Nov 23

Leadership & Bearing Pain

Leadership Development No Comments »

“You can exercise and sustain personal leadership only to the extent of your capacity to bear pain. If you can bear only your own pain, then you can’t really lead. If you can respond to and bear only the pain of your family, then your family represents the full scope of your leadership potential. If, however, by God’s grace you can recognize and bear the pain of those around you, the the breadth of your leadership potential is limited only by the scope of your burden and capacity. All this talk about bearing pain may seem off-putting to some. You may be thinking, ‘Isn’t leadership more about vision and the ability to inspire than about pain?’ Not really. To be sure, there is a kind of leadership that can rouse people to action for a short time, but enduring leadership invariably will be built upon a confidence that those who you call ‘leader’ would sacrifice themselves not only for the cause they share with you, but even for you yourself.”

~ A. Scott Moreau, Gary Corwin, & Gary B. McGee in Introducing World Missions: A Biblical, Historical, and Practical Survey

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Oct 19

Authenticity and Feedback

Leadership Development 2 Comments »

Developing a culture of authenticity and feedback is a core competency for leadership. The momentum and success of your team depends upon the health of your team. This is nothing new. Patrick Lencioni explores this in-depth in his Five Dysfunctions of a Team (dysfunction #1 being “the absence of trust”). But how do we develop trust on a team? I wholeheartedly believe that it starts with the leader’s authenticity, vulnerability, and ability to develop a culture of honest, helpful feedback. To develop this culture, there are some questions we must answer about ourselves:

  1. Am I an authentic person? Do I tend toward self-protection or self-disclosure? Why?
  2. What fears do I struggle with and how do they affect my authenticity and personal leadership?
  3. Do I invite honest feedback on my leadership style and performance?
  4. Do I get defensive when presented with solicited or unsolicited feedback? Why or why not? How does this defensiveness manifest itself?
  5. What can I specifically do to foster a culture of authenticity and feedback?

Personally process through these questions. Take some time to discuss them with a trusted friend or mentor. In your next leadership meeting, take some time to discuss them as a team. And as a result, develop an action plan for becoming more personally and organizationally authentic.

For more resources, I highly recommend some of the team exercises in Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions Field Guide (in this order):

  1. Personal History (p. 19) – have people share their story
  2. Behavior Profiling (p. 25) – a tool like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) will help the team understand and describe one another
  3. Team Effectiveness Exercise (p. 64) – have the team answer these two questions about each other: (1) What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that contributes to the strength of our team? (2) What is the single most important behavioral characteristic or quality demonstrated by this person that can sometimes derail our team? (WARNING: ensure that you have enough personal trust as a team to do this exercise and understand where and why the exercise can go “sideways” before you do it).

Question: What do you personally do to develop a culture of authenticity & feedback on your team?

 

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Sep 29

Notes From an Evening with Rick Warren

Leadership Development 1 Comment »

As part of Leadership Network’s Next Generation Learning Community, we had the opportunity to spend an evening with Rick Warren at Larry Osborne’s home. Here are my notes from the evening…  30+ years of his life and ministry wisdom condensed down to a blog post :)

rick warren (12 sep 11)

1. life is like twin rails… hills & valleys simultaneuosly… good & bad at the same time.
- don’t focus on trends… focus on what doesn’t change
- don’t focus on being cool

2. adding staff at 10 year increments to reach multiple generations
- farm league

3. what is my wife sensitive to… the voice of the Holy Spirit

4. plateaus… everything stops at some point. the average church grows 15 yrs. start a new bell curve by:
- physical: addition bases… church planting or campuses
- spiritual: the longer someone is a Christian, the less effective they are at evangelism (they are more & more involved in “church”)

5. build your church on a process
- bring them in
- connect them
- train them
- send them out

6. you will succeed at what you emphasize… you cannot emphasize everything
- signature issues: what we want to be known for

7. intentionally overemphasize evangelism… the larger a church gets, the more self-centered it gets.
- balance community & evangelism
- but the pastor MUST emphasize evangelism because entropy is towards internal/community
- “service” becomes “serve us”

8. mentoring – pick mentors to teach you a specific thing & different things

9. Jesus’ ministry – a look, a word, a touch

10. if you want to be effective for God, you must get control of your time.

11. the difference between ministry & leadership
- ministry: responding to someone’s need
- leadership: you take the initiative to meet with/disciple someone

12. be strategic in choosing your friends
- choose friends in different tribes

13. humility is not denying your strengths but being honest about your own weaknesses

14. integrity, humility, generosity – the only antidotes to Satan’s greatest temptations to leaders
- lust of the flesh (hedonism)… the temptation to feel good… you deserve to feel good… temptation to serve self (antidote: integrity)
- pride of life (secularism)… position… the temptation to show off & live for the applause of people (antidote: humility)
- pride of the eyes (materialism)… possession… the temptation to have (antidote: generosity)

generosity – the only antedote to getting is giving

rick’s personal generosity: raising % of giving… breaks the grip of materialism… & I become more like Jesus

Rick, thanks for modeling generosity with your time!

 

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Sep 19

3 Reasons Why I Love Leadership Network

Leadership Development No Comments »


For the past 2 years, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of Leadership Network’s Next Generations Pastors Learning Community. It was a life-transforming, ministry-expanding experience. Here are three reasons why the experience was so personally impacting and why I appreciate Leadership Network:

1) Leadership Network helps me grow beyond my own experience. Through a combination of mentor pastors and peers that lead larger churches, the collective wisdom and experience in the learning community format has been catalytic for my own thinking and development. If you go to a conference, you rarely have extended time with the plenary speakers. But in a learning community, the whole experience is conversational. With mentor pastors like Larry Osborne, Toby Slough, Steve Stroope and others (including Rick Warren for an evening), I had the opportunity to mine some of the best large church leaders around.

2) Leadership Network helps me expand beyond my own tribe. Larry Osborne repeatedly drilled the reality that exceptional leaders go beyond their tribe. The mentor pastors and peers were all from different tribes… from A29, Converge Worldwide, Southern Baptists, Non-denominational, etc. And we all know that tribes have certain cultures, certain ways of thinking, and certain ways of doing ministry and mission. The learning community helped broaden my experience and not only build relationships with pastors from other tribes but learn from them as well (which always challenges my thinking and practice).

3) Leadership Network helps me see beyond my own region. Much like the “tribe,” we get regionally conditioned. While it’s true that each region in the U.S. has its unique culture and challenges (I live in the Pacific Northwest), it’s refreshing and invigorating to see what Jesus is doing in and through His Church around the country. And ultimately we realize that what church leaders face locally, regionally, nationally, and even internationally is similar: How do we preach the gospel with clarity, conviction, and cultural relevance? How do we develop disciples in our context? How do we multiply followers, leaders, churches, and church planting movements?

Leadership Network, thanks for investing in me!

Here’s more information on Leadership Network’s Learning Communities.

(And just so you know, I’m not an employee of Leadership Network… just a grateful fan!)

 

 

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Jun 08

Top 10 Books on Leadership

Book Reviews, Leadership, Leadership Development 4 Comments »

Here are the top 10 books I’ve read on organizational leadership. These are the books that I seem to go back to time and time again for leadership advice. They are books with themes, phrases, and sayings that have consistently made their way into my leadership philosophy and vocabulary.

1. Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. In my humble opinion, this is the best book for building a strong team that achieves great results. As you can see, my top 3 books are by Lencioni. And I probably could have included all of his other books as well, but then it would have been “Top 7 Lencioni Books.” This book continually goes back to the element of trust. It’s the thing that leaders must develop and foster in their teams. And to develop trust, we must constantly model and lead through vulnerability. I highly recommend the Field Guide as well. It has great practical exercises to break the cycle of dysfunction in teams.

2. Four Obsessions of an Extrordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni. A great follow up book to Five Dysfunctions, this book reminds me that building and maintaining a cohesive leadership team is critical. And then I must create organizational clarity and communicate it over and over. And finally, the last “obsession” is creating the human and operational systems necessary to lead and manage well.

3. Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni. All leaders lead meetings. But not all leaders lead good, effective, compelling meetings. Death by Meeting identifies the problems of bad meetings: lack of drama (good meetings need good conflict) and lack of context and structure (what’s the purpose of this meeting?). Why will we sit in a two-hour movie, completely engaged but in a two-hour meeting, we’re praying for the rapture? Death by Meeting will help you lead great meetings.

4. Good to Great by Jim Collins. This is one of the seminal works on what makes organizations great. Collin’s work reminds me that it’s always “first who, then what.” Get the right people on the bus, and correspondingly, the wrong people off. Another “good to great idea” that’s influenced me was his hedgehog concept: doing one thing and doing it well. His companion Good to Great and the Social Sectors is helpful for non-profit leadership.

5. The Heart of Change by John Kotter & Dan Cohen. Change is a constant. And leaders must learn how to identify what needs to change and then how to lead change. Kotter and Cohen’s 8-step method is a great model for bringing and managing change in an organization. The Heart of Change Field Guide is helpful as well. In addition, a more light-hearted, story approach to the model can be found in Kotter’s Our Iceberg is Melting.

6. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath & Barry Conchie. Leaders play to their strengths, help others discover and play to their strengths, and build teams around strengths. The leadership edition helps leaders understand how to better engage leaders around their strengths. StrengthsFinder also gives you a language to use with your team.

7. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. This is another great book on change and change management in organizations and in life. The Heath brothers provide helpful insights with great illustrations about addressing both the mind and the heart in change.

8. Socialnomics by Erik Qualman. We live in an ever-increasing, technologically-driven culture. The social media revolution is underway. Qualman’s book on the reality (the upsides and downsides) of social media is fascinating. Leaders and the organizations they lead must learn to engage in and through social media. Socialnomics will help you learn why and how.

9. Sticky Teams by Larry Osborne. Osborne has become a personal mentor and has been affectionately nicknamed “Yoda.” Here’s a more in-depth review of Sticky Teams. It truly is a “one-stop” leadership book, especially for the church world.

10. Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malphurs. Leaders must collaboratively shape vision, values, and mission. Malphur’s book has influenced my strategic thinking and process for over a decade. It’s one of the best “step-by-step” methods for vision, mission, and strategy development.

11. Honorable Mention: Relational Intelligence by Steve Saccone. Steve’s book has become a staple of my personal and organization leadership development process. Leaders are all about influence. But often we don’t think about how relational intelligence shapes our ability to influence. Steve identifies 6 areas of relational intelligence and how to grow in each one. He also has a great study guide for the book to go through personally or as a group.

So these are some of the most influential books on leadership in my life. What are some of yours and why?

 

May 31

Ministry Action Planning, Part 3

Leadership Development, Northshore Baptist Church No Comments »

This is the 3rd and final part of the “Ministry Action Planning” (MAP) series.

Part 1 focused on our “macro” process from vision to strategy to execution with our planning flow throughout the year

Part 2 presented the actual Ministry Action Plan template we use

This final installment will focus on the process of how each team member presents their MAP and the year long follow up process and evaluation.

MAP Presentations. Each member of our Pastor/Director team presents their Ministry Action Plan to the Ministry Management Team (MMT), our senior staff team. They use the Ministry Action Plan Template, having built their plan with input from their leadership teams. We talk through the plan and each member of the MMT, regardless of what team they lead, has opportunity for input. As a team, it gives us the big picture as well as a detailed look at what the upcoming ministry year holds. At the end of the 45-50 minute presentation, we pray for the pastor/director. We pray for Jesus to use them and their ministry powerfully in the coming year.

Follow-up. After the individual presentations, the pastor/director and their MMT lead go through the MAP and make any changes and updates. Once the MAP is finalized, it becomes a working contract for the year. It’s a dynamic document with agreed upon changes made throughout the year. The MAP is reviewed by the MMT lead and pastor/director every 4-8 weeks. In January, we have a mid-year status update. Sometimes it’s done with the entire MMT, and sometimes it’s decentralized with the MMT lead and each individual pastor/director.

