to produce and or sell particular goods and or services. Now,
Jeff Iorg:let's go through and compare and contrast these definitions and see if we can understand better how leadership and management relate to each other. So first of all, leadership is an influence relationship. Management, more of an authority relationship.
Jeff Iorg:Now, once again, don't think
Jeff Iorg:of these as binary, meaning that there are two extremes of a long line and that they never touch one another. Instead, think of these as overlapping circles where leadership is more of an influence relationship and management is more of an authority relationship. But, of course, good managers have some influence built into their process, and good leaders have some authority built into theirs. Now management means oftentimes that influence is external and not so much internal to the relationship. So for example, managers have, an influence relationship called a paycheck that they can use to motivate people to get their work done.
Jeff Iorg:Influence doesn't depend on these externals, but management really does. Because these kinds of things like, again, a paycheck become a very visible means by which a person is motivated to get a work done. K? And then in these influence and authority relationships, in an influence relationship of leadership, the relationships are typically perceived to be more interactive. Whereas in a management relationship, they're more perceived as a top down authority style relationship.
Jeff Iorg:So for example, if a leader is wanting to bring about real change, that leader might bring people together for a conversation, meet with people individually, propose ideas, engage dialogue, work on solutions, propose new ideas, come to new opportunities or new solutions, and eventually, by this influence relationship and process of leadership, come to a decision to initiate a consequential change in an organization. So for example, your church decides to completely renovate its exterior, new, lawns, new shrubs, new signage, all of that. Well, that's gonna require some leadership from you. You're going to have to invest in relationships. You're going to have to invest information.
Jeff Iorg:You're going to have to create a strategy. You're going to have to demonstrate need, and you're going have to show where you're going get the money to get this all done. And eventually, there's gonna come to a point where somebody, a a staff or a group
Jeff Iorg:of elders or deacons or maybe the church as a whole, actually decides to get this done. Now, the
Jeff Iorg:guys that are gonna show up and do the work, they're gonna come as a crew of guys with a manager. And that person's gonna say, okay, You four guys are over there tearing out that lawn and putting in that sod. You three guys are over there taking out those shrubs and getting that ready for planting. You're over here. You're driving the truck, you're on primary cleanup duty.
Jeff Iorg:Let's get going. I wanna finish this much work by noon. Let's set a steady pace and
Jeff Iorg:let's get with the program, and off they go. There's no coming together for long conversations about how we're going to get this done. No. We're here to sell or coordinate a good or
Jeff Iorg:a service, which is installing the landscaping. And so a good manager has enough relationship with his workers to know, what motivates them and what they like to know and where their assignment is and what they do best so that these guys are better on sod and these guys are better on trees, and he assigns them accordingly. So, there's some relationship built into this management responsibility, but not a lot. Not as much as there is built into a leadership responsibility that's trying to make the decision to get this all done in
Jeff Iorg:the first place. But in this management moment, you have a person who employs people, motivates them with their paycheck, gives them the opportunity to do the work that they like, shapes them into the team that he needs, gives them the assignments at hand,
Jeff Iorg:and then gets the job done.
Jeff Iorg:So leadership, more of an influence relationship. Management, more of an authority relationship. Leadership, much more focused on
Jeff Iorg:the relational aspects of what it means to get something done. Management, much more focused on the doing aspect and the implementation aspect of getting something done.
Jeff Iorg:Okay. Second,
Jeff Iorg:the definition of leadership is that it's an influence relationship among leaders and followers. Management, it's more managers and subordinates. Now you may not like the word subordinate. You can pick
Jeff Iorg:a different one. It's not meant to be a demeaning word, certainly not in the way that the author of this definition uses it, and certainly not in
Jeff Iorg:the way I'm using it here today. It just simply means someone who is subordinate, subordinate, ordinal, sub numbered, if you will, on the organizational chart. So a a manager has people assigned to him or her that are subordinate to them placed under their guidance and direction for the work at hand. Now in a leadership relationship, leaders and followers are often in relationship and in ongoing continuing relationship because what they're doing requires significant investment in order to make the change necessary that they're proposing or that they're trying to bring about. Managers and subordinates, however, they're more there because they fill a role, and they're expected to fill that role and to make that role happen.
