[Image by Jeremy Caris]
Controlling Leadership vs Empowering Leadership
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| Controlling Leadership | Empowering Leadership |
|---|---|
| Emphasizes systems and details above relationships | Values relationships and real life above requirements |
| Drives away people who are truly gifted, called, and/or anointed by God for leadership | Identifies, equips, and releases people who are truly gifted, called, and/or anointed by God for leadership |
| Defines, limits, and uses people based on how their gifts and talents can help fulfill the leader’s current wants, desires, and needs | Encourages each person to expand into the fullest version of who they truly are, even if it removes them from fulfilling the leader’s wants, desires, and needs |
| Focuses on building the greatest version of its own thing | Focuses on building something greater than its own thing |
| Encourages a slave mentality (restrained, nothing to look forward to, no personal fulfillment) | Encourages a son mentality (bold, hopeful, expectant) |
| Creates a culture of enabling the leader through the codependency of dysfunctions and the need for approval | Creates a culture that enables others to benefit from the interdependent teamwork of a healthy family |
| Retains people through mutual needs, pains, and fears | Retains people through mutual love, respect, and honor |
| Forms an atmosphere of secrecy, self-guarding, self-defense, and apprehension | Forms an atmosphere of transparency, vulnerability, confidence, and motivation |
| Fosters competition, striving for position, blame-shifting, fault-finding, and elitism | Fosters promoting others, celebrating peoples individual strengths, and being a safe place to fail |
| Promotes compliance, unhealthy copying and comparison, and mimicking others to succeed | Promotes creativity, ingenuity, and the ability to dream, explore, and be unique |
| Creates an environment of survival and maintenance | Creates an environment of risk and advancement |
| Isolates the leader from those who can empower them in return, from those who can help them develop as a better leader, and increase their leadership potential | Allows the leader to receive according to the measure they give, allows others to empower them in return, and expands their influence as they release others on their own path |
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Jeremy Caris
Jeremy Caris is the founder and president of Caris Ministries. Since he is called as a prophet and gifted as a teacher, much of his focus involves equipping believers to hear, know, and follow God in their own daily experience. He teaches the foundational truth of the Word with simple clarity, while revealing deep things of the spirit in practical ways. He has the unique ability to demystify the supernatural side of real relationship with a living God and make it an embraceable and accessible reality for all believers. Jeremy has been married to his best friend, Mandy Caris, for eighteen years, and is the proud father of two boys.