Leadership Summit 2015: Ed Catmull

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Leadership Summit 2015: Ed Catmull

Monday, August 10, 2015

If you missed the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this year, no worries I’ve got you covered. I’ll be posting my notes and thoughts from each presenter over the next couple of days.

Ed Catmull, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios and President of Walt Disney Animation Studios, delivered a fantastic talk on creativity and leadership!

One of the great misunderstandings of our time is that art and science are in-congruent.
Art is not about drawing but learning to see.
It all comes down to the power of a story.
Great animation connected to a bad story makes for a bad film.
Stories are the way we communicate with each other at every level.
The good stories are the ones that connect with deep emotions.
Every great film starts as an ugly baby…if every idea was great we’d be done…
How do we help people improve ideas?
If there is laughter in the room they’ll solve the problem no matter how ugly it is right now.

The Brain trust

Peers talking to peers
In that room there is no power structure
They have a vested interest in each others success (the vested interest is in the film being right)
Give and listen to good notes (evaluation)

Every once in a while we violate our own rules/culture but every once in a while magic happens. Egos fade away and fantastic work takes place.
When you are working on something and you’re in the middle of it, you can’t help but lose objectivity.
Creativity is about solving problems. Coming up with solutions is a creative act.
The group and their culture determines if they are going to solve the problem.
Embrace candor with kindness.
There is a real aura of danger around failure in our culture…that fear of failure has become a lid to creativity.
What are the barriers to telling each other the truth? (Candor with kindness)…fear.
If you can get past the embarrassment of failure it can free you up to be more creative.
All good artists know you have to operate within constraints otherwise it’s unbounded.
Budgets and schedules allow you to focus creative energy on the right things.
If you spend too much time on it, it can lose it’s impact…don’t get lost in the detail.
Stating and agreeing to values is easy to do, the hard part is to ask yourself why you’re not living up to them.
Trust is something everybody agrees to but hard to do…it takes time, you’ve got to earn it.

Posted in Leadership

Leadership Summit 2015: Jim Collins

Monday, August 10, 2015

If you missed the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this year, no worries I’ve got you covered. I’ll be posting my notes and thoughts from each presenter over the next couple of days.

Jim Collins, a Summit favorite, delivered 7 Questions he learned to ask from West Point.

Bonus: you never stop being a “young leader”

1: What causes you to serve?

If you have a charismatic cause you do not need to be a charismatic leader,
Level 5 Leaders are ambitions and fully committed. They are serving, humble leaders.

2: Will you settle to for being a a good leader or will you grow to become a great leader?

Well managed organizations are the only obstacle of tyranny.
You don’t manage a network, you lead it.
We are moving from organizations well managed to networks well led.
True leadership only exists when people follow when they otherwise have the right to not follow.
- As a leader you must know what must be done
- It’s not about getting people to do what must be done but getting people to want to do what must be done
- It’s not a science it’s an art
Most great leaders don’t start as a great leader but they grow into a great leader.

3: How can you re-frame failure as growth in pursuit of a BHAG?

“I am not failing, I’m growing” and that is the point of the climb

4: How can you succeed by helping others succeed?

At West Point everybody is failing at something
You are never alone
- Service: to a cause or purpose that you are willing to sacrifice for
- Success: communal success built into the culture, we only succeed by helping each other
- Growth:

5: Have you found your personal hedgehog?

3 Circles:
- What you love doing
- What you are encoded/made for
- Your economic engine
What is more powerful, one computer 1,000 times more powerful than another computer or 1,000 computers in the hands of 1,000 creative people?
True creators stay in the game, even when you get a bad hand.
If you believe life comes down to a single hand you can lose really fast, but if you believe life is a series of hands you have a shot.
When you get decked, that’s when you need to stay in the game…you love to do it, you’re made to do it, you’re called to do it, so no matter what hand you get you stay in the game

6: Will you build your unit into a pocket of greatness?

Great CEO’s became great CEO’s by not focusing on their career but by focusing on building their unit into a pocket of greatness.
Be rigorous, not ruthless about your people decisions.
Instead of taking care of your career, take care of your people, and your people will take care of your career. Life is people.
When you’re suffering at the end of the race, you’re not running for yourself.

7: How will you change the lives of others?

The greatest leaders find a way to make a contribution and impact on other people’s lives
Life is people

Posted in Leadership

Leadership Summit 2015: Bill Hybels

Sunday, August 9, 2015

If you missed the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this year, no worries I’ve got you covered. I’ll be posting my notes and thoughts from each presenter over the next couple of days.

If you’re unfamiliar with Leadership Summit, more than a quarter million leaders participated in this world-class experience designed to help leaders lead better and embrace a grander vision – the reason God called you to lead. The event was broadcast live in HD from Willow’s campus near Chicago to more than 375 sites in North America and later around the world.

Willow Creek Community Church Founder and Senior Pastor Bill Hybels opened the Summit addressing The 5 Intangibles of Leadership. The following are leadership quotes and lessons from this incredible session.

Leadership is about moving people or an organization from here to there. From where it is to where it needs to go.
Leadership is not about protecting a position.
The highest value at the Leadership Summit is humility…
Armed with enough humility, leaders can learn from anyone

8 Basic functions of leadership

Casting Vision
Building Teams
Motivating & Inspiring
Solving Problems
Change Management
Establishing Core Values
Allocating Resources
Developing Emerging Leaders

5 Intangibles of Leadership

#1 Grit: Passion & Perseverance over the long haul…unrelenting long-term tenacity. Gritty people play hurt, expect progress to be difficult, but progress to be made. This is the key that unlocks the ability for less talented people to win. Those with more grit undoubtedly accomplish more in life than those who do not, regardless of talent.

Can grit be developed? Yes. But the archenemy of grit is ease. Grit development demands difficulty.
Overcoming physical challenges is one way to grow grit, and any area you develop grit in spills over to other areas of their lives.
Young leaders grow when volunteering for extra work assignments and then delivering and over delivering above expectations.
When Sr. Leaders push themselves hard teammates and followers notice and they begin to push themselves to the next level.
The whole organization gets grittier, and gritty organizations are unstoppable.

#2 Self Awareness: Who are you trying to impress? Without understanding the decisions and how they’re tethered to your past you destroy your future.

Under-performance is connected to leaders not being self aware.
Blind spots: stuff that leaders think they’re good at but everyone else knows that’s not true…they’re making a laughing stock of themselves.
Something someone believes they do well but everyone else on the team is aware of.
On average every leader has 3.4 blinds spots.
The danger is you really have no idea that they exist.
Everyone will win when you grow in self awareness.

#3 Resourcefulness: (learning agility), quick learners, tinkerers,

People with a high learning agility are promoted more than 20% more than others.
Resourceful people may not know the right answer but they stay at it until they figure it out.
Resourcefulness can be developed, but only by putting yourself in difficult situations and experimenting and trying to figure things out until you do.

#4 Self-Sacrificing Love: serve them, invest in them, pray for them by name, pull down the professional veil.

Vision & strategy are not at the core of leadership. It’s self-sacrificing love.
Love never fails.
Love is what melts teams into families instead of just work-groups.
We live in a day with narcissistic blood flowing through the veins of most leaders, trust in organizations is low, and at the root of it is a lack of love that must begin in the heart of the Sr. Leader.
Gallup measures what separates healthy organizations from toxic ones with one simple question: “Do workers feel personal concern coming from their managers?”
The quality of your “loving” sets the tone of the culture in your organization.

#5 Sense of Meaning:

Start with Why / Simon Sinek / What How Why
People want a “why” to come to work…a compelling reason to do what you do at your organization…what’s worth giving your life to?
What is your “white hot why?”

Posted in Leadership

5 Articles that will Help your Church Make Vision Real

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Thank you for making November one of the highest trafficked months of the year here at Helping Churches Make Vision Real! It’s great staying connected with you through social media and hearing about how helpful different articles have been. So, thank you for connecting with me through the content on this blog! You made these the top 5 Posts from this last month. If you missed out on any of them, here they are all in one place for your convenience!

#1 6 Things I Bet You Don’t Know about your Pastors’ Wife

One of the least thought about people in the church today is a Pastor’s wife. While leaders get all the attention and accolades their families and private lives are thought of very little by the public. In fact in a moment in church history where we are inundated with volumes of leadership ideas and training very little is written about pastor’s wives. I recently sat down with Lisa, my wife, and asked her about her experience being married to a full-time pastor for the past 18+ years. Here is some of what she had to say…

#2 A Leadership Conversation with an Executive Pastor at a Church of 20,000+

One of the most incredible and successful churches in America is one you’ve probably never heard of. Like many churches Christ’s Church of the Valley started in the living room of the founding pastor, in this case Don Wilson. Now over 30 years later CCV has a weekly attendance of more than 20,000 people located across 6 campuses. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Ashley Wooldridge who serves as the Executive Pastor at CCV and talk leadership and multisite. Here are a few of the highlights from the conversation.

#3 Replenish: Leading from a Health Soul

Lance Witt served 20 years as a senior pastor and five years as the executive pastor at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. A couple of years ago Lance released his book Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul. It’s a great book for church leaders. It’s so good, in fact, that we have our Leadership Coaching Networks at the Unstuck Group read it for the conversation we have about personal health. If you’re in ministry, I strongly encourage you to order this book today, you won’t regret it. Here are a couple of key ideas that stood out to me.

#4 What Makes a Great Campus Pastor a Great Campus Pastor?

Leading in a multisite setting I’m often asked by other church leaders, “What makes a great Campus Pastor a great Campus Pastor?” Often times when a church is thinking about moving to a multisite model the last thing they’re thinking about is who is going to be their next Campus Pastor. They’re stuck on logistics and most just assume they’ll stick an existing up and coming staff member on the next campus and hope for the best. That’s great IF you have the right person on the team already, but this can also be a fatal flaw. Trust me, I know and I’ve lived it. So here are 7 things I’m looking for when I’m looking for a Campus Pastor.

#5 The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-1

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.

Photo Credit: justin fain via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

The Best of Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit Pt-2

Monday, November 10, 2014

The first talk was from Patrick Lencioni bestselling author, Founder and President, The Table Group.

The Most Dangerous Mistakes a Leader Makes

#1 Becoming a Leader for the wrong reason

Fame, money, power, etc.
Why should someone want to become a leader? Because they want to sacrifice themselves for others even when they may not get anything in return.
There is no other kind of leadership other than servant leadership
If it’s not servant leadership then it’s just economics and measuring a Return on Investment

#2 Failing to Embrace Vulnerability

Destroys trust with the people that they lead
You can’t be too vulnerable as a leader
People have a right to expect you to be competent but they don’t expect you to be perfect
Vulnerable leaders are genuine, apologize, don’t cover up for themselves, and lean into others are better than themselves in particular areas

#3 Making Leadership too Important

Most of the time we’re thinking about leadership…we’re thinking about work
Our identity can get wrapped up in being a leader instead of other more important things like being a child of God, spouse, or parent
Are the people (family) who are our primary vocation getting ignored because our jobs and employees are more important than them?

Pride is what all 3 of these things have in common