Top 5 Posts from April

Tag Archive - vision

Top 5 Posts from April

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Thank you for making the month of April a great month on Helping Churches Make Vision Real! 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 “10 Insider Focused Ministry Names”

The language we choose to use is important because it both reflects and builds culture at the same time. And one of the most obvious ways to tell if a church is insider focused or outsider focused is the language that they choose to use. It either says that the church is “inclusive” or “exclusive.” There’s even a link included in this post to a free resource you can use evaluate your church!

#2 “Managing the Tension between Vision and Leadership”

Believe it or not there is a tension between leadership and vision. Your ability to gain the hearts of people and get them to follow you to a desired future. Here’s a tool that will help you begin to understand where your team members are at and at the same time help you identify your next steps in leading each of them.

#3 “Four Obsessions of an Effective Executive”

I recently finished reading The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Leniconi. It’s a quick, compact, and actionable read that I’d recommend to anyone who serves on a Sr. Management Team. Here are my top 15 quotes and ideas from the book!

#4 “Stuck in a Funk”

I recently caught up with Tony Morgan to talk about his new book, “Stuck in a Funk?: How to Get Your Church Moving Forward.” It just released on Amazon! Click here to get your hands on a copy and check out the interview with Tony!

#5 “4 Things to Remember when Leading from ‘Here’ to ‘There'”

Simply put the purpose of leadership is movement. To move a people or organization from “here” to “there.” This past week Lisa and I moved into our new home. Better put, we moved everything into our new home…now comes the fun part of unpacking and settling in. During the move I was reminded of four leadership principles about moving people from “here” to “there.”

Posted in Leadership

Managing the Tension between Leadership and Vision

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Believe it or not there is a tension between leadership and vision. Your ability to gain the hearts of people and get them to follow you to a desired future.

Here’s a tool that will help you begin to understand where your team members are at and at the same time help you identify your next steps in leading each of them.

It starts with asking 2 simple questions. But they’re two questions that a majority of leaders are too afraid to face an honest answer to.

#1 Has your team bought into you?
#2 Does your team believe in where you’re going?

Crew Leaders:

Crew Leaders are all in. They’ve bought into you, and they’ve bought into where you’re going. Not only will they go with you if you lead them, they have the potential to join you in leading others to go along with you.

Crew Members:

Crew Members are loyal. They believe in you, they’re just not sure about the direction the ship is sailing. Good leaders know how to leverage the trust that they’ve built over time with their crew and recast the vision.

Stowaways:

Stowaways want to go where you’re going, that is to say they believe in the vision. They’re just not sure you’re the one they want to follow there. The most important thing you can do with Stowaways is take the time to relate to them. As a leader you have to build trust with the people you’re leading because trust is the foundation of leadership. But be ware these are the most dangerous members on your team, because if they don’t buy into you as the leader you aren’t going anywhere.

Pirates:

Pirates don’t believe in where you’re going and they don’t want to go there with you. The best thing you can do with Pirates is counsel them out of your church. Or in Pirate lingo…have them walk the plank!

So do you have the courage to work through this exercise? Where do your team members plot out on this chart? More importantly, are you leading each team member they way they need you to?

Posted in Leadership

4 Leadership Lessons I was Reminded of by the Birth of my 4th Child

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A week ago we welcomed Wyatt Grant into the Alexander family! And I’m not biased or anything, but he’s absolutely incredible! While we’ve gone through this a time or three before I’m still surprised by the depth of amazement, excitement, awe, fear, and loss of control that all collide in my heart at the birth of each of my children. And while we’re playing zone defense and filling up the minivan there are four distinct leadership lessons that this experience has reminded me of…

1. Great Leaders grow accustomed to Loss

At the birth of each of my children I’ve been abruptly reminded about how selfish I really am. When a little one crashes the party you quickly realize how much you still have to grow as you’re confronted with completely rearranging your life and putting the needs of that child above your own. Similarly the best leaders I know love the mission of the church more than themselves. So much so that they’re willing to let go of the past or even the present in order to move towards a preferred future. And letting go always means you’re losing something, that’s why you have to let go of it. There is always loss involved in growth and forward movement, and it usually involves a loss of comfort.

2. The Secret to Success is found in doing the little things daily

It’s amazing how quickly my other kids got so big, literally overnight. I went to the hospital with 3 small children one day and came home with a baby and the other three all of the sudden became giants overnight! While I’ve had some great moments as a parent, my parenting is more characterized by the daily grind of trying to point my children in the right direction. The same is true in leadership. It’s more about having the discipline and courage to do the right thing daily than waiting around for a big moment to shine. Do the little things daily and it will surprise you how it eventually compounds and shows up.

3. Control is an Illusion

Simply put, the delivery room scares me to death. Mostly because I’m completely out of control and I’m trusting the woman I love most and my nearly born child into the hands of people that I’m hoping and praying do a good job. The truth is control is a dangerous illusion that church leaders and pastors slowly creep towards through believing their press clippings and overconfidence. We would do well to remember that at the end of the day this is God’s church not ours. We are simply under-shepherd and stewards. He is building His Church and we are simply honored to be joining Him in the process.

4. Even great Leaders can’t accomplish the Vision Alone

Over the past week I’ve been floored by the generosity of the people around me. Meals have been provided, my other three children were farmed out while we were at the hospital, the dog was taken care of, and there was even a late night run by a friend to bring the boppy up to the hospital (if you don’t know what a boppy is then ask your wife). Leaders, even great leaders, if they’re chasing after a God-sized vision can’t do it alone. It takes a team of multifaceted and talented people. After all if you can do it by yourself…it’s probably not big enough.

Posted in Family, Leadership

Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

I recently finished reading The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Leniconi. I can already tell you that this is going to be on my top 5 reads from 2013. I deeply resonated with the concepts in this book. You see in many ways this book describes why I do what I do. I love to see all the facets of the Church work together to build an aligned and integrated culture that actually makes vision real!

There is no way for me to share everything I underlined, highlighted and the personal notes I wrote in the margins. So I shared with you my top 20 favorite quotes and ideas from the book that stuck with me.

1. The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free, and available to anyone who wants it.

2. An organization has integrity – is healthy – when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when it’s management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

3. If an organization is led by a team that is not behaviorally unified, there is no chance that it will become healthy.

4. Contrary to popular wisdom and behavior, conflict is not a bad thing for a team. In fact, the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems.

5. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.

6. Nowhere does this tendency towards artificial harmony show itself more than in mission-driven nonprofit organizations, most notably churches. People who work in those organizations tend to have a misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another.

Posted in Leadership

What could God do in 2013?

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

This past weekend on the Sun Valley Gilbert Campus I kicked off the new year sharing about why I love being a part of Sun Valley so much and something that has me deeply concerned as we go into 2013. Here’s the talk below, hope it’s helpful!