Jeff Iorg:So, you know, for example, if you're a manager of a fast food restaurant, you're gonna have someone on the fry station, someone on
Jeff Iorg:the burger station, someone on
Jeff Iorg:the salad station, someone on the drink station, and they're they're to fulfill a role. They're they're not there to strategize with you about which drinks are gonna be offered. They're there to fill Coke cups, fill iced tea glasses. That's what they're responsible to do. And so they are there to fill a role.
Jeff Iorg:They are there to and their their work is defined by their role, not by their relationship with you. In fact, you may have so many employees in a fast food restaurant that simply rotate through by shift work. You may not even be sure that you have a relationship with all of them, but you need to know, does this person know how to run the run the fry station? Does this nurse person know to run the milkshake station? Does this person know how to run the salad station?
Jeff Iorg:And if they do, that's all I need to
Jeff Iorg:know about them. I don't really need to know their brother in law's cousin's name. I don't need to know, you know, how they're doing in their family. I just need know that they just need to know that they can keep keep up with the pace of work that needs to be done today. So that's some of the difference between leaders and followers in an influence relationship who are really enmeshed in one another, who really find themselves sharing life together, who really are working hard at decision making that relates to significant change that they're trying to bring about versus people like managers and subordinates who are really just in place to get the work done.
Jeff Iorg:And they're not really depending on that encounter to be a meaningful relationship. They're depending on that encounter to give them the direction they need to get the work done that they can fulfill their responsibility and receive their compensation for it. Now again, don't make this into a binary thing. You say, well, yeah, but but shouldn't you have relationships with the people you supervise, and shouldn't these subordinates, shouldn't you lift them up and let them know they're valued and that they matter to you? Well, of course you should.
Jeff Iorg:To a limit
Jeff Iorg:proportionate to the situation at hand, but recognizing that your primary role as a manager is to get the work done, not necessarily build the relationships along the way. And then a third distinctive is leadership's definition says that it's an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real change. Now this is the part of the definition of leadership that that some people stumble over. They they think, well, does it only happen when you're bringing about a real change? Well, according to the definition that I've adopted, that's really basically what it means.
Jeff Iorg:It means that you're leading something to be different than it was before, and leaders tend to function in the world of big ideas, big strategies, big decisions that have a lot of managerial impact required to be implemented. So for example, when I was at the seminary and we made the decision to move 400 miles from Northern California to Southern California, that required intensive leadership from me. And that I had to develop the influence relationship with the board, faculty, the the staff, and a significant number of students so that they had a confidence in me that when I made the proposal, they understood where I was coming from and why it needed to be done. I did this leadership leading of this great change in the context of leaders and followers working together. I did not stand up and just announce this is going to happen, and this is why it's going to happen, and this is what you're going to do about it.
Jeff Iorg:It was a much more interactive process than that. And I definitely intended a real
Jeff Iorg:change. We had to get from point a to point b, and that meant moving 400 miles and picking up an entire seminary and doing that was quite a change. But once that decision was made, what happened after that was much more management than leadership on my part. Because once we made the decision to move and the property had been sold and a new campus located and purchased in Southern California, now we have to move. And that doesn't require leadership, that requires management.
Jeff Iorg:That requires putting together a concrete plan of how we're
Jeff Iorg:gonna pack the boxes and label them and get them in the shipping areas and get them shipped to Southern California and put into new offices and the dates that we're gonna open and the dates we're gonna close and when we're gonna be open for educational purposes and all the things that went into that. Tremendous amount of management. Because management while leadership in focuses on producing real change, management focuses on producing goods or services. In other words, you're gonna make widgets or you're gonna service the people who sell the widgets. You're gonna make a good or
Jeff Iorg:a service. You're going to actually produce something or sell something or serve somebody with something. And so management is really essential at this point in terms of getting things done to fulfill the change that leaders have initiated.
