The line to talk to Jenn was 10 people deep.
I (Steven), on the other hand, had one guy come up to ask a quick question and scuttle off. As an introvert, I was pretty relieved.
Jenn and I had just shared the stage together to speak at a conference for aspiring goers. We shared about union with Christ, which has been the most important lesson that God had given us not only for thriving overseas but for abiding in general. We decided to share the stage, even though we had almost never seen that done before. Historically, I had been the one invited for speaking engagements. But God in His kindness helped us learn this lesson together. We were simply trying to reflect that when sharing about it.
What we didn’t expect was the response that taking the stage together would have.
Simply by being on the stage together at the same time, something clicked for people in that audience. One, that men and women could speak, lead, and work together. And two, that women leaders had something unique and important to bring to the table.
One of the women who waited to talk to Jenn said, “I would never have come up here if there wasn’t a woman on the stage.”
From speaking engagements and other opportunities where Jenn and I have led out together, we’ve had dozens of couples tell us, “we see your dynamic in leading together and we think we both have leadership giftings. How do we learn how to lead together?”
It was clear that Jenn had a gift, a unique voice, and an important message, and that she needed to be given more of a platform to share that message. But as the one who had the previous experience and trusted relationships, I needed to call out her giftings, create opportunities, and encourage her to step up into those opportunities.
We said yes to more opportunities to speak together, and eventually, for Jenn to start speaking on her own. What people didn’t see as Jenn crushed it on stage were the 5th, 6th, 7th rounds of edits that I had to make on her written drafts, and the hurried and harrowing practicing of her talk late into the night before she spoke.
Now, I rarely get invited to speak anymore. Jenn is the one in high demand.
I couldn’t be happier or prouder.
She continues to have lines of 10+ women line up to talk to her regardless of the topic.
If elevating her voice can help even a few of those women step more boldly into leadership, or help couples learn to lead together, I’ll gladly continue to stand in the back of the room and take cool pictures of her as she uses her giftings.
Through sharing and leading together, we began to see how deeply the question of men and women leading together mattered to goers and mission teams. We are convinced that this kind of partnership helps more leaders step into—and lead from—the gifts God has entrusted to them.
Best Practices for Men and Women Leading Together
In our previous post, we introduced the topic of men and women leading together and gave our view of why this topic is important. In this post, we’ll focus more on the best practices of how men and women can lead together effectively. These include clearing the path, collaborative giftings, commitment, communication, and conflict. As you work through each of these practices, consider creating an MOU between yourself and your co-leader that encompasses all these categories.
Clearing the Path
One of the most important aspects of empowering Jenn or other women leaders on our teams towards leadership was what we call ‘clearing the path.’ The other best practices are mutually owned by both the male and female leaders. But clearing the path is something male leaders must often lead out in, since they often hold greater leadership influence due to the internal and external barriers that women leaders experience.
Male leaders can advocate for women leaders and clear the path in many ways—by speaking highly of them, creating opportunities for leading and development, and providing support and feedback. Advocacy is different from simply mentoring – a mentor can consult and encourage, but being an advocate requires using our relational or positional influence for the benefit of those that we support.
When you’re in leadership spaces with decision-makers, speak highly of the women leaders that you’re advocating for. People used to mention to me that I seemed to go out of my way to give credit or speak highly of Jenn and the other women leaders on our team. I wish I was that intentional – I was simply giving credit where it was due! I could not and did not do the things that Jenn and the other women leaders did on our team.
In your own team and ministry, create opportunities for women leaders to lead according to their giftings. This will require that you actually know their giftings and their desire to lead, which means you’ll probably need to have some 1-on-1 or smaller group settings for you to get to know them! Help them identify their giftings and discuss potential opportunities where they can lead. When larger opportunities to lead within your organization, church, or region come up, vouch for the women leaders that you know if their giftings line up with that opportunity.
And don’t only recommend them for the opportunity. Lend your credibility and provide support by investing your own time in preparing, assisting, and sharing ownership of the outcome. Give direct feedback about what went well and where they can improve. Jenn says that women who do get the chance to lead can often ‘get the pass’ in terms of owning the negative consequences or hearing the difficult feedback that would help them improve because people want to be kind and not harsh. But that actually stunts their opportunity to learn and grow in leadership.
