Leading at Work – Page 11 – Chris Marshall Resources

What Accountability Looks Like: Changing Over Time

As we conclude our focus on accountability, I wanted to remind everyone that overtime your accountability partnership will change. That’s true with all human relationships, since living things grow–or die when they aren’t nurtured. I don’t know of anyone who has had the same accountability partner for more than twenty years, as I have, but what I do know is that once you get to know each other, and get to trust each other the relationship changes. That’s a wonderful thing, because since healthy things grow and growing things change, the change is a sign of growth!

For Bill and I the first major change was that we went from a clear, defined structure to a more informal one. As I noted earlier in the week, when we first started we used specific books to give our time together structure. We found that over time we didn’t need that. Neither of us are detail-oriented men, so we have found over time that we don’t need the formality of a workbook, or even a weekly Bible study to keep us on track. Personality does play into this, if you and your accountability partner are more detail-oriented you may always want some type of specific format to ensure that your accountability relationship doesn’t turn into just a time of getting together as friends–unless you want it to change into that.

In addition to the change in the format or style of your relationship, over time as trust develops you will find yourself going to your accountability partner with both victories and defeats more easily. Particularly if you are a follower of Jesus, you may find it hard to “celebrate the wins,” as Bill and I call it, because it can seem like you are bragging. In addition, if you know that both you and your accountability partner have been struggling in an area, to say that you’ve had a victory can seem like you are rubbing it in his face. Bill and I have learned to rejoice with each other when we have a win, and in fact Bill’s win is mine and my win is his. You’ll know your accountability relationship has grown significantly when you get to this point.

Another change for us has been that at first we were careful to make sure that each of us had our “fair share” of the sharing time. Now there are days when nearly the entire agenda is Bill, and others when it is me. The reason for that is there are weeks when Bill’s plate has been particularly full, or he has experience a major victory or defeat and needs to talk about it and so do I. If there’s a week when we both need to go through more than the usual amount of stuff, we’ll extend our time. While we meet at a time that is before a mutual commitment so we really can’t go over, we have followed up with a phone call, or stayed late after our commitment.

Finally, the prayer component of our relationship used to be as formal as everything else. While there’s still a formal component to it, in that we always pray at the end of our time together, sometimes that prayer is not together. We commit to praying each other on our way home–and we do. We also pray for each other through the week. When we know the other is having a particularly challenging time, or an important appointment or event, we’ll send a text that simply says, “Praying.” or “Praying for you.”

I pray that you have taken this series of posts seriously, and have either committed to finding an accountability partner and developing an accountability relationship, or that you have committed to deepening your accountability partnership as a result. I remember John Maxwell saying, “Those who think it’s lonely at the top don’t truly understand leadership.” What a powerful statement. Leadership is not intended to be lived out in isolation. While every leader finds it necessary at times to make isolated decisions, or to lead in areas that are unpopular to the group being led, no leader has to lead alone. That is a conscious, and sometimes unconscious choice leaders make. I encourage you to go through your leadership life with at least one person challenging you and encouraging you as you go–your accountability partner.

Here’s to leading better, by leading with the partnership of an accountability relationship–today or as soon as you can!

What Accountability Looks Like: Asking Hard Questions

As we continue our focus leaders and accountability, we turn today to “Asking Hard Questions.” While having a structured approach to your accountability relationship is important, being willing to ask and respond to hard questions will determine whether you are actually holding one another accountable or just getting together as friends, Bible study partners or coworkers. While trust building is necessary at the beginning of every meaningful relationship, the sooner you are able to get to the point of asking each other hard questions, the more you will grow through the relationship.

For example, If you are in accountability for deepening your spiritual life, you need to give each other permission to ask whether you have read your Bible, prayed, and applied God’s truth in love in your everyday spheres of influence. This is a “basic level” hard question. It’s a hard question, because it calls you to be honest at the level of daily personal growth. If you committed to reading your Bible every day last week, and you only read it twice, then when the question is asked, you will have the option of telling the truth and admitting your failure in this area, or lying and being a failure in the who concept of accountability.

