Leveraging Multiple Intelligences in Christian Leadership

My older brother and I are radically different. Whereas I hardly have a mechanical bone in my body, my brother had an innate understanding of mechanics from a very early age. And that’s okay with me. Where I need to call on people like my brother for certain skills, I have my own skills to offer back to the community.

It’s common knowledge that we each have different passions and abilities — that no two people are alike. In Christian leadership, we speak of a biblical understanding of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). The Spirit gives to each born-again believer a certain measure of faith and grace to fulfill a specific calling from God (Ephesians 4).

But even though we know differences exist, the world we live in doesn’t always celebrate those differences. The typical way we do education demonstrates how far we miss the mark. Oftentimes, our tests and ways of measuring “success” only actually assess a single type of intelligence.

Howard Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences to provide a better model — a better model that can enhance the way we lead teams and develop congregations.

Types of Intelligence and Their Implications for Leadership

Here are a few different types of intelligences (there are more identified in the literature) that are particularly relevant to our Christian leadership:

1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence: Those of us with this intelligence excel in communication, both written and spoken. We might be gifted preachers or writers. Oftentimes, these people learn best from communication. For some, this means they best process written information or oral instruction. For others, this means that we process information best by externally vocalizing information (such as through preaching, teaching, or simply talking through a topic).

2. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: These people are great at strategic planning and analyzing complex problems. Oftentimes, people working in finance have this type of intelligence. However, this could also be the person God has spiritually gifted with leadership and administration, functions that require a strategic view of a larger system. These people tend to process information best when the information is clearly identified through deductive communication (rather than the narrative logic of inductive communication).

3. Interpersonal Intelligence: With high interpersonal intelligence, we're skilled at understanding and working with others — a crucial skill for pastoral care and team leadership. Although we do not always see interpersonal skills as a type of intelligence, some people find particular natural skill in interpersonal social interactions. These people tend to prefer working in teams and tend to learn best when placed in direct contact with others. These people are also vital for their potential to improve team relational dynamics, especially amid conflictive or complex social situations.

4. Intrapersonal Intelligence: This intelligence involves self-understanding and self-management, essential for emotional intelligence in our leadership. Every leader should develop intrapersonal intelligence (see the note below about developing intelligences). For some people, intrapersonal intelligence comes natural. These naturally intrapersonally intelligent people tend to excel as leaders and also tend to be known as “good” leaders, even “great” leaders. Why? Because these are the self-reflective people who engage first in self-leadership — which leads to greater authenticity and more effective development. Every leader should develop intrapersonal intelligence as a primary goal for leadership development.

5. Emotional Intelligence: It's worth noting that emotional intelligence, which encompasses aspects of both interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, is particularly crucial in Christian leadership. As Boyatzis (2008) points out, emotional intelligence plays a significant role in effective leadership. It involves our ability to recognize and manage our own emotions, as well as to understand and influence the emotions of others. In our roles as Christian leaders, this skill helps us to shepherd our congregations with empathy and wisdom, navigating the complex emotional landscape of community life. Emotional intelligence also helps the Christian leader establish healthy boundaries, honor personal limits, and establish healthy patterns for sustained effectiveness.

Developing Intelligence

While recognizing different intelligences is valuable, it's crucial to remember that we can develop multiple types of intelligence (Wu & Alrabah, 2009). It is very possible (and highly encouraged) to expand our learning preferences and multiple intelligences through intentional, focused development (p. 402). This radically differs from colloquial “wisdom,” which often acts as if intelligences and learning styles are fixed traits that cannot change. However, this does not align with research on multiple intelligences.

While my brother may have a natural gift for mechanical intelligence — and because of that natural gift, he will likely always advance faster and further than myself in mechanical intelligence — research shows that, if I intentionally focused on mechanics, I could also develop my mechanical intelligence.

The problem is, I just don’t want to develop that intelligence. I have a preference for other types of intelligence.

Yet, in the context of our Christian leadership, there’s a need to encourage each other to step out of our comfort zones and develop new capacities, especially those capacities particularly relevant for Christian leadership (the main focus of this blog).

If we have high logical-mathematical intelligence, for instance, we might be encouraged (or encourage our teams) to also cultivate our interpersonal skills. If we have excellent verbal-linguistic intelligence, but find that we lack in intrapersonal intelligence, we might intentionally focus on ways to improve self-awareness and develop intrapersonal intelligence.

Applying Multiple Intelligences in Our Leadership Development

Even though research shows we can (and should) expand our capacities regarding multiple intelligences, research has also shown that multiple intelligences (like preferences) have a statistically significant relationship with learning styles (Narlı et al., 2011; Wu & Alrabah, 2009). This means that we, as people with different types of intelligence, may prefer different ways of learning and processing information.

For example, while I theoretically could improve my mechanical intelligence, this is not my natural preference. I struggle to learn mechanical ideas simply from spacial reasoning and graphic images. Instead, I usually learn best when someone orally explains it to me, followed by me being able to attempt teaching the concept back to the person. I have a learning preference for verbal-linguistic and interpersonal intelligences.

Here are some ways these thoughts can practically focus our leadership development efforts:

1. Personalized Development Plans: Because of natural preferences, we may each benefit most from different approaches to growth. Some of us might benefit from reading and discussing leadership books, while others might grow more through mentoring relationships. Recognizing a need to diversify development plans can help both ourselves in our personal approach to development while also benefiting our team as we seek to help them also develop.

2. Diverse Team Building: Speaking of teams, with an appreciation of multiple intelligences and learning preferences, we can also better appreciate the value of having different types of intelligence on our leadership teams. Each of us brings unique strengths to the table. If I am self-aware enough to recognize my own weaknesses, preferences, strengths, and gaps, then I can recruit a team that best works with me in those various areas. Also, by recognizing multiple intelligences, we can discern where we best fit on a team and how we can best offer a productive contribution, especially when we ourselves are not the leader.

   1. Strength-Based Leadership: This leads to the concept of strength-based leadership, where we help each other identify our primary intelligences and learn how to leverage these strengths in our ministry roles and teams.

   2. Addressing Weaknesses: With an understanding of multiple intelligences, we can also encourage each other to develop in areas where we're less naturally gifted even though we celebrate the natural abilities and preferences everyone brings to the table.

3. Varied Teaching Methods: Sometimes leadership development involves structured times of instruction. When we lead workshops or training sessions, we can intentionally incorporate methods that appeal to different intelligences. We can use a mix of lectures, discussions, hands-on activities, and reflective exercises to help people with different natural intelligences and learning preferences best grasp the concepts in question.

Conclusion

By recognizing and leveraging multiple intelligences in our leadership development efforts, we can create more inclusive, effective, and dynamic leadership teams. This approach honors the diversity of gifts within our body of Christ and equips us to better serve our congregations and communities.

"There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work" (1 Corinthians 12:4-6, NIV).

References

Boyatzis, R. E. (2008). Leadership development from a complexity perspective. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(4), 298-313. https://doi.org/10.1037/1065-9293.60.4.298

Narlı, S., Özgen, K., & Alkan, H. (2011). In the context of multiple intelligences theory, intelligent data analysis of learning styles was based on rough set theory. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(5), 613-618. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2011.07.012

Tennant, M. (2020). Psychology and adult learning: The role of theory in informing practice (Fourth edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Wu, S., & Alrabah, S. (2009). A cross‐cultural study of Taiwanese and Kuwaiti EFL students' learning styles and multiple intelligences. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 46(4), 393-403. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290903301826