The Rev. Dr. Floyd H. Flake is the senior pastor of the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York in Queens and the president of Wilberforce University in Ohio. Under his leadership, Allen Cathedral has grown into a 23,000-member church with senior citizen centers, private school, and hundreds of housing units for members and community residents. Along with its affiliates, Allen Cathedral is the second-largest African-American employer in New York City. Flake served as U.S. congressman from 1986 to 1997 and is the author of The Way of the Bootstrapper: Nine Action Steps for Achieving Your Dreams.
The notes from his talk continue below.
- It doesn’t matter what field we’re in, there’s always some need for transformation to find our best self.
- Leadership is about moving people beyond their self-serving motives.
- When people see that you are selfless they follow you because they realized that it benefits everyone
5 Models of Leadership
1) Transitional leadership – example: John the Baptist. Had a role, knew that it was temporary.
- Focused on an identified need(s)
- We have a responsibility to find out what the needs of the community are
- His church decided to build a school. Faced resistance because the church was not “in the education business”
- Avoiding pitfalls
- Perspective can be compromised
- Failure to focus on core purpose
- Goals and objectives that are not clear
- Traditions
2) Transactional Leadership
- Reasons for this model
- Group buy-in and agreement
- Delegate responsibility
- Build support
- Identify leaders process plans
- Avoid pitfalls
- Passive leadership, people who lead in title only
- Slows down the process
- Time consuming
- Selfish motives
3) Transparency in Leadership
- If we’re going to be great leaders, we’re going to have to be moral
- We must create a means for information to flow from the leader to the people and vise versa
- Make sure your financial house is in order. Regular financial reports to the congregation.
- Select worthy partners (hire a CPA)
- Trust God enough to have integrity
4) Transcendent Leadership (skipped due to time)
5) Transformational Leadership
- Aggressive leadership
- Transformational leadership always produces resistance. Don’t fear it.
- Always focused on the goal.
- Many institutions fail because they do not plan past the current leadership
- Be the best leader you can be so the leaders after you can be even greater
What did God impress on you during this session?
Wow – that was a lot of info in a short amount of time. I’m fingers couldn’t keep up.
The children’s choir was a great opener though!!!
Rev. Flake certainly is an amazing man. This session challenged me to look at our community to determine where we need to invest in order touch and impact our whole community for God.
He was like a machine gun in his presentation-very fast and focused.
I come away with ideas for what we can do to support our sister community in St. Louis Denard, Haiti to rebuild their community.
The children’s choir also sparked an idea, perhaps some of the 300 children in the school there could become the Haitian Children’s Choir travelling to raise support for themselves and other children in Haiti. God is able to transform this impoverished nation. These people matter to Him!
My other thought goes to my friends, Joseph and Molly, who will soon be moving to Nakuru, Kenya with their son Elijah. Their new community faces many of the same challenges that the community of Greater Allen Cathedral faced 30 years ago.
Rev. Flake is certainly a resource we need to use to replicate this transformational process in these other communities. As well as our own, where we have our homeless population.
There is much to be done
Thanks for the detailed notes. You can type much quicker than I can write notes. His discussion on transcendent leadership really got me thinking about how to apply it to a business.