Problems With The Boss
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Personal Development, Servant Leader
All of us have worked at some point in time for someone who at worst just could not get it done or at best was personality challenged. We come into our jobs with the hope that we can be a part of the solution and yet there are times when we don’t see the progress we had hoped for.
I changed jobs three times in the first five years out of college because I thought the problem was external. If I could just get with the right company with a great boss then I would be successful. To my shock I realized that the real problems were internal and I was simply carrying all of my personal issues from one company to the next expecting different results.
These are some of the things I have learned over the years about problems with the boss:
1. Check Your Motives—make sure that your real agenda is to do what is best for the organization and not for yourself. When you make it a priority to help make your boss successful then it becomes a win-win for everyone.
2. Keep It Real—when things are not changing at the pace you had hoped you have a choice to make. You can get your feelings hurt and start telling people what they want to hear and emotionally quit or you can have the character to tell the truth with a respectful attitude.
3. Watch Your Tongue—if you allow your concerns to become public in an inappropriate way then you just became part of the problem and not part of the solution. You should never say anything negative about another person to someone else because it will only spread disunity and destroy team moral.
4. Do Your Job—when we get in the negative cycle not only are we causing problems for other people we are not focused on getting our own jobs done with excellence. We must show up every day with a clean heart and high level of commitment to be and do our best.
I can promise you it is not in your job description to change your boss or even your organization for that matter. What is there is a clear set of priorities that need to be done by a person who is mature enough to stay positive when things don’t go their way and passionate enough to never settle for anything less than their personal best every day.
Work-Life Balance
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Life Balance, Marriage, Personal Development
If there has ever been a day when the demands of work and home have been greater I am not aware of it. The sheer pace of life today leaves us emotionally and physically worn out and feeling empty at the end of most days.
Technology keeps us connected all the time and people in the workplace culture almost demand that we stay available 24-7. Our families are all running on the same high speed treadmill that produces stress in every area of our lives.
There are several key principles that must be in place if you want to create margin for the people and priorities that you care about the most:
1. Lead Yourself First—it is impossible to successfully help lead other people at work or in the home if you are not able to accomplish what is most important in your own life. You should set specific goals in the areas of health, personal development and faith with the necessary time allotment to make sure they get done.
2. Prioritize Your Family Next—at the end of your life it will not matter how much professional success you have had if you consistently neglected your role as a spouse and parent. There are no guarantees that time alone will produce a great marriage and character driven children but without it there is a high probability that both areas could fail.
3. Choose Right Career—most organizations are looking for people who will perform and improve their bottom line. However there is a growing awareness that if you want to attract and keep the best people you have to give some deference to work-life balance. The key is you have to be outstanding at what you do and you have to be in a culture that will reward that effort by giving you more time off and not more projects to accomplish.
4. Develop Life Plan—it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most effective leaders in the corporate arena do not practice any of the leadership disciplines that made them successful in their home and personal life. The can lead multi-million dollar projects from start to finish at work but not take more than 30 minutes to plan the annual family vacation.
When you develop a total life plan with goals and strategies for everything personal, private and public you just assumed the C.E.O. leadership role for your whole life. You will never have a more important job.
Lessons From Michael Jackson
Filed under: Core Values, Financial Stewardship, Life Balance, Personal Development
We have all been affected by the sudden death of Michael Jackson in different ways. Some of us feel compassion for the children who are left behind to grow up in the huge shadow of their father. Others are feeling regret for such a waste of a very talented person who lost so much of what really matters during his life.
Most of us will never have to deal with all of the things that Michael did that come with being a famous celebrity who earns millions of dollars in income. However we all have to deal with the life issues that he faced:
1. Resolve Past Hurts—if you do not deal with the pain from when people close to you have failed you when you were growing up then you will surely carry those open wounds into adulthood. The tragedy for all of us is when the core issues that we are dealing with as adults are really problems that surfaced many years ago but were never appropriately resolved.
2. Trust Right People—show me who your friends are and I can tell you a lot about your character. The temptation for all of us is to surround ourselves with people who tell us all that we want to hear but they really don’t care enough to tell us the truth. These people make us feel good for the moment but leave us eventually broken and empty when the fun runs out.
3. Develop Core Values—there is no doubt in my mind that many times Michael wanted to do the right thing and really wanted to help people. When you don’t have a solid foundation to build on you will consistently make very bad decisions that seem extremely inconsistent with whom you want to be as a person.
4. Decide How Much Is Enough—driven people are never satisfied because they are trying to satisfy their deepest needs with things that can never bring real peace and fulfillment in life. If you are not content with what you have now there is no reason to believe you will be in the future regardless of how much you get.
Michael Jackson’s legacy will be a hotly debated subject for years to come. Some only see the bad and others refuse to say anything was wrong at all. Will the people closest to you be debating your legacy when you are gone or will they all agree it was a life well spent.
Corporate Shepherd
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Life Balance, Personal Development, Servant Leader
There are many leaders today that want to move beyond just making a profit to really making a difference. They want to be successful and that’s great but they also want the significance that only comes from adding value to other people.
When leadership is approached from a Christian perspective a new model starts to develop where the leader becomes more of a shepherd to their people than a boss to their employees. They do care about performance and productivity but they also feel responsible for developing alignment around core values and creating the right culture for work-life balance for their people.
They also see life beyond the immediate pressures of planning, project management, staffing, goal setting and execution. The legacy they want to create for their life and organization includes eternal metrics that must be included when talking about the ultimate bottom line.
The clear plan for every Christian is to use your professional life as a platform for ministry because we are all in full time Christian service. Our lives should no longer be seen as segmented into faith, family, friends, recreation and entertainment but become totally integrated into being one life on mission for God. The various roles that we fulfill are no longer competing with each other but complimenting the calling God has for our lives.