Jeff Iorg:Now I've said a couple times already on the podcast, don't make
Jeff Iorg:this binary. But on this one, there's a
Jeff Iorg:little bit of binary. All right? Leaders are about change. Managers are about implementing change. So while there's always some overlap, on this one, if all you have are managers, nothing will ever substantially change.
Jeff Iorg:Oh,
Jeff Iorg:you might tweak up your systems just a little bit, but nothing will substantially change. But leaders,
Jeff Iorg:leaders come along and say, we need a second site or another service. Leaders come along and say, we need to revision our youth ministry and make major investment in reaching young people with the gospel. Leaders come along and say, we need a new facility. We need a new
Jeff Iorg:location. We need to make this major change. And they go through all the process of bringing about the decision to make a major change. And then they or other people that they work through have to manage the process of making that happen. Now this is why a lot of organizations have, a chief executive officer
Jeff Iorg:and a chief operating officer. A chief executive officer is a visionary, a person who's always thinking about the future, who strategizes about the big picture, who looks at the seminal changes that must be made in an organization or in a in an industry in order to do something different to enhance, effectiveness or to break into new areas of ministry or opportunity in our world. That's what leaders do. But chief operating officers,
Jeff Iorg:they're people who listen to the dreams and visions of executives and they think, I know how to make that happen. I would have never dreamed it
Jeff Iorg:up on my own, but that is actually an idea that I can make happen. And those operations people go to work making things happen. Now that is sort of a macro expression on a corporate in a corporate world or context. Let's bring it down to your church. Do you think most pastors are more leaders or managers?
Jeff Iorg:Easy. Most of them are more leaders. They're big idea guys. They're big picture guys. They're dreamers.
Jeff Iorg:They're inspirationalists. You know, they wanna preach a message and challenge
Jeff Iorg:conquer the world. But somewhere, somebody's gotta be sitting there thinking, now exactly how are we gonna do this? And putting the managerial plan in place to fulfill those aspirational dreams has to be done.
Jeff Iorg:Now, some larger churches have actually moved to something called an executive pastor, which helps this to happen, but not every church is big enough to have something like that. In fact, most aren't. So most of this managerial expertise is gonna come from lay people who have managerial expertise in their ministry settings and can be brought onto your team to help you to do what I'm describing right now, which is create the systems, the processes, the programs to put into place what needs to be done.
Jeff Iorg:You know, pastors that are leaders, I highly value them. They're dreamers. They're big picture people. They've got big ideas, and man, that's awesome. But somebody somewhere has to ask the hard question, how are we going to do this?
Jeff Iorg:And put it into practice. You know, when I moved to Oregon years ago to plant the church, I had big dreams.
Jeff Iorg:And I had the good sense
Jeff Iorg:to ask to be my church planting partner, a fellow named Joe. Joe was not a musician. That always surprised a lot
Jeff Iorg:of people. I didn't pick a musician to be my first, paid associate and my partner in church planting. I picked an implementer, someone whose specialty was getting things done. In fact, I've worked with a lot of people over the years, and I don't think I've ever worked with anybody that was more riveted on getting things done than my friend Joe. So we moved to plant the church together.
Jeff Iorg:And I would say things like this, man, you know, we've gotta we've gotta figure out a way to get the name of our church in front of a thousand people in this community. We gotta figure out a way to do that the cheapest way possible, but the highest quality way possible. And we've gotta we've gotta we just gotta find a way to get much more publicity out about our church, and more people gotta know who we are. And Joe was like, okay. Let me make that happen.
Jeff Iorg:And the next thing I know, he's calling telemarketers, he's calling marketing firms, he's calling print shops, and he's getting competitive bids, and he's telling people what we need, and they're competing with each other.
Jeff Iorg:And he's putting a plan into place. And I'm thinking, wow. Amazing. I would lose my mind if I had to make all those phone calls.
