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…
Read More
Many leaders avoid conflict at any cost…
It seems this is true especially of pastors…
Yet conflict is often necessary for healthy relationships…
When needed conflict is avoided, people grow bitter, relationship development stalls, and teams suffer…
Here’s one thing I’ve learned about conflict…
Perhaps this well motivate you to confront what you need to confront…
There is one missing step that many teams forget…
You’ll find it in meetings…
In planning…
In goal-setting…
The missing step?
Asking “Who’s responsible?”
Who is the one person who will be help accountable for each task?
Many teams brainstorm wonderfully…
They come up with awesome plans…
But they never assign the person responsible…
For anything to be successful…
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…
Tweet People follow the leader… Because… One of the key aspects of being a leader is leading… Leaders have a vision that includes other people… Leaders are typically the ones…
A couple of young guys made an appointment and came to my office recently to pitch me an idea for a new ministry they hope to start. They had been told I have a passion to empower people to follow their dreams and callings. I instantly loved their heart and the new ministry, but what intrigued me was how nervous they were making the presentation. I understand, because any kind of presentation like can be nerve-racking, and we are a large church, but I’m also their pastor. It made me wonder if I had ever done anything to make them nervous about approaching me. I concluded that it was just the situation, and not our relationship, but it caused a healthy reflection for me for other areas of my leadership.
It forced me to ask how the people on our staff…the people I work with everyday…the ones I call a “team” feel about approaching me with an idea, an issue, or even a criticism or concern. That’s one reason I periodically ask our team this question as part of an annual evaluation process. (Read about that HERE.)
In my opinion, if you are a leader, the way the people you lead approach you says much about the quality of that leadership.
Here are 7 questions to consider about the way people approach you as a leader: