Leadership, Coaching, and Shepherding: Three Ways We Influence and Why Shepherding Transforms at the Deepest Level
By Bob Bumgarner, M.Div and Dr. Rick Marks
© RelateWell Institute
Every human system, whether marriage, family, church, or organization, rises or falls on the quality of influence exercised within it. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are constantly shaping one another. Yet not all influence is created equal, and critically, not all influence leads to genuine transformation.
Scripture consistently reveals God’s heart for transformation, not mere behavior modification. Paul writes to the Romans, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). This is not superficial change; it is a profound, lasting metamorphosis that begins in the heart and radiates outward into every relationship and responsibility.
Across marriages, families, churches, and businesses, three distinct modes of influence repeatedly emerge: leadership, coaching, and shepherding. Each plays a vital role. Each serves a unique purpose. And each shapes people in profoundly different ways.
Understanding how these roles differ, and how they work together most effectively, clarifies why some environments merely function while others genuinely transform lives from the inside out.
Leadership: Direction, Vision, and Responsibility
Leadership is the capacity to influence people toward a shared vision and desired outcomes. Leadership establishes direction, aligns people around purpose, mobilizes resources, and accepts ultimate responsibility for results. Without clear leadership, organizations drift, families flounder, and churches lose focus.
Leadership answers three critical questions:
• Where are we going? (Direction)
• What matters most? (Priorities)
• How will we measure success? (Accountability)
In marriage and family life, healthy leadership means establishing shared values, maintaining appropriate boundaries, and setting priorities that reflect kingdom purposes rather than cultural pressures. In the church, leadership provides theological clarity, casts a compelling vision, and maintains a missional focus. In business, leadership sets organizational culture, defines strategy, and creates performance expectations.
Strong leadership mobilizes people, clarifies expectations, and produces measurable results. The biblical model of leadership is never divorced from character; Moses, David, Nehemiah, and Paul all led from a foundation of personal integrity and relational authenticity. However, when leadership becomes disconnected from emotional maturity and relational care, it can devolve into something merely positional, performance-driven, or even controlling.
Leadership is essential, but by itself, leadership rarely produces profound, lasting personal transformation. It can change what people do without necessarily transforming who they are becoming.
Coaching: Development Through Awareness and Ownership
Coaching is a developmental process that helps individuals clarify goals, increase self-awareness, identify obstacles, and take personal ownership of their growth journey. Rather than directing people toward predetermined outcomes, coaching draws out insight, creativity, and agency through powerful questions, intentional reflection, and structured accountability.
Coaching centers on three essential questions:
• What do you truly want? (Clarity)
• What’s standing in your way? (Obstacles)
• What choices are you willing to make? (Ownership)
In marriage and family relationships, coaching respects personal autonomy rather than attempting to control outcomes. In churches, coaching helps leaders discern calling, develop spiritual gifts, and strengthen ministry effectiveness. In organizations, coaching improves performance, builds leadership capacity, and increases personal responsibility.
Coaching honors human dignity and agency. It refuses to impose solutions and instead invites people into their own discovery process. This is profoundly biblical; Jesus frequently used questions to draw out a deeper understanding rather than simply declaring answers. “Who do you say that I am?” He asked Peter (Matthew 16:15). “What do you want me to do for you?” He asked blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:51).
Yet coaching, while powerful, often operates primarily at the level of skills, goals, strategies, and mindset. It tends to avoid the deeper terrain of unhealed emotional wounds, unresolved identity confusion, and unformed character. Coaching works exceptionally well when individuals are already reasonably healthy, self-aware, and internally motivated.
Coaching develops people and increases their capacity, but it does not always form them at the level of core identity and character.
Shepherding: Formation Through Presence and Care
Shepherding is relational, long-term care that protects, nurtures, guides, and, when necessary, corrects—all with a deep, abiding commitment to the whole person. Shepherding focuses not merely on what people do, but on who they are becoming. It is fundamentally formational rather than merely functional.
The biblical imagery of shepherding is rich and instructive. Psalm 23 paints a picture of the Lord as a shepherd who provides rest, restoration, guidance, protection, comfort, provision, and intimate presence. Ezekiel 34 contrasts false shepherds who exploit the flock with God’s promise to shepherd His people Himself, seeking the lost, binding up the injured, and strengthening the weak. Jesus declares, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). This is sacrificial, personally invested, wholly committed care.
Shepherding asks three foundational questions:
• Are you safe? (Protection)
• Are you known? (Connection)
• Are you growing into maturity? (Formation)
In families, shepherding creates the emotional safety and secure attachment that children desperately need for healthy development. Parents who shepherd don’t simply enforce rules, they nurture souls. In the church, shepherding forms disciples rather than producing mere consumers of religious programming. Shepherding pastors invest in people’s long-term spiritual formation rather than obsessing over weekend attendance numbers. In business contexts, though admittedly uncommon, shepherding leaders produces extraordinary levels of trust, loyalty, personal investment, and character development.
