Chris Marshall – Page 84 – Chris Marshall Resources

Margin…(Part 2)

Today we’re going to talk about margin in the area of time. If I could have a “do over” in area of my life to this point, it would be in this area. Time is a precious gift from God and once we have invested it or spent it that particular moment is gone. We don’t get to live yesterday, or last week, or a particular situation over again, no matter how much we wish we did. When I think of all the times I have let time slip away unredeemed, I am reminded again of how important it is to make the most of this moment.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to creating margin in our lives when it comes to time is that we assume we have both more control over our lives than we do AND less. Let me explain. I regularly sit down and plan my time. In fact, thanks to Michael Hyatt’s book Living Forward, I sat down for an entire day several months ago and planned out the entire coming year. I included mission trips, vacations, conferences, and the regular daily and weekly commitments. I scheduled time to reflect on the week, and to plan the next. I even scheduled margin. On paper it seemed perfect. That’s the part where we assume we have more control than we do. We CAN schedule or plan our lives and if we’re ever going to have margin in the area of time we must, just as we must create a spending plan if we’re ever going to have margin in the area of money. The challenge is life doesn’t go the way we plan or schedule it.

For example, on Monday morning, I received a phone call that a dear friend of ours from the days we served a church in Cincinnati decades ago had died. Her family asked whether I “had time” to come out and officiate at the funeral. The short answer was, “No, I did not have time.” This is one of the fullest weeks I’ve had for a long time from a schedule standpoint, because of the 15th anniversary celebration of New Life. Saying, “Yes,” would mean a 5-6 hour drive each way, an overnight stay in Cincinnati, and a morning devoted to the funeral. I didn’t have anything specific planned on my calendar for Thursday, since I typically keep it open for big picture planning and writing. I knew the right thing to do: say yes. Doris, the woman who died, wasn’t just a friend, she and her husband had adopted us into their family for the five and a half years we served in Cincinnati. I said, “Yes.” That commitment took up all the margin in my week–but I had margin in my week. I had already completed my message for the weekend. I had already completed my daily blog on the church website for the week. Everything I “had” to get done was already done. That’s what planning does in our lives. It lets us get to the important matters first, and then when life happens-which is where we have less control over time than we think we do–we have margin to address it. Without margin, when the unexpected situations of life come up, are best planned schedules go by the way side.

Yesterday I gave you some specific ideas about what has worked for Nancy and me when it comes to creating and living by a budget or spending plan when it comes to money. When it comes to creating a budget for our time, I commend Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward model. I’ve tried most of the time management planners on the market over the years. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. For me, the most helpful has been the Living Forward model, because it starts with the true end in mind. It has you write your obituary–yes, your obituary. You consider how you want to be remembered in the various areas of your life, and then write that as the beginning of your “Life Plan.” Then you add specific areas that are vital to you. I started with “Quadrant II” areas, things that are important, but not urgent, and wrote a plan for each of them. For example, two of my areas of focus are Spiritual and Physical Growth and Development; and Intellectual and Emotional Growth and Development. In each area I wrote a preferred future, the current reality, and then the steps I’ll need to take to get where I want to go. The process was challenging, but also encouraging, because it has shown me how having a plan–and implementing it can move me toward being who I believe God created me to be.

The key in whatever planning method you use when it comes to time is to SCHEDULE margin for those times that will come up when our schedule is disrupted. We need to have at least an hour each day of scheduled margin, and it’s always best to schedule more time to do tasks around the house, and time with our family than we think we need. That last statement may strike you as strange–schedule time for our family? Yes, because unless we schedule it any block of time is open to the whim of someone else. If we don’t schedule our lives, someone else will. We must schedule family, and reflection, and margin into our lives, so when someone calls or texts and says, “Do you have time to go out for breakfast on Friday,” we can say, “I’m sorry but I have an appointment.” That appointment may be with a spouse, or with yourself. It’s easy in such a moment to say, “I can forego that and make up the time later. Don’t fall for that. We don’t make up time later. Time is a finite “commodity.”

I urge you to invest the time to schedule your time, and to create a spending plan for your money, so that margin may become a reality in your life if it isn’t yet. That way you will be available in those moments when you’re needed for those unexpected opportunities that make life fuller, and you’ll have the money to do those things without having to use credit. Margin is a great blessing that comes to us when we live our lives intentionally.

Here’s to leading better by pausing to make room in our lives to be available for the important and urgent moments we didn’t expect–today!

Margin…

I’ve already mentioned margin in a couple of previous posts, but today and tomorrow I want to devote the entire posts to this important concept. Margin at its simplest means leaving extra room when we budget our time and money, so we’ll have some extra when we need it. Most Americans are all too aware of what it’s like to have margin in neither–to live paycheck to paycheck, and day to day without much of a plan for how to provide margin in either bank accounts or calendars. By definition if we are going to lead we must be different than most Americans when it comes to margin. We must budget both our time and our money intentionally, because if we don’t plan our time someone else will, and as John Maxwell has said, “If you don’t tell your money where to go, you’ll wonder where it went. Leaders need margin if for no other reason than to have more time to think and more resources to apply to leadership opportunities.

