The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2014 Pt-1

Tag Archive - conflict

The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit 2014 Pt-1

Sunday, November 9, 2014

In the past I’ve regularly taken a large team to the annual Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, this year was a little different. Thankfully the Global Leadership Summit is available digitally even after the live event! We previewed the talks and selected the best two from this years event to share with our team.

The first talk was from Joseph Grenny, Co-Founder, Vital Smarts: Social Scientist for Business Performance and New York Times bestselling author.

Key Question: Are there some moments in our leadership that are disproportionate in influence, that matter more than any others?

Crucial Conversations: these 3 things cause these moments to become more crucial than others

High Stakes
Opposing Opinions
Strong Emotions

Principle #1 Any time you find yourself stuck in a relationship or team: There are always crucial conversations that we are not holding or not holding well

When it matters most you and I seem to do our worst

You have options when a crucial conversation comes

Talk it out
Act it out (if you don’t talk it out you will act it out…it will affect your behavior)

We buy into a lie early on and that is “We have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend.”
You can measure the health in a relationship or team by measuring how many undiscussables there are in the relationship or organization.
Progress in organizations begin when we as leaders discuss the undiscussables.
Our job as leaders is to model, teach, and measure these crucial conversations.
Crucial conversations are either a pit or a path – they can become an acceleration of intimacy – they become trust building accelerators
The Bible is a history of crucial conversations

“The vital behavior that enables most any positive organizational outcome is candor at moments of acute emotional and political risk”

7 Skills to Successfully Navigating Crucial Conversations:

Start with the Heart
Learn to Look
Make it Safe
Master my Stories
STATE MY Path
Explore Others’ Path
Move to Action

In the first 30 seconds of a crucial conversations there are 2 things that determine if you will be heard:

Mutual Purpose: Help them know that you care about their interest, concerns and interests
Mutual Respect: Help them know that you genuinely care about them.

Candor is never the problem: people never get defensive about what you’re saying. People become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it.

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing

Are You a “Big L” Leader?

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

People don’t just become “Big L Leaders” overnight. It’s not something that can be learned by reading books or by going to conferences. They learn to lead by leading. Want to know if you’re on your way to becoming a “Big L Leader”? The following six characteristics will help you in identifying “Big L Leaders.”

#1 They Have a Proven Track Record

They’re not a novice. They’ve built something and have demonstrated the ability to deliver.

#2 They are Driven

They have a forward lean and a bias towards action.

#3 They can Lead Through Conflict

They have the internal fortitude to endure the personal attacks and pain that comes with conflict. They lead through it by bringing clarity to the chaos.

#4 They don’t Delegate Tasks they Empower Leaders

Delegation is telling people what to do every step of the way and then having them report back after every step. Empowerment gives people both the position and authority to choose their course while remaining responsible for outcomes.

#5 They Lead through Vision

They can rally people around a vision and build a culture.

#6 They Embody Organizational Values

They lead with moral authority and make decisions through the filter of the values of the organization.

Posted in Leadership

Embracing Conflict in the Church

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

There’s an unhealthy presupposition in a large majority of churches in America that conflict is bad and should be avoided at all costs. After all if we’re all Christians shouldn’t we all just somehow magically get along? When conflict is avoided all kinds of negative things happen. But when it’s handled well, even properly encouraged it can be a team leaders greatest asset.

Healthy Conflict is a Pathway to Intimacy

When conflict is pressed into instead of shied away from, the team learns to address issues in an honest and straightforward manner. Attacking the problem, not the person. The best ideas are allowed to surface, unhealthy behavior is corrected, and the mission of the church takes ground. The best byproduct of healthy conflict is it provides the opportunity for greater depths of trust to be built on the team. By the way if you’re looking for a healthy model for Biblical conflict check out Matthew 18.

Unhealthy Conflict is a Pathway to Dysfunction

Unhealthy conflict leads to politics, posturing, and silos. Among other things a culture of enablement is built, problems get bigger, passive aggressive behavior is more common, and rumors abound. Ultimately the unity of the team is at stake and the advancement of the mission of the church slows to a crawl at best.

Posted in Leadership, Staffing

Why Nice People Kill Churches

Sunday, February 17, 2013

For the last 12 years I’ve had the incredible opportunity to serve on the Sr. Leadership Teams of some of the nations fastest growing and leading churches. Over that time I’ve observed time and time again one of the most destructive inclinations to church growth and the advancement of the Gospel is the simple fact that people on staff at most churches are simply too nice to each other.

5 Ways Nice People Hurt the Mission of the Church

1. Nice people have a tendency to hire people that they like rather than people who are going to advance the mission of the church. In other words it’s okay to lose as long as you’re losing with friends.

2. Nice people avoid conflict and by so doing don’t mine the best ideas out of their teams.

3. Nice people keep people on their teams well after the work has surpassed their capacity. This not only slows the mission but it exposes the weaknesses of and hurts the very person they’re trying to protect.

4. Nice people don’t confront the brutal facts and as a result “hallway conversations” take place and a lack of unity begins to undermine the mission.

5. Nice people sacrifice the flock for the sake of one sheep. This happens every time you let that one person sing who has no business singing (if you’ve been around church-world for any length of time you know exactly what I’m talking about).

Let me be clear, what I’m not saying is that the staff at your church shouldn’t be nice to each other. But when being nice begins to trump being honest because you don’t want to experience the discomfort of a difficult conversation, that’s not nice…that’s selfish. And when that begins to happen everybody loses.

In his new book “The Advantage” Patrick Lencioni says it this way, “Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice for a leader who doesn’t know how or isn’t willing to hold people accountable.”

There’s a strong principle and clear message in there that many church leaders need to take some time and wrestle to the ground.

Posted in Leadership

the 5 dysfunctions of a team

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Of all organizations on the planet why does it seem that Churches, more often than not, tend to get lumped in with the most dysfunctional? Could it be that it’s due to the fact that dysfunctional teams typically lead Churches? I’m not saying that Churches aren’t led by well-meaning, well-intentioned, high integrity, even godly people. But they just seem to be led by people who are trained to know more about the Scriptures than they are trained to lead people well. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not synonymous. The book, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, is a great resource that Church Leaders would do well to pick up and wrestle through. The author, Patrick Lencioni, tells a leadership fable that will surprise you with some incredibly transferable principles and tangible steps that will help bring alignment and an opportunity for legitimate forward progress. In it you’ll learn about the following dysfunctions and how to combat them: