The 5 Levels of Leadership

November 17, 2011 Leave a Comment

John C. Maxwell just recently released a new book called, The 5 Levels of Leadership. This is not the first time that he has written about this. In fact, he’s been teaching on this topic for 30 years. In a nutshell, the five levels are as follows:

  1. Position: the lowest level of leadership, people follow because they have to.
  2. Permission: people follow because of who you are. This is about relationships.
  3. Production: people follow because of what you have done. This is about getting stuff done.
  4. People Development: people follow because of what you have done for them. This is about helping people grow to become leaders.
  5. Pinnacle: people follow because of a lifetime of great leadership and developing leaders who develop leaders.

I have understood this concept for years when I first read about it and have strived to move up the levels of leadership. However, this is the first time I have had an action plan to help me move from one level to the next. There is even an assessment to determine what level of leadership you are on with people (noting that we may be on different levels with different people).

For those that are serious about leadership in the church, I would highly recommend this book. If you’ve read it already, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on it. Please comment below some of the highlights of this book for you. I look forward to your responses.

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Priorities, Priorities

November 10, 2011 1 Comment

I’m finding that it is easy in ministry to do too much. There’s a “duh” statement if I ever heard one. Lately, I’ve been distracted. There is a ton to do. But I once heard someone say, “20 percent of your priorities will give you 80 percent of your production, if you spend your time, energy, money, and personnel on the top 20 percent of your priorities.” I believe that to be true. I’ve written about this principle before, the Pareto Principle.

I decided it was time to sit down and re-think my priorities in my ministry. The task: create three columns:

  • Column #1: Activities that bring the greatest return
  • Column #2: Activities that bring a good return
  • Column #3 Activities that bring no return

Basically, I concluded that I need to spend more time on items from column #1, do stuff in column #2 if I have the time, and completely stop doing the activities that are listed in column #3. I thought through all the things I do and all the programs and activities I lead. I chose a column for everything I could think of. It was enlightening.

The interesting part of this activity was not the things that ended up in column #3. Those made sense. They drained energy from me and I wanted to stop doing them anyway. I was okay with that column. It was the things in column #2 that concerned me. There were things on that list that I really enjoyed doing. However, they don’t bring the greatest return to my ministry. They don’t move the ministry forward as well as other things. Do I stop doing these activities? What do I do now?

There are two steps I’m moving towards now:

  • Get a different perspective.
  • Take it to God in prayer.

Today, I decided to email the columns to Steve, who is on my team and is in the process of doing the columns as well for his ministry. At some point soon, we’re going to sit down and talk through all the columns and the items that were listed in it and talk it through. I need a different perspective.

The next step will be to spend some time in discernment. If I’m truly doing this ministry for God, then God will give me insight.

The hard part will be after these two steps. I’m going to need to act on my columns. I need to focus much more intentional effort on column #1, stop doing the stuff in column #3, and slow down on the items in column #2. How will I do? I don’t know. I guess that will be a future blog entry.

What I do know is that the process has been enlightening already. I really encourage you to give it a try and see what happens. I believe it will be eye opening for you, as it was for me. Give it a try! And let me know what happens.

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Selfish Leadership

November 9, 2011 1 Comment

Today, I was on an airplane coming home from a conference. I was happy because I had an emergency exit row seat and the aisle. The emergency exit row meant that I had lots of legroom for my tall stature. The plane was almost finished boarding and the row in front of me was completely empty. I waited a few minutes to make sure that no one else was coming on to the plane. Then I decided to move from my seat to the empty row to have more room. I was trying to take advantage of the empty seats to have a more comfortable flight. After I moved, an individual boarded the plan and ended up taking my emergency exit row seat. I thought, okay, he’s in my seat, but I have a row to myself. As the door to the plane was about to close, one last individual boarded. Sure enough, his assigned seat was the seat I was in

Now I was in a quandary. Do I go back to my emergency exit row seat and kick the guy out who sat there? Or do I suck it up and sit along the window, crowded, with no legroom? I had to admit that it was my selfishness that caused this whole ordeal. So instead of going back to my original seat, which I had the right to do, I had decided to live with the consequences of my selfish actions. Window seat with no legroom.

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself and look up to God and say, “You got me!” I felt busted by God. I had a very good comfortable seat, but I decided to get a little selfish and see if I could get more room. I paid the price for that. I deserved it.

This experience translated so clearly to my role as a leader in ministry. In a nutshell, the lesson I learned (again!) was that being a servant leader and serving others always pays bigger dividends versus being selfish and serving myself.

On the plane ride today, I practiced selfish leadership instead of servant leadership. In the end, I got the short end of the stick because I put myself before others. That is not what Christ did in his leadership. Neither should I.

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Moving from Questions to Confidence

November 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

We’re planning a new initiative for our young adult ministry and my colleague brought to me some numbers for a facility that we want to rent for this program. We’ve been talking about launching this initiative for some time. In fact, we have pushed the start date back a couple times to make sure that we had the time to do it right.

As he brought me the numbers, I found myself a little hesitant to commit. Not that we don’t have the budget for the facilities contract. We do. I couldn’t name my hesitancy at first. As an extrovert, I just kept asking questions in hopes that this decision would become clearer in my mind. And that’s when it hit me: have we really asked all the questions yet?

For me, the answer was no. Although the vision is clear for this event, my hesitancy was caused by ambiguity. There were too many unknown answers to the questions we had. What I noticed was that most of the questions I had were detailed ones. Where are we getting the equipment from? How are we hauling the equipment? What’s the flow for the event? How are we working out hospitality? The list went on. We are hoping to launch in January, however, I had to say to my colleague (and myself) that it would be okay to push back the start date (again) to make sure we get this right the first time.

What I learned today was simple, but important:

  • Make sure we ask all the questions that need to be asked. Get into the details.
  • Get as many answers to those questions as possible. Be realistic.
  • Answers bring clarity.
  • Clarity brings confidence.
  • Confidence brings about successful ministry.
  • It’s okay to slow down to make sure that we’ve done the above.

Does this mean that we are going to delay the launch of our ministry program? Not necessarily. What it does mean is that we need to double our efforts to make sure we get to the point of confidence that we need to move forward. Will everything be clear? No. Will unexpected things come up? Yes. But, the more questions we answer and have a plan for, the better off we’ll be. Good lesson for me.

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Resistance to Change? Never!

November 4, 2011 Leave a Comment

I’m taking a class right now called “Church, Change, and Inclusion.” It’s been an intriguing topic as I have been studying with nine other students who come from different Christian denominations and experiences. One of the questions that was presented was, “What do you do when people don’t want to change?” Well, change is inevitable. Change can be hard. As my professor notes, “Change is constant, necessary, life-giving and difficult. Change is built into life. It’s a given.” Many people embrace change time and time again. Just ask anyone who wants to have children. A difficult change, indeed, but a welcome one for the parents. I’m not stranger to writing about change. I’ve written about change before. Here, here, and others as well.

But this seems to be a new question. What do you do when people in your church don’t want to change? In this case, the easy answers are not good answers. You cannot just ignore them, kick them out, or kill them. Well, I guess you could, but, like I said, these aren’t good answers.

The main thing here is to focus on the individual or group that is not wanting to change. Here are some strategies that seem to work for me:

  • Listen to their reasoning for resisting change. All change requires loss. We don’t experience all change as positive or good, even if it is necessary. Even if it is good, it contains loss. What loss is the individual perceiving? Many times, their reasoning is valid. Be open to their opinion. It’s important to come with an open mind and truly listen to their resistance.
  • Focus on similarities and build upon them. Often, there are many things we have in common in our vision and hope for our church and ministry. Our dissimilarities do not need to be an obstacle if we focus on the similarities. Seek those similarities out, name them, and build upon them.
  • Continue to cast vision. As leaders, we must always show people the bigger picture. If we are not casting vision daily and helping people see what is possible, then implementing change is going to be difficult.
  • Be okay with certain people not jumping on board. It is practically impossible to have everyone in your church embrace the change 100%. It can happen, but it takes work. Some people have no desire to jump on board the train. They just don’t want to. Don’t wait until everyone is on the train before you start moving forward. If you do that, you will never start moving forward.

As John C. Maxwell states in his book, Thinking for a Change,

“People are most willing to embrace change when they: Hurt enough that they are willing to change, learn enough that they want to change, receive enough that they are able to change.” (p. 47)

Let’s not hurt people, but let’s certainly help them learn and receive enough so that they can embrace change for God’s kingdom.

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Strategic Planning: Why?

November 2, 2011 Leave a Comment

Twice in the past month, I have found myself talking with ministry leaders about the future of two different church ministry organizations. It all focused around having a strategic plan. The ultimate question: is there a plan? As we talked about it, we finally decided that there was a plan. But the fact that we had to have an extended conversation about it made me wonder:

  • Is the plan clear?
  • Do people know we have a plan?
  • Can we measure our success from the plan?

Although I could say that we did have a plan, I could not answer yes to the questions above. Not yet, anyways.

Then I thought to myself: do churches have a strategic plan? I never asked this question before, but in my experience, I have not seen or heard anyone talk about it. Sure, plenty of ministries within the church or parish have goals and plans. That’s really good! But how does it fit in with the greater work of their church? How do my ministry plans move the entire church forward to achieve it’s stated goals?

I’m an advocate for organizations having and creating strategic plans. If we are going to be successful in accomplishing our mission, then we need to name the steps that are going to get us there. What I’ve discovered is that we often have great goals that are lofty and “high in the sky.” What we lack are the steps that are going to move us from point A to point B to point C.

I think a strategic plan does a few important things for a church or organization:

1. It makes the dream seem achievable. Therefore…

2. The plan motivates people. We achieve what we see. We don’t achieve what we don’t see.

3. Everyone sees the bigger picture. The team and staff understand how their ministry fits into the greater mission. Therefore…

4. The plan creates clarity. Each individual ministry has clear direction on how to move their ministry forward, in line with the plan.

5. Resources are clearly directed. Each individual ministry understands why resources (money, people, etc.) are being funneled to a certain area of the organization and not another. Therefore…

6. There will be less complaining and unease about why a specific ministry is not getting a bigger budget or bigger staff. Why? Because they have the bigger picture in mind. This creates…

7. More transparency in the organization. Everyone in the organization can answer the fundamental question: why?

Strategic planning takes time and effort. I have to ask myself, is it worth the effort? The answer is clear.

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Situational Leadership In Practice

October 24, 2011 Leave a Comment

I recently wrote about how situational leadership was one of the more important leadership lessons I’ve learned in my life. In the previous post, I shared about the principle of situational leadership. This post is finding ways to make that lesson practical. I want to share a couple ways I have put that lesson into practice in my ministry.

One of my ministry supervisors was the one that taught me about situational leadership. I started to apply it immediately with him. We started to meet quarterly for 30 minutes to review the previous three months worth of ministry activities and events. The conversation was mostly evaluating what worked and did not work. Then we spent the last ten or so minutes reviewing the next three months and what was coming up. What I learned is that for each event or activity, I needed my boss to use a different situational leadership behavior for me. On some events, I was very confident and I just needed him to be S4. However, there were events that I had never coordinated before and I had no clue what to do. I needed my boss to be S1 in that situation. It worked really well because my boss knew exactly what I needed from him. This quarterly meeting helped us as a team to make our ministry better and more successful.

Of course, there are many people I work with on a regular basis that do not know about situational leadership. That’s okay. I don’t need them to know about it to apply it to my ministry. What I do when I gather with different team members that serve on the different teams I lead is I start to mentally think about where they are at in terms of their ministry project. Here are a few questions that help me determine what style of leadership they need from me:

  1. Have they served on this team before?
  2. Have they been in this specific leadership role before?
  3. What similar experiences have they been a part of before?
  4. Do they show confidence about this ministry?
  5. Do they understand the expectations I have of them?
  6. Have I worked with them before?
  7. Are they a self-starter?

Asking these questions can give me a better sense of what style of leadership I need to practice with them. Of course, if they are familiar with situational leadership. I have no problem asking them what leadership behavior they think I should be using with them.

Situational Leadership is not the perfect tool because, as I mentioned before, the style of leadership can change from person to person, from event to event, and from time to time. However, I know it has helped me be more responsive to the needs of those that serve with me in ministry. As a ministry leader, serving my team of volunteers and staff in the most effective way possible is the most important thing I can do.

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Lesson Learned: Situational Leadership

October 19, 2011 3 Comments

One of the biggest leadership lessons I’ve learned (so far) came in 2001. I was volunteering as a small group leader for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Christian Leadership Institute (CLI). CLI is a week-long leadership institute for high school leaders. The entire week is devoted to teaching and practicing leadership skills in a Christian context.

As a small group leader, they required us to take a leadership behavior questionnaire that informed us of our default style of leadership. The lesson began here. I learned that I defaulted to an S3 style of leadership. What does that mean? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

There are two basic behaviors in leadership: directive and supportive.

  • Directive behavior: defined as one-way communication from the leader to the team that spells out what, where, when, and how to do something.
  • Supportive behavior: defined as two-way communication, in which the leader listens, provides encouragement, facilitates interaction, and involves the team in decision-making.

Neither is better than the other. As leaders, we must decide what type of leadership our team needs in certain situations, hence, situational leadership. There are four types of leadership style:

  • S1: Directing Behavior; high directive, low supportive. perfect for new teams that are excited and motivated, yet have no clue what to do. My job as a leader is to provide clear directions.
  • S2: Coaching Behavior; high directive, high supportive. At this stage, the team still needs a lot of direction because they are still fairly new, but the novelty of a new experience has waned. The team is less excited about the work they are doing. My job as a leader is to still provide lots of direction, but also provide more support and encouragement.
  • S3: Supporting Behavior; low directive, high supportive. At this stage, the team is getting the hang of the work that needs to be done, but is still not totally confident. My job as a leader is to provide lots of support, but the team needs less directive behavior from me.
  • S4: Delegating Behavior; low directive, low supporting. At this stage, you are working with a highly functioning team that knows what they are doing and is providing supportive behavior from within the team. My job as a leader is to back off and provide less direction and support.

