Category: Leadership

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Six Practical Leadership Principles

 

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A lot has been written about leadership, I’ve read books, articles and listened to speakers.  There is not one thing that makes a great leader, each person is a bit different in personality, style, gifting and drive.  Some leaders are bold and charismatic while others are quiet and reserved.  I’ve seen great leaders with each of those traits.  So what’s important to know in leadership?  As a young person what can be done to grow as a leader?

Here are some things I’ve learned over the years in my experience leading in the banking/accounting world and also in full time ministry:

  1. Be the best version of you – Don’t try to copy another leader’s style or personality.  Work at knowing yourself and what your strengths and weaknesses are.  Learn from other leaders but be who you are and keep improving who you are.  Personal growth should be a high priority if you want to be a great leader. Early in my leadership I would often try to imitate leaders that I admired and would wish I had gifts I did not have.  That led to frustration and disappointment.  As I got comfortable with who I was, I got better as a leader.
  2. Ask for criticism and feedback – Give the people around you permission to criticize you and give honest feedback about your leadership and the systems, procedures and policies that are in place.  Create safe ways for that to happen.  Doing that allows people to be open and honest and helps to keep you humble.  When I get critical feedback it always motivates me to get better, focus more and make adjustments and ask questions.
  3. Take the time to plan – Most people do not take time to write down their plans and think about how to get there.  Developing a life plan that involves personal and business is critical for high level leaders.  This means setting aside time to think, study, analyze and dream.  It means writing down your plans or your vision for the future and then developing goals on how to get there.  It also means putting those goals on your calendar, updating your progress as you go and staying focused.  When you spend time planning it’s easier to say no to good things so that you can say yes to the best things.  Planning well keeps you focused on the right things, not the urgent things.
  4. Learn to relax – Most leaders have a high drive and love to get things done.  However, if you run at full speed too long you can blow a gasket or your whole motor.  High level leaders know how to stop, relax and recharge.  They understand when they need to take a break, get away and spend time doing something they love doing or simply spending time with family and friends.  Taking a sabbath day each week is a great place to start.  Don’t wait until you are burned out to relax and recharge, build it into your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly planning.  If you don’t deal with stress, the stress will deal with you.
  5. Build healthy relationships – Leadership is all about relationships.  To build healthy relationship you have to be healthy yourself.  So deal with your junk, go see a counselor or a coach and work on your issues.  Then work at deepening the relationships in your life at home and work.  When the people around you trust you, know you and understand you, the team will be much more productive.  This takes time, patience and lots of hard, honest conversations.  Speaking the truth with love leads to healthier relationships.  Caring about the people you lead is vital in leadership.  If people know that you actually care about them as a person they will follow you wherever you go.
  6. Take Personal Responsibility – This one is huge.  Instead of complaining about what is happening ask yourself how you can lead better, what can you contribute to make things better?  What part do you need to own?  What is under your control?  Doing this helps to keep you humble and focused on yourself and not the other person.  Coming up with solutions to problems instead of complaining about the problems is what high level leaders do.  They own their mistakes, admit when they failed and ask for forgiveness.  They don’t make a bunch of excuses or shift the blame.  This is a mark of maturity and builds incredible trust and respect.

Learning to lead is really learning about yourself, knowing your blind spots and barriers.  Knowing your core fears, weaknesses and scars.  When you raise your level of self-awareness you raise your level of leadership.  Then if you can surround yourself with people that will be honest with you and are gifted in areas you are not, incredible synergy can start to happen.

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Top Ten Proverbs

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Recently I challenged a group of guys I meet with to read through the book of Proverbs and identify their top ten.  We all found that very challenging as there are so many great Proverbs.  So here are my top ten:

  1. Proverbs 3:5,6  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
  2. Proverbs 4:23  “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.”
  3. Proverbs 11:2  “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
  4. Proverbs 11:25  “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”
  5. Proverbs 12:18  “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
  6. Proverbs 19:11  “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
  7. Proverbs 19:21  “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
  8. Proverbs 27:1  “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.
  9. Proverbs 28:13  “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”
  10. Proverbs 27:17  “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

If you can’t read through all the Proverbs take some time over the next several days and read these 10 and ask God to help you understand how they apply to you personally.

 

 

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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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A Key to Stronger Relationships

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I’ve been studying the idea of vulnerability and how that plays out in our relationships.   Brene Brown has some incredible insights on this tough topic.  Much of this post is based on her research.

One of the things that keeps us from being vulnerable is shame.  Shame thrives in secrecy, silence and judgement.  However when we introduce empathy, shame cannot grow.  So in order to be open and vulnerable we need to be around people that are great at empathizing and we need to learn how to be empathetic with others.  Learning how to be empathetic is one of the most powerful ways to improve your relationships.

In order to be empathetic we need to be able to see the world as others see it.  This is all about perspective, being able to take the perspective of another person and not our own.  It’s being able to listen to someone and not interject our own experience but to really what to hear it from them.  It’s not one upping the person by sharing what you did or how you messed up.  It’s being able to realize that our lens of life and our experiences are different than others and being OK with that.