I want to be extremely practical with these posts, and not just theorize about what it might look like to put some margin into our calendars and bank accounts. While I learned a long time ago that there is no one “right” way to do most things, particularly when it comes to something as individualized as planning the use of one’s time and money, so I will provide examples today and tomorrow describing what has worked for me. These will not be prescriptions of what will necessarily work for you. I have found quite often that when I read another’s examples of how he or she does something, while it might not fit me exactly, it’s a helpful place to start, rather than totally reinventing the wheel.

For the remainder of this post, let’s consider budgeting money. While I have studied just about every financial planning process out there with a Christian slant, Nancy and I have found that Joseph Sangl’s simple formula I-O=EZ proves quite helpful. The letters in the formula stand for I=Income; O=Outflow; EZ=Exactly Zero. In other words if you add up all your sources of income over a specific period: a week, every two weeks, each month, or whatever your pay periods happen to be, and then subtract all of your outflows over the same period, they need to EQUAL exactly zero. Remember that the outflows include giving and saving, along with all of the typical expenditures and commitments you have made with your money. I like the 10/10/80 “rule” as a guideline for how to disburse our income. The first 10 represents the percentage we give, the second 10 represents the percentage we save, and the 80 represents the percentage devoted to paying all the rest of the bills.

The first time Nancy and I put a budget together and got serious about following it we were surprised by two things: 1) John Maxwell was right! We didn’t realize how much money we were spending that we didn’t know we were spending. 2) Including EVERYTHING in the Outflow area is both crucial and challenging. It’s crucial, because if you don’t know exactly how much you are spending, you won’t be able to balance your budget (or spending plan, as I like to call it!). It’s challenging because the first several months we put together our spending plan, we had to keep adjusting the totals, because we forgot things. We forgot what we call the “1/12 items.” 1/12 items are bills that come due once a year. If you put aside 1/12 of the amount each month, then when the annual bill comes due, you will have the amount you need. A couple examples of 1/12 bills in our lives are life insurance and Christmas presents. Nancy and I each have a life insurance policy that comes due once a year. We simply divide the total cost by 12 and put that amount in a special checking account each month. Then when it comes due, we write a check from that account. We have a Christmas savings account, because we want to have money to buy Christmas presents, and since Christmas is always on December 25th, we start saving the first week of November the year BEFORE the Christmas for which we’re saving. We put $50 in the bank every two weeks (now that we get paid every other week), and then at the end of October we have $1,200 to spend on Christmas. We usually don’t spend that much, so we donate the rest to a charity such as Samaritan’s Purse. We remembered the Christmas 1/12 expenditure several years ago, and it’s been fun to look forward to buying Christmas presents and knowing we won’t be paying for Christmas into the following year.

Nancy and I also found out that our original outflow number was larger than our income. When that happens there are only two ways to balance the equation: add more income or subtract expenses. It’s simpler (not necessarily easier) to subtract expenses. Nancy and I found that we had some “fat” in our spending plan so we started cutting there. We also realized that our savings in various areas are the MARGIN that we’ve been talking about in this post. When we have an emergency fund, (which we do, now!) and an emergency comes up, such as an expensive car repair, or a root canal, or any true emergency, we have money to pay for it. That way we don’t find ourselves using a credit card to pay for emergencies, putting us back into a cycle of debt.

At this time we’ve been working our budget for years, so we’ve been able to eliminate all debt with the exception of the remainder of our home mortgage, and we have developed several additional “margin” accounts. We have an appliance replacement fund, a car replacement fund, and a major repair fund to which we contribute every month. That way when the stove stops working, or the roof needs to be replaced down the road, or we want to buy a new couch, or replace a car we have the money to do so. What we have found is that by putting $25 or $50 away each month in these various funds, the margin increases fairly quickly. Thankfully, a roof only needs to be replaced every thirty years, and a stove every 10-15 years. If you put these replacement funds in the Outflow portion of your budget the money will be there when those eventualities become realities.

If you’re thinking: I could never do all that! The truth is all of us can take a next step from where we are. Nancy and I didn’t realize that we would ever be at place to consider all these eventualities when we first started using the I-O=EZ formula, but what we noticed within a few months was we started to have a little margin. It wasn’t much, but it was there. Over the years the margin has grown. We still don’t have a great deal of day-to-day margin, but we know that a blown transmission, or a broken dishwasher is no longer going to blow our budget. We also know that when a giving opportunity comes up and we believe God is calling us to give to it, we are able to say, “Yes!” far more often than we used to be able to do. That’s a great blessing.

The key is: the younger you are when you start to develop margin in your finances, by developing a workable spending plan and sticking with it over time, the sooner you will have margin and the more margin you will have. As the old saying goes, “The best time to plant an oak tree is fifty years ago. The second best time is today.”

Here’s to leading better by creating or using a spending plan to create or increase margin in our finances–today!

Do For The One…

Over the past several years the church I serve as lead pastor has grown significantly. We now have more than a 1,000 people who call New Life their church home. While our staff has also grown significantly, which is a great blessing, one of the biggest challenges I face as a leader is that I can no longer interact with every person on a personal level. Some in my situation would suggest that you just have to settle for leading through others and recognize that at this point being a leader of leaders is my calling.

