7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership

Overcome Self-Defeating Behavior in Work and Ministry

Kate Coleman

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780310119982
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

Unleash your leadership by identifying and overcoming the limitations you place on yourself in the workplace.

Women are called by God to flourish in areas of leadership. And for the first time in modern history, women are making their way into strategic positions of influence and leadership within the ministry, public, corporate, charity and voluntary sectors.

Certainly, there are still external disadvantages that women leaders face in the professional world, and there's still a lot of work to do. But there are internal hinderances, too, and those you can take charge of today.

In 7 Deadly Sins of Women in Leadership, Kate Coleman considers what lies at the root of the many challenges facing today's leaders—women and men—and proposes ways of dealing with them. Effective leadership starts with you. Based on her 35 years of leadership experience, Kate explains how you can:

• Overcome limiting self-perceptions
• Establish boundaries
• Develop a tailor-made personal vision
• Cultivate a healthy work/life rhythm
• Stop being a people-pleaser
• Learn to confront not collude
• Be intentional with your inner circle

Written for every leader from any sector or gender (men could learn a few things from this book too), this proven and practical guidebook will enable you to identify and overcome self-defeating patterns of behavior, in ways that will radically transform your leadership.

Notes

Introduction

1. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of books on women’s leadership by Christian and non-Christian authors, such as Made to Lead: Empowering Women for Ministry by Nicole Massie Martin (St. Louis: Chalice, 2016); Emboldened: A Vision for Empowering Women in Ministry by Tara Beth Leach (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2017); Building a Church Full of Leaders by Jeanne Porter King (Orland Park, IL: Life to Legacy, 2017); Developing Female Leaders: Navigate the Minefields and Release the Potential of Women in Your Church by Kadi Cole (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2019); Dare Mighty Things: Mapping the Challenges of Leadership for Christian Women by Halee Gr ay Scott (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014); and Gifted: Women in Leadership by Debbie Duncan (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2019), together with books authored for a wider market both within and beyond the church, such as How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life by Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston (New York: Crown Business, 2009); How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith (New York: Random House Business, 2019), and what is now a modern classic, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg (London: WH Allen, 2015).

2. Liz Shercliff, Preaching Women: Gender, Power and the Pulpit (London: SCM, 2019), Kindle edition, chapter 1.

3. One of the foremost scholars on women in leadership, Dr Robin Ely, states, “We conceptualize leadership development as identity work and show how subtle forms of gender bias in the culture and in organizations interfere with the identity work of women leaders.” Robin J. Ely, Herminia Ibarra, and Deborah Kolb, Taking Gender into Account: Theory and Design for Women’s Leadership Development Programs, 2011, https://flora.insead. edu/fichiersti_wp/inseadwp2011/2011-69.pdf.

4. Susan Miller, “A Day without a Woman: What You Need to Know,” USA Today, 8 March 2017, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/06/day-without-woman-what-you-need-know/98690692/.

5. Kirstie Brewer, “The Day Iceland’s Women Went on Strike,” BBC News, 23 October 2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34602822.

6. Brewer, “The Day Iceland’s Women Went on Strike.”

7. The following represents a small selection of helpful books from easy to more challenging reads: 10 Lies the Church Tells Women: How the Bible Has Been Misused to Keep Women in Spiritual Bondage by J. Lee Grady (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma, 2006); What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women by Kevin Giles (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018); Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts by Lucy Peppiatt (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019); Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians by Lucy Peppiatt (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015); Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015); Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World by Carolyn Custis James (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015); Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Aimee Byrd (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020); and Developing Female Leaders: Navigate the Minefields and Release the Potential of Women in Your Church by Kadi Cole (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2019).

8. Liz Cook and Brian Rothwell, The X and Y of Leadership: How Men and Women Make a Difference at Work (London: The Industrial Society, 2000), 4.

9. Jeanne Porter, Leading Ladies: Transformative Biblical Images for Women’s Leadership (Philadelphia: Innisfree, 2000), 31.

10. Although it is generally agreed that human development is influenced by both heredity and environment, researchers remain undecided regarding the overall extent of each influence. The question of whether human beings are primarily products of genetic information passed on to them via their parental ancestry or whether they are essentially forged in the unique environmental conditions of their earliest and most formative years remains a topic of heated debate.

11. This is the spiritual component of the almost tangible sensation of oppression and malevolence rooted in demonic activity and “mischief” that is unleashed against those who would seek to do God’s will.

12. Steven Croft, “A Theology of Christian Leadership,” in Steven Croft, Focus on Leadership: A Theology of Church Leadership (London: Church Leadership Foundation, 2005), 13.

13. Reggie McNeal, Practicing Greatness: 7 Disciplines of Extraordinary Spiritual Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 6.

