Faith Venture

Would you follow the leadership of someone who is consistent, has a consistent message, who keeps confidentialities? Or a micro-manager who manipulates, cannot make a decision, is emotionally volatile?

The second (and last, really) good point Simon Sinek makes in his book “Start with Why” is the value of trust.

He uses two stories from the airline industry–Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and Gordon Bethune of Continental (now United). He also uses the examples without the irony of time.

Kelleher posited the notion “that it is the company’s responsibility to look after the employees first. Happy employees ensure happy customers, he said. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders–in that order.”

Bethune shared that notion. When he became CEO in 1994, he said, “I could see Continental’s biggest problem the second I walked in the door. It was a crummy place to work. You can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work.”

And Bethune succeeded. (Note: I fly Continental/United, in fact I’m Premier Platinum this year.) The company’s performance improved dramatically and it was a good enough place to work that a loyal passenger like me noticed.

But… The board of directors eventually decided that they needed a cost cutter CEO and moved Bethune to retirement and brought in a finance guy (I call them “bean counters”) Larry Kellner. It didn’t take an entire year for him to begin to reverse all the policies and attitudes that made Bethune successful. He was succeeded by a mergers and acquisitions attorney Jeff Smisek when the board moved toward a merger/acquisition with United–a failed airline that was as bad as Bethune’s “crummy place to work.” And Smisek drove employee attitudes further down. Although neither could succeed in making it as bad as United.

Trust takes time to build. It can be destroyed in an instant.

When you are building a team in your church, parish or organization, better to study Bethune and Kelleher (same story with Sam Walton and his successors, by the way).

And for Biblical inspiration, study Nehemiah. He was a leader.

Great leaders inspire by communicating why the organization exists. So says Simon Sinek in his book, “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action.” Actually the book is surprisingly poorly written–should have been an article, rather than a book. Or, yet, it’s better as a short talk–as his appearance at the TED Talks generated millions of views.

His idea is insightful. Why do you work in the church? In fact, why do you work anywhere? If you are a leader in your church, why does your function exist?

I was reflecting on Paul’s letters–yep, all of them. He was the consummate organizer. Think about it. He had a “why”.

Micromanaging kills enthusiasm. Just filling a spot in a program kills enthusiasm. Just heard a story about a many who was moved by guilt and other manipulative tactics to take on leadership of a children’s class at church. He really didn’t like working with kids. He really wasn’t a teacher. Although a successful businessman, he failed miserably as a children’s teacher. He didn’t have a “why”, just a “what” that was filling a spot and reading the curriculum.

This week, define your why. If it doesn’t inspire, find something that does.

You volunteer to work for an organization–say a church or charity. You work somewhere to earn money to live. If you are a leader, especially of a church or charitable organization, you find yourself constantly recruiting to fill positions.

One of the talks I listened to while working out this week was by a senior pastor of a large church. He was talking about some techniques a pastor might use to recruit people to fill positions in the church. He might use guilt, for example. Or peer pressure.

Then I had another conversation this week about church leadership. She told me that she’s discovered that church leaders must begin with a foundation in the Holy Spirit. Only then can you feel called to serve. She was on to something. Manipulation only works in the short term and eventually breeds an environment of people doing what they don’t want to do only out of a sense of being talked into it. Not much moving of the Spirit there.

I have begun reading Simon Sinek’s book, “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action.” I’ve watched his TED Talk. It’s powerful. Last night I read, “There are a few leaders who chose to inspire rather than manipulate in order to motivate people.”

His emphasis seemed to be on “a few” as in “not many” or “not nearly enough.”

Manipulation may be conscious or it may be just a person’s life orientation. Maybe the leader doesn’t know why, either. Sinek talks about What an organization does (which most people know), How an organization does What (which many people know), and Why an organization exists (which few people seem to know and can articulate).

A friend of mine recently wrote on his blog asking why people join professional associations.

I’d ask in this context, Why do you volunteer for church or charity work? When you recruit and lead, do you know Why your organization does what it does? Can you be passionate about doing what you do if you don’t know Why?

One of the twelve regular readers of this blog mentioned she liked it when I discuss leadership. I started thinking about this last night as I was refereeing a soccer (football for my international readers) match played by 16-17 year old boys.

Ever watch youth soccer–or other youth sports, for that matter? Look at the coach and look at the team. What I’ve seen countless times is that the team can take on certain personality traits from the coach. Particularly if the traits are negative. If you get a coach that whines and complains constantly, usually you’ll get a team that whines and complains constantly. If you get a coach who is more even-tempered (or knowledgeable), you get at most only one or two kids on the team who need to “act out” as psychologists love to put it these days.

What about other leadership? If the leaders are dysfunctional, don’t you usually see a dysfunctional organization? If the leaders are on a power trip, don’t you see either politics or angst among the people in the organization?

