Leadership Styles and Cultural Preferences

A Church article with View Comments posted 25 August 2008.
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I just got back from the Central States Synod candidacy retreat, and it was a very interesting experience. Our retreat was led by the very capable Betty Heier of the Nebraska Synod candidacy committee, and we focused primarily on The Delicate Art of Dancing with Porcupines by Bob Phillips.

Phillips deals with differences in “social styles” in two dimensions: introverted vs. extroverted and people-oriented vs. task-oriented. The retreat focused on identifying which of the four possible combinations is your dominant social style and understanding how to work with people of other social styles. It was pretty interesting, and while I didn’t read the book, I can at least recommend the concepts presented.

One of our small group discussions during this retreat, however, provided important insight into leadership in American culture. For Americans, leaders are people who are what Phillips calls “Drivers,” who are extroverted and task-oriented. Drivers are people who are driven to succeed, to get things done, who plow through task after task. Relationships with people are secondary to accomplishments for Drivers. In our discussion, we realized that American culture prefers Drivers, but other cultures value other leadership styles. In many Asian and African cultures, Amiables – who are thoughtful, consensus-minded, people-oriented introverts – are preferred as leaders.

It’s very tempting for us (as Americans) to get caught up in the idea that the only road to success as a leader of an organization – whether that’s a church congregation, a business, or some other endeavor – is to focus on tasks and accomplishments and to act decisively (and perhaps impulsively) to get things done quickly. But this is a preference of our culture, not a universal dictum.

This retreat helped us understand that no matter which social style we fall into naturally and which our culture prefers, people of all social styles have important gifts to be successful leaders. We don’t all have to be driven, task-oriented extroverts. Thoughtful, analytical introverts – and expressive extroverts like myself – have gifts for leadership and ministry that should not be overlooked.

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  • That's a really good point. A lot of us were thinking through the retreat that we don't just express one social type all of the time, and incorporating other styles is important. I don't think it's the driver mentality that is necessarily preferred in corporate culture, but what drivers and expressives share: their extroversion.
  • Nancy Baum
    Another way of looking at these 4 characteristics is to set up a 4 square grid, with analytic and driver on the top two grids and amiable and expressive on the bottom two. Then look at behaviors or styles as the possible permutations of these four, with one being the primary style, modified by another (or possibly one modified by itself!). For example, our corporate culture seems to regard expressive drivers most highly.
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