I agree with that assessment for the most part–for the most part. Several years ago, I heard Andy Stanley say that the time comes when an organization grows larger that leaders say, “Since I can’t do a particular thing for everyone, I won’t do it for anyone.” That seems “fair.” But Stanley contends there is a better approach. He stated that in such situations remember to “do for the one, what you cannot do for everyone.” That is incredibly helpful advice. I have applied it over the past year or so more than ever, and it has been a great blessing, not only to those with whom I have ministered, but also to me.

If you’re thinking, “That sounds good, but won’t the many people you aren’t interacting with one-on-one get upset?” Some will. Some people will get upset no matter what we do as leaders. Our goal is not to make people happy, but to make Jesus happy. It’s so important for us to remember that. I still make a hospital visit now and then, or sit down with someone who is struggling with their faith, or an important relationship to listen and share with them. The vast majority of the folks at New Life understand that I can’t give each of them that kind of attention. Those who don’t will probably be more comfortable in a small church, where the pastor serves more in a chaplain role than as a lead pastor. In my experience the people who get upset are people who have already been in church, since unchurched people don’t have many expectations of church leaders!

I learned a long time ago from John Maxwell that we are going to lose people. Maxwell contends we get to choose who we lose. In my experience he is right. I do my best not to lose folks who don’t yet know Jesus. After all, if a lost person leaves New Life without coming to know Jesus as Savior and Lord, they may never come to know Him. I also make time to meet with staff or other leaders in the church who serve in one of our ministries when they have important issues. Beyond that, I seek to listen to the Holy Spirit in every situation, and to say, “Yes,” to folks who request my help when there is a valid need and my schedule permits.

While it is hard to say, “No,” for many of us, as our church, business or organization grows we will have to do it, or risk not being of great use, when those moments come when we really could have made a difference. Remember, you can’t do everything for everyone, but you can do for one what you can’t do for all!

Here’s to leading better by leading one person in an area where you can’t lead everyone–today! (or soon!)

Taking Time To Celebrate…

This weekend we’ll be celebrating the 15th anniversary of New Life Christian Ministries, the church Nancy and I planted in April of 2001. While the anniversary was officially a couple of months ago, I suggested to our leadership team that we wait until summer to celebrate, because I have been notoriously bad at taking time to celebrate the wins over the years and I knew we needed to make a big deal about what God has done among us. In the past it’s always been, “Wow! Look at what God has been doing among us. Okay, let’s keep going!” Over the years, we’ve taken a moment to mention that it was the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th anniversary as the moments came and went. We said thanks to God for all He’s done, but we haven’t taken the time for an appropriate celebration of much of anything along the way.

We did have a grand opening when we moved into our “stage one” building at 139 Knoch Road, Saxonburg, PA back in 2013, but even as we were celebrating my mind was thinking about “stage two,” and “stage three.” This time it’s going to be different. We’re having a pig roast on Friday evening, July 1, and more than 500 people have signed up to join in the celebration. We’ll play games together, eat together, and then we’re going to take some time to watch a video collage of many of the moments and events from our first fifteen years. After that I’m going to share a number of memories and a few hopes for the future. Then we’ll close with a time of prayer during which we’ll praise God for who He is, and thank Him for all He has done.

We’re following Friday, with a weekend of “regular” worship gatherings on Saturday at 6:30 pm, and Sunday at 8:30, 10:00 and 11:30 am, but we’re holding them outside as we used to do in the summer months when our normal worship space was the local school and we could only gather at the church property during the warmer months. Then on Sunday night we’ve invited the community to join us for a professional fireworks display, honoring our country and celebrating the many blessings we have as Jesus’ followers.

I share this with you for two reasons: 1) If you live in the Saxonburg area, we’d love to have you join us for any or all of these celebrations! and 2) If you are a leader, I exhort you to take time on a regular basis to celebrate the wins, both small and large, because it’s far too easy to just keep the pedal to the metal and keep barreling forward. Not that we don’t all want to make progress as leaders–we do. It’s just that sometimes we need to stop, take a breath and say, “Thank you!” to God, to those who have joined us on the journey and who have helped make the wins happen. It also helps us remember why we exist and that a major part of our life together is celebrating the journey. The people you lead will thank you for making the commitment to celebrate. Your team’s morale will increase, and life will just be better. I wish I knew this from more consistent experience of celebrating myself, but in those relatively few times when we have paused to celebrate, I’ve always been reminded how important it is to make celebrating a priority. Starting this Friday, I’m going to do it more often.

Let’s lead better by taking time to pause and celebrate–today!

That’s Why We Play The Games

As leaders, we sometimes think that the statistics “prove” a certain thing is going to happen or not happen, so we forget there is always a human factor and often a God factor involved when it comes to the actual playing out of a particular situation. For example, on Sunday evening my brother, Kenn, his wife, Colleen, and Nancy and I went to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ game versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. On paper, they didn’t even need to play the game. Clayton Kershaw was pitching for the Dodgers. He has been arguably the best pitcher in all of baseball over the past several seasons, and his statistics going into Sunday evening’s game were spectacular. He was leading the majors in several important pitching categories and his 11-1 won/loss record along with his ERA of 1.59 made him seem untouchable. Add to that the Pirates were sending Chad Kuhl, a rookie making his major league debut, to the mound and it seemed highly improbable, if not impossible, that the Pirates would win the game.

