Category: Leading at Home

Today we remember when Jesus the world’s ultimate leader made the ultimate sacrifice for those He led–the human race! We call it “Good Friday,” but both for Jesus and for what it said about humanity it was the worst single moment in human history. He came to give us life in all of its abundance and in return we “gave” Him a cruel and unimaginable death sentence.  He came to give us love and we “have” Him the cruelest form of rejection and hate. He came to lead us and we rejected His leadership soundly, and decided to lead ourselves–again.

The result? The salvation of humanity. Jesus’ death changed everything for everyone forever! While as we look around these days it isn’t always obvious that Jesus won the battle over sin and death, when we look inside of our own hearts, we are able to see glimpses of the victory if we have trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord. His death and resurrection stand as the single greatest act of love and sacrifice on the one hand, and of power and victory on the earth. The cross without the resurrection is a pathetic story of a martyr whose grand intentions ended in a tomb near Jerusalem. The cross with the resurrection is the account of God become man, to lead humanity to a freedom only God could have imagined.

I pray each of us takes time today to remember and reflect on the example Jesus set. Each of us has the opportunity to “take up our cross daily and follow” Jesus. Today is a reminder the extreme lengths to which that can lead, but on most days for us it means putting our selfish ambitions aside to serve Jesus and those we lead. Cross-bearing is never easy, whether of the literal or figurative type. Today of all days is a day for remembering that. Yet, when Jesus bore His cross for us, He changed our eternal destinies.  When we bear our crosses in His name it changes us, our families, our churches, our communities and even our world. That’s the plan, and Jesus has no plan B.

Here’s to leading better, by pausing to remember Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice for us–today!

In concluding our three part series on What I Would Tell My Twenty Year Old Self when it comes to leadership, I would tell myself, “Wherever you are, be all there!” I don’t remember who made this point to me a number of years ago, but it’s one I wish I had learned in my twenties. The point is if I am with my wife, I need to be with my wife. In that moment, I can’t be attending to something from work, or thinking about a personal development plan, or anything and do justice to that moment. With the advent of instant access social media, this idea of being all there is even more challenging, and perhaps even more necessary.

How many times have you attended a meeting and as someone is giving their presentation, a person or two, or even you are looking at the portable device on your lap for some information, or at a text? It’s impossible to fully attend what someone is saying or demonstrating while dividing our attention with a mobile device. While the human mind is amazing and can process information 2-3 times faster than another human can speak, thus always allowing for extra thinking while we are listening to someone also, if we are all there, we are using that extra time to formulate thoughts about the comments of the person, whether agreement or challenge or whatever. The truth is a timely placed question or challenge of a fact, offered appropriately, after someone has presented information honors them by showing we were fully in that moment with them.

Great leaders are the best multi-tackers, they are the best at affirming the value of those around the whether co-workers, fellow managers or leaders, family members or whomever. Giving our full attention to someone is one of the single, best ways to show them honor and that we value them. When we are all there with the a person in whatever situation it may be, it permits us to gain the best information, which every leader needs to make decisions; to give the highest value to the other, which every leader needs in order to develop the strongest relationships with them; and to make the best use of time, because we don’t have to go back and fill in blanks from the aspects of the conversation we missed because we weren’t fully attending to it.

While it may seem a minor matter to “be all there,” I have found it to be one of the most helpful aspects of any day in which I succeed in doing it. By being all there, wherever “there” may be, I enjoy those moments most, lead most effectively, and ultimately gain the most value from the time. One final thought: if you cannot “be all there” in a given situation, is it a place you ought to be in that moment? In other words, if you are distracted while being in a meeting, if something is so urgent or important in that moment that you are “somewhere else,” perhaps you need to be in that other place. What I’m saying is sometimes when we practice the habit of being all there over time, it helps us to set our priorities. If the person texting us is truly more important to our leadership in that moment than the meeting we’re sitting through, then we need to leave the meeting and get in front of that other person. Otherwise, we need to put away the electronic device and be all there, wherever there may be.

Here’s to leading better by being all there–today!

