7 day on Leadership;
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Leading up part 1 You do not have to be in charge in order to lead. It’s the biggest myth about leadership.
If you’re on the front lines, you see things others don’t—you have a unique perspective. You have ideas that could make a big difference. You are thinking of solutions to problems some people don’t even know exist. Leading up will not only help your organization, but it will eventually help you, because your ability to lead up now will help determine your ability to move up later. Let’s break it down into two categories. First, there’s positional power—that’s power based on someone’s title or experience. Positional power is not what it used to be. More importantly, there’s personal power. Personal power is based on what a group thinks about a person. Even if you lack positional power, you can lead up by serving up! If you want influence, care about people. Love them. Help them improve.
“Your ability to lead up now will help determine your ability to move up later.”
Leading up can be risky. If you lead in the wrong way, you can get some negative labels and lose personal power.
There are five things that matter when you’re leading up.
1. Honor matters.
Honor publically results in influence privately. If you want to be over people, you need to learn to be under them. Don’t forget: respect is earned. Honor is given. If you don’t honor your boss, supervisor, business owner, or pastor, you might do everyone a favor and find someplace else to work.
2. Timing matters.
Look at the rhythms of those you serve. Value their time. Schedule a meeting, and keep it short and focused. Have a written agenda. If you are going to lead up, make sure the time is right Remember, you don’t have to know it all to be a great leader!
3. Motives matter.
Your only motivation to lead up should be to push the mission forward. If you’re leading up, it shouldn’t be to make yourself look better, or to be a hero, or to make someone else look stupid. Lead up because you want to help your organization win. Don’t just point out problems; bring solutions. Your supervisor would rather hear someone who has potential solutions than hear about problems. Even if your idea isn’t perfect, it often evolves to a better solution. If you have only a critical spirit, you’ll never have upward influence. There is a massive difference between thinking critically and being critical.
4. Initiative matters.
Want to gain trust and influence? Lighten your leader’s load. Find something that needs to be done and do it. The best team members don’t need to be told what to do because they intuitively find important things to do. If you’re willing to do what others won’t do, you will earn influence others don’t have.
5. Truth matters.
If you’re a yes-man, you will lose credibility. Truth always trumps flattery. The more successful you become, the more difficult it is to find people who will tell you the truth. Those who care enough to tell you the truth are incredibly valuable.
If you are the point leader, you must do everything you can to give opportunities for others within your organization to lead up.
Never penalize them for telling the truth. Instead, give them public credit for bringing good ideas, taking initiative, and putting the organization first. Let go, and let others help raise the ceiling of your organization. Saying you don’t care what your team thinks: unacceptable! If you say you don’t care what your team thinks, either you have the wrong people or you are the wrong leader. Change the people around you or change your mindset. If you don’t listen to them, you will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.
Anticipating Leadership The lifespan of your current systems, structure, and strategy is diminishing. The way you are doing what you are doing won’t work forever—just ask Kodak, Polaroid, Blockbuster, or tons of other companies that were incredibly successful at one point or another. If you’re not changing, you’re falling behind. If you continue with your current systems, structures, and strategy, one of these things will happen:
1. You will outgrow your systems, structure, and strategy.
2. You will stall out and eventually lose ground to your competition.
3. The market will change and leave you in the dust, wondering what happened.
When it comes to growing into the future, here are two things to continuously work on:
1. Solve problems before they are big problems.
Most big problems were small problems that a leader didn’t address. See problems early and solve them quickly. Now, obviously you can’t address all of them, but you should be able to focus on something you will battle if your organization is growing. Look for predictable problems and potential roadblocks. A reactionary leader says, “I’ll solve the next problem when I see it.” An anticipatory leader says, “I’ll solve the problem before it’s a bigger problem.”
2. See potential others overlook.
As you anticipate, remember: What you know today may not be true tomorrow. Great leaders see possibilities before others see them. The organization I lead was on the forefront of changing the landscape of what was possible in a church setting. Because of that, we formed strong opinions on what worked and what didn’t. We were considered “experts.” Any time you’re considered an expert, you’re incredibly vulnerable to the curse of confidence. It becomes difficult to listen to feedback, you answer more questions than you ask, and you stop innovating.
Some people talk about a concept called the Prediction Paradox: If we think we are good at predicting the future, we aren’t likely to be. Instead of confidence about the future, we should seek humility. The more humility we have about our ability make predictions, the more successful we will be in anticipating the future. Pride blinds
SHARPENING YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS, PART 1
People aren’t thinking about you. People are thinking about themselves. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just true. When people roll into your planning meeting, they’re wondering if they are in trouble for running late, they’re mad because they’re husband didn’t say goodbye, or thinking about who gets the kid to soccer practice. When they come to church, they aren’t always thinking about what they’ll learn. They’re excited about seeing friends, getting donuts, hoping they’ll see the cute girl greeting, or they’re scared because it’s their first time. They are consumed with themselves, not with you.