Cultivate their personal development by encouraging them to create development plans and keep them accountable to those plans. Open access to leadership spaces by bringing them along, when appropriate, to meetings you have with other leaders. In leadership team meetings, if there’s a topic or ministry area that aligns with their giftings, bring them in to share or just to listen and learn. If you’re meeting with another leader 1-on-1 who you know would be comfortable with another person there, try to bring women leaders along to learn and contribute as well.
Lastly, a disclaimer that we need to mention is that male leaders need to be careful to not elevate women leaders to positions that they are not qualified for, especially your wife. Standalone projects or opportunities can be good opportunities for developing leaders to step into and generally there’s grace for a one-off event if things don’t go well. But elevating women to leadership positions that they aren’t qualified for can backfire. A woman leader surveyed by Kadi Cole in Developing Female Leaders addresses this issue:
Let’s not do women any extra favors, or promote them, just because of gender. This defeats the purpose of demonstrating equal capability and…decreases the validity of women in leadership roles in some people’s thinking. If [a woman leader is] only at the table because someone needs to fill a female quota, I’d rather find another table to sit at. However, let us ensure we are watching for and providing opportunities for women to grow, lead, and advance in our…organizations.
Developing Female Leaders, 141
We really love when husbands and wives can lead together and use their gifts (and will write a post on that in the near future), but exercise particular caution when elevating your wife to a leadership role as it can easily look like favoritism or nepotism which will undermine both of your leadership reputations.
Clearing the path and advocating doesn’t only happen at the beginning of the process to get women in the door, but needs to continue until these women leaders are self-confident and well integrated into the leadership teams and culture of your organization. As women leaders are raised up, they can continue to be advocates and path-clearers for other women!
Collaborative Giftings and Leadership Roles
We mentioned in our first post that having men and women leading together provides a plurality of leadership and improved decision making because women leaders can represent the perspectives of the women on the team. The benefits of plurality of leadership are enhanced when the male and female leaders can have collaborative giftings and roles.
As men and women leaders begin leading together, discuss how your individual giftings can support each other and what roles on the team may be most appropriate for each leader to take the lead on. We’ve mentioned before that the missions team leader role is basically impossible for an individual leader, which is why we highly recommend a plurality of leaders. Between strategic planning, administration, shepherding, development, training, and 100 other topics, there are likely areas where one of the two leaders is better or more experienced than the other. Distribute the roles of leadership according to the giftings that each of you have. If you both have the same giftings, switch off or figure out ways that they could express themselves differently.
Using our initial story of speaking together as an example, I (Steven) am stronger at clarity of communication, whereas Jenn is much stronger in inspirational / motivational speaking with passion and emotion. So when we split up the different sections in our union with Christ talk, I took more of the teaching/Bible sections and Jenn told more stories of how it impacted us. We both had a speaking gift but they expressed themselves differently. Even within the same talk we could support each other with our giftings!
Commitment
Regardless of gender, if people want to lead together, they need to be equally committed to the vision and to their leadership role towards that vision. If you know your fellow leader is just as focused on the same goal as you are, it’s easier to trust them and also to lovinglyg call them back on track if they begin to drift off your shared vision.
Conversely, when one leader is fully committed to the vision and the other is not, dysfunction and conflict often follow. A leader with less ownership may hesitate to carry their responsibilities or minimize their role, especially in difficult seasons. For the more committed leader, it can become difficult to trust their co-leader or to share leadership equally when they know their convictions aren’t shared. In these situations, it is often clearer and healthier to name one person as the primary leader and give the other a defined supporting role.
Both male and female leaders must take time to seek clarity about their vision from God and their own calling and commitment to leadership. One person’s sense of calling cannot compensate for a co-leader who has not done this work themselves. These convictions should be shared openly and revisited regularly as a reminder of your shared commitment.
Finally, it’s important that the people you work with—especially your team and ministry partners—clearly understand your level of commitment, authority, and responsibility towards them. Does a female leader only lead other women? Does each leader make decisions on behalf of the whole or just one? Who should report to whom?
Conflict
Men and women leaders are going to have different perspectives. While embracing diversity of ideas is a strength, it can lead to tension and conflict. It is critical that men and women leading together know how to conflict well in order to lead from a place of unity. This involves knowing each other’s conflict dynamics and conflict styles, and to have a plan for how to address conflict when tensions arise.
In conflict dynamics, societal norms can lead men to respond more directly while women may respond more deferentially. It’s important to be aware if you have these sorts of leanings. For example, women may not share everything they’re thinking right away and may need to revisit an issue to feel fully resolved, while men often prefer to address something once and move on. Women may also seek more relational and contextual clarity, while men may focus mainly on the immediate problem.