Jeff Iorg:And he's over there smiling saying, no. No. No. No. I love this.
Jeff Iorg:I got this. I could give you example after
Jeff Iorg:example after example. For example, I said, we're gonna be a portable church.
Jeff Iorg:I said, our DNA is that we are a movement. We do not need a big facility. We're gonna build a major ministry and a minor facility. We wanna grow up to as many as a thousand people in rented facilities, and we're gonna spin off 200 for for church planting. And every time we hit a thousand, we spin off 200.
Jeff Iorg:And Joe heard this and said, okay. So we're gonna be portable for a long time. I said, yeah. Long time. Maybe like ten years at least.
Jeff Iorg:Okay. Next thing I know, he's buying carts and equipment to go in this portable church. And on every cart, everything is in a box. Everything's in a plastic container. It's all labeled.
Jeff Iorg:There's a photograph taken of the cart. The photograph is attached to the cart, laminated so that you can see it with a note that says,
Jeff Iorg:when this cart is packed correctly, it will look like this. We could pack and unpack a church building that ultimately had several 100 people coming in a little over an hour because of his managerial capacity to put together plans to put my dreams into effect. It was amazing. But again, I
Jeff Iorg:was dreaming of real change. Here's what's going to be done that's never been done before. A church goes for ten years with no facilities and grows to significant strength. We can make this happen.
Jeff Iorg:And he said, yep, we can, but somebody's gonna
Jeff Iorg:have to figure out how to do that, and I think I can do it. And he would start working on putting together the plan of how to
Jeff Iorg:make that happen. I was thinking about real change. He was thinking about goods and services, how to actually get the work done. And then the last part of the definition is leaders intend change that reflects mutual purposes. In other words,
Jeff Iorg:leaders and the followers that they have all share this big dream of what they wanna get accomplished. But in management, the the results are the results of the coordinated activities. In other words, the product that comes out at the end or the service that's rendered at the end. Well, today, I've tried to talk with you about leadership and management. As I said, I was asked at a panel, which one are you?
Jeff Iorg:And I said, well, I'm kind of both. I'm a leader when I'm leading change. I'm a manager when I'm working to produce the goods and services required to implement that change. I'm a leader when I'm focusing on my followers, building relationships and working through those by means of those to create influence and to bring about significant change. But I'm a manager when I'm working with people, yes, in relationship, but
Jeff Iorg:more in an authority structure where I'm focusing more on their roles and responsibilities. They're there mainly because they wanna be paid or compensated or rewarded in some way, and I'm managing when I'm in those contexts. You say, well, which of these is better? Nah. Wrong question.
Jeff Iorg:We need them both. We need them both. I will tell you that after doing this for about forty years in ministry, that
Jeff Iorg:most ministries are long on ideas, short on implementers. Most ministry leaders would fall in the leaders category, focus on relationships, big ideas, lots of change, wanna see things happen that have never happened before. They have aspirational ideas and inspirational thoughts. In order to move forward, you're going to have to find some really good managers who can translate all of that into relationships with people who are focused on getting things done so that goods and services are actually produced even in ministry. My goal for this podcast is to lift up both leaders and managers, to let you both know out there we need both disciplines, to end some of the debate about which one of these is better and to recognize they're both valid expressions of what God can do through people to get his work done.
Jeff Iorg:I'm grateful that I've been a leader. And while I've done some management along the way and I can do it when needed, it's not really my gift and not really my passion. But I'm also thankful for the people that I could list that God has brought into my life over the years who were fantastic managers. Leaders occasionally themselves, to be sure, but who instead had the capacity to take those dreams and turn them into reality. If you're one of those people, thank god for you today and the work you do.
Jeff Iorg:Leaders and managers, we need both. Leaders and managers, valid disciplines, not the same, but lots of overlap along the way. Leaders and managers, two roles that can come together to make an incredible kingdom impact. Think about it as you consider your gifts, your capacities, and as you consider the people around you and how to best make use of them in this understanding of how people fit together to get the work done. Give us some thought today as you lead on.