Leaders and Followers

Larry Bossidy, CEO of AlliedSignal author of Execution, once wrote,

“The development of new leaders is not only the key to profitability, it is also very satisfying in terms of feeling like you’ve left a legacy, not just an income statement.  The question is often asked, “How am I doing as a leader?”  The answer is how the people you lead are doing.  Do they learn?  Do they manage conflict?  Do they initiate changes?  You won’t remember when you retire what you did in the first quarter of 1994.  What you will remember, is how many people you developed.”

Our leadership will reflect in the vitality of our followers. So what do ya say, how long has it been since you or someone asked YOUR followers about how they are doing?  Are they growing?  Are they managing conflict? Are they initiating change?  If the answer is an emphatic YES to all of those you get an A.  If not, it’s time to realign.

Simplify Your Message

As life gets visually noisier, brands that dial back to their core essence stand out by contrast.  –Pio Schunker

I love kick off meetings.  I love them because usually it’s when organizations are most focused on their core business.  There are rally cries for company wide focus on things like “service,” “excellence,” and such and such.  Over the course of the year it’s easy to drift away from the essence of what makes that organization unique and get caught up in non sense.

I’m reminded that if our brand is getting noisy it’s time to cut back to essence of who we are.

OPEN Source Leadership

What happens when you stop telling people what the vision is and allow them the opportunity to help create it?  What happens when leaders stop doing and start listening, observing and empower the masses to make a positive impact?  Results!  That’s what happens.  Look at some of the most influential innovations of the last 5 years:

The iPhone-A small device combining a phone, web browser and mp3 player.  Platform: OPEN allowing 3rd party developers to create apps for the platform.  The iPhone has revolutionized the phone and has forced cell phone manufactures to follow suit just to try and compete.

Wikipedia- An OPEN source web encyclopedia that just doesn’t provide answers but allows users to contribute understanding of topics as well.

WordPress-  An OPEN source web publishing platform that serves 10 million users to date.  The platform is open allowing developers to create widgets, modules, plugins and more to help shape the platform.

Facebook-If Facebook was a country it would be the 7th largest country in the world.  It has an OPEN API allowing developers and users to create applications to the social networking site making the site an extension of their communication.

The Church- Mostly a CLOSED platform (that is changing).  While the church differs in form, it’s function is very similar to the innovations mentioned above in that it exists to serve a community.  Yet by in large it has not figured out, actually, I take that back I don’t think it really has valued the idea of an open model or platform yet but when it does the impact will be amazing.  An OPEN source model will allow it to focus on empowering their community to contribute and reshape their faith.  This means relinquishing the style of leadership that assumes one should have some degree of control over every part of the church.  This kind of leadership is exhausting and ultimately does not nurture a climate of momentum, empowerment, innovation and ownership.

I’m seeing a generation that has realized that they do not need titles and positions to influence culture.  They are hungry to see lives change and the message of God’s grace told.  They are self organizing and the momentum being built is astonishing.  A large part of this is being developed outside of traditional church models.  Our responsibility is to make room for them and that may mean a different approach to church leadership.

Just sayin…

The Last 10%

As mentioned below, I have been leading our team at Bayside through the 5 Dysfunctions of a team and have been very happy with the response of our team. You can read some personal stories here on Danny Macphail’s blog. He’s one of our worship pastors who wrote a great post about 5 Tips to Engaging in Healthy Conflict.

This week I was reminded of a very key phrase that helps us get to the heart of an issue. For example, I had a meeting with a co worker one day and had much to cover. There were schedules to look at, things to get approval on, budgets to look over and most of all a conflict I needed to resolve. The conflict was about something he said in a meeting that derailed the momentum we had going and I needed some clarity on the whole incident.  In the grand scheme of things, the conflict was only 10% of all we needed to cover but as busy as we both were that day we talked about everything except the conflict.  It felt next to impossible to find the right way to segway into it at that moment so I didn’t address it.  It festered for a week or so before we finally resolved it.

So how do you get to the last 10%?

The last 10% is that talk you need to have about something that has been weighing on your mind.  The common language helps a team or organization makes the talks smoother to get into.  To say “hey, I got to talk to you about the last 10%” or “here’s one of those last 10% things” or whatever is whole lot faster than, well, the alternative.  Being able to use that phrase also gives the person you’re talking to a little heads up too.  If I know someone wants to talk to me about the last 10% and I am expected to walk into a meeting, I will defer that conversation to a later time when I can devote my full attention to it.

Is there a conversation you need to have with someone that deals with the last 10%?