Category: Change

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Why Most People Don’t Have What They Want

 

Cardiovascular problems cause thousands of deaths every day.  The main problem is neglect.  Every day there are thousands of divorces, often because of neglecting problems, and each other.  The relationships and things we neglect are damaged and deteriorate faster than the relationships and things we care for and pay attention to.

Think about your car.  If you never wash it and never get it serviced it won’t last very long.  It will start to break down and soon will quit running.  Or think about a garden that is neglected.  All kinds of weeds start to take over and they can choke out everything you planted.  Our bodies and our relationships are the same way.  If we neglect them they will stop working or weeds start to take over.

So what or who are you neglecting in your life?

The longer you neglect your health, your teeth, your weight, your finances, your marriage, your spouse, your character or your faith the worse it will get.

Why do we neglect things that are important in our lives?  That’s a big question, because most people want to be healthy, most people want a great marriage, most people want financial freedom, most people want a good reputation, most people want a closer relationship with God.  The problem is most people are not willing to do the basic principles that lead to health, growth and success in those areas of their lives.

It takes discipline to lose weight and get healthy, it takes discipline to work on your marriage and become a better person, it takes discipline to get out of debt and be generous, it takes discipline to grow in your faith and trust in God.

Our natural tendency is to do what’s comfortable and easy.  We avoid conflict, we avoid the scales and going to the doctor.  We eat our favorite foods and only think about exercising.  We avoid having that conversation or going to a trusted advisor for counsel.  In other words we neglect some of the things that are most important in our lives and stay busy with things that don’t improve those parts of our lives.  Many people simply hope it will get better or that the problem will just magically go away.

So what should a person do if they have areas of their lives that have been neglected and damaged?  Here are a few simple steps that can help get you back on track:

  1. Set some goals – We all have two choices, making a living or designing a life.  When you write down goals and review them often you are paying attention to parts of your life that you want to improve.  The first step in improving an area of your life is to pay attention to it.  The ultimate reason for setting goals is to keep us focused on the things that will bring out the person God created you to be.  To be a better man or woman, husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter.  Setting goals is the first step toward being a better person.
  2. Ask for help – Trying to accomplish major changes in your life is very difficult without the help of others.  Whether it’s losing weight, reconciling a marriage, improving a relationship, transforming your financial condition or deepening your faith, find trustworthy people that can walk with you.  Find people that want something for you not something from you.  Look for people of integrity, honesty and character.  Remember that God created you and has a purpose for your life.  Talking to God and reading His words in Scripture can be a huge help in making changes in your life.
  3. Think long-term – Short-term fixes don’t work.  Cutting out carbs might help you lose some weight but long-term weight loss only happens if you change the way you eat and exercise for life.  The same in relationships, you can learn to do some nice things for each other but if you don’t address your core issues your right back in the same place a year later.  Address why you eat too much, address why you get so angry, address why you spend so much money.  That is the hard part of change, not just putting a bandage on the wound but cleaning it out and stitching it up.
  4. Don’t give up – The hard work is always worth it.  When you exercise on a regular basis you get sore and hurt for a while, but as your muscles and lungs and heart get stronger you feel so much better.  When you learn what your hot buttons are and how you defend yourself, then you can start working on changing your responses, which will improve your relationships.  Put in the hard work, face your fears, keep pushing to get better and don’t give up.

So if you’ve been neglecting areas of your life start making plans to change that today.  A year from now you will be glad you did.

 

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Four Things Leaders Think About Every Day

Everyone that’s still breathing is thinking about something.  We think about what to eat, when to eat, what we should wear, what we will watch on TV tonight.  We think about what other people think about us, we think about and make judgements about other people.  We think about losing weight, starting to exercise or eating ice cream.

We all have this dialog going on in our heads.  We have conversations about all kinds of things going on in our lives.  That’s pretty normal, but leaders think about a lot of other things.  Leader’s don’t get stuck in the web of our day to thinking.  Leader’s think about what could be, what should be and how to get there.