As your accountability partnership grows you will ask harder and harder questions. For example, in order to move from basic level hard questions to intermediate level hard questions, means moving from the level of activity and performance, to the level of character. You may ask each other, such questions as: Did you cut any corners, or cheat anyone this past week? A yes answer would mean you wasted your company’s time during working hours, or you didn’t invest your full attention with your children when you were talking, playing, or working with them in the past week, or you didn’t show up to your small group, or you didn’t engage if you did. Another question you might ask would be: Did you purposefully participate in any conversations intended to hurt another person’s standing in your company, peer group, family, etc…? You can see why this is a hard question. No one wants to answer yes to this one, but we can all find ourselves engaging in this kind of behavior if we’re not intentional about growing in our integrity on a daily basis.

The hardest question of all ought to be asked at the conclusion of your conversations: Did you lie to me today? While this is a catch all hard question, it ensures that we operate in the arena of honesty. Otherwise, we aren’t holding one another accountable. I know how difficult it is to tell the truth when we’ve messed up in any area of our lives, or the same one ever and over again, but if we don’t we will never grow out of the negative or sinful behavior that is keeping us stuck where we are.

I need to underline the truth we have mentioned a couple times already: trust is the basis for every human relationship, and we aren’t likely to respond to such hard questions in a completely honest manner until we trust our accountability partner to keep the information to himself or herself. The only way we can determine whether he or she will do that is to put ourselves out there and tell something that we have done that is not good. While that can seem brave to some of us and foolish to others, the truth is it is absolutely necessary, or we’re deceiving ourselves when we say we’re in accountability.

Having been in the same accountability relationship for more than twenty years it is easier to admit my shortcomings than it used to be, and to answer the hard questions truthfully, but at times the temptation still exists to respond in a less than honest manner. It’s simply a matter of persevering in the relationship and building on the trust each gives the other, until it becomes easier to tell the truth, even when the truth isn’t pretty. We know we have “arrived” in our accountability relationship when we can celebrate the victories of our partner and tell the times when we really messed up, and our partner responds with affirmation of the victories and correction and encouragement for the messes.

The bottom line is life is messy. The only way to overcome the messiness is to wade in and clean it up. My experience is that happens best in accountability relationships, because over time we help each other clean up the messes together, and we move to deeper levels of growth, productivity and maturity than we will ever do on our own. It all hinges on our willingness to ask and answer the hard questions our accountability partner asks with honesty and humility.

Here’s to leading better, by asking and answering the hard questions that will lead to growth in our lives–today and into the future!

Casting Vision

I have often been told that one of the leader’s primary tasks is casting vision for the company, church, or organization. Casting vision is never a once and done activity because vision “leaks.” It’s easy to forget why we do what we do, and unless we remember why we’re doing what we’re doing we often tire of doing it and are prone to giving up on the task over time. In order to cast a vision, we must be clear about what the vision is ourselves and the vision must be worth pursuing in the first place. After all, if we have a clear vision that is not worth pursuing, the people in our organizations won’t be motivated, and even if we have a vision that could move mountains if people understood it, but it isn’t clear enough for people to understand, we won’t have many followers.

If we want to understand the crucial importance of having a clear vision and casting it effectively, we need turn no further than the ancient words of King Solomon of Israel: Without a vision, the people perish. The statement was made 3,000 years ago and reminds us that a nation, a business, a church or any significant organization will not continue for long without a clear, compelling vision. The greatest people movements in history have followed the development of clear, compelling visions that have been communicated effectively by great leaders.

So what is the movement for which you are seeking to cast vision? Is it the development of a product that will make people’s lives better physically, emotionally or spiritually? Is it the promotion of an idea such as freedom, or of an action such as learning? Until we are clear about what it is we are seeking to do and why, we will never be able to tell others why they ought to participate in the cause, but once we know what we’re seeking to do and why, we must communicate clearly to those we hope to influence to participate so they will not only join our cause or organization, but commit to accomplishing the vision over the long haul.

At New Life our vision (which we call our mission) is To share, grow and live the new life of Jesus Christ with the world–one person at a time! As you can see the key elements of the statement communicate what we are seeking to do: share, grow and live the new life of Jesus Christ, and our target audience is the whole world. We also recognize that in order to reach the whole world, we must reach one person at a time. The vision is so big–reaching the whole world–while at the same time broken down into a reasonable approach–one person at a time. You may be thinking, “Your statement doesn’t say anything about why you’re doing what you’re doing.” It doesn’t. When we cast the vision we always remind people that we do it, because the decisions we make now matter for eternity. That’s why we want to share, grow and live the new life of Jesus Christ with the world–one person at a time. What we do with Jesus Christ determines the course of our eternity.

