Tag Archive - leader

0

How to Lead and Keep “Big L” Leaders on your Team

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Great parents know that you don’t parent every kid the same way. Great leaders understand this principle, and because of it they don’t treat everyone on their team the same way. “Big L” leaders are a different breed. Not only have they been gifted with a greater leadership capacity, but they’ve worked at perfecting their craft. You can’t lead these kinds of leaders the way you lead everyone else on your team. If you do, you won’t keep them on your team. They need something different.

Leadership

This may sound obvious, but you can’t keep these kinds of leaders on your team without offering them serious leadership. They will challenge your personal leadership capacity more than any other person on your team. These kinds of team members crave a compelling and clear direction. They respond to strong leadership because they’re strong leaders. You can shoot straight with them because they’re mission focused just like you.

Empowerment

Don’t try delegating tasks to these leaders. If you do they’ll feel micromanaged and leave you. They need the position and authority to go and make real decisions and execute to objectives. Don’t tell them what to do, tell them where you’re going, and then let them lead there.

Coaching

“Big L” leaders are personally secure, and they can accept coaching. In fact, reviewing the game tape and looking for opportunities to improve the next play doesn’t bother them at all. They want to get better.

Resource

These kinds of team members need to have the resources to do their job. Don’t give them a big challenge, point them in a clear direction and give them the authority to execute without resourcing them to accomplish the vision. If you don’t resource them they won’t take you seriously.

Challenge

These kinds of leaders aren’t afraid of being challenged. They’re need something big to chase. In fact if you don’t give “Big L” leaders a steady diet of fresh meat they’ll go hunting somewhere else.

Posted in Staffing

0

Why the Sky is NOT the Limit for Young Church Leaders

Sunday, April 15, 2018

The sky is not the limit for your church leaders, it’s just not. And we do them a disservice to feed them lines and fill their heads with ideas that just aren’t true. It’s one thing to tell a young leader that you believe in them and encourage them, it’s another to just lie to them. Sometimes in our attempts to encourage young leaders we move past encouragement into falsehood. In doing so we set them up for disappointment and sometimes failure.

In Proverbs 13:12 the Bible teaches us that, “Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick.” In other words, hope that doesn’t end in real results can destroy someone. So we need be careful what direction and expectations we set on young leaders, because if it doesn’t come to fruition we can ruin them.

We’d be better off to encourage them to understand that their limit is their limit and go have fun testing their limits. When young leaders find their limits and live within what Jesus has wired them up to do they’ll experience more peace and produce more fruit!

Truth is, the sky is not the limit for young leaders, there are real limiting factors that they are or will experience, here are just a few.

1. Gifting

The Scriptures are clear that not everyone gets the same gift (and leadership is clearly defined as a spiritual gift in the Bible that not everyone gets). There are different gifts, God seemingly loves diversity and has created a system that pushes us towards one another instead of away. For the Church to be its best we need to bring our best together and lean into each other’s areas of gifting and brilliance!

2. Capacity

The Scriptures are also clear that not everyone gets the same measure of gifts. Some have a greater capacity than others. It’s possible that two people may have a teaching gift, but one may have a great measure of that gift. You get how this works.

3. Approach

Now this is something that young leaders can actually control. They can control the approach they take. They can decide if they are going to have a great attitude or not, they can choose how much effort they are going to put forth, they can choose to submit to those in authority over them or not, and they can choose be teachable or not. They can choose their approach.

4. Opportunity

I’ve heard it said that luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. You can call it providence and blame all of your opportunities or lack of opportunities on God or you can take personal ownership of your life and go make your own opportunities. Now I’m not a “demon behind every bush” kind of guy, but I don’t want to not give credit to God when it’s due either. Some opportunities are self-made while others are God given. Whichever come your way take advantage of them because not everyone gets the same opportunities.

5. Resources

Some young leaders simply have greater resources at their disposal. These resources give them a disproportional leg up over their peers. Some have access to greater preparation, development and coaching. Some have access to more finances which allow them greater margin. Still others have access to deeper personnel bench to deploy. Recourses are a limiting factor for growing leaders.

Posted in Spiritual Formation, Staffing

0

How Your Church’s Growth Can Out Pace Your Team

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Most church leaders I talk with want their church to grow. But few of those same leaders are willing to change and do things differently in order to grow. Unfortunately, it’s impossible for your church to grow and everything stay the same. I know, it would be nice if everything could stay the same as the church grows, but it can’t.