Empathy also requires that we are nonjudgmental.   Most of us are  judgmental and we are usually judgmental in areas where we are vulnerable to shame.  We tend to judge people that are worse than we are so that we feel better about ourselves.  We do that because we are looking for validation that at least I’m not as bad as so and so.

Empathy is not our default or natural mode, it’s a skill that must be worked on and developed in order for this to happen naturally.  Empathy is usually very subtle, it can be just a knowing look or going to be with someone in a time of crisis instead of calling to express sympathy.

When we empathize with someone, we go to that dark place with them, we don’t flip on the lights and try to cheer them up and fix the problem or make light of the situation.  It’s like walking up to your friend that is in a hole and going down into the hole with them, but knowing how to get back out of the hole because it’s not your hole.  Sympathy is walking up to the hole and asking what happened.  When they tell you, you express that your sorry to hear that, that’s a terrible thing.  Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.  There is a big difference.

When we empathize with someone, we are creating a safe environment for people to be vulnerable.  Being vulnerable is one of the most accurate measures of a persons courage.  To be vulnerable takes bravery, because it is walking into uncertainty, it’s taking a risk and it’s exposing your emotions.  It takes courage because the reality is you can get hurt when you do this with someone that is not able to empathize or keep things confidential.

However if you live in secrecy, and silence you might feel safe, but are most likely miserable.  When we are vulnerable we are our true self.  We are showing that we are imperfect, messed up, awkward and goofy.  The greatest relationships are the ones where you can be all  of that and the person loves you even more.

So if your looking to improve your relationships, first learn how to empathize better with the people around you. Work on those skills of listening and trying to understand their perspective.  Don’t try to fix them or the situation, but let them know we can do this together.  Then work at being vulnerable with the people in your life.  Expose yourself emotionally by being honest about your struggles and your shame.  When we do that there is incredible freedom and life when we push past our fear.

 

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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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Seven Servant Leadership Principles

 

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The greatest leaders in history are the ones that had a mindset to serve others.  There has been a lot written about servant leadership and many today try to practice being a servant leader.  But just how practical is that in the real world.  When you have to get things done, ship your product or close the sale, how can you serve?

It can be hard when the heat is on to be thinking about serving others.  Yet if you want to be great you must learn the fine art of serving others as a leader.  Here are just a few things I believe are important in having a servant leader mindset.

  1. Keep Growing – If you want to serve the people you lead and the business or organization you work at, then grow.  If you become a lid for the organization then you are not serving anyone well.  To me this means that you are reading and studying your area of business.  It means that you are talking to others that are doing it better than you and learning as much as possible about how to improve yourself as a leader and whatever product or service you offer.  The bottom line is that servant leaders are constantly growing and changing and improving.  The more you grow the more you can pour into the people around you.
  2. Have a Vision – You have to know where you are going and be able to articulate that to your team on a regular basis.  A servant leader is constantly reminding everyone about why we are doing what we are doing.  Where we are heading and what the win is every day.  Casting vision is vital to being a servant leader.
  3. Think Strategically – A servant leader must be thinking ahead and planning.  One of the best ways you can serve people is by being well prepared and by thinking of things that could wrong before they go wrong.  This involves analyzing what is working well, what is not working well, what is missing and what is confusing.  Going through that process with your team will help bring clarity to the work being done.
  4. Collaborate – Servant leaders realize they don’t have all the answers, so they will involve the people around them in the decision making process.  They will ask what other people think and be open to new ideas and suggestions.  They allow other people that know more about the situation to make decisions and then back them up.  Servant leaders are also very open about what is happening and what is coming, they don’t keep secrets from their team.
  5. Empower People – This is one of the most powerful principles of servant leadership.  It’s developing people and then allowing them to do their jobs.  Servant leaders do not micro manage unless a person needs that extra attention.  Empowering a person is trusting them to make decisions, without having to always check with you first.  This can feel risky at times, but it builds your team and develops leaders.  People learn from mistakes and it allows you to coach your team along the way.
  6. Hold People Accountable – This is another important servant leadership principle.  When you are leading someone it’s important to be clear about what the expectations are and what results you want.  It needs to be in writing and you need to talk about it on a regular basis.  Setting goals and objectives with your team and then asking for regular updates on the progress is a great way to serve your people.  When someone is not hitting the goals or meeting expectations you serve them by having honest conversations with them and telling them the truth and coaching them on how to get back on track.
  7. Care About Others – Finally the people you lead need to know that you actually care about them.  That they are more than just an employee that is getting results.  This means you have to get to know your team.  Find out about their family and personal lives and ask them how they are doing.  It means taking time to have conversations with them and carve out time to have fun together as a team.  If your all business all the time you won’t connect with your team and your not serving them well.  When you take time for people especially when they are going through a crisis it’s a game changer – People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Lead On

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Three Life Lessons

Israel, Jerusalem, holy city, former wall around the old town near Jaffa

One of my favorite books is found in the Bible in the Old Testament.  It’s the book of Nehemiah.  It’s a story about a man that led a movement to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem, a city that had been destroyed and in ruins for many years.