You may or may not believe anything I wrote in the previous paragraph, but what I hope you see is the vision is clear, and has a compelling reason for being accomplished if you do believe the premise that the decisions we make now matter for eternity. As we cast this vision at New Life people are free to accept or reject it. We welcome questions from people as they are forming their decisions and commitments. We challenge folks to go all in with their commitment and provide biblical reasons for doing so. Since we are a Christian organization that trusts the teachings of the Bible as truth, we have a body of information that forms the basis for fulfilling our vision. In effect, we cast vision every time we share a message during our weekend worship services, because we show how the biblical passages impact what we do and why we do it.

The first step in casting vision then is to determine what it is you are attempting to do and why it matters. If you can’t answer those two basic realities–what you are doing and why–then you will never be able to cast vision effectively, because you don’t have a vision to cast. Once you have determined those two realities you will need to remind people of them regularly. How often? Daily isn’t too often. Absent a clear vision for life, people drift. While a small percentage of people seem to be naturally organized and ordered in their lives, the vast majority are waiting for someone to give them something to do and a reason to do it. Leaders see the what and the why clearly and help others to see them and join in the quest to accomplish them.

If you’re thinking, “Isn’t that manipulation? Seeking to get others to do what you want them to do?” It can be. True leadership is not manipulation, because true leadership pursues a vision that is not just in the best interest of the leader, but serves the “common good.” Businesses that seek only to make a profit, or churches that are seeking only to survive, or any organization that has a purely selfish reason for existing will ultimately be manipulating people whether intentionally or unintentionally, because the cause is not for the common good.

So, in order to cast vision, we must have a vision worth casting–a what and a why that matter. We must be clear in casting the vision, which means we have a body of information that forms the basis for our communication of the vision, and we must present it clearly. When we do those things people will understand our vision and be able to determine whether it’s worthy of their commitment. Once they do make a commitment to pursue the vision with us, our task of casting vision continues to be vital, because vision does leak, and we need to help those who are pursuing it with us to remember both what we’re doing and why over the long haul.

Here’s to leading better by developing a clear, compelling vision and communicating it effectively and regularly–today, and for a long time to come!

Your Culture Document

Yesterday I wrote about creating a leadership culture and at the end of that post, I mentioned that today, we would look at your culture document. First question: do you have a culture document, that is have you taken the time to think through and write down the elements of your work, church or even family culture that are too vital to leave to chance? A great place to start is with the three things you can control: your allegiances, your attitudes and your effort. New Life’s culture document makes it clear that we’re serving Jesus Christ, who we believe is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, so we’re quite serious about our ultimate allegiance. Your allegiance may be to your company, to your family, or whatever it is that tops your list.

When it comes to attitudes, the culture document is the place you make it clear what kind of attitudes are and aren’t acceptable. For example, our document makes it clear that we are not “hired hands,” that is we don’t have an attitude of punching the clock when it comes to our work. We believe that the Kingdom of God doesn’t fit in our job description, so we may have times when we’ll need to work through a schedule time off. In my case, I’m officiating at a funeral today, even though I’m on vacation this week. To me, I’m making the right choice, and I’ll take some time next week to make up for the off time I’m missing today. You may not have that kind of flexibility in your place of work, church or endeavor, but it’s important to decide what your attitude is toward getting the job done.

Another area where attitude is important is when it comes to whining. We have a no whining policy for New Life staff. If you receive a pay check you lose the opportunity to whine. That doesn’t mean you can’t be critical of a process or situation, only that dealing with it includes finding constructive approaches rather than whining. Again, you may have a different attitude toward negativity, but whatever it is, having something about it in your culture document will help assure that everyone’s on the same page. After all, it’s hard to stay on the same page unless there’s an actual page on which to stay!

When it comes to effort, everyone wants employees or staff to give their best, but it isn’t realistic to expect someone to be at the top of their game every minute. The key is to include in your culture document that best effort is expected, and when someone isn’t feeling well physically, or is going through a challenging time personally, the document may address the need for team efforts in such situations, or specific responses to make when a coworker is performing at less than his or her peak.

As with all documents of this type, a culture document is always a work in progress. As I mentioned yesterday, we want to include that we are great at celebrating successes, but right now, we’re not. We’re monitoring our progress and one day we’ll add it to the document when the time is right. The key is to start somewhere and move one step at a time to the point that your culture document offers a clear representation of who you are and what your doing as an organization.

Here’s to leading better by making the first step, or the next step of progress on your culture document–today!

Creating a Leadership Culture

Back in April several members of our leadership team had the opportunity to sit in on a Q&A session with the lead pastor of a church that is much larger than New Life. During the session someone asked, “Which do you think is more important as church leaders: casting vision or setting the leadership culture in your church?”

Without hesitation the pastor said, “Culture kicks vision’s butt every, single time.” I’ve thought about that statement frequently over the past several months, because leaders often tell one another that casting vision is the leader’s most important task. After all, if the company doesn’t know whether it’s headed, how is it going to get there? If the church doesn’t know what it means to “win,” how will it know if it has? Vision is vital when leading any organization, because the people within the organization need to know why it exists before they will get on board with how to get there.

Having said that, the leadership culture within an organization determines what are and are not acceptable allegiances, attitudes and efforts, and since those are the only three things we can control, developing a culture that lends direction to what is and isn’t acceptable is crucial. For example, if you’re leading a business, and your R&D department has the attitude that no matter what they do they will always be behind your competitors, you have a major problem. If you’re leading a church and your youth ministry department or leader has decided that the best way to get young people to come is to align with the most popular rock bands (or whatever kind of music is popular in your area), and to reflect their attitudes and beliefs, you may well attract a crowd, but to what end?

One of the things we say often at New Life is that any paid leader must come “with the batteries included.” We learned that phrase from Michael Hyatt, but the concept is easy to understand. If someone is being paid to lead in your organization, whether it’s a business, a community organization or a church and you have to push them to exert the necessary effort to succeed that’s a major problem. That kind of attitude and effort is contagious. It will poison a culture if it’s permitted to exist. Sometimes we don’t want to appear to be harsh or uncaring, particularly in the church, so we permit that kind of behavior to continue longer than it ought to be permitted, which isn’t long. We hope the person will change, or perhaps we even challenge the person to change, but we don’t set specific standards and enforce them, so the person continues to poison the culture with his or her weak performance.

If you’re thinking this sounds cold coming from a pastor, remember this: the Church of Jesus Christ represents the God of the universe, and one day each of us will give an account of our leadership to Him. (I know you might not believe this statement, but for those of us who do, what more do we need in order to be motivated to develop a culture of excellence in every area of our churches?) That means if we have responsibility for a direct report who is not motivated, or who is exhibiting behaviors that are in direct contradiction to our organization’s culture we must address those behaviors sooner rather than later. (That last statement is part of an organization’s culture, because over time it becomes clear to staff whether there is accountability for their behavior and actions, whether the expectations are clear and will be enforced, or whether the policies and procedures are just pieces of paper that have been developed to satisfy an agenda item in the organization’s to do list.)

If you haven’t given much thought to the concept of your organization’s culture, it is essential that you sit down and do so. This is something that will take time, because you must come to clarity on what constitutes a win for you, and what personal qualities as well as processes and procedures are necessary and acceptable in obtaining that win. One of the things we realized we want to have as part of our culture at New Life, but don’t have yet is an ability to celebrate our wins. We attain wins often, because we have identified what they are, but after we accomplish one our tendency is to move on to the next goal rather than stopping to celebrate. We addressed that during our 15th anniversary in July, and did a great job of celebrating, but taking time once in 15 years does not constitute a culture of celebrating our wins. We’ll continue to address that area until it becomes part of our culture and then we’ll add it to our staff culture document. Yes, we have a staff culture document. More on that tomorrow.

Here’s to leading better, by taking time to consider our organization’s culture and if it’s the one we want, or we need to make adjustments–today!

Leading By Example…

While virtually every post I’ve entered so far has included at least one example of the leadership topic I’ve emphasized, I wanted to be explicit today about the importance of leading by example. We can say or write anything we want about leadership, but unless we are doing it ourselves others will rightly label us with the “H” word–hypocrite. While none of us is 100% consistent in everything we say and do, the more consistency we live between our words and actions the more effective our leadership will be, and the more influence we will have not only with those we lead directly, but those around us who are impacted by our leadership.