So here are four things that most leaders are thinking about:

  1. Leaders think about the future.  Leaders are custodians of the future.  They are thinking about what’s next? What could be our next big challenge? What needs to change to get us there?  Why is this the direction we need to go?  How can we keep moving in that direction?  What steps do we need to take to get there?  They think beyond what is directly in front of them.  Leaders are always thinking about a better future.  Great leaders are optimistic about the future not pessimistic.
  2. Leaders think about their team.  If your a good leader you know you can’t do it alone.  Leaders are always thinking about the people on their team or in their organization.  They think about if they are in the right seat, they think about how to help them get better at what they are doing.  Leaders are constantly thinking about who can help them get to that preferred future.
  3. Leader’s think about goals.  Leaders set goals because they know it will keep them focused.  In order to set good goals you have to know where you want to go and the goals you set help get your there.  So leaders are thinking strategically about what behaviors, actions and initiatives will get us closer to that vision for a better future.  Great leaders not only think about goals but they write them down and require their team to do the same and then holds the team including themselves accountable to achieving those goals.
  4. Leaders think about learning and improving.   The best leaders know they have a lot more to learn and look for opportunities to learn from others.  That’s why most leaders are readers.  They devour books, listen to podcasts, read articles and posts from other leaders and organizations.  All that reading and listening helps the leader to stretch their thinking about the future and discover changes that need to be made in their personal lives and professional lives and in the life of their organization in order to move toward that preferred future.

Of course leaders think about a lot of other things but these four are near the top.  Leaders also set aside time to think.  Leaders that are so busy they can’t sit down and think deeply tend to be pulled to the urgent and can miss great opportunities and make bad decisions.  Schedule time into your calendar to think, read, listen and write.  That time will sharpen you and your organization.

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7 Leadership Insights I Learned in Ministry

I’ve been in ministry full time for over 15 years and I’ve learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes.  The church I work at went from single site in a small town to a major relocation to a bigger facility to multi-site now with five locations.  I was involved with leading the relocation of two of the sites from a portable campus to a permanent site.  I’ve been a part of a lot of change and challenges over the years.  I’ve grown as a leader and I’ve struggled as a leader.  I believe there are some basic things that help a lot in ministry, do these basics well and you will lead well.

Here are seven things I’ve learned and believe about leadership.

  1. Relationships are more important than Systems – Effective, well thought out systems are vital to an organizations health, but people are more important.  Every person that attends our church is important, and every person that does not attend our church is important.  Each person matters to God and so they must matter to us.  When going through explosive growth it’s easy to miss the relational part of ministry.  That is when you must work hard to meet with people and listen to them.  I have learned so much by simply meeting with people and listening to them.  listening to their story and sharing parts of yours is so important when building relationships.
  2. Communicate with your team often – Even when there is nothing new to report, it’s important to communicate with your team on a regular basis.  As a leader, I wake up every day thinking about what needs to happen to get us to where we are headed.  The volunteers I am leading have many other things to think about, like their own jobs and families.  The more I can communicate about what is going on, the better my relationship with the people I lead.  Open honest communication builds trust, it also motivates and encourages and allows people to ask clarifying questions.  When you don’t communicate you are communicating and that’s when people start loosing interest, or fill in the blanks themselves.
  3. Trust that God is working in ways you do not see – In ministry, things don’t always line up like you would like them to be.  As a leader, I am responsible for my own actions and to make plans and develop strategy.  It is also my responsibility to be flexible and to include God in everything.  The deeper my trust in God the stronger my faith grows.  If we figure everything out on our own, we don’t need God to show up.  When you take on a big vision, only God can make it happen, we need to trust and obey.
  4. Trust the leaders around you – I must choose to trust and not to be suspicious of the leaders above me and around me.  The more I choose to trust the more my heart remains in the right place.  When I start to fill in the blanks with my own ideas, I begin to head into a downward spiral.  When I believe the best about the people leading me, I can then lead with integrity and passion.  Trust builds a culture of emotional health and stability.  It’s also important that you are trustworthy and lead well in the area entrusted to you.  This becomes even more important and difficult as you add multiple sites.  You are not as close to the leaders as you used to be so trust becomes vital to moving things forward in a healthy way.
  5. Do more than rally the troops – You must do more than talk the talk, you need to walk the walk and make things happen.  That means doing what you say and equipping your volunteers to do what they are asked to do.  It means taking the time to develop people rather than just direct people.  When you build meaningful relationships with people they will follow you through the most difficult of times.  When you pay attention to the details and delegate to people that can get things done your influence goes up.  Don’t just try to pump people up, pour into them and love them.  The only way to do that is by allowing God to pour into you and to keep growing as a leader.
  6. You have to be real – People are looking for real leaders that admit their mistakes and take responsibility.  Be quick to admit mistakes and ask for forgiveness and extend the same to others.  Don’t put on the religious mask, where you try to make people think that everything is just perfect.  That is only possible if you are sure of your identity and comfortable with who you are.  I have learned that I need to be me and not someone I think people want.  The more I am the person God created me to be the more influence God gives me.
  7. Be as clear as possible – Clarity is one of the most difficult things to do as a leader.  It is easy to dance around the issues and not give direct answers.  Sometimes there are things that I just cannot share with people, so I need to be honest about that and let them know that I will share details when I can.  To be clear as a leader means taking time to think about what you are going to say.  It means you can’t just shoot from the hip, but take time to aim before delivering the message.  Being clear is a way of honoring people and letting them know you care.  Whether it’s in an email, in a meeting or face to face be honest about what is happening or what happened.  Share as much information as possible.  That will build trust and respect.

When things are changing all around me and the pace seems to be higher than what I can stand, it helps to step back and trust God and obey what he tells me.  When things are busy and hectic I need to make sure that I am praying and communicating with God.  I also need to be reading the Bible to build my intimacy with God and get wisdom and direction.  One thing that has helped me in this area and many others is having people in my life to ask me how I am doing in some of these areas.  Having accountability in my life has brought growth and freedom into my life.

Lead On!

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Why should we give and save more?

Most people want to be generous and help those in need.  The reality is most people do not give much.  Most people also understand that’s it’s important to save money.  The reality is most people don’t save much money either.  So what’s the problem?  Part of it may be understanding the world better.  Also part of it is not having a plan.

Pastor Bob Coy of Calvary Chapel in Ft Lauderdale gave this example of putting the people of the world into perspective.  Let’s look at the world as made up of just 100 people:

  • 70 of them don’t know Jesus. 30 do.
  • 30 are white. 70 are some other color.
  • 51 are women, 49 are men.
  • 80 live in substandard housing, meaning they have no electricity, running water, inside plumbing or a roof over their head.
  • 50 are malnourished. Their food is not satisfying, not enough and doesn’t provide proper nutrition.
  • 70 can’t read.
  • 1 is dying as you read this-a little kid under the age of 10. He’s dying because he can’t get enough to eat.
  • 6 have a significant portion of the world’s wealth.
  • 6 live in the United States.
  • What if you’re the dad of the kid who’s dying of malnourishment?  Wouldn’t you be asking one of the 6 wealthy to share a little for your child? Unfortunately, the answer all too often is: there’s other things to do with our money, new things to buy.

Most Americans spend their money this way:

  • 24% on housing
  • 19% on health care
  • 22% on recreation and personal needs
  • 15% for food
  • 17% for transportation
  • Leaving 3% for other such as giving or saving

Most people want to make a difference but are either too far in debt to be generous or have good intentions but don’t plan in advance to be generous or even to save.

Make it a goal to give 10% and save 10% and live on 80%.

