Leadership Styles in the Home

I have always had a heart for family life ever since I was a little child, being very sensitive to whether family members were connecting and relating to each other in love or whether those relational connections were impeded or broken. Thinking back in time on how my family was from when I was a child, in hindsight, I realize that my family was really a dysfunctional one. To sum it all up in a nutshell the foundational reason why my family was dysfunctional started and ended with the unstable relationship between my mom and dad which started off on the wrong foot and suffered much, so that by the time I reached the end of my junior year in high school my mom filed for a divorce from my dad.

With family as one of the high priorities of my heart I have taken my role and responsibility as husband and father very seriously. I am trying to take into account many factors such as the perceived shortcomings of my parents without overcompensating for them, take into account my family life as a child, take into account observations from the family life of others, and most of all directly apply the counsel of Almighty God. I have been trying to correct for the dysfunctional model I was raised with as a child and striving to live out a more functional and godly model within my home. A man needs all the help he can get to carry out this overwhelming role and responsibility, especially the help of the Divine Creator.

I have really been excited about one source of help that I am currently receiving and that is through Men’s Fraternity at my church. Men’s Fraternity provides men with the counsel, help, and encouragement that men need to have in order to be the man, the husband, and the father that men should be, and most of all it is seasoned with the salt of God’s counsel.

One of the subjects recently discussed within Men’s Fraternity was the four basic leadership styles within a home. They are:

1. Authoritative

2. Permissive

3. Neglectful

4. Authoritarian

Authoritative leadership is marked by lots of love and lots of discipline and instruction. Permissive leadership is marked by lots of love but low in discipline and instruction. Neglectful leadership is marked by a low level of love, discipline, and instruction, and Authoritarian leadership is marked by a low level of love but with lots of discipline and instruction. The interesting statistic about all four of these leadership styles is that the order of best to the worst style of leadership is the same order as given above with the Authoritative style the best and the Authoritarian style as the worst. Men tend to naturally express the Authoritarian style of leadership while women tend to naturally express the Permissive style, and interestingly a neglectful style with little love and little discipline and instruction is better than the Authoritarian style that has little love and lots of discipline and instruction. I muse that tyranny in any form is worse than anarchy because in anarchy at least the individual can somewhat express and live out freedom.

As a small child it seemed like my family was Authoritarian but by the time I became a teenager it was more the Neglectful style of leadership, and I can understand why since the relationship between my parents suffered to the point of divorce. In my home it is my goal to model the Authoritative style of leadership and at worst to err on the side of Permissiveness since I know that my natural inclination as a man is to be Authoritarian which would be the worst style possible to model for my family. There will be no tyrants in my home. I need to balance discipline and instruction with lots of love and depend upon the grace of God interceding upon my behalf for my shortcomings and failures as a man, a husband, and a father.