14. Ely, Ibarra, and Kolb, Taking Gender into Account.

15. Rosie Ward, Growing Women Leaders: Nurturing Women’s Leadership in the Church (Abingdon, UK: Bible Reading Fellowship, 2008), 11.

16. Lois Frankel, See Jane Lead: 99 Ways for Women to Take Charge at Work (New York: Warner Business, 2007), xviii.

17. David Gergen, foreword to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, ed. Linda Coughlin, Ellen Wingard, and Keith Hollihan (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), xix.

18. Coughlin, Wingard, and Hollihan, Enlightened Power, xxi.

19. The formal economy or sector (unlike the informal) comprises those entities that are recognised and monitored by some form of government, taxed, and included in a country’s gross national or domestic product (GNP or GDP).

20. Jackie VanderBrug, “The Global Rise of Female Entrepreneurs,” Harvard Business Review, 4 September 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/09/global-rise-of-female-entrepreneurs.

21. Amanda B. Elam et al., “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2018/2019 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report,” London Business School, 2019, https://www.gemconsortium.org/report/gem-20182019-womens-entrepreneurship-report.

22. The highest rates of Total Entrepreneurial Activity for women are found in sub-Saharan Africa (21.8 percent) and Latin America (17.3 percent). The lowest rates are found in Europe (6 percent) and MENA regions (9 percent). There are nine countries in which women report entrepreneurial behaviors at levels equal to (parity) or greater than those of men: Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Panama, Qatar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Elam et al., “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor,” 8.

23. Falon Fatemi, “The Value of Investing in Female Founders,” Forbes, 29 March 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2019/03/29/the-value-of-investing-in-female-founders/#3e133b405ee4.

24. “The 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report,” commissioned by American Express, https://www.mbda.gov/sites/mbda.gov/files/media/files/2018/2018-state-of-women-owned-businesses-report.pdf.

25. “Women in Management: Quick Take,” Catalyst, 7 August 2019, https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-management/. Catalyst is “a global nonprofit working with some of the world’s most powerful CEOs and leading companies to build workplaces that work for women.”

26. The #MeToo movement was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly black women and girls and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing. A fuller description can be found at https://metoomvmt.org/about/. It has become a global movement that has spawned multiple “movements” with similar aims and goals. Many Christian women responded and supported the basic premise through #silenceisnotspiritual and #churchtoo (with the latter being more associated with evangelical women).

27. The war on #MeToo will fail. See Moira Donegan, “Women Cannot Be Un-radicalized,” Guardian, September 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/06/metoo-movement-backlash-media-al-franken. See also Ruth Everhart, The #MeToo Reckoning (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2020).

28. Grant Thornton, “Women in Business 2019: Blueprint for Action,” https://www.grantthornton.global/globalassets/global-insights---do-not-edit/2019/women-in-business/blueprint/women-in-business-blueprint-for -action-report-final.pdf.

29. Peter Brierley, “Pulling Out of the Nosedive: A Contemporary Picture of Churchgoing; What the 2005 English Church Census Reveals” (London: Christian Research, 2006), 165; and Peter Brierley, “Statistics on Women in Ministry Compiled Using Data from UK Church Statistics 2005–2015,” Evangelical Alliance, 2 July 2012, https://www.eauk.org/church/researchand-statistics/women-in-ministry.cfm.

30. Ward, Growing Women Leaders, 187.

31. Ward, Growing Women Leaders, 187. Rosie Ward writes, “In the Church of England the number of women clergy in 2002 was 2539, 20 percent of the total; by 2006, it was around 3000. The percentage of women being ordained each year is increasing. In 1995 there were 44 women and 314 men priested. In 2006, it was 244 women and 234 men: parity was reached.” The Church Times carried a similar article. However, what it failed to clarify was that the majority of women were ordained to non-stipendiary posts and that only 95 women compared to 128 men were ordained to full-time stipendiary ministry and that women were still seriously under-represented in senior posts. However, t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction: My Journey Into Leadership
• The 7 Deadly Sins
• 1st Deadly Sin: Limiting Self-Perceptions: Adjust How You See Yourself
• 2nd Deadly Sin: Failure to Draw the Line: Establish Appropriate Boundaries
• 3rd Deadly Sin: Inadequate Personal Vision: Develop and Maintain a God-Inspired Vision
• 4th Deadly Sin: Too Little Life In the Work: Establish a Healthy Work-Life Rhythm
• 5th Deadly Sin: Everybody’s Friend, Nobody’s Leader: Defeat the “Disease to Please”
• 6th Deadly Sin: Colluding and Not Confronting: Deal With Men (and Women!) Behaving Badly
• 7th Deadly Sin: Neglect In Family Matters: Be Intentional With Your Nearest and Dearest!
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography