By Andy Stanley from InsideNorthPoint.com

Most leadership principles are fun to apply. They may be hard work, but they’re enjoyable because there’s usually growth, teamwork, and high fives all around. This is not one of those leadership principles. This principle is usually accompanied by hurt feelings and personal loss—and very few high fives. And yet, failure to apply this principle consistently will lead to greater loss for the organization and much more pain to many more people. It’s like that strange cousin at every family reunion; we do everything we can to avoid him and only engage him when forced to.

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

How Do You Know When Someone Needs to Go?

Everyone has bad days and we all make mistakes, so how do we know when we’re putting the many at risk by keeping the one? One indicator is a “nagging” sense that someone needs to go–and other staff members have confirmed it. Another is to ask yourself two questions: “Would I be relieved if this person quit? Knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again?” Answering these two questions will tell you if you’re working with this person or around him.

Leading Through the Aftermath

As leaders who are called to a higher standard, it’s important to remember that removing someone from a circle of leadership doesn’t necessitate removing him or her from a circle of fellowship. The relational fallout is the most painful. We must minister to the hurt, even if we feel responsible for it. Also, removing a paycheck doesn’t always mean removing financial assistance. In the end, it will be money well-spent.

This is one of the most difficult decisions a leader ever makes. In the aftermath, somebody is going to be disappointed; somebody is going to be mad; and only a few will understand exactly why you did what you did. But never forget that when you sacrifice the many for the one, ultimately, nobody wins. When you sacrifice the one for the many, eventually, everybody wins.

Link to original article

From catalystspace

Excerpts from Nancy Ortberg’s new book

Rubber Bands
One day I was in a meeting of senior leaders at Willow Creek Church, and a co-worker named Greg Hawkins was talking very excitedly. He was talking about this topic of development and he pulled a thick rubber band out of his pocket. He stretched it between his two hands and said, “Very simply”-Greg is a genius when it comes to making complex issues simple, and therefore, doable-”this is development.”

He showed what happened when he moved his hands too far away from each other: The rubber band became taut and clearly in danger of breaking. Stretched too far for too long, the rubber band is ruined.

Then he moved his hand closer together until the rubber band became slack, not at all capable of doing what we hire rubber bands to do-completely incapable of acting like a decent rubber band.

Inherent in the leadership relationship is the expectation that over time, the direction you give will result in progress toward maturity, growth in skills and character, and even an increase in your own leadership competencies. I think it is a helpful and good discipline to write out a simple development plan for the people you lead. And once that plan is written, the best way to implement it is to think of those people as rubber bands.”

The Core of Leadership
The core of leadership is hope. Leadership is the hope that we can change the things that need to be changed, and create what we cannot now imagine. Hope gives us the courage to move forward, the power to forgive, and the grace to keep the promises we have made. Hope dispels fears. Hope readies us for round two…Hope redeems mistakes and prompts the optimism and resilience of a leader.

To lead well, we must possess the strong belief that our best days are ahead of us, always ahead of us. Yes, Hope and leadership are inexorably linked.

The Hardest Person to Lead
It doesn’t take long to realize that leadership is hard. You should be able to conjure up the names of at least five people who make that a true statement. All kinds of things make leadership difficult, but certain people are one of those things.

As the picture of those certain people comes to mind, take a minute to let that picture fade. Because of all the difficult people you will lead, the hardest person to lead will be yourself. Call it whatever you want-the discipline of a leader, self-leadership, managing yourself-you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The journey of leadership is as much inward as it is outward. Leadership, done well, will continually be a force that drives you back into the center of yourself to find out what you are really made of. Great leadership occurs when you understand your own motives, your ‘dark side,’ what you want to misrepresent in order to look better than you really are.

One of the things I believe deeply is this: Leaders ought to be the most self-aware people in the room. Sure, who doesn’t agree with that? Especially if I clarify that I am not talking about a narcissistic self-awareness. You know the kind: The people who know only two pronouns: I and me-no, not that kind of self-awareness.

I’m talking about the kind of self-awareness that makes you comfortable in your own skin. You know who you are and who you aren’t. You lean into and lead out of your strengths. You have words for your brokenness, and while you may wish you had none, you know that you do, and you know what they are. And you know that other people know. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

Taken from Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands by Nancy Ortberg. Copyright © 2008 by Nancy Ortberg. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Andy Stanley from InsideNorthPoint.com

Most leadership principles are fun to apply. They may be hard work, but they’re enjoyable because there’s usually growth, teamwork, and high fives all around. This is not one of those leadership principles. This principle is usually accompanied by hurt feelings and personal loss—and very few high fives. And yet, failure to apply this principle consistently will lead to greater loss for the organization and much more pain to many more people. It’s like that strange cousin at every family reunion; we do everything we can to avoid him and only engage him when forced to.

Read Part 1 here.

Widespread Panic

This principle holds true at every level within your organization. Not only does it apply to your staff, it applies to your volunteers. For those of us who lead organizations that depend on volunteers, we can adopt the view that if people are willing to serve, then we need to let them serve, even if they’re not qualified or effective. And yet we can all tell stories about the destruction left behind by disgruntled or ineffective volunteers. Failing to remove or reassign an unqualified volunteer out of compassion is actually the most insensitive thing we can do. Everybody benefits when everybody is pulling his or her weight and everybody suffers when someone is not.