I’ve been watching about an hour of the Olympics coverage each day since this past Friday, and one of the truths that has been brought home to me by these mostly young athletes is their absolute commitment to attain their goals. No one could call them hypocrites when it comes to the discipline needed to become effective in their chosen field, or in their willingness to do whatever it takes to win. The challenge becomes the win at any cost mentality they have developed can and has resulted in some athletes using performance enhancing drugs, or questionable or unallowable decision-making or equipment. As with every good or even great opportunity leaders have–and whatever anyone says, Olympic athletes are leaders at least in their chosen fields of endeavor–sometimes the thought is that the ends justify the means.

This thought has led many leaders to forget the example they are setting along the journey in order to get to their desired destination ahead of others, or with greater success than others. We have seen this path taken by leaders in every field of endeavor: business, sports, the church, education, you name it and someone who everyone thought was a great example turns out to be a cheat, a liar, or a phony. As leaders we must make certain that we use appropriate means to attain our ends. I remember more than thirty years ago while sitting in a preaching class at Princeton Seminary, when the professor said, “You can attract a crowd by preaching in your underwear, but the question is, ‘What will you do next Sunday?'”

Shortcuts are always a temptation on the road to success as leaders. While all of us ought to find the easiest and best way to do anything required in our particular field of leadership, sometimes the easiest and best way is still hard. After more than thirty years in the ministry, I still haven’t found an easier way to develop my relationship with God than to invest at least an hour a day in prayer and Bible reading. I’ve tried easier ways, faster ways, but in the end I always come back to the truth that no relationship is built easily or without an investment of significant time.

Think about your primary area of leadership. What kind of example are you setting when it comes to character, behavior, to living through best practices in your field of endeavor? Are you taking shortcuts that will eventually turn out to be anything but shortcuts, because they will compromise your integrity? One of the easiest ways for an Olympic athlete to be disqualified from a competition is to stray off the prescribed course for the event. Whether it’s moving outside of one’s lane, or missing a required element, or using an improper technique disqualification means that years, and in some cases decades of training are wasted.

I don’t want to take anything away from the achievement of earning an Olympic gold medal–or any Olympic medal for that matter–but the stakes are often much higher in your leadership and mine. If you or I stray off the course families will be ruined, businesses may be destroyed, and churches may lose their ability to speak truth and love into a community. All this and more make it vital that we learn the best way to lead in our areas starting with modeling character and integrity, and then learning or developing best practices, and then modeling them in our own lives. As we set the example, we also set the tone of what is and isn’t acceptable in our organization’s culture, which makes all the difference over time, because our organization’s culture provides the arena in which all that we do gets carried out, and sets the boundaries of acceptability and victory. More on that tomorrow.

Here’s to leading better by setting the right example in every area of our lives and leadership–today!

The Three Things You Can Control–#3 Effort

As we conclude our brief series on the three things you can control as leaders: our allegiance, our attitude and our effort, we turn today to effort. Once we have determined who or what is going to receive our ultimate allegiance, and once we have determined the kind of attitude with which we are going to approach the situations we face in life, the final matter over which we always have control is our effort. How much effort are you and I going to put forth in the various tasks of life? We’re all familiar with the sport coaches who say that their players give “105%.” That’s statistically impossible. No one can give 105%, since 100% is the best possible effort. The truth is few of us give close to 100% effort in most of the tasks we engage in our lives.

Knowing I was going to be writing this post today, I have been taking an informal poll as I meet them by asking this question, “So far today, if you were to assign a percentage of effort you have put forth in your work, your relationships, and life in general what would it be? The answers I’ve received have been instructive. Most of the responses have been 80-85%. One person told me he had given 50% and another said he had given 9%. I was surprised by the 9% answer, because it came from someone I consider to be quite productive. He explained his answer by saying that his work was mainly sedentary, and he didn’t have to think that much in order to do it well.

What about you? If I asked, “What percentage of effort have you put forth so far today in going about life’s tasks and relationships?” What would you say? I’ve been reflecting on this a great deal in my life recently, because I’ve found myself not taking good care of myself in the area of physical care. I haven’t put much effort into exercise, or even selecting and eating the foods that will be beneficial to me. I did remove caffeine from my diet again a couple of weeks ago, but this past Saturday I succumbed to the temptation of an Almond Joy flavored coffee. It tasted good, but the following day, I experience one more caffeine withdrawal headache.