Yearly Evaluation. At the end of the ministry year, the MAP becomes part of the Yearly Evaluation. Were the outcomes and goals achieved? Why or why not? Are there things that should be changed or adjusted for the next ministry year? A key personal philosophy during yearly evaluations is “no surprises.” If there is anything that is said during the yearly evaluation that hasn’t been discussed previously in a regular one-on-one meeting, there has been some communication failure along the way.

What does your process of planning look like? Is there anything you’d add to this process?

 

 

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May 26

Ministy Action Planning, Part 2

Leadership Development, Northshore Baptist Church 5 Comments »

Yesterday I posted Ministry Action Planning, Part 1. I focused on our process from vision to strategy to execution, paying specific attention to the cycle of our year and how different teams collaborate to execute vision and strategy.

This post will focus on the actual Ministry Action Plan template that each of our pastors and directors use with their teams to develop their specific ministry plan for the year.

Part 3 will focus on the actual process of presenting, regular follow-up, and yearly evaluation.

Here’s a snapshot of the Ministry Action Plan (you can download a PDF copy HERE):

Here are some of the key components of our Ministry Action Plan template:

1) Ministry Objectives. These are 5-8 things we’re going to focus on as a church and therefore in each of our ministries. Each ministry leader develops their plans and share how their ministry will accomplish these objectives and goals. And notice that some of them are focused “internally” for the staff (personal spiritual development, communication/social media development).

2) Desired Outcome & Metrics. What do you want to see happen as you accomplish this objective? How will you measure it? How will you know that you’ve succeeded?

3) Action Steps. What’s the game plan to accomplish this objective? What are the key steps you need to develop?

4) Point Person. Who’s in charge of getting this done. If the ministry leader’s name is on too many of these, it’s an potential indicator that they’re not developing and equipping leaders.

5) Completed By. This should have two sets of dates. Dates for each action step and the date for the objective to be completed. And then the supervisor should help the ministry leader do the necessary “backwards planning” to accomplish the objective.

6) Budget. What financial resources will this require, and is it allocated in your annual budget? This is always a good check to make sure we’re being the best stewards possible with the resources God has entrusted to us.

7) Notes. Important notes and additional thoughts/comments/reminders.

This template and format is working for us right now. But everything has a shelf-life. We continue to make necessary changes and tweaks along the way.

What changes, tweaks, additions or subtractions would you add? Do you have a Ministry Planning template you use?

 

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May 25

Ministry Action Planning, Part 1

Leadership Development, Northshore Baptist Church 2 Comments »

Strategic planning and leading all of our people and teams in the right and same direction is critical for momentum and success. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been using a process we call “Ministry Action Planning” to hone and clarify what God is calling us to do over the next 12-18 months and how we’re going to do it. This is the 1st of a 3-part series on our ministry action planning model. Here’s what I’ll address in this 3-part series:

Part 1 – Our “macro” process from vision to strategy to execution

Part 2 – The actual Ministry Action Plan template

Part 3 – The process of how each team member presents their Ministry Action Plan and the year long follow up process

Our Process from Vision to Strategy to Execution

Here’s a snapshot and timeline of how we do team and vision/strategy planning with a calendar of our planning cycle during the year (our ministry year runs September to August):

  • November – Elder retreat to determine vision points for the following ministry year. For example, in November 2011, we’re thinking at the 30,000 ft. for 2012-13 ministry year and beyond).  We’re continually re-evaluating and re-calibrating our vision. We’re determining the big things that we see, hear, and discern God calling us to do. Before this retreat, we’re hearing from Jesus, from our leaders, from our people, and from our community on where Jesus is calling us to go, truly for His glory, for our good, and for the good of our world.
  • January – The Ministry Management Team (our senior staff team) goes on a retreat and takes the elder team’s vision points and begins to put some flesh on the bones. The team begins to hone in what this looks like in terms of strategy and goals for the following year’s ministry action planning process. The goal is to take the 30,000 ft. vision and descend to 20,000 ft. We typically come out of this retreat with 5-8 major “headline/thematic” goals for the year that we’ll take to our staff team.
  • March – The Pastor/Director team goes on a retreat, taking the 30,000 ft. vision points for the following year and the 20,000 ft. strategy and begins to talk about how it specifically impacts their ministry areas and how we’ll all share in the big goals together. We call it the 10,000 ft. level. Each ministry leader begins to see how their ministry can and will execute on the big 5-8 goals. Necessary adjustments and tweaks to the strategy are happening here. And feedback is going “up and down” the leadership channels.
  • May – After the Pastor/Director team retreat, the pastors and directors take everything that we’ve collaboratively done together to their ministry teams (which includes their lay leaders) and begin to develop specific, concrete ministry plans (with metrics, timelines, teams, people, budget, etc) for the next ministry year. In Part 2, I’ll show you our Ministry Action Plan Template. In the middle of May, each pastor and director on our staff brings that “collaborative” ministry action plan and presents it to the Ministry Management Team for the final “thumbs up.” More on this in Part 3.  It’s a collaborative process where we speak into each others plans, making sure that we’re all moving in the right direction together.