The problem with choosing Jesus as your leader is that he had no fault. He modeled his teaching. Just like Paul kept modeling what a perfect church would look like. But with Jesus, about as close as we get to seeing him acting human was when he cursed the fig tree between Bethany and Jerusalem just before he was killed. That must have been so surprising to his followers that they retold the story enough to get it written in the Gospels.

With Jesus as the leader, we have no excuses. He wasn’t dysfunctional. He didn’t whine and complain. He wasn’t on a power trip.

Now, if we could just be like him.

Sorry I missed the Tuesday installment. Only had a couple of reprimands, though. With all the travel I do, I am never able to achieve a good routine. It was a great day for my professional side, though.

I’m thinking again about the post I wrote from <a href=”http://www.northpoint.org/podcasts”>Andy Stanley’s latest leadership podcast</a>. He was talking about leadership through change in an organization. These ideas also fit us on a personal level.

Remember he talked about having a mission/vision, model and doing or outcome. In our personal life, as well as organizational leadership, we need to cultivate these things.

Do you have a personal mission? A vision of what you want to be when you grow up? As crazy as this may seem, from my youth I had a vision of myself growing old gracefully. Achieving a level of fitness. Keeping mentally sharp and perpetually curious. Add some darn good genes, and few people meet me and suspect my age (which I’m not sharing). I have others. Always wanted to write. I do that. Help others, especially young people and older people. Anyway, you get the idea. What’s yours?

I once heard a story about modeling. Just as I’ve been talking lately about how Paul describes what a good church looks like, we need to describe to ourselves what we should be like in our thoughts and actions. There is a story about a top football (American style) athelete, Herschel Walker. He was a fabulous running back in both college and in the pros. Athletes watch lots of videos. At the high levels–of themselves. Often with coaches criticizing how they performed. In Walker’s case, he watched only his good runs. They were then thoroughly embedded in his mind so that when he was called on to perform, his brain was progammed to do the right thing.

Just so, we need to program our minds and bodies to do the right thing so that when the opportunity arises for us to act, think and talk, we can do so in an appropriate way.

In Andy Stanley’s latest leadership podcast, he discussed leading through change. Many of you are involved in leadership roles at work. His thoughts are just as valuable there as in your leadership roles within your faith community.

He always goes back to lessons learned from Nehemiah. Leadership can be studied in three phases. Mission/vision, model, product/program. The leader must be on a mission with a vision of the objective. The leader will communicate that vision. Then the product or program must be worked on to achieve the vision.

The key question as you are working down from vision to doing is “What is the best way to …?”

Stanley is very bright, but he may be perhaps a bit optimistic about the business world. He said that in business it’s pretty simple. If it doesn’t sell, they quit selling it. They move on to something that will sell. Sadly, I’ve experienced businesses that stubbornly cling on, trying to sell something that the market doesn’t want. Just like the church leaders he discusses who, when a program doesn’t seem to be working, seek to blame it on external forces rather than changing the program to something that works better.

That’s where Stanley says you’ll run into the most resistance to change. At the “doing” level. When you ask people to change what they do every day, they get resistant and can fall back into old habits. We don’t have people signing up for the mission to women in Tijuana? Some say let’s keep trying. Others say, we need to do it differently. The ministry to youth doesn’t seem to be clicking? Instead of saying, “It’s just kids today,” say, “What would be a better way?” But then people have to change what they do during the preparation and “class” times.

People really won’t change how they do things until they are shown that there is a better way. Getting some small successes along the way reinforces the new “habit” and progress happens.

Communicate your vision. Lead people into changing the way they do things. Move your organization forward.

I’ve just returned from a business trip, and I’ve been thinking about leadership. Had a chance to see the foremost leader in the industry segment that I cover in my “other life,” and also saw the results of that leadership in the people of a multi-billion dollar company.

So I began to think about leadership within the faith community as a spiritual practice or discipline. Are you a leader? Small group or major church, there are many leaders. In my years of involvement, I’ve seen leaders succeed and fail. I’ve seen some start fast and then lose momentum and falter.

What if we all sometimes stepped back from our busy lives and reflected upon our own experiences and attitudes? What are our motivations? Have we even considered that? Are we just in a leadership role because someone asked us to take on a job?

Leadership as a spiritual practice involves consciously aligning our vision of where to lead with our spiritual calling. Leadership as a spiritual practice involves valuing the people on the team (or even building a team) and valuing those whom you are serving.

I recorded this podcast about leadership. It was targeted to my readership on manufacturing and automation, but I suddenly realized its relevance for this readership, too. I am on iTunes, although these podcasts are all about manufacturing. Perhaps I’ll start another series for this audience.