While on the flight home from Cambodia about a month ago, I read a book titled Leadership and Self-Deception by the Abridger Institute. The book has been transformative in my life. The basic premise of the book is that we are all self-deceived far more often than we think and when we are we will never function effectively as leaders. The book calls being self-deceived being “in the box.” When we’re in the box, we tend to exchange the corporate results of our organization, church, business or family for the single result of self-justification. Put simply: when I am self-deceived my major objective is to justify my thinking and behavior to make me right and everyone else wrong.

Until I read the book, I didn’t realize how easy it is to betray ourselves and thus fall into self-deception. The book is presented in the format of many of Patrick Lencione’s books, with a “fable” being the basis of the book. In Leadership and Self-Deception the fable is about a man who recently took a job at a new company, and is required to go through training with “Bud.” Bud is a master of presenting the concept of self-deception, because he was once a self-deceived leader himself, and as with all of us, is still working at staying “out of the box.”

For our purposes, let’s use one of the examples Bud offered in the book to see how easy it is to betray ourselves and then to move into self-deception. Bud offered the example of a time when he and his wife had an infant. In the middle of the night, Bud woke up to the cries of the baby. His feeling was, “I ought to go take care of the baby.” But instead of acting on the feeling, Bud betrayed the feeling and waited. For what? We all know, right? He waited for his wife to wake up and take care of the baby. As he lay there pretending to be asleep and not acting on his impulse to care for his son, Bud started moving to self-betrayal. Here’s how it worked: Bud thought something like this, “I’ve been working really hard, and I have an important meeting tomorrow. I need my rest. My wife doesn’t have anything that urgent to do. In fact, she’s actually rather lazy. She’s not that great a wife, and I am a great husband and father, because I work so hard to provide for us.”

Do you see what Bud did? He inflated his own goodness and magnified his wife’s flaws. He even invented a few flaws. That’s what we do when we’re in the box. We inflate our own value and devalue others. Bud’s definition of being in the box is when we treat others as objects and not as people. The book offers explanations of how we get in the box, how we get out of the box and how we stay out of the box. While it’s a fairly quick read, I’ve gone through it twice, because it’s principles are immediately applicable. Any time I start to justify myself when I’m thinking about someone else, I ask whether I’m self-justifying in order to make myself seem better than I am. If so, I realize I’m either in the box or moving there.

After that it’s a simple–not necessarily easy–but simple process of thinking through the steps necessary to treat the person as a person and to stop the self-justifying behavior. That does two important things: 1) it gets me focusing on the true results I’m working toward instead of working toward self-justification; and 2) it gets me thinking about the person in question as a person and not as an object. I find myself checking my motivations more often than in the past, and when I’m moving toward or am already in the box, I can get out much more quickly. Indeed, I was often in the box toward folks without recognizing it all.

One more important truth from the book is that we can be out of the box toward some people and in the box toward others. It isn’t an all or nothing matter. We must relate to every person as individual people. We either value them as a people or we devalue them as objects. I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Leadership and Self-Deception or listen to it on Audible. It’s worth far more than the purchase price. If you operate from a Christian worldview as I do, you will notice that the book is not from a Christian frame of reference. What I’ve noticed is I’ve inserted the concepts of sin and grace into my application of the principles and have found the book’s theses even more helpful.

Here’s to leading better by getting out of the box–today!

About every three to six months I realize that I’m not using my life planning process to its fullest utility. What that means is whatever life planning process I’m using at the time–and since my twenties I have used nearly every life planning tool out there–I’m not using it fully or at all. Just the other day I quoted Benjamin Franklin again: Failing to plan is planning to fail. I know that. I know that. Yet, I either fail to plan intentionally, or I only use a portion of the planning process or I don’t do what I’ve planned.

I’m not saying that I make a great plan and then life interrupts it, which does happen from time to time. I’m saying I either don’t make the great plan in the first place, or I don’t follow through with it when I do. If you have an intuitive feeler personality with an extroverted bent and a perceiving style you may understand more of what I’m saying than if you are by nature more inclined to order and structure. I’m writing this post as much as a reminder to me as a reminder to all of you–planning is a major key to success and ultimately significance for us as leaders. Just yesterday, Pastor Brad, Pastor Mark and I sat down to review and revise our message planning schedule for December through August. We already had a plan, but the plan had missing parts and aspects we weren’t sure we wanted to include. The hour and a half we took to review and revise it will make a major difference in our effectiveness in those nine months.

