GrowthStarts

Jeff Henderson on Leading Up

Jeff Henderson, campus director of Buckhead Church in Atlanta, came to speak to our staff yesterday on "A Navigational System for Leading Up." Here are some bullets from his great talk...

• There are two directions a leader can take: either my ultimate aim is my own success, or I can ask: Did I do everything possible today to put my boss in a position to succeed? Did I set my boss up for success?

A Navigational System for Leading Up:

1. Be true to Scripture.

• Navigational tool number one: Pray for your leader.
• This is not a new insight. It is a critical reminder.
• Action item: Pray for your leader for 10 minutes this week.
• How to pray for your leader:
• • For wisdom
  • For spiritual and physical protection (John 17:11)
  • For creativity
  • For a confident humility (Success, not failure, has the potential to become our greatest enemy.)
  • For their spouse, family, and relationships
  • For their leadership
  • To overcome fear
• Navigational reminder: Praying for your leader puts your heart in the best position to lead up.
• On God's agenda for me: Increased humility.

2. Be true to your leader.

• Navigational tool number two: Know your leader.
• Questions to consider:
• • Is your manager a detailed person?
  • Are they energized by being around people or by being alone?
  • What do they hope to accomplish? (What are their dreams?)
  • What are their strengths? (Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton)
  • How do they communicate best? (email? phone? in person?)
• The better you know your leader the better you can lead them.
• Become a student of your leader. (It's Your Shipby Michael Abrashoff)
• The counter-intuitive career track: "If you help enough people get what they want, eventually you will get what you want." -- Truett Cathy
• Don't let problems travel alone. Don't just present problems. Present a problem and propose solutions as well.
• Great question to ask your supervisor: "As you look at our ministry, what keeps you up at night?"

3. Be true to yourself.

• Navigational tool number three: Know and improve yourself.
• One of the best things you can do to increase your effectiveness in leading up is to develop a passion for continuous personal improvement.
• What are you good at?
• • What makes you come alive in your job?
  • What drains you in your job?
  • Complete this sentence: I would experience more joy in my life if I only...
• How are you ensuring that you are going to perform at a higher level this year than last?
• The secret to improving yourself: It doesn't happen by accident.
• Two ways to improve yourself:
• • 1. The books you read
  • 2. The people you interact with
• What does your 2009 personal development plan look like?
• The most courageous thing you can do at work: Think for an hour. (Thinking for a Livingby Joey Reiman)
• The better you become, the more successful your leader can become.
• The better you become, the more influence you will eventually have.
• "The humble improve." -- Wynton Marsalis, jazz musician
• Get a personal board of advisors. (Jeff recently posted more about this on the Buckhead Church blog here, here, and here.)

Potential roadblocks:

• "My boss never listens to what I have to say."
• • This is an influence issue.
  • It may not be what you're saying, but how you're saying it.
  • Be creative on how you say what you say:
  • • Newspaper/magazine articles
    • Write a note
    • Find a book or audiotape and buy it for them
  • Encouragement helps pave the road to influence. Let your leader know when things are going right.
• "My supervisor never has time for me."
• • This issue calls for clarity.
  • How much time do you need? Once a week? How long?
  • Once you determine that, you need to have a conversation.
• "My boss never gives me proper credit."
• • There's no limit to what we can do when we don't care who gets the credit.

Great thoughts from Merge this morning

Today's Merge focused on leadership reminders from Moses and the plagues (Exodus 7-12). Some great bullets that spoke to me:

• Sometimes when God is in it, the process is harder, not easier. (When it's easier, it's easy for me to take the credit.)
• All the plagues happened because of Pharaoh's hard heart. Think of all the things that have happened because someone had a hard heart.
• Remember the power of vision. If you don't have vision (a preferred picture of the future) you'll never get anywhere. What drives you? What are you passionate about?
• Søren Kierkegaard: "If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eyes, which, ever young and ardent, see the possible."
• Remember the payoff of persistence.
• God shouts in our silence...and in our silence He demands we listen.

Merge takes place the third Wednesday of each month, 7:15-8:15 a.m. in the True North Auditorium. There is free breakfast, a short time of worship, and teaching from Mike Linch, currently going through the life of Moses.

Hope-Full Caregiving

One of our Stephen Ministry leaders passed these on to me. They are from Kenneth C. Haugk's book Christian Caregiving: A Way of Life.