Compassion for the one results in suffering for the many. Ultimately, the morale of the organization, as well as its financial health, will suffer. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins said it this way: “Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people.”

Counterintuitively, ignoring this principle is insensitive to one other person. When you allow a staff member or a volunteer to remain in a role for which he is unsuited, you dishonor him. In most cases everyone, including the person, knows what’s going on. Failure to deal with it robs him of his dignity and the opportunity to be productive somewhere else. We must be willing to take the difficult step of “freeing up” people’s futures, for their benefit, as well for the benefit of our organizations.

How Do You Know When Someone Needs to Go?

Everyone has bad days and we all make mistakes, so how do we know when we’re putting the many at risk by keeping the one? One indicator is a “nagging” sense that someone needs to go–and other staff members have confirmed it. Another is to ask yourself two questions: “Would I be relieved if this person quit? Knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again?” Answering these two questions will tell you if you’re working with this person or around him.

Leading Through the Aftermath

As leaders who are called to a higher standard, it’s important to remember that removing someone from a circle of leadership doesn’t necessitate removing him or her from a circle of fellowship. The relational fallout is the most painful. We must minister to the hurt, even if we feel responsible for it. Also, removing a paycheck doesn’t always mean removing financial assistance. In the end, it will be money well-spent.

This is one of the most difficult decisions a leader ever makes. In the aftermath, somebody is going to be disappointed; somebody is going to be mad; and only a few will understand exactly why you did what you did. But never forget that when you sacrifice the many for the one, ultimately, nobody wins. When you sacrifice the one for the many, eventually, everybody wins.

Link to original article

On my most recent trip, I wrapped up Management Rewired by Charles S. Jacobs. Jacobs takes a look at recent brain research to address some myths of leading people that leaders may have erroneously embraced in the past. As examples, he talks about emotions versus logic in decision-making. He addresses the failure of positive or negative reinforcement to improve performance. He addresses the lack of long-term effectivenes of the authoritarian-style of leadership, instead suggesting that leaders cast a compelling vision through the use of communication and stories to empower self-managed teams.

Here are some of the highlights that challenged my thinking:

“Using stories to change behavior is more effective than logical declarations.”

“Leadership isn’t about forcing people to do our bidding, but about telling a story so that they want to do what we need.”

“The study reviewed pay-for-performance programs, which are a fixture of most corporations, and found no linkage between pay and performance.”

“Leaders who inspire outperform any other kind.”

“The more experiential the vision is, the more powerful it will be, so the achievement of the vision should be made as tangible as possible.”

“People are going to embrace a story to make sense of their experience.”

“It’s important for the leader to let the followers feel the competitive pressure, but not to the extent that it makes them insecure.”

“Given the failure of reward and punishment and other extrinsic ways of motivating behavior, managers have no choice but to consistently put the responsibility for performance back on their people.”

“In a mental world, it is ideas that shape behavior, and it is the transformational leader’s job to package the right kind of ideas into a story and to effectively communicate it to the organization.”

“The kind of leadership that works is more humble and therefore more empathetic.”

“Our decisions, no matter what we think to the contrary, are made as much by our emotions as our logic.”

“It’s the role of the transformational leader to create the story that identifies the kind of change needed and to present it in a way that is meaningful and moving. It should align the needs of the individual with those of the organization, so that people see the necessary changes as a way to meet their desire to be part of something bigger than themselves and realize their fullest potential.”

“The best leaders are emotionally expressive.”

“The strongest are often the ones who come across as the most humble, for, given the potential for relationship effects, leaders must step down from their pedestals so that followers don’t become overly dependent.”

“It’s so quick and so easy to tell people what to do or to tell them how badly they’re doing it. It takes longer to come up with questions to help them decide what to do or realize that their performance isn’t cutting it, but the questions produce a better result. Questions build commitment and overcome the resistance to being controlled.”

“When we tap into the stories others are telling themselves, we gain a clearer understanding of who they are and why they do what they do.”

“Stories are the most useful tool we have in the mental world. They have a unique power to sneak up on people and change the way they think and behave.”

Link to original article

by Bob Hyatt from Out Of Ur

I was disappointed to read Douglas Estes’ piece last week on Ur, for a number of reasons, but chief among them is this: it fails to deal substantively with a single serious critique that has been raised regarding virtual church. In fact, Mr. Estes not only fails to address the critique, but he seems to fail even to understand it.

So in a spirit of Christian love and good dialogue, let me respond point by point!

First, Mr. Estes asserts that critique of virtual church can be boiled down to “Internet campuses and online churches are not true churches because they don’t look like and feel like churches are expected to look like and feel like (in the West, anyway).”

Respectfully, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, my concern about internet church is that it’s too much like what we expect (and want) church to look and feel like (at least in the West).

Bob Hyatt is pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Oregon, and a regular contributor to Out of Ur.

Link to original article