Kenn and I talked about the statistics, and the odds of the Pirates winning a third straight game over the Dodgers, who had come into PNC park riding a six-game winning streak, while the Pirates had forgotten how to win during the month of June. It didn’t look hopeful, but I turned to Kenn and said, “That’s why they play the games.” In other words: statistics don’t lie, but sometimes individuals and teams overcome the statistics to win. That’s exactly what the Pirates did on Sunday night. Kershaw gave up four runs in one inning, something he had not done in a long time. Chad Kuhl was good enough to make it through five innings with a 4-3 lead over the Dodgers, even though it took him making a play at home plate for the third out of the inning after he had thrown a wild pitch with a runner on third!

In another unlikely scenario the Pirates’ relief pitchers blanked the Dodgers for the final four innings to preserve the victory for Kuhl. (Imagine someday, when Kuhl tells his grandchildren that he face Clayton Kershaw in his prime, in his major league debut, and WON!) I love baseball, and even though the Pirates have struggled mightily over the past several weeks, I love how often baseball offers us leadership lessons. I don’t quote Woody Allen often, but one of my favorite quotes attributed to Allen is, “90% of life is just showing up.” How true! The Pirates showed up on Sunday night. They didn’t care that Kershaw was on the mound, or that most people thought they didn’t have a chance of beating him. The game was on the schedule, so they showed up and played. They overcame the statistics and won. That IS why they play the games.

What “game” do you need to “play” tomorrow that doesn’t offer a likely prospect of “winning”? Remember that if you just show up, your odds of winning increase dramatically! Know that if you persevere day after day after day as a leader, you will often win over time, because perseverance is not a common quality, but it is a necessary one for leaders. I encourage you to take the statistics seriously, because they’re often quite helpful in preparing for life’s endeavors. Just don’t let the statistics convince you that there’s no point in playing the game, because on any given day the team that wins may NOT be the team with the better statistics!

Here’s to leading better by showing up–today!

“SHAPEd” for Leadership!

One of the most important truths I have learned from Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church is the concept that each of us has a unique God-given “SHAPE” or design. The word SHAPE is in all caps because it is an acronym. The letters in shape stand for: S-spiritual gift(s); H-heart (or passion); A-abilities; P-personality; and E-experiences. As leaders we need to know our SHAPE in order to lead effectively. Let’s take a brief look at each component of the SHAPE acronym.

S-spiritual gift(s). In order to have a spiritual gift or gifts one must be a follower of Jesus Christ. Once we have trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord and been “born again” to use Jesus’ terminology, His Spirit lives in us. The rebirth of which Jesus spoke is a spiritual birth, and it comes with spiritual gifts. The Apostle Paul lists a number of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12. The key for this brief summary is to recognize that each of us has one or more spiritual gifts that we may use to increase our effectiveness as leaders. One of the spiritual gifts is the gift of leadership. While leadership skills may be learned, a person with the spiritual gift of leadership will have God’s ability to lead in his or her life, which will raise the leadership capacity and potential greatly. In the same way, the spiritual gift of compassion will cause a leader to be able to empathize with those she is leading, and that is boon to leadership.

H-heart (or passion). God gives each of us a heart or passion for certain types of people, or certain realities. For example, I have a heart for people who don’t yet know Jesus as Savior and Lord. One of the greatest opportunities in life to me, is the opportunity to speak with someone who has not heard of Jesus, or who has not trusted Him as Savior and Lord. Some folks have a heart for orphans, others for the elderly, others for pursuing justice for the poor. Whatever your God-given passion, when you exercise it in your life, you will have more commitment and persistence to lead in that area.

A-abilities. God has given each of us natural abilities. Some of us are good with spatial relationships. Others are good with mechanical processes, while still others are good with math, or grammar, or other academic endeavors. Some of us have natural physical abilities such as good hand-eye coordination, or the ability to run or jump. While many may discount these natural abilities, God uses them in our lives to enhance our leadership. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to use my carpentry skills on many occasions, both for my family, and in the various churches I have served. During construction projects at the various churches I’ve served, my knowledge and skill in construction processes has allowed me to interact with contractors and sub-contractors in meaningful ways that have allowed for better outcomes in those projects. Your natural skills and abilities will give you a richer capacity to lead as you use them effectively

P-personality. No two people have identical personalities. While each of us is primarily an extrovert or an introvert, the level of our extroversion or introversion lies on a spectrum from extreme extroversion at the one end, to extreme introversion at the other. Many other facets of personality have been identified and studied. Knowing our basic personality “type,” can help us lead more effectively in many ways. For example, I am an outgoing extrovert who tends to process the world around me intuitively and I respond best in non-structured environments. What that means is I’m a great idea person, but not such a great follow-through person. Therefore, in calling staff at New Life, particularly when we called an Executive Pastor, we called a person with a much more concrete view of life, who excels in process and follow through. Pastor Barry has been a great blessing to us in the relatively brief time he has been with us, because his personality compliments mine, and several other of our staff members who are helped by his more structured approach to life.

E-experiences. We all have countless experiences in life that can help us to become better leaders if we let them. Some of those experiences were quite painful. Others filled us with joy. Training experiences have enhanced our skills in various areas. Even the leadership experiences we’ve already been through inform how we lead today. It’s been said that God never wastes an experience in our lives, so we must not. What that means is sometimes things happen in life that hurt us deeply. We may not understand why we must endure such things in the moment, but down the road we find that the experience strengthened us to face another difficult situation, or prepared us to come alongside another person who is facing a similar difficulty.

In order for our SHAPE to help us be more effective leaders, we must first study ourselves to understand our shape. Once we know who we are, we need to let our strengths “lead.” In other words, if I worked really hard for the rest of my life to become better organized and to develop better follow through, I might one day become adequate in those areas. Far better for me to exercise my spiritual gift of leadership in casting vision for New Life, in training leaders and complementing my gifts with those of others who have strengths in areas of my weakness. At the end of the day, each of us must be willing to do whatever it takes to lead in our lives, but the more time we spend in leading in areas outside of our SHAPE, the less effective we will be. Our goal ought to be to surround ourselves with teams of folks who complement us and whom we complement with our SHAPE. In that way we will move the organization, company or church forward far more effectively than by seeking to do everything well.

Here’s to leading better by living out our SHAPE–today!

Leaders Worship!

I have a bias, which you have probably discovered by this point: I’m a follower of Jesus Christ. On my best days that reality colors everything I think, say and do. 2,000 years ago Jesus said that no one can serve two masters. He didn’t say it was difficult to serve two masters. He didn’t say it would be extremely difficult to serve two masters. He said it’s impossible. That means we must choose our master. In doing that we also choose who or what we worship. I chose to worship Jesus when I was twelve years old. (Some would say He chose me, and I have no argument with that.) I haven’t followed Him perfectly, or anything close to perfectly over the years. For a brief time in my teen years I even attempted to abandon following and worshiping Him.

It didn’t work out for me.

When I say it didn’t work out for me, I mean that I couldn’t NOT worship Jesus. I would say to myself, “I don’t believe there’s a God,” and then “shout” back, “Yes! I do believe there’s a God and He has revealed Himself to me in Jesus Christ.” I know many people have difficulty letting Jesus be their master, their owner, their Lord. So do I! It’s far easier to worship myself than Jesus. When Jesus said that no one could serve or worship two masters, He made it clear that the chief rival god would be “mammon,” which many modern translations render “money.” It’s a fairly good translation, since what Jesus was going for was the overall concept of material wealth and provision. For us the best representation of that pursuit, and therefore of that “god” is money.

Jesus told us that money would be the chief rival god, because it is so tangible, so measurable and we have been led to believe that it will purchase us everything we need: security, position, friends, and whatever else we value. The truth of the matter when it comes to money is it’s a “dissatisfier.” What I mean by that is if we don’t have enough money to meet our needs, we will be dissatisfied, but we can never have enough money to be satisfied. Satisfaction doesn’t come from material things. It comes from relationships, and ultimately it comes from being in relationship with the one, true and living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s why leaders worship–God.

We all worship something, whether we’re adherents of one of the world’s major or minor religions, or we claim to be atheists, in which case we will worship ourselves, or science, or some other invention of our minds. Everyone worships. The reason I contend that leaders worship God is because in order to be the best, most effective leaders we can be, we need to have as much wisdom as we can. God’s wisdom as found in the Bible has been demonstrated to be true over thousands of years and across cultures. We need authority to be leaders, and all authority is delegated. When we worship God, we are worshiping THE delegator of all authority. Jesus told His disciples that “all authority in heaven and earth had been given to Him.” From where? From His heavenly Father. That’s the kind of authority I want in my life, so I worship the source, and He shares it with me.

I don’t worship God solely, or even primarily, in order to get things: wisdom, authority, blessing, and every other good gift God gives. I worship God, because I have come to see that Jesus’ statement about masters is true: I CANNOT worship or serve more than one master. God is the best master. He does give wisdom, authority, blessing and every other good gift to those who love, worship and serve Him. From my experiences in places such as Cuba, Cambodia and Haiti I have seen first hand that people with virtually no worldly wealth can be far “wealthier” than Americans who have dedicated themselves to the worship and service of money. I have seen from a handful of Americans who lived their lives wholeheartedly for themselves, and then turned their lives over to God that there is no substitute for worshiping the living God in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

All this ties into leadership, because at the end of the day every leader has a “source” of his or her authority as a leader. It may be a title. It may be wealth. It may be tenure. It may be experience. The best source of authority for any leader is Jesus. Jesus demonstrated and initiated the model of “servant leadership,” which has been popularized sporadically in American business culture over the past several decades. Those who serve in churches and service industries may find servant leadership more appealing than those who work in businesses that are more geared to the “bottom line,” but the funny thing is all arenas of life work best when servant leadership is exercised, and then coupled with worship of the God from whom it derived. One day every knee will bow one day, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord either voluntarily or involuntarily, so why not do it NOW?