So here are some tips on how you can Save more and Give more:

  1. Save second and Give first.  When we give first, then save some we don’t spend money on those unimportant things that we don’t think about.  The fancy coffee, the extra soda, the eating out.
  2. Use an automatic transfer at your bank.  Transfer money out of your checking account into a savings account after every paycheck.  You can also set up automatic giving to your church or non profit either through your bank or through the non profit organization.
  3. Be consistent.  If you save money every other week for a year it adds up quickly, same goes for giving.  If you give consistently every week and not just when you’re in church you end up being more generous.
  4. You might want to have multiple savings accounts you transfer money into.  One should be an emergency account, with 3-6 months worth of expenses, another could be to purchase your next vehicle or other large item and another could be for a down payment on a house.
  5. You might even set up a saving account at a different bank to make it harder to get to and more out of mind.  When you don’t see the money in your checking account or in your wallet you won’t spend it.
  6. When you get a raise or a bonus put that money in savings, give some away or pay off debt.
  7. Pray about saving and giving.  Ask God to give you wisdom with your finances and guidance on how to spend what He has entrusted to you.
  8. When an opportunity to give comes along if you’ve been saving money you can pull from your savings and give and not have to take money out of your budget.
  9. Plan in advance where you want to give each year.  I give to  my church first.  I recommend 10% of your gross income as a target.  Then plan what other non-profits you have a  heart for and what you would like to give to them for the year.  Then plan to use money from savings or budget to give to things that come up that you would like to support like mission trips, pizza fund raisers, families in need etc.
  10. When you payoff debt add that extra money to your savings and give some away.  Or if you are able to save some money on expenses increase you’re giving or your saving.

Being generous feels good and helps make the world a better place.  Saving is a healthy practice and helps you to be more generous.  Start today by choosing a couple of these tips and put them into practice.

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Leadership Nuggets

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I recently read through & discussed James Kouzes & Barry Posner’s book called The Truth About Leadership with a group of guys.  Here are some of my nuggets I took away from the book:

    • Before you can lead others, you have to lead yourself and believe that you can have a positive impact on others.
    • Before anyone is going to willingly follow you-or any other leader-he or she wants to know that you are honest, forward-thinking, inspiring and competent.
    • If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.
    • You cannot fully commit to something that isn’t important to you-no one can.
    • People won’t follow you, or even pay much attention to you, if you don’t have any strong beliefs.
    • Spend more time in the future. You have to carve out more time each week to peering into the distance and imagining what might be out there.
    • Looking backward can actually enable you to see farther than if you stare straight ahead.
    • The best leaders take actions that make people strong and capable. They make people feel that they can do more than they thought they could.
    • Often, people just lack a little courage and confidence. They blossom when they have a leader who believes in them and gives them support and encouragement
    • Tremendous energy is unleashed when constituents trust you!
    • To be a leader you need to make something happen. You need to feel a strong sense of commitment, believing that you can find something in whatever you are doing that is interesting, important, or worthwhile.
    • You can’t lose focus when there are lots of distractions all around. You can’t hop from one thing to the next without completing what you started. It’s called grit!
    • People are always watching you.
    • Learning agility…is the ability to reflect on experience and then engage in new behaviors based on those reflections.
    • If you want to be the best leader you can be, you will have to attend to your weaknesses.
    • Love enlarges lives. Love creates the desire to serve others and to see them grow and become their best.

I hope you can also learn from some of these quotes.  It may be a reminder or a new challenge.  We are all leaders to some degree whether at home with our families, at work, at church or in your community.  I’ve heard this many times and I believe it that everything rises and falls on leadership.  Lead On!

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Six Guideposts for an Emotionally Healthy Life

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Living an emotionally healthy life is incredibly freeing.  Yet it is very difficult to do because we all grow up learning unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy emotions.  Think of it like pieces of armor that we put on growing up, defense mechanisms, ways of handling conflict, how to treat other people, what we think about ourselves, others and God.

In order to get healthy here are a six guideposts that can help us all get healthier emotionally and live with freedom and joy.  Many of these guideposts come from researcher, author and speaker Brene’ Brown.

  1. Cultivate authenticity and let go of what other people think –   Authenticity is a choice and must be practiced every day.  It’s letting ourselves been seen for who we really are and also setting healthy boundaries in our lives.  It’s being able to say no in a kind way yet stay firm when pressured.  It’s choosing to have a hard conversation instead of stuffing it and letting resentment fill us up.  It’s paying attention to what we are feeling and why and dealing with the truth.  It’s speaking up instead of holding it in.  It’s taking our mask off and being our true self, imperfections and all.
  2. Cultivate self-compassion and let go of perfectionism – Perfectionism leads to frustration, anger and a host of other unhealthy emotions.  It also leads to negative self-talk and keeps you from moving forward in relationships and projects.  It can feed fear and keep us paralyzed.  To let go of perfectionism we need to be able to practice self-compassion or being kind to ourselves.  It’s allowing ourselves to deeply feel what we are currently going through and understanding that we are not alone in our struggles.  Others have gone through similar things and survived.  We must be able to love ourselves before we can love others.  It’s giving ourselves a break from having to be perfect and always doing the right thing.
  3. Cultivate a resilient spirit and let go of numbing behaviors – This involves knowing who we are and how we are wired.  It is the self-awareness to know what our numbing behaviors are and a willingness to get help to avoid going there.  It’s understanding our purpose in life and God’s plan for our lives.  When we grow spiritually it strengthens our spirit and allows us to bounce back much faster when troubles come.  It’s having a healthy outlet for venting frustrations and pain.  Allowing people close to us to know us and be vulnerable with them about what is happening.  numbing behaviors include things like spending hours on Facebook or social media, watching TV, video games, working.  It can be drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking or watching porn.  It can also be focusing on our phone and not being fully present with the people around us.
  4. Cultivate gratitude & joy and let go of scarcity & fear – It’s not just having an attitude of gratitude, but actually practicing gratitude.  Keeping a gratitude journal and actually telling others how grateful we are for them and the things we are grateful for.  It’s living with an eternal perspective and knowing we have a higher purpose in life.  It’s noticing the little things in life and being able to live in the moment and just be.  It is being comfortable in our own skin and not trying to be somebody we are not.  It’s having an abundance mentality, and not a scarcity mentality.  It’s being generous with our time, our money and possessions and our abilities by helping and serving others.
  5. Cultivate intuition and trusting faith and let go of the need for certainty – Certainty is not real but uncertainty is.  Our intuition comes from the experiences we have had in life.  To cultivate intuition we need to think about and learn from our experiences.  It’s also important to grow in our faith and keep searching for answers to life’s questions.  Yet it’s also being OK with not having all the answers.  Many people would rather be miserable and certain than emotionally healthy and uncertain.  One way to cultivate intuition and trusting faith to create time for silence and solitude.  Building time into our schedules to connect with God, feed our soul and nourish our minds.
  6. Cultivate creativity and let go of comparison – Every human being is creative, some people practice using it more than others.  Unused creativity turns into unhealthy emotions like anger, judgement, rage and depression.  When we start comparing ourselves to others our creativity goes down because of fear.  Often because of something someone said or did to us as a child we avoid being creative because we fear not being good enough.  When children get to be in the 4th and 5th grade their level of creativity goes way down because that is when their art begins to get graded and compared to others.  To cultivate creativity we need to start doing something we gave up or thought we were no good at.  Start drawing, painting, sculpting, writing, taking pictures, making videos.  Finding our creative side and exercising it will bring joy, freedom and energy into our lives.  Do something creative today.

Start pursuing an emotionally healthy life by cultivating the good and letting go of the bad.

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Summer 2015 Reading List

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Reading is one of the most important things you can do to learn, grow and improve yourself.  I love to read and I try to read one or two books a month.  I also listen to pod casts, and audio books to keep feeding my mind good stuff.  As a leader this is vital to keep stretching and pushing yourself to get better.

So over the next several months I plan on doing a lot of reading.  I have carved out some extra time to allow for this by taking some vacation time and incorporating it into my regular work schedule.

