Because Hiring Diverse Strengths Is Not Enough
Every leader knows that a well-rounded staff makes for a better organization. As a leader, you desire to have a diversity of skills, capabilities, and even personalities on the team. You want a leadership team to provide different perspectives. You want a leadership team to contain unique individual abilities. You want an overall staff built upon a healthy diversity of talent.
You want people with financial strengths, administrative strengths, people strengths, and creative strengths. You want leaders around you who are feelers, doers, thinkers, strategist, contemplative, and decisive. You need this as a leader. And your organization needs this to be successful.
That should be easy to accomplish, right? I mean, all you really need to do is hire for strength and personality diversity. Not diversity of chemistry — we all need to love the people we work along side — but diversity of talent. Diversity of abilities. Diversity of personality.
Do Labels Limit Potential?
Do you have a label maker in your workplace? Or maybe at home like I do? A small little printer with only one purpose in life: labels. My wife really loves label maker, which explains our pantry. She’s labeled every bin, which felt like overkill until I needed to distinguish between powdered sugar and all-purpose flour. A light dusting of flour on your pancakes isn’t a good as you probably imagine!
My wife isn’t alone in her love of labeling. People by nature love to label things. You have probably labeled something today — or many somethings. Not necessarily physically, but mentally. And that could be a good thing. Labels are helpful. And labels give context. A label describes what we know and what we can expect. Powdered sugar or flour. Black beans or green.
Here’s where labeling goes downhill. Unfortunately, as a leader, our propensity to label things often transfers to labeling people. We do it for the same reason as the bins in my pantry — labeling people gives us context. It helps us understand who people are and what we can expect. We label people through personality test, which is often helpful, as these types of tests give us context on how to best lead individuals individually. We label people’s roles though job descriptions and titles. Again, helpful for us and the person on the other end of the role. If we could stop the labeling there, maybe all would be fine. But we don’t. In fact, it’s as if we can’t. We love context too much to stop with personality characteristics and job descriptions.
Does Your Team Really Believe They Belong?
Have you ever felt you needed to prove yourself? Prove your worth? Prove you deserved to be at your company, church, or organization?
I guess that’s more of a rhetorical question, right?
We’ve all felt the sense of performance-based acceptance at play in our heart. It’s part of the human condition. We’ve all wondered if we really belong. If we are worthy of our role.
As leaders, we have to look outside of our own experience to see the bigger problem: The internal battle to belong isn’t isolated to us. If we have felt it, most likely everyone in our organization has felt it — or is currently feeling it. And it’s a problem on several fronts. I know, because like you, I’ve been there.
The Internal Battle to Belong Creates:
1. Sideways energy: When people are trying to prove their worth, their misapplied motivation moves their energy away from the good work and toward a good pat on the back. When people are focused on being noticed, their efforts cannot be fully dedicated to something bigger than themselves.
Filling Seats on Your Bus
If you lead any type of organization — company, church, or department — you probably have an organizational chart of some sort. It’s one of those necessary structures that help delineate chain of command and channels of communication, among others.
When I first began leading a church (a typical organization in many ways), I was encouraged to envision the org chart 5 – 10 years down the road. What departments would be necessary? What divisions? How many layers? How many staff? I even went as far as putting my name in most of the “open” positions in this hypothetical org chart. Visually, it looked impressive and strategic. Personally, it just looked like I had too much to do!
I think this is a valuable exercise for every leader. If you’ve never done it, you should. But a few years into leading at Woodstock City Church, this exercise created quite the conundrum.
Here’s the dilemma I began to ponder: Is it better to start with the org chart in place so you can then find the right people for each box, or is it better to find the right people and build the organization around them?
The Power of Proximity
Have you ever been passed over simply because you were not around when opportunity came?
Don’t feel bad—it’s the power of proximity, and it’s a normal function of organizational life. Those closest to the point leader often find themselves with the most opportunities. Not necessarily because they are the most talented, or the most capable, or even the best fit, but because they are there.
I’ll go ahead and say it for you: “That doesn’t seem fair.” It’s not, but neither is life, which doesn’t make anyone feel better, but nevertheless.
Obviously, there are some drawbacks to proximity, but for a driven, young leader, the advantages typically far outweigh the disadvantages. Young leaders want new challenges and opportunities. They want to learn through experienced and be coached on their performance. They want to better understand and contribute to the bigger picture, and there is no picture bigger than that carried by the point leader. Being near him or her matters.
Neutralizing Your Fear to Lead Change
What’s keeping you from making a change?
There are some things that are unchangeable—things outside of our control. But what about the stuff that we do control? What about the stuff that we can change. The places where we have autonomy or authority.
– You’re a business leader, and your primary product is slipping in market share. If something doesn’t change soon, you’ll be out of business. You know it. Your staff knows it. Your competition knows it.
– You’re a team leader, and your staff is growing complacent. Moral is low, people are beginning to leave, and you know something must change internally for the team to be a team once again. You’re the leader. You have the power to make a change.