I know that’s a bold statement. It’s a statement of worship. I told you up front I have a bias. In every era of history, but the one in which we’re living now, thinking men and women have been able to hold a thought without agreeing with it, and still be civil toward one another. That is basically true in America today except when the thought being held is that Jesus Christ is the exclusive God of the universe who invites everyone to worship Him, and become part of His eternal family.

This is my twentieth post in twenty days. I have been clear that I am a follower of Jesus in a number of those posts. In the ones where I haven’t mentioned it explicitly, I haven’t hidden it. My goal is to help leaders lead better. Therefore, I cannot do otherwise than bring my faith in Jesus into the discussion, because He is the lens through which I view everything, including leadership. I will never bludgeon you with my faith, but neither will I hide it. I invite you to investigate it if you haven’t done so, and to do so without the commonly held preconceived biases about what is and isn’t possible in the natural world. After all if the God in whom I believe is the one true God then He created the natural world, and “invented” the natural laws that hold it together. Thus, by definition He comes from beyond the natural and isn’t bound by it.

Although I am a preacher, I don’t want to preach, so I’ll stop for today. I do urge you to be clear about who or what you worship and why. This will deepen your clarity as a leader, and as I said yesterday clarity always leads to greater effectiveness as a leader.

Here’s to becoming a better leader by worshiping the one true God–today!

Leaders Communicate

The title of today’s post may seem obvious: Leaders communicate. After all, it’s impossible to lead anyone unless we communicate expectations, goals, and an understanding of what it would look like to “win” or succeed. The truth is communicating effectively isn’t easy. That’s why it’s an essential part of leadership. I once heard John Maxwell say that the difference between educators and communicators is that educators make simple things complex, while communicators make complicated things simple. With apologies to educators I have experienced the truth of Maxwell’s statement all too often in my many years of formal education. While not all communicators are leaders, unless we communicate effectively we will never be great leaders. That means we must make complicated matters as simple as possible.

I’m not saying we must “dumb things down,” making matters simplistic. I’m saying we must make matters as clear and simple as possible. Let me give you an example of what I mean through the use of a single word: utilize. Back in 1984 when I bought my first “portable” computer (It weighed 27 pounds!), a Kaypro IV+88, the word processing program had a feature, which would automatically make a document more “scholarly.” When you applied the feature it always changed the word “use” into “utilize.” There were dozens of other words this feature changed (transformed?), but have always remembered the use/utilize pair. To this day any time I hear someone say “utilize” I automatically think, “You mean ‘use.'” (There’s nothing wrong with the word utilize, but in my mind I always think of it as attempting to make something more complicated than it needs to be, so why utilize it?) What’s my point? My point is why say, “Unless we utilize our cognitive skills in order to overcome the plethora of provocations from our antagonists our endeavor will experience its demise,” when you could say, “Unless we use our minds, our competitors are going to destroy us.”? Or even, “Unless we think we’re going to lose!”

During my last year of seminary in one of my final theology classes, the professor told us that during our three years at Princeton we had learned a whole new vocabulary, one that we could use (utilize?) to ensure that no one in the churches we served would ever understand a thing we said. After all, we had paid for and studied to attain a Master of Divinity degree from one of the most prestigious seminaries in the world. Then he said, “I have always believed that if one is always speaking over everyone’s head when he or she communicates, it isn’t necessarily a sign of intelligence. You may just be a poor marksman.”

I have always remembered that statement. Our goal as leaders is to make sure that our listeners, learners, or followers are clear about what we have said. We ought not to care about how intelligent they think we are, because if they can’t understand what we’re saying it shows we’re not as smart as we think we are. When we communicate to others, the best way for them to follow us is for us to make it clear where we’re going! Our effectiveness as leaders rests in large part on our effectiveness as communicators. In order for everyone to head in the same direction, everyone needs to know that direction. As Michael Lukaszewski points out in his new book Streamline in order for everyone to be on the same page, there needs to be an actual page that communicates clearly what is expected.

Another important thing I’ve learned about communicating over the years is the less time I have to say something, the longer it takes me to prepare to say it. Anyone can be fairly clear given half an hour to say something. But if you have to say the same thing in fifteen minutes or five, it becomes much more difficult. Clarity is vital in communication and leadership, and yet we have often been led to believe that people will listen to us simply because we are leaders. Leaders can never take it for granted that others are following us. We must never assume that just because we hold a particular position that makes us leaders. We can’t assume that just because we are speaking our listeners are understanding. Particularly in American culture leadership must be earned. If we can make complicated matters as simple as possible when we communicate people will be more inclined to follow our leadership. That is as it ought to be. After all, if our business or church or organization has a mission to carry out and a vision worth pursuing, we must communicate both as clearly and effectively as possible. Otherwise, people will have to figure it out for themselves, which leads to division as they come up with their own interpretation of the mission and vision, or they will go somewhere else where the mission and vision are clear.

Here’s to leading better by communicating effectively–today!

Leaders Go First!