We’ve discovered that this process helps all of our teams and plans point in the same direction. Instead of building silos and fiefdoms, we’re concentrating on moving towards the same goals. It also helps us defeat a “silo” mentality. These goals become our “thematic goals” for the year (to use Patrick Lencioni’s term in Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars).

How does your team do “master, strategic” planning? What would you add to improve this model?


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May 12

The Extroverted Leader

Leadership Development 8 Comments »

A group of extroverts all talking at the same time… with the lone introvert in the corner, completely overwhelmed

Today I read (and forwarded, tweeted, and posted to facebook) a great article by Thom Rainer called “The Introverted Leader.” He explains what it’s like to lead as an introvert. An added value of the article is learning to be more sensitive to introverted leaders on our team (especially as an extroverted leader). So Thom Rainer, here’s my companion piece – “The Extroverted Leader”

I am an extrovert. I speak in public and group settings over 100 times a year. I am the senior pastor of a church of 2400 with over 50 employees.

It seems like a winning combination. I love being out front leading and preaching week in and week out. I am happiest when I’m with other people, verbally processing all the myriad thoughts and feelings that pop into my head.

What Drains Extroverts

Being alone drains extroverts. Also, agonizing gaps of silence in a conversation drive us crazy. We get frustrated when a conversation isn’t reciprocal. We dread the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude. We love being the center of attention, so when we can’t process externally, we become emotionally “constipated” (okay… I know that’s over-the-top… but true nonetheless)

We’re often perceived as friendly because we enjoy engaging people, but far too often, because we tend to be processing what we’re going to say next, we don’t listen. So we need to actually be fully present in the moment, especially in meaningful conversations.

Compensating for Extroversion

Leaders must compensate to lead effectively. Here are my own seven principles for leading as an extroverted leader.

1. Compensating for extroversion is not an option. Leaders can’t lead without dealing with people in a multitude of settings. If I am not willing to compensate and learn how other people process, I will not be an effective leader.

2. I must practice LBLTO, leadership by listening to others. I love walking around the office, engaging people, but far too often, I’m not really listening to what other people are saying. I must be willing to sit down and slow down, being present and in the moment. If not, people really can sense when you’re there physically but not emotionally.

3. It often behooves me to explain to others that I am extroverted and will need to process things externally. Often in meetings I will communicate to my team, “I’m processing externally right now, so don’t hold me to everything I’m going to say. You’ll know, and I’m sure I’ll verbally let you know when I’m really serious about something.” My wife has a “Jonathan needs to talk about it 3 times for me to take him seriously” rule. I also tell people to beware of my personal space because as an extrovert, my arms and hands will gesticulate wildly, especially as I get more passionate about an idea.

4. When possible, I need to be more efficient in meetings. Since I love the dialogue and engagement, meetings can go longer than needed. Dr. Rainer says in his article, “I also notice that extroverts tend to organize long and tedious meetings. They enjoy them. I don’t. I really don’t.” Also, I need to draw introverts out in meetings. The extroverts hog the airspace, and as the leader and facilitator of a meeting, I need to be more aware of inviting introverts into the conversation.

5. As much as possible, I need to have introverts on my team to remind me to not talk so much. They also model a quiet interior life that I need so desperately to be better at.