Additionally, every person has a unique conflict style. Typically, people will default into certain behaviors when facing conflict – fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. In a nutshell, fight people will face a threat aggressively, flight people tend to run from or avoid conflict, freeze people will find themselves paralyzed and unable to take action, and fawn people will move toward appeasement and people pleasing methods. On top of these “styles”, we all have triggers that will set us off as we feel our sense of safety threatened. Identifying these things in ourselves and in our co-leader helps us to mitigate many potential conflicts.
In our own case, I fawn in conflict. If I feel unheard or misunderstood, I will push endlessly for clarity or resolution for the sake of harmony. Steven, conversely, tends toward flight. He often needs space to collect his thoughts and to get his emotions in check, before he is able to engage. As we understood these tendencies, we have had to adjust and compromise toward one another. I am learning to give Steven time to collect his thoughts before I barrage him with questions, and he makes an effort to respond calmly to me even if it’s faster than he would prefer.
However, sometimes leaders will reach an impasse. In these situations, it’s helpful to bring in a neutral third party with whom both sides feel safe and who can help to mediate a conflict.
It is best for leaders to keep short accounts with one another and strive to resolve conflicts as quickly as possible. It helps to have a clear plan and awareness for what issues have potential to spark conflict, each person’s conflict response, how to resolve conflict, and how to rebuild trust after conflict. Make the time to discuss and plan:
- What are stress triggers or topics that potentially might escalate into conflict?
- How can you together create a safe space to share your perspectives?
- What is your conflict style? What are things you and your co-leader do to help move forward toward resolution?
- How will decisions be made? Will there be a deciding voice or will decisions be made collaboratively?
- Who is a safe mediator for when conflicts reach an impasse?
Communication
Team leaders are constantly processing and passing on information. On any given day, team leaders may be communicating with their national partners, teammates, organization, and many others. And while having two people share the burden is great, if co-leaders are not on the same page or aren’t working off the same set of information, chaos often ensues. Before we found our best communication rhythms, Steven and I would often contradict each other in meetings in front of our teammates – confusing everyone!
Steven and I are always communicating with each other, and our teammates have a clear understanding that anything one of us hears, unless it is told in confidence, the other will receive at least a short update. We will text each other random thoughts and ideas that we might have while apart. When we take meetings, we crystallize and write down summary points and send them to each other as soon as the meeting ends. While this may seem cumbersome, creating this type of shared consciousness allows us to make decisions quickly together without needing to stop and explain context. It also allows us to communicate the same message to our team and partners.
Other co-leaders may have different communication styles they would prefer over our constant sharing, and could set up regular meetings with a calendar invite simply to check in and share information. Whatever your method, the goal is to ensure that you are always as informed as you can be about a given situation that impacts your team and the ministry work. And with this knowledge, you are making wise decisions that allow you and your co-leader to present a unified front to your team.
Generally, women will pull back on their ideas or perhaps be tempted to prioritize being agreeable over rocking the boat. If you are a woman leader, even if it feels risky, push to prioritize your voice and your ideas rather than stuffing them down. Try to eliminate disclaimers and speak your ideas out directly. Leaders can make better decisions when there’s more information and better representation of the perspectives involved. Men co-leaders will need to create spaces for women co-leaders to offer feedback and also make it a habit to push for clarity. Ask multiple times if your woman co-leader has said everything she wants to say and ask her for proposed solutions. We also encourage creating a culture where co-leaders regularly provide feedback with one another as a way of accountability and personal development. This could be as formal as a regular feedback meeting on the calendar or just making it a point to ask for, provide, and receive feedback in regular conversations.
Conclusion
Co-leadership between men and women on missions teams takes a lot of work. It will take discussion, time, and trial & error to figure out what a collaborative leadership dynamic looks like between a male and female leader. But most of all, it will take a Philippians 2 type of humility – to consider the other leader higher than yourself. When each leader goes out of their way to elevate the others’ gifts, they both benefit and the team strengthens. When you’re fighting for your own reputation or position, it will lead to unhealthy conflict and damage your team and ministry. Collaborative leadership requires the mindset that Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians 12:
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
1 Corinthians 12:21-26
But when you’ve done the hard work of clearing the path, learning giftings, and figuring out commitment, conflict, communication with your co-leader, Scripture is clear about the result: “when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”