I once listened to a leadership podcast by Andy Stanley titled “Leaders Go First!” In the talk Andy pointed out that the leader isn’t always the smartest person in the room, or the most creative one. Often the leader is just the one who goes first. He offered the illustration of a group of children riding bicycles “off road.” The group comes to the crest of a hill, a very steep hill. Everyone looks at each other wondering, “Is it safe? Can we make it to the bottom of the hill without getting hurt? Which route would be the best?” As all these questions and more bounce through everyone’s minds, one member of the group let’s out a whoop and heads down the hill. After a ride that may have been exhilarating, terrifying or both, the rider looks back to the rest of the group from the bottom of the hill and pumps both fists in the air. That rider has just become the leader of the group! The next time a danger, challenge, or opportunity comes to the group, they will look to their leader for permission, for direction, for whether to attempt to overcome the danger, or to take on the challenge.

I’ve found Stanley’s assessment to be true time and time again in my life. I remember a time nearly four decades ago when I worked a part-time job as a carpenter. I had started working evenings and Saturdays with Nancy’s cousin Frank, who already held a full-time job as the foreman of his dad’s construction crew. They built new homes and did remodeling Monday to Friday. Frank also worked in the evenings and on Saturdays during the summer months to make extra money. He had taken me on as a third member of his “crew.” I was in my second summer of working with Frank and John. I had also started working full-time with Frank’s dad that summer during my break from college, so I had gained sufficient skills for the task that was before us on that particular Saturday morning: removing an old roof down to the rafters, replacing the rotted sheeting boards with plywood, covering it with felt (tar paper), and then laying new shingles.

The house was small, and the task of removing one half of the old roof and getting it to the point of being water tight, meaning to the point that it had plywood and felt covering it would likely only take a few hours. The challenge was the weather. As we got up on the roof that morning with mattocks in hand (The plan was simply to drive our mattocks through the old, rotted shingles and sheeting in order to remove them as quickly as possible, and then replace them with the plywood, felt and shingles.), the sky looked ominous. It was about nine in the morning. The weather forecast called for afternoon rain, but the morning would have only “scattered showers.” We knew we couldn’t get the whole roof done that Saturday. We weren’t sure we could even finish half of it completely. The goal was to get half of the roof “felted under,” meaning water tight. This would ensure that when it did rain, the house would not be damaged until we could complete the job.

The three of us stood looking up at the sky and considering what to do. The clouds to the west were gray and threatening. If felt like rain. At the same time, we knew that to do nothing would put us behind schedule, and we only worked this job on Saturdays and evenings. Frank had other work lined up for us, so delays meant frustrated potential customers, and smaller paychecks for us. The possibility existed that the rain would come before the roof was felted under, or it could miss us completely. The roof was already leaking. That’s why the homeowner had called Frank in the first place. He had water marks on his ceilings, which meant the rain was coming through the roof and pooling in places on the ceiling. Frank had determined the sheeting was rotten by inspecting the roof from the outside–by walking on it, and from the inside–through a visual inspection from the attic. What should we do?

I drove the mattock through a section of the roof. It pulled away easily. It wasn’t going to take long to remove the old stuff. AND I had just become the leader of the group for that day! The three of us worked quickly, exposing one half of the roof to the elements. John started handing us plywood, and cutting the end pieces to fit. Frank and I nailed furiously. As we completed the plywood it started to rain softly. We quickly laid the felt, making sure it was nailed securely, and lapping the top piece over the peak of the roof to ensure that no rain could enter. We got off the roof, gathered our tools into the truck and jumped in the cab. A few minutes later we were sitting through a downpour. It rained harder and harder, but the half of the roof where we had just worked was more secure from the elements than the other half. John, who always called me “Sonny” said, “Well, Sonny. Looks like you were lucky.” Frank saw it differently. He was never one for giving compliments, but I noticed that he started relying on my opinion more when we needed to make decisions. He was still the boss, but my leadership had risen in his eyes. He started giving me more opportunities to make decisions, to lead.

It takes courage to go first. Courage is the quality of a leader that causes him or her to go first. There’s a difference between courage and recklessness. That day on the roof I took a calculated risk. I had faith in our crew. I knew we could get the roof to a point of being water tight in a couple of hours if we worked as hard as we could, and I knew we were especially motivated that morning. I knew the roof was already leaking, so even if we only got the plywood on the roof it would turn nearly as much water as the roof was currently. I also knew I would work in the rain until the roof was watertight if need be and so would Frank and John. Exercising leadership in that moment wasn’t a big risk, but going first showed confidence in myself and the team.

The next time you have a challenge before you, do you want to be the leader? Do you want to have the responsibility of stepping into the unknown and taking the risk no one else is ready to take? Remember, the difference between courage and recklessness. Courage moves people and groups to accomplish more than they would ever be able to do without it. Recklessness is likely to get someone hurt, or to cause unnecessary damage to people or property. Taking a courageous first step can sometimes lead to you or someone getting hurt, too. After all, leadership does come with those kinds of costs. The difference is when leaders exercise courage they are seeking to take the group to a new level whether of experience, expertise or accomplishment, while the reckless person is just looking for the next thrill.