Here are the books I am currently reading and several I plan on reading later:

Business Books:

Spiritual and Personal Growth:

Audio Books:

Just for Fun:

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15 Leadership Tips

I found this in my leadership files and wanted to share this.  Not sure where I got it, but some great reminders for everyone that has influence and is leading other people.

15 Leadership Tips:

  1. In other words, for people to embrace and follow compassionate, honest, ethical, peaceful, and fair principles, they must see these qualities demonstrated by their leadership.
  2. A given type of leadership inevitably attracts the same type of followers. Put another way, a leadership cannot behave in any way that it asks its people not to.
  3. Prior to expecting anyone to follow, a leader first needs to demonstrate a vision and values worthy of a following.
  4. The suggestion that loyalty and a following can be built by simply asking or forcing people to be loyal is not any basis for effective leadership.
  5. That is to say – loyalty to leadership relies on the leader having a connection with and understanding of people’s needs and wishes and possibilities. Solutions to leadership challenges do not lie in the leader’s needs and wishes. Leadership solutions lie in the needs and wishes of the followers.
  6. It is not possible for a leader to understand and lead people when the leader’s head is high in the clouds or stuck firmly up his backside.
  7. Incidentally, leading is helping people achieve a shared vision, not telling people what to do.
  8. Leaders get lost because of isolation, delusion, arrogance, plain stupidity, etc., but above all because they become obsessed with imposing their authority, instead of truly leading.
  9. Always, when leaders say that the people are not following, it’s the leaders who are lost, not the people.
  10. People are a lot more clever than most leaders think.
  11. People have a much keener sense of truth than most leaders think.
  12. People quickly lose faith in a leader who behaves as if points 10 and 11 do not exist.
  13. People generally have the answers which elude the leaders – they just have better things to do than help the leader to lead – like getting on with their own lives.
  14. A leadership which screws up in a big way should come clean and admit their errors. People will generally forgive mistakes but they do not tolerate being treated like idiots by leaders.
  15. And on the question of mistakes, a mistake is an opportunity to be better, and to show remorse and a lesson learned.

Lead On

 

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5 Elements of a Great Team

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There has been a lot written about teams and team work.  Yet many companies struggle to have healthy, high functioning teams.  Most often that is the result of an unhealthy culture or misguided leadership.  There are some fundamental elements of great teams that allow organizations to get things done quickly with excellence.

  1. A Sense of Purpose – The great teams I’ve observed and served on have had a sense of purpose, they all knew where they were headed.  That sense of purpose allowed the team to want to be great not just average.  The first step in building a great team is to make sure everyone knows the big picture purpose of what they are trying to accomplish.  Does everyone know what a win looks like and are they celebrating the right things and changing the wrong things?
  2. Empowered – Great teams are given the ability to do their jobs and the decision making power to get things done.  They don’t have to check with the boss before every decision, because the boss trusts them and has given them their purpose and goals.  When a team is empowered and trusted great things can happen very quickly.  When they are told what to do and how to do it they tend to move slow and become average and apprehensive.
  3. Humble – Great teams might have superstars on the team but everyone knows the team is more important than any individual.  People are willing to defer to others if they have more experience and knowledge.  They also learn how to push back on ideas without attacking individuals.  The team is always trying to find the best and so everyone is open to feedback and evaluate everything together.
  4. Transparent & Honest – Great teams talk to each other and are honest with each other.  If they are on the same page as far as purpose and are clear on the objectives they can push each other and hold each other accountable.  This can only happen if they are also humble and trust each other.
  5. Cross functional and diverse – The great teams have different personalities, skills and strengths.  Team members know what each others strengths and skills are and allow people to work in their area of strength.  Great teams communicate about who should be involved in certain projects based on their skill and strengths and not on politics.  Team members understand what others are doing on the team and therefore can help each other if needed.

Teams are only as great as the leader.  Leaders that try to control and direct instead of casting vision and empowering tend to have average teams.  As a leader don’t get caught up in telling your team what to do.  Instead make sure they know their purpose and what the wins are.  Establish clear goals or outcomes and then allow your team to figure out how to get there.  If you can’t trust your team then you have the wrong team and need to find people you can trust.