What does that have to do with controlling effort in my life? Everything! As leaders, we have the opportunity to set the example for others in the various areas of our lives that I wrote about during the Life Management series: rest, prayer, physical care, relationships, study, work and finances, when it comes to the amount of effort we commit. You may think it sounds strange to speak of extending effort in the area of rest, but let’s think about that for a moment. If you and I do not extend effort intentionally to stop our work, play, or whatever it is we’re doing to rest in adequate amounts, we won’t be able to be as effective in any other area of our lives as we could be. That means it does take effort to rest, and doing so is crucial.

In the same way we extend or fail to extend effort in each of the seven areas. When taken together the cumulative 100% effort we could give, makes all the difference in living and leading effectively. Perhaps none of us actually lives any day giving 100% effort, but the more intentional we become in extending effort in these important areas of our lives, the more effective we will become as leaders.

One more important question when considering this matter of effort is, “How do I know when I have given 100%?” The question will always be answered somewhat subjectively. After all, do any of us know our ultimate capacity in each of the seven areas? Would ten minutes of fervent prayer be a 100% effort, or would it be an hour? Would saving an extra $100 this month be 100% effort or would it be giving away an extra $200? At the end of the day only you can answer those questions for you, and only I can answer those questions for me. The key is that as we ask and respond to the questions in each area of our lives, we will become more intentional about extending the maximum amount of effort, and we will become more effective in life and leadership.

Why not take fifteen minutes right now to stop and evaluate your effort in each of the seven areas, and to set a new goal in each area that will push you to exert more effort? As we do that daily, or at least on a weekly basis, we’ll be examining our lives and making them more worth living, at least we will if we also act on those questions and responses. We know by now that the unexamined life is not worth living. That means taking the time to examine where we are and how we plan to move forward in any area, particularly in the area of effort, will make our lives not only more worth living, but also more effective in the living.

Here’s to leading better by examining our effort and extending more of it in the important areas of life–today!

The Three Things You Can Control–#2 Attitude

As we continue our Three Things You Can Control series, those three things being our allegiances, our attitudes and our efforts, today we turn to our attitude. Many years ago John Maxwell wrote a book about attitude. In it he said that our attitude determines our altitude. In other words, how “high” we go in life is dependent on our attitude. That’s because we can’t control what happens to us in life, but we can control what happens in us, how we respond to what happens.

We see this truth all the time when tragedy strikes a family, or a community or a nation. Some respond with fear, despair and desperation, while others respond with courage, hope, and determination. What’s the difference? At the base of it all the difference is attitude. Our allegiances certainly help in determining our attitude, but are also separate from them. I have seen folks who trust Jesus fall apart in certain situations, when others move resolutely forward. Once again, the difference is attitude. When any situation occurs we get to choose the attitude with which we respond.

That is not to say that each of us will always choose the same attitude in every situation, but over time our attitude grows and develops just as we grow and develop physically, emotionally and spiritually. The attitudes we “feed” grow stronger, and the attitudes we ignore grow weaker. That’s precisely why I say we can control our attitudes. For example, let’s say we live in a community that experiences devastating floods, and you and I lose our homes as a result. They are totally destroyed. How would we respond in that situation? Obviously, many variables determine how we would respond, but the three things we would be able to control in the situation would be our allegiance, our attitude and our effort.

If our allegiance was to our material goods, then such a loss would be absolutely devastating. If our attitude was one of despair, because we would lose everything, then we may not put much effort forward to move on with our lives. We may simply sit and grieve. On the other hand if our allegiance was to God in Jesus Christ, we would recognize that while we had lost every “thing” we own, we hadn’t lost anything of ultimate value. I’m not minimizing the inconvenience, the sense of personal devastation and loss, because in the flood we would surely have lost personal mementos of relationships we hold dear that could never be replaced. But at the end of the day our attitude would be one of hope. The reason I say that is because God gives us hope in such situations.