Going first becomes easier over time. Through knowledge and experience we come to know the difference between courage and recklessness. We come to understand that we will nearly always regret NOT going first when opportunities come, more than we’ll regret the consequences of going first. Leaders are much more “afraid” of missing opportunities than of failing. After all when we fail, we can make adjustments, which lead to success. But when we miss an opportunity, it is often gone forever.

Here’s to leading better by going first–today!

The Tyranny of the Urgent

Yesterday as I was talking about expecting the unexpected, and kept mentioning making sure that when we have unexpected interruptions that we respond to them when they are important and urgent, it reminded me of one of the classic little booklets I’ve read on time and really life management titled Overcoming the Tyranny of the Urgent. In the book Charles Hummel points out that in life events come in four different types, which he divided into four different quadrants: Quadrant I: urgent and important; Quadrant II: not urgent and important; Quadrant III urgent but not important; and Quadrant IV: not urgent and not important. Hummel contended that in order to overcome the tyranny of the urgent, which would often mean succumbing to Quadrant III activities those things that are urgent but not important, one must invest a great deal of intentional planning and time in Quadrant II activities.

If you think about it matters that are not urgent, but important include all kinds of things that develop us as people whether at the physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual level. For example, I am engaging in a Quadrant II activity right now. Writing this blog is important. When I complete this post, I will have written more than 17,000 words about leadership in the past seventeen days! I will have gathered my thoughts, done research, reflected on what it means to be a leader, and passed on helpful insights to you who take the time to read them each day. These are important matters, but they are not urgent. I won’t get paid for writing these posts. If I “forget” to write them I suffer no penalty. No one will scream at me, or tug at me. On the other hand, if I fail to take the time each day to stop, think, reflect, and then write these posts I miss out on the opportunity to focus my thoughts on leadership, and thus grow as a leader. I also take away your opportunity to grow as leaders.

On the other hand, the Quadrant III matters of life break the silence of our Quadrant II times through the ringing of a telephone, the “ding” of a text message or e-mail coming to our inbox. When Hummel wrote The Tyranny of the Urgent back in 1967, he pointed to the telephone as the primary culprit in Quadrant III. He noted that so often when the phone rings we feel obligated both to answer it AND to respond in the affirmative with the requests that come from the callers. That’s what I was talking about yesterday when I mentioned that when I first started in the ministry, I felt that when someone called or stopped by my study, I felt obligated to respond. It was Hummel’s Overcoming the Tyranny of the Urgent that helped me to see that urgent demands need to be assessed and then assigned to Quadrant I or Quadrant III. Matters that are truly urgent AND important, must be addressed. It’s the matters, which are urgent BUT NOT important which must be dismissed.

It isn’t easy to say, “No,” to any urgent request whether important or not. That’s why we tend to rob Quadrant II time from our lives. Our exercise equipment won’t scream at us to use it. The latest business journal or book sits silently on our night stand or in our computer waiting “patiently” for us to read them. As much as we need to invest time with God, He will not yell for us to invest time with Him in prayer. In the same way, if we’re married, our spouses may or may not remind us of how important it is for us to invest time with them. When it comes to time and money we can only do two things with each: 1) spend them; or 2) invest them. When we spend time and money they are gone. We will never see any return from them. But when we invest time and money, over time they give us returns on the investment. I am already experiencing a return on my time investment in writing these posts. My leadership skills are improving. I think more about leading effectively all the time, and as a result I’m becoming a more effective leader on a daily basis.

Some have already asked me, “Do you have the time to write a DAILY blog with all you have going on?” The short answer is, “No. I don’t HAVE the time. I have to carve out the time.” One of the key differences when it comes to time and money is while each of us may make and have vastly different amounts of money, each of us has exactly the same amount of time: 24 hours each day. How we use those 24 hours makes all the difference. For this season in my life, I have committed to writing a daily post on leadership. I may find that I need to make that a weekly invest over time, but for now, even if no one reads what I’m writing, the return on investment for me is worth it.

As I was writing this post I had an instant message “ding,” a phone call from Nancy, and a second phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I nearly laughed out loud. What a confirmation that interruptions come to all of us, and that if we don’t have a filter, we will fritter away our time. Both the instant message and phone call from Nancy fell into Quadrant I, so I took a moment away from my writing to respond to each. I answered the second phone call, because I was expecting an important call from a person at a business that I hadn’t yet spoken to over the phone, and I couldn’t remember the number he gave me in his latest e-mail. After about ten seconds I realized it wasn’t the person I was expecting, and while I DID want to talk to the person on the line, it wasn’t a good time, so I asked if I could call back later. He said, “Yes,” so I moved that Quadrant I call, to my to do list, and will schedule it for tomorrow, at my convenience. That’s the blessing of filtering as many things as possible through the grid of the four quadrants.

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention Quadrant IV yet, those matters that are neither urgent nor important. I can sum up that quadrant in my life in two letters: TV. For some it’s spelled: video games. I’m not saying we ought never to spend time in this area, but that we must be extremely cautious in doing so, because when we say, “I’m just going to sit down and play a game or two, or watch a few minutes of television,” it is almost never a game or two, or a few minutes. We often invest our time in minutes and spend it in hours!

Here’s to leading better by filtering our time and thus our lives through the grid of the four quadrants–today!