Before you communicate anything, answer these three questions:
1. What do I want people to know?
2. What do I want them to feel? (Emotions moves people to action.)
3. What do you want them to do? (If they can’t define it, they can’t do it.)
Here’s a big thought: Apply that to your role: You are never announcing—you are leading. You aren’t just running a staff meeting—you are leading to the specific purpose. You aren’t having a developmental conversation—you are leading to a desired outcome.
SHARPENING YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS, PART 2
We have four communication languages:
1. Appearance. Match your outfit to the message. Don’t dress down for a big pitch to raise capital with potential investors! If you’re trying to remain casual and approachable, though, dressing down helps.
2. Body Language. Grab their attention with authority and confidence. Speak appropriately for the size of the crowd. Move, don’t pace. Make your hands work for you, not against you. Think through non-verbal communication until it becomes natural. If you can, watch for distracting body language on a video recording.
3. Words. Tell them what you are going to tell them—and deliver. Work on clean transitions. Create moments when you can, and allow moments to happen. Speak clearly and repeat often.
4. Emotions. Change your tone and pace of speaking. Use facial expressions. Grab or re-grab attention. Help them feel and let them laugh.
If you are cocky, they won’t like or trust you, but if you are confident and humble, they will love and embrace you. Humanity connects. Godliness inspires. The single greatest thing you can do to win the crowd is to be yourself If you’re dorky, don’t try to be cool. If you’re pushing 50, don’t try to act 22. And if you’re 22, don’t be freaked out that you’re young!
Creating an Empowering Culture
One of the greatest examples of empowering leadership is Jesus and his disciples. He identified a dozen men who he spent years developing and empowering before telling them, “Go change the world!”
We empower people through clarity and trust. We must be clear on the what and the why, but not the how. Trust those you empower with the how. Clarity without trust produces fear and inaction. When you have clarity but no trust, you’re looking over shoulders and causing fear. You hold onto the things others could be doing instead. Fear can paralyze the people you’re trying to lead.
On the other end of the spectrum, trust without clarity produces work without direction. Your team members might be bought in, but they don’t know what to do. They’ll start doing things that might not be important or right. If you want to frustrate someone, give them freedom without direction.
Clarity ensures that your team members’ work is aligned with your goals and mission. Your team will know that what they are doing matters. Trust is the necessary net that results in risk-taking. When your team members have freedom to fail, they have freedom to experiment and don’t have to be perfect.
Strengthening a Struggling team; A struggling team lacks vision. Its team members are down on themselves. Its culture might be toxic. Its management wants compliance, not creativity. Risks are discouraged, and mistakes are acceptable. Problems on a struggling team go unaddressed, and it can feel like there’s never a team win—it’s every man for himself. A struggling team…
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1. Is devoid of vision
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2. Deflects responsibility
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3. Resists accountability
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4. Avoids conflict
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5. Withholds trust
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If this describes your team, it might be time to break the cycle. A destructive cycle starts when wrong actions aren’t addressed, which leads to casting blame, which leads to negative assumptions about each other, which ultimately leads to more wrong actions. A strong team, on the other hand, breaks the cycle. They may start with wrong actions, too, but instead of doing nothing, they have a productive conversation, accept responsibility, create positive assumptions about each other, and ultimately turn a wrong action into a productive one. Here’s how:
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1. Instead of assigning blame, accept responsibility. Blame focuses on the past instead of the future. It’s judgmental. Responsibility is about change. Accept responsibility, and tell the truth. 2. Diagnose the root of the dysfunction. You can’t change what you don’t define. Many leaders focus on the symptoms—wise leaders identify the root cause. Fix the problem, and the symptoms will fade away. 3. Confront the root issue. When you find the issue, face it head-on. You can’t correct what you don’t confront. Just remember, you shouldn’t attack people, you should address behavior.
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A healthy team’s qualities are the exact opposite of a struggling team’s. A healthy team:
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Has clear vision and a defined strategy
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Accepts responsibility
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Has consistent accountability
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Embraces conflict
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Extends trust
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Hey guys this past year I went through an internship with http://mybigchurch.com/ I wanted to take the time during these next 6 days to share with you all these notes that Craig Groeschel gave us and how these notes can provide value to your business.
Over these next 6 days here is what we will go over:
1. Leading up
2. Anticipating Leadership
3. SHARPENING YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS PART 1
4. SHARPENING YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS PART 2
5. Creating an Empowering Culture
6. Strengthening a Struggling team