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Breaking Our Dependence on Praise

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 28, 2014 / 0 Comments

“You like me.  You really like me!”  Let’s face it. We are all guilty of defining our self-worth by what others think. When people praise us we feel successful.  Are we? Courageous and adaptive leadership requires leaning into our own incompetence, and pointing out the incompetence of our congregations.  Leading beyond our own competence will […]

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Holding Steady (Maintaining Presence)

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 15, 2014 / 0 Comments

Congregations today are chronically anxious. When the anxiety of the congregation rises, leaders come under attack. We know this intellectually, but understanding that something will happen and actually riding out the experience are two different things. Every change leadership theory has a name for the leader’s needed presence during times of high anxiety. Edwin Friedman […]

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Join me for my PEN talk: This Wednesday 10/15/14

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / October 12, 2014 / 0 Comments

PEN talk: “Adaptive leadership: What is it, really?” with Susan Beaumont Drawing distinctions between adaptive challenges and technical solutions has become commonplace in congregations seeking to change, perhaps too commonplace. These terms are being overused and misused in ways that diminish their impact. We lull ourselves into thinking that we are being truly adaptive when […]

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You Disappointed Me

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / September 23, 2014 / 0 Comments

A volunteer agrees to complete a task but fails to deliver, or delivers a less than satisfactory outcome. A leader violates an established behavioral standard. What do you do? How do you redeem the situation? Disappointment is inevitable when people are involved in ministry; but disappointment doesn’t have to be the final word. Delivering an […]

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Acting on on Our Plans

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / September 16, 2014 / 0 Comments

In the world of congregations we are good at planning and doing. We enjoy thinking great thoughts and crafting lofty ministry ideals. We are fair at experimenting with our ideas, and taking tentative steps in the direction of our plans. We are great at running programs, running programs, and running more programs. However, we are […]

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How to Develop Wise Leaders

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / September 13, 2014 / 0 Comments

Consider the last slate of candidates nominated for leadership in your congregation. What attributes were sought when recruiting this group? Perhaps you looked for potential leaders who were: invested, good decision-makers, strategic, prayerful, respected, effective communicators, with strong personal boundaries. How did the actual list of nominees compare to your desired list of attributes? Did […]

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Building a Discerning Team

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / August 18, 2014 / 0 Comments

Most teams in congregational settings assume they are being Spirit-led.  They believe that God will be self-disclosing and guide the work of the team, so long as good people gather with good intent.  They expect that discernment will happen automatically in the context of good decision making. And so, they demonstrate little intentionality when it […]

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Pastoral Transition-Lifting the Veil of Secrecy

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 15, 2014 / 0 Comments

Organizations in all walks of life openly plan for leadership transition. The Church is unique in the veil of secrecy that we draw around pastoral transition. We don’t want to watch people grow anxious, so we withhold known information about departure. In doing so, we postpone the hard adaptive work of leadership transition into the […]

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Is Our Busyness Masking Spiritual Boredom?

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 10, 2014 / 0 Comments

The large church is known for the quality and depth of its programming, and for the exhaustion of its staff team. It’s true, every one of my client congregations is functioning with a burned out staff team, and pastors on the brink of exhaustion. We assume that a growing and thriving church is always adding […]

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How to Have a Better Conversation

By Susan Beaumont & Associates / July 2, 2014 / 0 Comments

Board leaders long for meaningful meetings. Instead, many participate in mind-numbing meetings that repetitively chase topics, with little forward momentum. Agendas are rigidly structured around the receipt of reports, with little work that actually impacts the future of the congregation. What would it take to foster more fruitful board conversations? Recently, I observed a board […]

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