There are a lot of things that a church out grows as it grows. One of those things is often the church staff team.

Pace

The growth of your church has the potential to outpace the growth of your team. Beginning a new ministry, adding a new service time, building a new building, or starting a new campus all have the potential to be catalytic to growth at your church. The problem is that people don’t grow as fast as churches have the potential to. I’ve heard all kinds of stories of churches doubling over night, but when is the last time you doubled your personal leadership capacity over night?

Development Culture

Building a development culture will help you keep pace with growth for a while and will provide opportunity for your greatest capacity and highest potential leaders to rise to the surface. Development doesn’t happen in a classroom but in the “heat of battle.” Giving a young leader a big opportunity by throwing them in the deep end of the pool is a great opportunity to teach them how to swim. Preparation, opportunity and coaching are the greatest tools in the arsenal of development.

Outside Acquisitions

If you’re leading in a growing church eventually the pace of growth at your church will force you to recruit talent from the outside to add to your team. Don’t be afraid of hiring people who have more experience, more expertise, more exposure, and a greater capacity than your current team. Great hires should intimidate you a bit and push you to grow. To keep pace with growth you’ll need to bring in outside talent or you’ll allow your team to be the lid to growth.

Posted in Leadership

1

How Crucible Moments Accelerate your Leadership

Saturday, February 3, 2018

The growth of your church has the potential to outpace the growth of your personal leadership. It has the potential to outpace your ability to develop leaders to keep pace with growth.

There are moments where growing churches take huge leaps forward. Another service option is added and the church grows. A new building is opened and the church grows. A new campus is launched and the church grows. New options are created for new people to engage with the Gospel and the church grows. Unfortunately most church leaders don’t grow at the same rate.

The good news is that there is something you can do to accelerate your leadership. Moments where your leadership can equally take huge leaps forward. It’s called a crucible moment. A crucible moment is a moment of severe trial that leads to the creation of something new.

It’s Good to be in Over your Head

Growth doesn’t happen when things are smooth and comfortable. Conflict, stress, and being in over your head forces you to figure new things out, learn new skills, and build new muscles. Instead of complaining about how difficult things are, rise to the occasion, learn from it, and grow.

Jump in with both Feet

If you really want to grow then stop allowing life to just happen to you and put yourself in a situation where you’re in over your head. Do it on purpose. Take a job that scares you. Accept a new project at work that will push you to figure new things out. Choose the crucible and it will remake you.

Learn the Truth about Yourself

Crucible moments not only create opportunities for growth but they reveal the truth about who you really are. Pressure has a way of holding up a mirror to us and showing us who we are. That definition of reality provides the opportunity for us to pivot to a new future. Growth.

Posted in Leadership

1

Take Someone With You

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Take someone with you. It’s the most overlooked and easiest way to develop people.

I’ve never worked with or consulted with a church that believed they had enough leaders. In fact, most churches are looking for some off the shelf content or course they can take people through and then call them leaders. Content and concepts can be helpful to understanding leadership practices. But understanding leadership doesn’t make someone a leader. Leadership is best learned by leading and being around other good leaders.

It takes time to develop people. Great leaders are gifted to be great leaders, but they also develop that gift over time. One simple way that you can help young leaders develop their leadership gift is to give them access to you and to allow them to watch you lead up close and personal.

Take them with you.

Invite them into you Schedule

It doesn’t necessarily require a lot of extra time for you to invest in others if you invite them into your schedule. Seriously, just have them come with you wherever you go. It gives them access to meetings, conversations and decision making that they normally wouldn’t get the opportunity to see first-hand. Yes, even allow them to observe Sr. Leadership Team meetings, Board meetings, and coaching meetings you have with other team members. In those meetings just have them observe, literally don’t let them say a word. Just observe. Over time you can invite their input when it would be helpful to the conversation or helpful to them.

Debrief later

With all of that shadowing they’re doing, there’s going to be natural moments walking or driving from one thing to the next for you to debrief them. Simply ask them what they observed and coach them to observe and understand the right things. Take a moment to answer any questions that they have about what they observed.

I know this post may seem over simplified…you may be reading and thinking, “That’s it?” Well…yea…that’s it. You don’t have to over complicate what it means to develop other people. No, taking people with you isn’t the end all, be all method of people development. But based on my interaction with churches, if church leaders just took this step it would net much better results that what they’re getting.

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation, Staffing
Page 3 of 17«12345»10...Last »