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Pastors, NEVER Mix Up These Two Things

Remember, micromanagement is about the small picture and macromanagement is about the big picture.

If you’re an organizational leader, the first question you should be asking yourself today is, “Am I motivating my team through nitpicking, pestering and over-analyzation, or am I motivating my team with inspiration, action and vision?”

You’ll always lead further faster by motivating with the latter ingredients as opposed to the former.

Organizational leaders are at their best when they lead from a position of macromanagement rather than micromanagement. Macromanagement is about managing the passion and excitement level of your organization rather than managing every nuanced detail of your organization.

What are the ways you’ve seen macromanagement in action?

I wrote about the differences between micromanagement and macromanagement from a senior leader’s perspective. Now I’d like to write a note to those who are not in senior leadership and feel like you’re being micromanaged. It’s vital that you never confuse micromanagement with macromanagement!

When I was a youth pastor, my senior pastor once came in and told me something very specific he wanted to see happen in the student ministry.

He told me that he wanted me to minister not only to students, but also to intentionally minister to the volunteers and to the parents. In one statement I felt like he’d tripled my work!

It got worse when he started getting a little too detailed for my comfort. He said that he wanted my primary emphasis to be on the volunteers and the parents rather than the students. This felt counterintuitive to me. After all, my title was ‘youth pastor.’ “Shouldn’t my first priority be ministering to the students?” I wondered to myself.

Then this new work assignment got even more granular. 

He told me he wanted me to start having a parent gathering at least once every six weeks, and that every month I should have a relational type event with all of my volunteers. At the time, I found this extremely annoying! I felt like he was micromanaging me.

On the inside, I was indignant. I was thinking to myself, “Who does he think he is coming in here and telling me how to run my ministry?”

Thankfully, I kept my mouth shut and I did what he asked.