6. I need to practice self-awareness constantly. In that regard, I need and have people I trust to speak to me truthfully. If I appear to be overtaking any and every social moment, I need a friend to tell me to be quiet and create some space for others to engage.

7. I must schedule interaction time. If I stay sequestered in my office too long working on a sermon or a project, I become unfocused and unproductive. But I can’t succumb to the temptation to not head back into my office (where it’s quiet… ughhh…) to get the work done that I need to get done.

The Extroverted Leader Can Lead

It is possible for us extroverts to lead. But it takes effort. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort, especially to be quiet and learn the discipline of not having to externally process all of the time.

Feel free to give me your take on this matter. I would love to hear from all of you, especially fellow extroverts.

But then again, most of you extroverts may talk (or type) so much that I won’t have a clue of what you’re really saying.

I understand completely.

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Dec 28

iPad Productivity

Leadership Development, Technology 6 Comments »

A year ago, I started using the iPad for productivity. I’m already an avid Apple fan (iPhone, iMac at home, MacBook Pro at work). I like being paperless, but I don’t like going to meetings and typing with a laptop. It’s loud, and I personally think people are checking their email as they hide behind the screen. I like handwriting. And I don’t really care to convert to text (although it’s a nice option when needed). For a couple of years, I used an Axiotron Modbook (a modded out Apple Macbook White), coupled with Circus Ponies Notebook. But with some of the apps listed below, the iPad has become my primary productivity device for meetings.

Here are some of the apps and accessories I’m using with the iPad:

1. Bamboo Styles by Wacom. Since I like taking handwritten notes, a stylus is a must. Writing with your finger is awkward. I’ve tried three different iPad styli (is that the plural of stylus?) before landing on the Bamboo stylus. I tried the Pogo Sketch, and the tip seemed too spongy and was hard for accurate writing. I also tried the iFaraday, and it was better than the Pogo but had a tip that was still too soft. For over a year, I used the the Acase stylus. It was my stylus of choice until I found the Bamboo. The Bamboo has far better accuracy and responsiveness. It has a substantial feel as well as a firm tip. It is by far the best stylus on the market (a bit pricier as well at $30).

2. Noteshelf. This is a great app for creating notebooks and taking handwritten notes. You can create a notebook for each team you’re a part of. It’s like having multiple journals and notebooks. There are multiple different formats and layouts for the notebooks (lined, graph, plain, meetings, journal, travelogue, etc.) You can also export notes to Evernote (see below) and Dropbox (see below) as PDF or image.

3. Wunderlist. Wunderlist is a simple, elegant, and FREE task list app that syncs with your iPhone (or Android) and your desktop (Mac & PC). You can create different categories and even share lists with other Wunderlist users. I typically take notes in a meeting and update tasks either real-time or after the meeting. I’ve downloaded the app for my Mac as well as iPhone. It’s great to have multiple places to interface with the app. Did I mention the completely FREE?

4. Evernote. Evernote is a dowloadable program (Mac & PC) that allows you to create and store notebooks and notes. You can access your notes and notebooks from your desktop, mobile device, and iPad. As I create notebooks and notes on the iPad via Noteshelf, I can export those notebooks to the free Evernote iPad App and sync it and access the notebooks and notes with my laptop and iPhone.

5. Doc2 HD. This is a word processing iPad app. You can create, edit, import and export Microsoft Word docs (.doc & .docx) via email, Dropbox, Google docs, or multiple other ways. If you’re public speaking, it has a large enough font for you to be able to read. I’ve even used Doc2HD while officiating a couple of weddings.

6. Dropbox. Regardless of whether you own an iPad or not, you should take advantage of Dropbox. It’s a cloud-based file sharing and backup program that you can store and access files from multiple sources (desktop, mobile device, iPad, etc.).

7. Accessories. The market for iPad accessories is endless. Here are some of my personal favorites (among many).

  • iPad Pulpit (Little Mountain Productions). Don’t worry, I won’t be getting one anytime soon because I preach without notes… but you’ve got to admit it, it’s pretty cool.

What apps, programs, and accessories are you using with your iPad to maximize productivity and connectivity?

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