Tweet Let me bring you in on a little secret. All those leadership posts I do – I don’t make them up. Most of them come from real life situations…
Read More
Tweet “This is probably none of my business, but…” Do you ever hear that as a leader? Recently one of our staff had a question for me. He had observed…
Tweet If someone is called “leader”, but… Always has to know everything. Always has to have the final word. Always has to be coddled by others. Never empowers others. Never…
Over the next few months, I’ll be interviewing some great business leaders. They may or may not be leading Christian companies, but they will be high-level leaders in successful organizations. I think there are helpful things to learn for us in the church world from those leading outside the church.
I begin with Mark Schoenwald, President and Chief Executive Officer at Thomas Nelson. I have met Mark on a couple of occasions and each time he left a great impression on me in a casual setting. I understand he is a runner, which makes me identify with him, but I also gather from our causal encounters that he is professional, methodical, kind, and wise. Mark recently replaced the well-known Michael Hyatt as CEO of Nelson. From the outside, it appears Mark will approach the position different from Michael. I was interested in learning from Mark’s leadership.
Here is an interview with Mark Schoenwald:
Recently I was reposted my parenting model I’ve called “Grace Parenting”. You can read the article HERE.
One of the principles in my model is to Major on the Majors, Not on the Minors and I stated that there are certain non-negotiables I think a parent should enforce in their parenting. A reader commented on the post, asking, “What are the non-negotiables?”
Great question! For my family, these were mostly Biblical characteristics I wanted my boys to possess as adults, things most people would agree are a part of having a good, moral character.
Things such as:
In an organizational setting, when little issues arise, I try to consider the bigger issue at stake. Not everything has a bigger context worth considering, but strategic leaders consistently consider if there is one.
For example, if a staff member makes an awkward, unusually negative comment during a meeting, I try to consider the bigger issue. Was he or she reflecting in the moment about something in their personal life, was the comment limited to the meeting, or is there something unspoken going on that could point to a bigger issue in the person’s life or the organization? I’ll most likely question this after the meeting.
If I receive criticism from someone I trust, is it limited to the matter being criticized, or is there a bigger, unspoken issue of concern? I’ll always try to discern what isn’t clear.
As a leader, I have learned that I don’t always get the full story. As much as I try to lead around that fact, some are afraid of hurting my feelings, are intimidated, or just fearful of speaking up with their true feelings.
I discipline myself to question or consider:
Tweet I read recently that the creators of Google weren’t looking to create Google when they discovered the complex way of indexing pages. They were working on a research project…
I have a basic policy…
I’ve held it almost as long as I’ve been in a management/leadership type of role…
If you come to me ready to resign…
Keep reading…
Recently I posted about the annual review process where our team evaluates the leader…me. (You can read more about that process in the initial post HERE.) I ask the staff to anonymously evaluate my performance as a leader. After a few weeks to answer, we met yesterday for lunch to go over the responses.
I was nervous about their responses this year, because our growth and the personal life changes have stretched me this past year. This year, unless they told me separately, I was not able to tell who said what in the evaluation, so it was good feedback without taking reading anything into the responses based on personalities.
Below are the questions and the most repeated answers.
Tweet I’m an idea guy. Ideas are plentiful, I know, but I tend to have more than average. As a leader in an organization, that means I throw out a…