That attitude may not be the first one to surface. I have been through a number of devastating circumstances over the years, both personally and vicariously through the families I have served as a pastor. Depending on the depth of the loss, and the era in my life when the loss occurred, my first attitude may have been anger, or despair. But those have always been replaced by hope, gratitude, determination, and other attitudes that have permitted me to move forward. Even the great prophet, Elijah, succumbed to an attitude of despair when Queen Jezebel told him she was going to kill him. While that may seem rational, he had just experienced the greatest demonstration of God’s presence and power in his life just hours before. We would think Elijah would have heard Jezebel’s claim and laughed, or at the very least have responded with calm confidence that God would protect him.

Instead, Elijah ran. He ran for 40 days, and all that while he asked God to take his life. He forgot that because of his allegiance to the one, true and living God, he could face any threat with the assurance of ultimate victory, even if that victory meant an eternal one after this life ended. Elijah shows us what James told us about him in chapter 5 of his book: Elijah was a man like us. I’ve alway found great comfort in those words. Elijah wasn’t made out of some special genetic material. He was a common, ordinary man like us. He served an extraordinary God. His allegiance is what made him great. The same is true for each of us. As leaders we must always remember who we serve, then we will gain an ability to serve with humility, confidence, assurance and hope regardless of the situation.

So how is your attitude toward life in general and toward difficult times in particular? Do you see life as a long series of unwinnable obstacles, or as an experience set in front of us by God? Are you ready to face this day with confidence and hope, because you know God is leading you as you lead others? Or are you just hoping to get through the day? Whatever attitude you bring to this moment the good news is you can change it or keep it. It’s up to you, because we get to control our attitude.

Here’s to leading better by choosing attitudes that will overcome the obstacles we’ll face-today!

The Three Things You Can Control–#1 Allegiance

On Friday we started a four-part series titled: The Three Things You Can Control. I overviewed those three things on Friday: Our Allegiance, Our Attitude and Our Effort. Today, let’s take a deeper look at what it means that we can control our allegiance. First, some would say, “I don’t have one allegiance, I have many. At a certain level that is most certainly true. For example, I have allegiance to God, to my family, to the United States of America, to New Life Christian Christian ministries and so on. But at the deepest level, we all have one primary allegiance, and that primary allegiance determines how we respond in all our other areas of allegiance.

Jesus stated this clearly nearly 2,000 years ago when He said, “No one can serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the others. You cannot serve both God and money.” Jesus didn’t say it was challenging to serve two masters or to have two ultimate allegiances, because ultimately we are servants of our ultimate allegiance. He said it is impossible to have two ultimate allegiances. How interesting that nearly 2,000 years ago Jesus saw that the two primary allegiances that would vie for our ultimate allegiance would be God and money.

Two millennia later that is still true. While a handful of folks may hold family as their ultimate allegiance, most people boil it down to whether they are going to pursue God first in their lives or money and material goods. As leaders, our primary allegiance determines everything about how we will go about our leadership. For example, if God is our master, our ultimate allegiance, then we will seek to understand what that means at the deepest level, so we will know how to live out the allegiance. If I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I will understand God quite differently than if I am a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu, for example. Jesus revealed God to be personal in a way no one else ever has. After all, He was and is God in the flesh. His teachings, while reflected in other religions, since truth is truth, are quite unique in their characteristics from the way they may be represented in other religions.

The point here is not to debate religious differences, but rather to say that what I believe about my ultimate allegiance will determine how I pursue my life and leadership. Since I follow Jesus, my leadership will always have a servant nature to it. Jesus told His followers that even He, who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. If I am going to lead as a follower of Jesus, then I will think of the needs of those I lead first, because I am their servant as well as their leader.

On the other hand if money is my ultimate allegiance, then I will pursue my life in a different way. The “bottom line” will be my bottom line. I will always be thinking about how I can produce more income, more product, more material goods, and I will count my success or failure in life based on whether I have the most. We may not be that crass about it on the surface, but if our ultimate allegiance is the bottom line we will put things before people, while if Jesus is our bottom line, we will put people before things.

You may be thinking, but what about atheists, who serve no god, and also don’t seem to pursue money? Such folks exist to be sure. Their number is in question, because when a person claims not to believe in God, that person’s ultimate faith is by definition in the material world. Such folks may align themselves with a pursuit of what is best for them, or best for others, or they may not have a particular concern about ultimate allegiances, since they don’t believe in anything ultimate.

