Today I’m going to help you identify readiness gaps in the life of a leader. I’ve discussed how to use these categories in emergency situations. Situations that require leadership placement over development. We want to avoid those at all costs. These four categories can also be used as a quick assessment to help you create a personalized development plan for someone within your church’s leadership pipeline. So you can use them in more than one way. The first thing you want to do is rate a person’s actions in each category as rarely, sometimes, most always, or always.
Now let’s take a look at values first. What value-based judgment calls have you seen this leader make over the last year? Are they able to articulate the values of your church? Do they have a passion for your vision? Do their decisions align with those vision and values?
Let’s take a look at strategy. What strategy-based judgment calls have you seen this leader make? These decisions may be ongoing adjustments that continually improve the ministry or they may be used to create consistency that delivers excellence and quality of service. Do their decisions align with your church’s strategy?
Next, look at people. What people-based judgment calls have you seen this leader make? How do they identify, develop, and deploy people on their team? How do they work with others? How do they work with difficult people? Do their decisions show that they are self-aware and socially-aware?
Then look at crisis. Now, crisis-based judgment calls are a big deal. They inevitably occur at every level of leadership. A crisis is something that happens unexpectedly. You can’t really plan for it and it threatens to disrupt the work of the ministry. Or it may keep a leader from fully executing their personal leadership responsibilities. You want to be sure they handle crisis well.
As you identify the competency gaps in these areas, you know which ones to focus on to help a person achieve their next level of leadership development. And if you rate someone as always in all four of these categories you know that they are likely ready for the next level of leadership in your pipeline.
Now that you know and understand how to use the readiness gaps to develop your people, what are you going to do about it?
