Metamorph: Transforming Your Life and Leadership, by Kate Coleman

'Kate’s book made me feel hopeful with its rich and compassionate wisdom that leads to transformational action'

Metamorph: Transforming Your Life and Leadership
By Kate Coleman
100 Movements Publishing
ISBN: 1955142602
Reviewed by Shaun Lambert

Kate’s book made me feel hopeful with its rich and compassionate wisdom that leads to transformational action.

In counselling it is important to acknowledge the difference in the room. I am a white man; Kate is a black woman. This is a principle she uses in her book, acknowledging her African and British cultural backgrounds and inviting her readers to acknowledge their backgrounds.

From the very beginning of the book the author uses language that resonates with me: complexity, rapid change, collaboration and flatter leadership structures, spiral learning. All this is in the context of outlining the necessary changing faces of leaders and leadership. Kate makes a compelling case for this and not just because of her own experience, ‘I have known for years that existing leadership systems, processes, and cultures were never designed with women or people of color in mind.’

One of the key reshaping principles is that leadership is a verb rather than a noun, it is something ‘we do, as in “leading” – rather than something we are.’ In this way we focus on becoming a person who sees others as persons, rather than followers.

As I read the book my sense is the author is a leader who has changed herself (a key principle) and whose wisdom is rooted in a depth of engagement and experience with other leaders. She subverts the traditional success models, sometimes the old ways in us and around us need to ‘fall apart.’

This emphasis on transformational change is distilled in her central idea of metamorphosis which she links to Jesus’ advocacy of metanoia, a profound shift into a new way of living that accompanies repentance and immersion in the kingdom of God. A ‘metamorph’ is someone who leads ‘both from and for a fundamental transformation.’ An organisation can be a metamorphic group. She sees the metamorphic everywhere in scripture.

In her quest for the ‘whole story’ she draws on non-Western wisdom as well as critiquing our Western models of leadership. I like her emphasis on the inner work every leader needs to do. Drawing on the model of Jesus, her main vehicle for bringing about transformation is not more information and knowledge (although that is there) but her use of interpretive stories that lead us to the whole story. This is to bring metamorphic change to three main areas: personal, community, and societal.

I was captivated by her imaginative use of biblical stories, whether it is Moses, or the woman at the well. She asks important questions through these stories: are we tempted to go it alone like Moses? Can we develop people through affirmation and vulnerability as Jesus does with the woman at the well?

In bringing transformation to community, she emphasises the power of friendships. When it comes to leadership, she rightly identifies that ‘the single most important factor in determining the sustainability of someone’s ministry in leadership is the presence of a ‘“full-disclosure friend,” with whom we share complete transparency.’ The other important aspect of friendship that Kate highlights is making friends with people who are different to you and with whom you might disagree (she uses the story of the friendship between Mary and Elizabeth to illustrate this, (Luke 1:41-45). Together is better.

As she moves to transforming community and considers the necessity of just leadership (leaders who take justice seriously especially racial justice) Kate writes with fierce clarity. But as a white person reading this chapter, I do not feel I am being shamed. I am compelled by the power of her thesis to examine myself further to embrace ‘just’ leading. I recognise I was slow to realise the significance of the tragic killing of George Floyd in Minnesota as a pivotal moment of racial reckoning and a bringing into the light of continued and endemic systemic racism.

In the UK context she makes the invisible visible, racism is not a problem confined to the US. She argues that as Christians we are the ‘custodians of the unique narrative, practices, and resources so crucial for both effective communication and community building in racially and culturally different spaces.’

Her postures for making a difference are radical empathy and radical solidarity which resonate with Project Violet’s Request 33 for white ministers to challenge racism in private and public. Kate’s book is an excellent book to start exploring how to do this.

When it comes to her final circle for change, mission she says, ‘Being an effective agent for change ultimately rests on our ability to establish what is and isn’t ours to do.’ In our leading it is more important to ask the right questions than have the right answers, and we can learn from God’s questions in the Bible.

Living out our purpose is more important than the mainstream emphasis on effectiveness. Using the story of Esther, she argues that we need women’s leadership more than ever before, although many women continue to face significant resistance and negativity toward their leadership. As with each chapter there are helpful sections for personal reflection or group discussion.

Kate argues we need to be ‘disrupted disruptors’ as in the day of Pentecost discipling others into that model. She says, ‘I am completely done with celebrity culture and Christian entertainment disguised as an authentic spiritual encounter.’ We are to be disrupted out of ideological, gender, cultural and geographical captivities.

On the positive side she sees the rise of new generations that are seeking authenticity and genuine spiritual experience. Kate’s book made me feel hopeful with its rich and compassionate wisdom that leads to transformational action.