My goal here is to help us understand that we have control of only three things in our lives, and the first is our allegiance. We get to decide whether we will devote our lives to God, to our families, to the pursuit of well, or even to pursue nothing as our ultimate allegiance. We can certainly change our allegiances over time, but only when we are intentional about determining our ultimate allegiance and then aligning the rest of our lives to pursue it will we ever be strong leaders. The greatest leaders in human history have had a clear vision of what they made their ultimate allegiance. They pursued it, because they thought it was best for them, and often, because they thought it would be best for everyone else, too.

Once we determine our allegiance and align our lives to its pursuit we can become effective leaders, and only then. People who are drifting through life from one allegiance to another, or without any particular allegiance may well be happy, many are. They won’t be leaders. So, what is it you are seeking to lead? Is it just your own life? Is it your family? Your company? Your church? Your cause? Whatever it is, when you stop and take the time to get crystal clear about your ultimate allegiance, you will be able to align all your subordinate allegiances to pursue that ultimate allegiance and your leadership we become exponentially more effective.

Here’s to leading better by making certain we define our ultimate allegiance and pursue it diligently–today!

The Three Things You Can Control

One of the biggest challenges for leaders is understanding what we can control and what we can’t. After 59 years on the planet, reading many leadership books, attending decades of schooling in and out of the classroom, and seeking to live my life fully for the vast majority of those 59 years, I’ve boiled what we can control down to three things: Our Allegiance, Our Attitude, and Our Effort. Today, we’ll focus on the overall idea of these three areas being the only matters within our control. Then on Monday, we’ll pick up with a focus on Our Allegiance; Tuesday we’ll focus on Our Attitude, and we’ll finish this little series of posts on Wednesday by focusing on Our Effort.

Here’s why I believe the three areas listed above are the only areas of life we control. While we may think we can control many other areas of life, when we examine them we find either that we can’t control them, or they fall into one of the three areas. For example, we may think we can control other people, specifically our spouses, children, parents, co-workers–particularly if they are employees, or others in our spheres of influence. The truth is we may be able to control others’ behaviors while they’re in our presence or under the influence of the paychecks we provide them, but we can’t ultimately control them if they decide to take control of their own allegiances, attitudes and efforts.

We may think we control how much money we make, or how much resource we have available to us to live our lives or carry out our work. In the short-term that may be true. But as great economic downturns throughout history have demonstrated worldly wealth can be so uncertain. What we can control when it comes to our personal resources is our allegiance to them–whether we control them or they control us, our attitude toward them–whether they’re tools or traps, and our effort in attaining them.

We may think we have control of our time. We can sit down at the start of a day, week, month, or year and plan the course we will take for each of those units of time. Not only can we do that, if we want our lives to matter as much as possible, we must do that. What we cannot do is control whether what we have planned will happen. It is true that when we have a plan, we have a much greater probability of attaining what we set out to do than if we don’t, but we can’t even control with absolute certainty whether we’ll make it through this day. Every day folks with great plans have heart attacks, get hit by busses, and find themselves impacted by random occurrences they could neither have foreseen nor controlled.

By now you’re probably seeing we have far less control in our lives than we think. I’m not making this case in order to depress us, or to tell us we can’t lead effectively, because we never know what’s going to happen next. We must lead more effectively precisely because we don’t know what is going to happen next. When we have our allegiances set on the right people and causes, when we have our attitudes aligned with our life purpose, and when we give the maximum effort to the areas of life that matter most, we’ll experience both success and significance. As you’ll see on Monday through Wednesday, as we focus on allegiance, attitude and effort, controlling these three is the leader’s basic task.

When our plans don’t work the way they thought we would, we must remember why we were living out the plan in the first place, which leads us back to allegiance. When others make purposeful attempts to upset our plans, or just blunder into our plans without an idea in the world of what they’re doing, our attitudes will make all the difference to whether we maintain our leadership or not. When roadblocks come up along the path our plan is taking us, as they surely will, our effort will make all the difference. We do control our allegiance, our attitude, and our effort. The more we focus on them, the more the rest of our lives will be ordered and effective–if not controlled–in the direction our leadership is focused.

Here’s to leading better by controlling our allegiance, our attitude and our effort-today!

(Remember, no posts on Saturday or Sunday. Have a blessed weekend! Looking forward to being with you on Monday.)