As a destinctively Christian caregiver, you can become a facilitator of God’s hope. Here are nine practical ways you can become an instrument through which distinctively Christian hope can flow into others:

1. Sticking with them – your consistent, caring presence with them through thick and thin instills hope and provides a feeling of security.
2. Being available – hope is fostered by letting people know they can get in touch with you any time they need you.
3. Reducing anxiety – the very act of meeting with you a time or two can serve to reduce the anxiety of the care receiver. A problem shared is a problem halved. Anxiety reduction can be very hope-producing itself.
4. Sharing the stories of others – sometimes hopelessness comes about because people believe their problems are totally unique. Sometimes it can be a potent force for hope to share instances you know about in which others have met these same kinds of crises.
5. Accepting the other – by communicating through words and actions your acceptance of people despite their problems and faults, you can also instill hope.
6. Emphasizing the positive – sometimes individuals feel so broken that they can no longer discover any good in themselves. You can instill hope in the person for whom you are caring by emphasizing their positive characteristics, skills and talents.
7. Realizing failure and limitations – like bad-tasting medicine, confronting in love the faults and limitations of another can engender hope as these faults and limitations are actually promises that Jesus still has healing to perform.
8. Jesus with you – what a comfort that Jesus is not only in you, but with you – with both the caregiver and the care receiver. He is before you to lead you, behind you to guard you, beside you to support and comfort you, and above you to bless you.
9. Being distinctively Christian – you can instill hope by simply being Christian in words and manner.

Building a life around your assets

Today was our monthly staff leadership development day, when our pastor Mike Linch brings in great leaders to pour into us. The incredible Dr. Jack Llewellyn returned to speak on building a life around your assets. (You can check out my notes HERE from when Jack shared about winning vs. surviving.) Here are my bullet points from the session:

• God gave different people different assets (and different liabilities).
• Jeff Francoeur fell apart because he had never had adversity. He had never failed so he had nothing to pull out of his bag with which to handle failure. (Same thing happened to Vince Young.)
• The fact that he had never failed was a major liability.
• Jack said that his own number one asset is his faith. If he didn't have it, his liabilities would have overtaken him.
• Everyone has a finite emotional pie (think of a pie graph). The more of your emotional pie you give over to worry, the less you have left over for you.
• What separates you from others? Rarely talent. Usually it's emotion and how you deal with it.
• When someone is experiencing frustration, don't tell them "just do the best you can." That gives them an excuse to do nothing. Give them something specific to do.
• Set goals that are meaningful to you.
• If you have too little energy/stress, you are too relaxed and you make errors of omission. If you have too much energy/stress, you are nuts and you make errors of commission. Plus you fatigue early. You fatigue emotionally before you do physically. Ideally you need to be right on the edge. And you need to be able to quickly get back if you go to far.
• You have to have emotions yourself to tap into the emotions of people.
• What you are talks so loud, people can't hear what you say.
• With a bad economy and bad business times, many are taking their 10 hours a day at work and stretching it into 13 hours. But whether you spend 10 hours or 13 hours, you still only get 7-8 hours of productivity.
• When you go over the edge, take a deep breath and go over mentally something good you've done.
• Your assets and liabilities are never more important than when you have stress.
• Five ineffective ways to deal with stress, each with different liabilities:

1. Withdrawal. It's not bad to strategically withdraw sometimes, but make a commitment to come back to it.
2. Internalization. This results in physical issues (neck pain, headaches, stomach issues, etc.).
3. Helplessness. Victim mentality. This actually can be a positive if you give up to either pray or get help somewhere.
4. Emotional outburst. However, there is a time and place for this.
5. Over-control. Many companies will start doing this now.

• All of these have merit sometimes, but generally are all bad.
• The result of stress is exhaustion and death. Stress makes you vulnerable to heart attacks and strokes.
• About 80% of stress is neither positive nor negative toward your body. Stress is what we make it.
• Speed of recovery from adversity makes your life easier.
• Most stress can be dealt with when you put yourself in a positive environment. Environment enables you to win or causes you to lose. One bad attitude can ruin the entire environment.
• Surround yourself with two kinds of people: (1) people who support you and (2) people who challenge you and tell you things you don't want to hear--people who are honest with you.
• Understand your assets and liabilities and be willing to share them with people in your environment.
• Throw away the liabilities.
• Put your assets where you can see them every day (in your office or on a laminated card).
• Understand that you need goals that are specific, challenging, and attainable.
• If you have these things, you can handle stress.
• The most important thing to remember is that there's always somebody to talk to.

State the Mission. Review. Repeat.

The moment that you think the main purpose of your group is so well established and accepted that to emphasize it is to restate the obvious is a dangerous moment indeed.

Your organization's mission must be reviewed frequently. People forget. Turf wars are easily justified. Details overwhelm the central reason for the organization's life. Individuals and teams wander from the main trail and into the jungle.