The reason I like this story so much is because it demonstrates how much can be done when a person works hard and involves God.

Here are three simple life lessons from the story of Nehemiah, I hope you will take the time to read his story:

  1. The first step in any venture is to pray – The first thing Nehemiah did when he heard how terrible things were back home was to pray.  He talked to God and pleaded with God to help.  He also confessed sin for himself and his people, and he asked for specific help in having favor with his boss.  Prayer was his first response, Nehemiah knew that on his own he could not accomplish what God and he could do together.  When we face a challenge in life the first thing we need to do is talk to God, confess our sin, ask for his help and be specific in our requests.
  2. People under God’s direction can accomplish impossible tasks – Nehemiah was a talented leader but he knew he could not accomplish this huge task without the help of God and other people.  He put a plan together and asked for help from many different people.  He was able to keep the people focused on the most important things and not get distracted or paralyzed by fear.  He kept encouraging the people and praying for help, wisdom, protection and courage.  When you have a big vision and you include God on everything and you stay focused, amazing things can happen.  They rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem in just 52 days.
  3. There are two parts to real service for God: talking with Him and walking with Him – Serving God means including Him in every area of our lives.  It starts by talking with Him through prayer, this builds intimacy with God, a closeness that can only come from spending time together.  It also means walking our everyday lives with God.  Walking with God is simply including Him on the good and the bad in your life.  It’s continually acknowledging that He is in control and that we are seeking to do His will and not our own.  Walking with God is also asking for help when tempted, confessing when we mess up and getting back up and continuing on after we fail.

Nehemiah’s story is amazing and well worth reading.  Read it here – Nehemiah

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Examining the Condition of Your Walls

 

One of my heroes is Nehemiah.  His story is found in the Bible and it’s loaded with leadership and spiritual principles. Nehemiah was a Jewish man living in Persia after the Persian empire had taken over Jerusalem and exiled the Jewish people.  Slowly over a 90 year period the Jewish people were traveling the 800 miles back to Jerusalem and were trying to rebuild that great city.

Nehemiah had an important and prestigious job as the cup bearer to the king.  He found out that the rebuilding process in Jerusalem was not going well and they were struggling to make it.  Mainly it was because the walls around the city had been torn down and that left them vulnerable to the people around them.  Nehemiah had a great concern about the walls of his beloved city.  The rest of the story is how he went about rebuilding the walls.

Here are some of my takeaways:

Wall rebuilding then…. Wall rebuilding now:

Ancient walls served many purposes. They offered Protection, Security, and reflected the strength of the people.

Likewise, today the walls of spiritual disciplines that we build around our lives are vital for our Protection and for building our relationship with God.

We need to examine the condition of our walls.

Are some gates open for the enemy to slip in?
Has neglect allowed a loose piece of stone or mortar to become a hole or a gap?
Have weeds of compromise overrun certain sections until those toppled walls have become a main entrance for sin?

If your walls are in need of repair lets take a look at some principles from Nehemiah.

First: Develop a genuine concern for the condition of the walls.

Is it a burden on your heart? We must have a genuine concern for the condition of our spiritual lives.  If spiritual growth is not important it will take a back seat to all the more important stuff in our lives.  The spiritual walls we have in our lives keep us focused on the best things and growing in our trust of God.

Second: Express direct prayer for guidance and protection.

Nehemiah started 800 miles away in prayer before the Lord. Prayer tends to be an afterthought many times. It should be the first thing we do. Get into the habit of acting on your burdens only after you have given them a firm foundation in prayer.  Prayer is a privilege and God is available at all times.  We have access to the only one that controls everything.

Third: Face the situation honestly and with determination until the task is finished.

If we are upfront and honest about a problem we usually can get more of a commitment from the people around us. An honest appraisal of your own spiritual walls will help you stay determined to fill the gaps.  We all know were we tend to struggle and where we are allowing things to influence us in a negative way.  If your unsure then ask the people that are closest to you for honest feedback.

Fourth: Recognize that we cannot correct the condition alone.

No amount of experience can overcome sin’s power to crumble our walls. It is only when we are willing to live in dependence on God that we have the power to fix and build the spiritual walls we need for survival.  If we are serious about making changes in our spiritual lives then allowing other people to speak into our lives is vital.  Pray for someone that can hold you accountable by asking tough questions and then pray for courage to be open and honest.

Breezes instead of wind gusts usually knock us down. We get lulled into neglecting our walls.  We drift from God and allow other things to take priority in our lives.  Slowly we stray away and can find ourselves lost, stuck or alone.

Pray for God’s help in recognizing those subtle breezes in your life that are causing you to drift into moral compromises.

What area of your spiritual wall needs repairs or strengthened?

Are you faithful in all areas of your life? At work, At home, At play?

Take some time soon to think about the condition of your own walls and then follow Nehemiahs example and rebuild them as needed.

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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.