As the leader you are there to coach along the way and not get involved in the how.  This means encouraging people, redirecting people, refocusing people and backing your team up even if they make some mistakes.  Building a great team takes great leadership.  If you have a very new team or inexperienced team you may have to spend more time with them and give them some of the how.  Getting your teams to great is a process, there is an ideal yet you need to work with reality.  Start with yourself as the leader and then your team members.  The better you lead the better your team becomes.

Lead On

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10 Points of Emphasis

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Over the past 12 years I’ve been working at NewPointe Community Church is various leadership positions.  NewPointe is a multi-site church meaning it is one church in multiple locations.  Currently there are four locations and we are working on locations five and six to be launched in 2015.  Over the years there has been a lot of change at NewPointe.  The strategy has been a constantly moving thing but the vision has always been steady.  Our vision is to lead people to realize and reach their full potential in Jesus Christ. With millions of people in Ohio, which is where we are located, we have to keep growing in order to continue reach more people to help them grow spiritually.

Recently I went over some points of emphasis with my staff at the Millersburg Campus.  These are areas that all of us as leaders need to pay attention to and constantly be working on.  These points lead to a healthy organizational culture and to steady growth.  These points are all transferable to any business or organization.  These are leadership issues that I have found to be important in building a healthy organization.

10 Points of Emphasis at NewPointe Community Church:

1. First Impressions matter – So remove all distractions and create wow moments of service.  You only have one opportunity to make a positive first impression.  Make someone’s day and then keep building on that positive first impression.
2. Lasting Impressions matter – So follow-up is essential.  Once a person comes to your organization it’s important to connect with them so that they keep coming back – write notes, send emails, texts and calls – meet with as many people as possible – Each touch matters in building relationships.  You don’t want to bombard people, but they need to know that you value them as a customer or client.
3. Lead by example – People are watching and listening so make sure your healthy emotionally, physically, mentally and especially spiritually, so that you can be positive and passionate about the vision. Sometimes you need to do things that are not your job, to show people that you are willing to do whatever it takes to move the organization forward.
4. Focus on the individual – Be fully present with people. When you are talking with someone focus on them and not what’s going on around you.  Work at listening and not thinking about everything else you need to do or what you are going to say to respond.  When you make the person you are talking to feel like they are the most important person in the room they feel valued, heard and cared for.
5. Do for one what you wish you could do for all – You can’t help everyone, but you can help someone.  When you come across a person in need and you can help do all you can to help and serve that person.  It might be providing a needed piece of equipment to an employee or finding a way to help during a difficult time.
6. Always try to make it better – 1% improvements over time make a big difference. Have a mindset of how can I improve this.  Constantly ask for feedback and give people permission to be negative and honest.  When you get negative feedback be grateful and don’t get defensive.
7. Be good stewards of all our resources – Pay attention to details and don’t waste resources.  This forces you to be creative and responsible.  Work within your budget and spend money as if it’s your own, not the organizations.
8. Don’t just care about your team, care for them – When the people around you know you care because of your actions it builds loyalty, healthy community and a positive culture. You care for people by taking the time to listen to them, serve them, follow up quickly if they have questions, be flexible and give them open honest feedback.
9. Be clear when you communicate – Make sure you clarify the win and the expectations and then repeat and follow up. Repetition is important especially when it comes to values, guiding principles and vision.  Don’t make people guess at what you mean.  Most people appreciate clear direct communication.
10. Keep it simple – Take the complex and make it simple for people. This is hard the bigger you organization gets.  You have to be very intentional about keeping things simple and easy.  Remove as much red tape as you can.  Systems are good but can become too complex if you as the leader don’t keep pushing for simple.

These are things I think about and try to do on an everyday basis as a leader.  Leadership means you are out in front and yet walking behind and with your team.  Serving the people you lead is vital in leadership.