We will surely make additional revisions, and we’re always open to significant events that happen in the world around us, but having a plan means we know the direction we’re going. We know how we are going to help the hundreds of people who call New Life Christian Ministries their church home come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, or serve Him more effectively in the coming year. The process of planning itself helped me to take a next step forward in that process for myself, and it reminded me that what is important for the local church known as New Life is at least as important for each of us who are individual leaders. We must plan our lives or others will plan them for us.

That’s really the bottom line. I don’t want somebody else, circumstances, or the winds of culture planning your lives or mine. We must take the time on a regular basis to sit down and plan our lives–our days, weeks, months and years. I’ve said in past posts that it’s important to invest a time of planning each day, most likely that will be fifteen minutes to half an hour. Then we must take some time each week to review our week and plan the next that will take an hour or two. then we ought to take time each quarter and each year to review the past quarter or year and to plan the coming quarter and year. (After all, the unexamined life is not worth living, right?)

I know that everything I’ve written is true, but decades ago I read these words from Leo Buscaglia: To know and not yet to do is not yet to know. Writing these words to you is helping to anchor the importance of planning my life in my mind and heart. I’ve done a good job of life planning this week. That’s great, and I must follow that up with a weekly review and time for planning the week ahead on Saturday. That will need to be followed by planning day by day next week, and the next. If you think I’m a little OCD, that’s the problem–I’m not even a little OCD when it comes to planning. If this resonates with you, please, convince yourself to make the commitment to plan. We all know that until our own hearts are committed to something, there’s little chance than any outward mechanism is going to convince us to succeed.

If you’re already a planner, thank God for that. We all know that when we plan our work and work our plan, or more inclusively when we plan our lives and live our plan our effectiveness increases dramatically. Every moment is precious. My prayer is that we will plan them and then live them to God’s glory and our gain.

Here’s to leading better by planning our lives and living our plan–today!

One of the challenges of participating in a mission trip, whether as a leader or a participant, is the distraction that being far from home can be. It’s easy to forget the moment and drift off to considering what’s happening at home, which in the case of being in Cambodia means being on the other side of the planet. I often tell team members early and often when participating in a trip, “Wherever you are, be all there.” The advice is as simple as it sounds, but the results are significant.

When you are on the other side of the planet thinking, worrying or focusing on what’s happening back home is detrimental on two levels: 1) It detracts from your ability to serve or work where you are; and 2) It’s a waste of time, since you can’t do anything about whatever may be taking place at home anyway. In several of the places I have gone on mission trips, I haven’t been able to access phone or e-mail. That has turned out to be a great blessing. When I can’t check my e-mail or make or receive phone calls it is far easier to stay focused on the task at hand. In my recent trip to Cambodia, I was able to FaceTime my wife, which was great, because the face-to-face interaction makes it almost like being there. At the same time, I had e-mail, which wasn’t necessarily great, because in one case I was able to access information that was a bit disturbing to me, then I was unable to do anything about it.

Such distractions aren’t fair to either those with whom you’re serving on the mission or work trip, nor to your family or whomever it is back home that you have the ability to communicate. That’s because you generally can’t “fix” anything from half a world away. In addition the distraction means you aren’t fully present to those with whom you are actually present. The principle of being all there isn’t just applicable to mission trips in distant countries. It’s true of all of life’s experiences. When we focus our attention on the person or project at hand, giving our full attention the results will always be better, and the relationships involved will grow deeper.

We live in a distracted world these days. The electronic devices that serve as ubiquitous points of connection, also serve as points of distraction from the present moment. It leads to the paradox of being always connected, but never present. When I was in Cambodia, I found it far easier to stay focused and to stay present, because for the most part my phone wasn’t distracting me, and I didn’t even have my computer. It may be a good idea to take such a trip if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of how important it is to focus on the person or project before us.