Teams can easily move back and forth from stage to stage. As a ministry leader, when I am working with a team, even though I tend to default to an S3 style of leadership (which is very common among ministry leaders), I must analyze which style of leadership I need to be practicing. I cannot practice one style on all team and expect it to work every time. When I do analyze where the team is at, it allows me and the team to be more effective, which in turn helps grow the ministry and raise up more leaders from the group.

*Situational Leadership was developed by the Ken Blanchard Company. All descriptions and images used on this blog post can be attributed to Ken Blanchard.

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Just Say No!

October 12, 2011 Leave a Comment

I’m reminded of my elementary school days when I was going through D.A.R.E., Drug Abuse Resistance Education. The big learning of that program was to just say no! I’d like to start a new program: Y.A.R.E., Yes Abuse Resistance Education.

See if this doesn’t ring a bell: You’re sitting in your ministry office trying to catch up on emails. You’re trying to catch up because you have too many things on your plate. In walks __________ (fill in the blank of a person likely to walk in your office). This person asks you for a favor. “Would you mind doing ____________ (fill in the blank with a ministry project)?” Now, what is your typical response?

If you are like me, your typical response would be yes. (It could be “sure” or “okay,” but then the acrostic would be S.A.R.E. or O.A.R.E. We know Y.A.R.E. makes more sense : ). Why do we say yes in ministry? Here are a few reasons:

  • Guilt: “How do I say no to a good thing? It’s ministry. It’s for God. I should always say yes.”
  • Unrealistic sense of time: “Sure! I have plenty of time to do that. I’ll just work 14 hour days. I don’t have to go home and spend time with my wife and kids. It’ll be fine!”
  • Lack of specifics: “I have no idea what you really want me to do, but sounds easy enough. Sure.”
  • Lack of priorities: “My main ministry is not as important as this new project. I’ll do it!”

I joke… a little. If I am to be a good leader in ministry, I have to recognize the need to say no. There are an infinite amount of projects I could do. All good things. But I cannot do them all. Here’s what I have done that help me determine whether I should just say no!

  1. Listen to God’s voice, not guilt. I believe guilt is not a function of God. However, when an opportunity does come up, take time to listen to the voice of God. What is God saying about this new project? This allows me to have God’s interests in mind as I say yes or no.
  2. Manage the calendar well. The better I manage it, the better sense I have of the time required to get the project done. If I don’t really have the time, then I need to be honest and say no. (Read here for more on this topic.)
  3. Ask for clarity. I say yes too easily before I know all the details that are involved. I soon realize what I thought would be an easy project has turned into something difficult.
  4. Make sure I know my priorities in rank order. For me, they are family, my main ministry in youth and young adult ministry, and my doctorate work. Everything else falls underneath these items. These can change from time to time, but my family will always be number one.

This is important to me. I have to say no from time to time.

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Moving Forward, Building Momentum

September 30, 2011 1 Comment

During lunchtime today, my colleague and friend, Steve, were discussing where we were in ministry a year ago and where we are now. We were both struck by how people and resources have come out of the woodwork over the past year to help us succeed in our ministry to youth and young adults. In the past year and a half, we were able to launch six new ministry initiatives. We were surprised at how people have so willingly and graciously offered their time, talent, and treasure to make these initiatives happen. For that, we are grateful.

What shocked us the most was when Steve and I started these projects, we had nothing. No volunteers, no money, no equipment. We created a plan and set the vision in motion. As the vision caught on, it was amazing to both of us how things came together. We didn’t know how it would come together. It just did. We only have the Holy Spirit and those people to thank for what has happened.

I couldn’t help reflect on the leadership principles I learned in this short lunchtime discussion.

  1. If we wait to act, we will never act. I thought about an analogy I heard before. “If you wait for all the lights in town to turn green before your start driving, you will never start driving.” How true that is. We didn’t know which lights were green or red. We just started driving.
  2. As we start to act, the resources will make themselves apparent. In other words, “If you build it, they will come.” There were so many missing pieces as we began this vision for our ministry. We knew that. But we figured that we would find a way. And we did. People volunteered. People provided equipment. People donated money. People stood up to take a lead. We couldn’t even imagine this when we started. But it happened.
  3. As we keep acting on the vision and moving forward, excitement, energy, and momentum start to build. What’s so much fun about this time in our ministry is not the actual projects themselves (although that’s cool), it’s how excited the people are about the projects and how much they enjoying being a part of the team. Now we are building off of that energy. Now is not the time to stop or slow down. Now is the time to keep ramping it up because we do have the momentum in our favor. If we do slow down, that excitement, energy, and momentum will start to wane.

Do you have an exciting vision? Just start moving forward. Come up with and execute the plan. If it’s a vision worth pursuing, the Holy Spirit will provide.

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