Read more of Michael Wade's post HERE.

The most important words of the leader

From Randy Elrod's blog Ethos:

• The six most important words of a leader: "I admit I made a mistake."
• The five most important words of a leader: "You did a good job."
• The four most important words of a leader: "What is your opinion?"
• The three most important words of a leader: "If you please."
• The two most important words of a leader: "Thank you."
• The one most important word of a leader: "We."
• The least important word of a leader: "I."

Winning vs. Surviving

Every first Wednesday our staff is privileged to have leadership lessons with some great minds coming and sharing. (Mike, thanks for that!) Last Wednesday, for the month of February, our special guest was Dr. Jack Llewellyn, a sports psychologist who is famous for helping take the Atlanta Braves "from worst to first" back in the 1990s. I guess John Smoltz may be his most famous client, but he has worked with many professional athletes, including many Braves and many NASCAR drivers.

Jack went through a Job-like time in his life when tragedy upon tragedy seemed to be heaped upon him (divorce, a debilitating automobile accident, losing his home, being diagnosed with MS [multiple sclerosis]) and he was forced to follow what he had been teaching his clients for many years.

Here are some bullets from the day:

• Where would we be today if Jesus had not played to win?
• Only 2 things you can control: your emotions and your mind.
• If you're in a negative environment, it's very difficult to win.
• What separates the winners from the survivors? The winners do more than what's required.
• Winners recover from adversity more quickly than other people.
• Understand your assets and liabilities.
  • Build your life around your assets.
  • The athletes Jack coaches put their assets on a business card to pull out and review to themselves.
• Know who's on your team.
  • You need someone on your team to be accountable to.
  • You need someone on your team who'll be compassionate to you.
  • As a church staff member, you need someone outside your church on your team.
• Understand that emotion doesn't replace talent.
  • You need to be realistic about what you can't do.
• Winners understand why they do what they do.
• Your attitude is either your best friend or your worst enemy for the rest of your life.
• For everything professionally that's significant in your life you need to have something personally that's significant.
• To be happy at what you do professionally, your personal life has to be in order.
• Expect something good to happen every day.
• Two things you've got to have:
  • Pride in what you bring to the table.
  • A burning desire to finish the race.
    • Reward yourself when you achieve things.

What LeBron teaches us about leadership

Check out this recent excellent FastCompany.com blog post from John Baldoni on what NBA star LaBron James can teach us as leaders. According to the author, James' work ethic can teach us at least three lessons:

1. Lead by example.
2. Do what it takes.
3. Live your values.

An excerpt:

LeBron plays basketball as a team game. He knows what must be done, but he is a playmaker. In high school, LeBron revealed something about his character that is not often seen at that level. He shared the ball. So often, it is said, that when a teammate came off the bench, LeBron would give him the ball. One, to get him into the flow of the game. Two, to let him score. The net result is that LeBron makes the players on his team better. That seems to be a lost art in today’s NBA celebrity-thon. LeBron is team. A manager’s real job is to enable people to succeed, that is, to give them the resources and authority they need to do the job. Supervise, yes, but not micromanage. Let them score themselves.

Read the full (short) post here.

WWAAD?

Another great post from Michael Wade and his excellent blog Execupundit.com:

You may have seen the WWJD? (What would Jesus do?) bracelets or bumper stickers.

I'm proposing another one: WWAAD? (What would an adult do?).

You can probably guess why if you've kicked around the workplace. Otherwise responsible people can slip into a variety of roles:

First Grader. If we do this, the Tooth Fairy will bring us a lot of new business.

Third Grader. He did it first. No, she did it first. No, he did it....

Teenager. I'm just here because I have to be here. Whatever you guys want is fine with me. When do I get promoted?

Maturity, like civilization, does not come automatically. Without careful tending, the workplace can easily revert to the playground. WWAAD?

Tony stops gunky build-up

Tony Morgan has a great post from April (yes, I know I'm behind) on stopping "gunky build-up." Some bullets:

• Sometimes I believe the lie that I can't afford to take a break and rest. The reality is that I'm far less effective in my family and leadership roles when I'm tired and grumpy.
• Sometimes I believe the lie that I'll spend quality time with my wife at the end of the day after everything else is done. The reality is that the last things on my priority list rarely get done.
• Sometimes I believe the lie that I'll get to the big projects after I knock out the more routine tasks. The reality is that there will always be other routine tasks to complete.
• Sometimes I believe the lie that the more I do the more valuable I am to the team. The reality is that I'm not being effective if I'm busy doing the wrong things.

For more bullets and the entire post, click HERE.