Description
Cultural corruption and complexity challenge contemporary leaders?۪ identities and threaten
authentic, trust-generating, and God-honoring leadership. This session will examine the role of
self-awareness exercises and active spiritual engagement as resilience-strengthening forces for
leader identity. Intentional identity shaping and strengthening will be discussed as powerful
forces to allow leaders to manifest authentic servant-oriented leadership. The constructs and
relationships of authenticity, identity, effective leadership development, and spiritual
engagement are examined from theoretical and practical perspectives in a quest to identify
more effective approaches to shaping the leader from the inside out. An examination of the
role of a resilient identity is viewed from an integrated scientific and Spirit-driven perspective to
discover how leaders can be better prepared to stand against the pressures of culture and
complexity. Insights from identity, spiritual engagement, authentic/servant leadership, and
related social sciences research will bolster practical leader improvement suggestions intended
to be identity shaping. The objective will be to understand effective Christian leadership as an
outflow of a biblically-shaped identity. The resulting leadership is described as both biblically
aligned and socially desirable with elements of humility, wisdom, and clarity incorporated.
Ideas for measuring the impact on leaders of an identity-based development program are
offered.
Presented by: Rick Roof, Ph.D. (candidate) & Mark Conklin, M.Div.
Learning Objectives
Participants will:
- Study identity as a critical force in authentic, biblical leadership, and be able to describe the relationship of identity and leadership in practice
- Explore strategies for individual leadership coaching and organizational development programs that focus on spiritual engagement and self-awareness promotion
- Identify and describe contemporary complexity and cultural challenges to leadership, and examine wisdom, humility, and servant-hearted identity characteristics as necessary for God-honoring leaders