In the end there is only one performance review that really matters. The evaluation criteria is simple, How faithful were you with all that I entrusted to your care? Thinking about that moment should overwhelm us with gratitude and give us a renewed sense of passion to hear well done my good and faithful servant.
Love & Respect
There have been a lot of great marriage books written over the last twenty years. The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb is probably the best based on how our individual needs for security and significance impact our relationship with our spouse.
Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is extremely good from the standpoint of giving a simple foundational framework for the major role that each partner needs to play in the marriage. Then the book gives lots of practical applications and illustrations on how to live this out in real world.
He writes that the husband should love his wife by:
1. Closeness—she wants you to be close
2. Openness—she wants you to open up to her
3. Understanding—don’t try to fix her; just listen
4. Peacemaking—she wants you to say, “I’m Sorry”
5. Loyalty—she needs to know you’re committed
6. Esteem—she wants you to honor and cherish her
The wife should respect her husband by:
1. Conquest—appreciate his desire to work and achieve
2. Hierarchy—appreciate his desire to protect and provide
3. Authority—appreciate his desire to serve and to lead
4. Insight—appreciate his desire to analyze and counsel
5. Relationship—appreciate his desire for shoulder-to-shoulder friendship
6. Sexuality—appreciate his desire for sexual intimacy
One of the very helpful points that he continues to make throughout the book is just because our needs make us so different that does not make either of us wrong. When we assume the best about our spouse’s motives then we can give them the benefit of the doubt when they fall short of giving us what we want and need.
Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the sixth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.
The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best. Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us. It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing. The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst.
The sixth promise is I will not manipulate change in you. This deals with our core motivation when we interact with other people. If our goal in sharing with this person is to only tell them what they are doing wrong and why they should be the one to change then we are manipulating.
We must first assume personal responsibility for whatever percentage of the problem is our responsibility by admitting it and giving a sincere apology. Then and only then are we ready to talk to the person about what they did in a way that will really try to help them to move forward as well.
It is very easy to see what other people are doing wrong and sometimes almost impossible to see the blind spots in our own lives. When people first see our humility then they will be open to our advice.
The Winning Attitude
Filed under: Core Values, Leadership Callling, Personal Development, Servant Leader
Lou Holtz the famous football coach once said, “Ability is what you’re capable of doing, motivation determines what you do and attitude determines how well you do it.” We have heard all our lives how important a role our attitude plays in everything we do every day.
In John Maxwell’s book The Winning Attitude he says that it is absolutely your key to personal success. His list several key principles about how attitude impacts every part of our lives:
1. Our attitude determines our approach to life
2. Our attitude determines our relationships with people
3. Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure
4. Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else
5. Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings
6. Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective
Maintaing the proper perspective is probably the most important one for me. We are all going to encounter problems and setbacks in our lives. It is very important to remember when you are going through difficult times not to focus on what you have lost but what you still have to be thankful for all around you. When you choose to see the glass for the way it is more than half full it will give you the perspective you need to deal with all the other issues.
I found the following to be very helpful about What is an attitude?
It is the “advance man” of our true selves
Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward
It is our best friend or our worst enemy
It is more honest and more consistent that our words
It is an outward look based on past experiences
It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them away
It is never content until it is expressed
It is the librarian of our past
It is the speaker of our present
It is the prophet of our future
Six Ways To Make Emotional Deposits
Filed under: Family Ministry, Leadership Callling, Marriage, Parenting, Personal Development, Servant Leader
We are all familiar with the metaphor of making emotional deposits and taking withdrawals from another person both personally and professionally. When you end up taking more than you give to another person you end up with a negative balance and believe me there are serious fees and late charges involved.
Stephen Covey in his great book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People gives us six ways that we can make sure we are making deposits on a consistent basis with another person:
1. Understanding the Individual—really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don’t know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual.
2. Attending to the Little Things—the little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindness’s, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things.
3. Keeping Commitments—keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there’s probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that’s important to someone and then not to come through.
4. Clarifying Expectations—the cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals. That’s why it’s so important whenever you come into a new situation to get all the expectations out on the table.
5. Showing Personal Integrity—personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits. One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present because that builds trust with those who are.
6. Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal—when we make withdrawals from the Emotional Bank Account, we need to apologize and we need to do in sincerely. Great deposits come in the sincere words we share with the people we have hurt.
Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the fifth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.
The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best. Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us. It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing.
The motive behind the message a person is communicating is extremely important. Most of the time it will not be immediately apparent what their motive is but every time we bring our own presuppositions and expectations into each conversation.
The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst. When we assume the worst we will walk away hurt or even bitter. When we assume the best regardless of what they say and how upset they are we can give them a pass because we trust their heart.
Law Of The Inner Circle
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Personnel Development, Servant Leader
This by far is one of the most important principles identified by John Maxwell in the realm of leadership. The simple definition of the law is that a leader’s potential is determined by those closest to them.
As any organization continues to grow the leader cannot continue to spend equal time with every person on staff because of time constraints alone. This means that eventually the majority of a leader’s time will be need to be spent with the top 20% of their leadership team.
It is a proven leadership principle that they in turn will produce at least 80% of the desired results because of the scope of their impact throughout the entire organization. The leader is incredibly dependent upon this inner circle because they are responsible for providing the best information possible upward for decision making and they are also responsible for the downward execution of all planning.
Leaders of large organizations should still spend some time managing by walking around and maintain some personal contact with all levels of staff. However the purpose of this interaction is for personal encouragement and visibility and not for problem solving and day to day decision making. The leader can be involved to some degree with everyone but they must invest themselves only in the inner circle because they are the key to continued growth and outstanding performance.