Shepherding requires sustained presence, patient endurance, and significant personal investment. It cannot be rushed, packaged, or scaled through systems alone. But because shepherding engages people at the deepest levels of identity, belonging, emotional healing, and character formation, it reaches places that leadership strategies and coaching conversations cannot touch.
This is where the H=REG framework, Humility, Respect, Empathy, and Goodwill, becomes most essential. Shepherding without humility becomes paternalistic. Shepherding without respect violates dignity. Shepherding without empathy becomes cold and clinical. Shepherding without goodwill devolves into manipulation. True shepherding consistently embodies these relational virtues, creating the conditions for deep, lasting transformation.
Shepherding is slow work. It is costly work. But it is transformational work that changes people from the inside out.
How Leadership, Coaching, and Shepherding Compare
Each mode of influence serves distinct purposes and produces different outcomes. Understanding these differences helps us exercise the correct type of influence at the right time:
Dimension
Leadership
Coaching
Shepherding
Primary Aim
Direction & results
Growth & development
Identity & formation
Core Focus
Vision, alignment, outcomes
Awareness, goals, skills
Care, maturity, belonging
Power Source
Authority & influence
Questions & insight
Relationship & presence
Time Horizon
Short to mid-term
Mid-term
Long-term
Posture
Directive
Non-directive
Relationally directive
Primary Impact
Behavior
Competence
Character
Primary Risk
Control or distance
Avoiding depth
Over-functioning
Which Role Transforms People Most Deeply?
If we define transformation as lasting change in character, emotional maturity, and relational health, transformation that flows from the inside out has the most significant impact. Why? Because identity shapes behavior far more powerfully than rules, strategies, or performance goals ever can.
Jesus understood this principle perfectly. He did not merely give the disciples a mission statement and quarterly objectives. He lived with them. He ate meals with them, walked dusty roads with them, answered their questions, corrected their misunderstandings, comforted them in their fears, and challenged them in their pride. He shepherded them into new identities as beloved sons, faithful servants, and sent-out apostles.
That said, transformation is strongest when all three roles are integrated. Mature influence does not choose between these approaches but combines them wisely based on the situation, the person’s needs, and the relationship dynamics at play.
Healthy, integrated influence looks like this:
• Leadership provides clarity, vision, and accountability so people know where they’re going.
• Coaching develops ownership, skills, and confidence so people grow in competence.
• Shepherding provides safety, care, and formation so people are transformed in character.
Leadership without shepherding becomes transactional; people are reduced to assets or problems to manage. Coaching without shepherding becomes shallow; it improves performance but leaves deeper wounds and identity issues unaddressed. Shepherding without leadership lacks necessary direction, and care without clarity produces dependency rather than maturity.
The most effective influencers, whether spouses, parents, pastors, or CEOs, develop the wisdom, emotional maturity, and relational skills to integrate all three modes of influence appropriately.
The Mark of Mature Influence
The most effective leaders, whether spouses, pastors, parents, or organizational executives, understand at a foundational level that people are not problems to manage, obstacles to overcome, or assets to maximize. People are lives to steward. They are image-bearers of God entrusted to our care, worthy of dignity, respect, empathy, and goodwill.
Those who influence others most effectively:
• Lead with vision so people know where they’re going and why it matters.
• Coach with humility so people develop agency, ownership, and confidence.
• Shepherd with empathy and goodwill so people experience safety, belonging, and lasting transformation.
Leadership moves people toward objectives. Coaching develops people in capability. Shepherding transforms people in character. And when people are genuinely transformed, when their identities are reshaped by grace, their hearts are healed by love, and their character is formed through patient investment, everything changes.
Marriages heal and thrive. Churches become genuine communities of spiritual formation rather than entertainment venues. Organizations strengthen from the inside out, built on trust and integrity rather than mere productivity. And cultures shift as transformed people live out the fruit of the Spirit in every sphere of influence.
This is the vision Paul articulated in Ephesians 4:11-13, that God gives leaders, teachers, and pastors “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
The goal is not simply efficient systems or compliant behavior. The goal is nothing less than Christlike maturity, fullness of character, depth of love, and transformation that lasts for eternity.
And that kind of transformation requires shepherding.
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Bob Bumgarner is the Missional Director of First Coast Churches in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a respected leader in Church Ministry leadership and leadership training nationally.
Dr. Rick Marks, PhD, is the founder of RelateWell Institute. His work focuses on emotional maturity, healthy identity, integrity, and the relational virtues of humility, respect, empathy, and goodwill (H=REG). Through marriage intensives, leadership training, and comprehensive educational resources, Dr. Marks helps individuals, couples, and organizations experience profound, lasting transformation rooted in biblical truth and psychological insight