I had the opportunity to meet a little orphan boy named Thai during my trip. Nancy (my wife) and I sponsor Thai through SEAPC’s New Hope for Children Ministry. We have often thought of the little guy, and having only had a picture we imagined what he may be like, but it was impossible to know. When I met him the moment was priceless. I will always remember his smile. I took pictures and even a couple of videos to send to Nancy, but it wasn’t the same as being there. That kind of in the moment experience is available to each of us but only where we actually are at the moment. My hope for each of us is that we’ll avail ourselves of those opportunities and they are many to be all there. As we do that we’ll be better leaders and better people, too.

Here’s to leading better by being all there–today!

Quite often during our Cambodia experience either Pastor Matt Geppert or I would offer some variation of this statement: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape! The only constant on a mission trip is change. Sometimes the best laid plans and the most carefully developed schedules change in an instant. Some of us prefer life to come at us that way, while others see such changes as enemies to be overcome. Given the nature of a mission trip, particularly a cross-cultural mission trip, when change comes a number of people from the other culture are generally watching to see what the “Americans” will do. How will they respond to inconvenience, or discomfort, or disappointment?

For example, how will the group respond to the announcement that while the meat for last night’s dinner was imported from Australia, tonight it will be locally raised–right here in Cambodia? (This actually happened. Small inconvenience to be sure, but there was a noticeable difference in the taste and texture.) How will they respond when they’re told they will  have the following morning to relax while the leaders of the team meet with the governor of the province, only to be told the next morning while they’re enjoying a leisurely breakfast that the whole team needs to be ready to roll in fifteen minutes–including being ready to check out of the hotel–because we’ll be visiting a couple of sites for prayer walking, and then all of us will be meeting the governor at 10:30? (This also actually happened.)

The answer to the question: How will the group respond? depends on how the group has been prepared. This is true of any group’s response to change, which is why all leaders need to be flexible and prepared for change and to prepare their teams for change as well. The three most important actions I took in order to prepare our team for change were: 1) To say throughout the training for the trip things such as this: the plan is to spend the first night in Phnom Penh and then to worship at Pastor Sinai’s church the next morning–but that could change. In other words, we had a plan for the entire trip from start to finish, but every time I laid out one of the specific components of the plan, I noted that it could change. (This was helpful, since the last major change was that one of the legs of our return flight was cancelled and we ended up with an additional five hour lay over in Korea. By the time that happened the team, while disappointed and eager to get home, rolled with it as one more change of plans.)

2) When changes came up during the trip, the leaders responded positively. We would say things such as, “Hey everyone we get to do something a little different than we planned…” or at one meal, which was particularly outside of our comfort zone, I took the team off site and we ate at KFC. (That was a change of plans everyone was quite happy to experience.) Bill Hybels has said, “The speed of the leader, the speed of the team.” When the leader responds positively to changes, whether desirable ones or downright challenging ones, the rest of the team generally will as well.

3) We “debriefed” quite often during the trip. We gave folks the opportunity to tell us what they thought the “good, the bad and the ugly” had been so far during the trip, or what they saw as the best experience they had been through so far. Giving folks the opportunity to respond to what was happening and how they were feeling about it let everyone know that we cared about their feelings, because we genuinely did. That didn’t change the situations, but it helped everyone to see that the unexpected, and the adjustments to the schedule sometimes turned out to be part of the good, and even when it was part of the bad or ugly it still provided opportunity to experience and share God’s grace with others.

All in all the trip was an incredible experience. Everyone did get to meet the governor of a province, and sit in on a two hour meeting with him. That was a major change from the original plan when just the leaders were going to meet with him. While the experience was formal and only a handful of the participants were involved in the conversations, all of us had the opportunity to see how God is opening a door of relationship and cooperation for helping the next generation of children in Cambodia. That was a time when being flexible resulted in a blessing for all of us.

I’m sure you can see the application of this principle to your leadership, whether in the home, workplace, church or wherever. While changes may occur more often on the mission field than in any of those places, change is an inevitable part of life. The more flexible we remain when it comes, the more effective our leadership will be, and the more positive the outcomes of our efforts.

Here’s to leading better by remaining flexible–today!