Coaching today comes is a variety of forms, from Personal exercise trainers, everyday life coaches, to expensive executive coaches. Coaching is a rapid growth industry. Fortune Magazine says coaching is, “The hottest thing in management today…” Coaching has grown out of the recognition that human beings function better when they are supported by another, when they apply a discipline of accountability to themselves, and when they spend regular times reflecting with a coach on what they are doing.

Over the years I have been a coach and have trained church growth coaches. For three years I had the opportunity in a formal way to coach the full array of leaders of two local church. Let me tell you, coaching local church leaders is a delight!  The return for effort that one’s receives is great. There are many lay leaders who with a small amount of support and a few nudges will perform significantly better.

Unfortunately, most ministers struggle to find the time or have the confidence to provide systematic coach support to their leaders. In fact most lay leaders operate totally on their own. Their only support coming from their team members. Without adequate support these leaders are setup for poor performance and often discouragement.

As a church system, we do reasonably well when it comes to training and resourcing our leaders. Unfortunately, it is in the implementation of strategies where often it fails. Many good plans and strategies have never realized their full potential because the leader isn’t sure what to do next, or doesn’t know how to get his team on board or simply fails to delegate the tasks.

The ability of knowing how to implement a plan comes from experience and one’s personality. Some people are real doers but need help in knowing what to do. Others are very creative but not naturally skilled in working out how to bring their ideas into being. In every people group, there is a small number of people who excel in the process. They can easily tell you what the options are in dealing with a problem. They enjoy mapping out the action steps for others. These people when aligned to leaders help leaders’ pickup on those missing ingredients that will make all the difference.

Great Challenge of Implementation

George Barna is well known in the USA because of his organization’s excellent church research. Barna says his “…objective had always been to get good information into the hands of leaders so they would convert those insights into great strategic decisions about how to minister more obediently and effectively.” At the end of 2003, he concluded that the “insights” that his organization provide to the church in North America was not resulting in genuine life transformation in churches. They were not acting on the research. In 2005 Barna re-launched his organization with a new focus of working collaboratively with churches, through their Transformation Church Network.

 Lack of implementation is not unique to churches. In a survey of senior executives at 197 companies conducted by management consulting firm Marakon Associates and the Economist Intelligence Unit, respondents said their firms achieved only 63% of the expected results of their strategic plans. Michael Mankins, a managing partner in Marakon’s San Francisco office, says he believes much of that gap between expectation and performance is a failure to execute the company’s strategy effectively.

 This failure to execute strategy is very prevalent in church life. A common reason for this failure is a loss of focus by leaders in managing the implementation of strategies. Leaders assume that those who are given the responsibility know how to implement. Often the strategy is allowed to shift over time and hence is never truly implemented. Most significant strategies require numerous incremental adjustments.

 Strategies often fail because of a lack of synchronization. The success of a strategy is often subject to the collaboration of a number of departments. One department’s activity may be held up by another department’s lack of activity. Leaders have to look at the big picture as well as the specific strategy they want to implement.

Sometimes strategic plans fail because those who are responsible for implementation don’t understand the strategy or don’t agree with it. They simply don’t implement the strategy or do it half heartily with poor results.

 Most churches do not have an effective system in place to monitor implementation. Many boards and business meetings are poorly attended and lack adequate reporting from department leaders. Few department leaders receive regular supervision or coaching from their church leadership. This means that unless leaders are highly motivated and disciplined implementation will often falter.

 Successful implementation requires an understanding of the big picture, as well as all the sequential steps that lead to it. Until there is a system in place in churches where leaders are brought to understand the big picture and are helped in working through the sequential steps many great plans will never be implemented.

A coaching system for leaders is the single most important factor in facilitating effective leadership and implementation of strategic plans.

 Sources:

Perspectives: New Directions By George Barna April 4, 2005

Closing the Strategy-to-Performance Gap Techniques for Turning Great Strategy Into Great Performance By Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele

Natural Church Development Christian Schwarz P23