– You’re a pastor or church leader. Things have grown stagnant in the congregation. People are still attending, but they aren’t engaging like before. They arrive late and leave early. New families are not showing up. You know something must change if you are going to reach the community again. You’re the leader. You know what’s wrong, and you believe you can fix it. You can make the shift. You can implement the change.
– You’re a parent, and you sense your influence is lessening because your relationship is slipping. Something needs to change. If it doesn’t transition soon, you fear the opportunity to change will be gone forever.
– In your personal life, some areas are a mess. That’s the best way to describe how you feel. Physically you are a mess. Emotionally a mess. Spiritually a mess. Maybe a habit needs to be put down, or a relationship needs to be ended. Change is necessary, and your know it.
What’s keeping you from making a change?
There are many reasons we resist changing what is actually under our control to change. In my life, there are three specific fears that have caused me to pause instead of pushing me to progress. If you’re a leader, you’ve probably experienced them, too.
1. Fear of failure.
We know the only failure is a failure to learn, but intellectually embracing a pithy statement is much easier than holding to it literally. Failure is such a strong deterrent for change that we often choose the status quo of apathy, mediocrity, and even small failure. That is nonsensical, but we do it every day, because even a huge possibility of success is no match for a slight possibility of failure.
Telling Yourself “No For Now”
When was the last time you listened to a leadership podcast, read a blog, or attended a conference and heard a great leader offer great advice, but walked away thinking it wasn’t for you?
Several years ago I listened as my boss, Andy Stanley, taught a leadership lesson on saying “No for now.” The basis of his teaching was saying “No for now” doesn’t mean “No forever.” According to Andy, as a leader, you should be willing to say “No for now.” He gave examples from his past.
– When he had young children and was asked to speak at other churches or conferences, he declined. “No for now.”
– When he was launching North Point Community Church, he didn’t accept any offers to travel. “No for now.”
– He decided that being home at 4:00pm was best for his wife and family, so for a season, he would not meet with anyone in the late afternoon or evening. “No for now.”
Andy then explained how he can say “yes” to the things today that he consistently declined a decade ago. His season of life has changed. His children are grown. His leadership at North Point requires a different commitment.
In Andy’s mind, saying “No for now” did not mean “No forever.”
There’s one fallacy in this principle: It only works when people are asking you to do things.
5 Ways You Can Better Question Leadership Decisions
Have you ever questioned a decision made by leadership? Maybe EVERY decision made by leadership?
My guess is everyone’s answer is “yes” to the first question! For those of you who answered “yes” to both, we’ll write another post for you soon!
Everybody at some point questions those in leadership. In some cases the questions are warranted. But in every case there is a danger in not knowing what we don’t know. Let me explain by pointing to a recent news article published in the NY Times, and then we will circle back and try to learn something together.
How To Ensure Feedback Is Helpful, Not Harmful
Have you ever given great feedback in the wrong way or to the wrong person, virtually negating the feedback in total?
I sure have – like it was my job!
Actually, evaluating and providing feedback IS a huge part of my job. It is an important part of any leader’s job. As a Lead Pastor in a campus location with North Point Ministries, I am constantly evaluating our services, events, and programs. One of our staff covenants is “Make it Better,” so it’s safe to say evaluation and feedback is in our organizational DNA.
While evaluation alone is relatively innocent, the feedback mechanisms that carry our evaluations are ripe for harm – especially if you are a senior leader.
I learned this lesson the hard way a few times (I’m a slow learner). I remember two specifically:
I Start Every Meeting With The Same Question
What happened recently that makes you feel you’re accomplishing your mission and vision?
I love that question. I love it so much I begin every single meeting, lunch, coffee, or gathering at Watermarke with this one question.
At our staff meeting today, I began (as usual) with this question. The answers brought both cheers and tears! Here is a sampling:
One answer involved a brand new unbeliever who had not been to any church in decades. A few weeks ago, she walked into Watermarke for the first time. It just so happened we were launching a new Starting Point group that week, and she decided to give it a shot (you can read more about Starting Point HERE). Her life is changing, and she has not missed a single week of the group! That’s worth celebrating.
Our high school (InsideOut) ministry is at their summer camp. We celebrated how many students and leaders attended this year and what we have already seen happen in some of their lives over the past five days. That’s mission success.
Our elementary team (UpStreet) created an amazing summer competition with our children based on inviting new friends to Watermarke. We shared several of their stories, including some who had invited literally dozens of friends throughout the month of June!
We even shared how a staff member from another campus location came to Watermarke on Sunday morning to help run sound when our sound engineer showed up with a 103 degree fever.
There were several more…
Sure, in every meeting, there are lots of things to cover. And this question can at times take half the meeting. But whether I’m meeting individually with a direct report, with our staff team, or with a volunteer team, I begin the meeting with this one question. Here’s why:
