Leaders Learn to Love Process

Proverbs 2:1-6 My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom, and  from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Today's article is a continuation of "Did you Get Your Wisdom." It may be helpful to review this post.

If an organization is shaped well, its leaders have acquired a certain level of decision-making authority. Leaders make new decisions every day. Some are significant, and some are seemingly insignificant. Still others really are insignificant. For instance, some decisions can be as insignificant as deciding what kind of coffee to buy for the office.

Understanding the Difference Between Significant and Insignificant Decisions

Leaders need to be really good at discerning which decisions are really insignificant and which are only seemingly insignificant. You may redesign your office and think that moving someone's desk 5 feet is insignificant, yet you my find that to be very significant for the person you just moved. While you thought the person was just being petty, months later you may find that the person was somewhat claustrophobic and did not do well with his desk facing the wall. Your seemingly simple decision cost you more than you ever thought.

Most of us would think we are able, and have sufficient wisdom to decide how far a desk needs to be moved. However, most leaders don't need to learn the art and science of desk moving! Instead, they need to learn while moving desks. After mastering a process for seemingly simple decisions, then you can go on to make significant decisions, those that could threaten the life of your church or organization.

Leaders must take the time to make decisions carefully.

There are more, but here are a few signs that usually accompany a poor decision process.

• The leader thought he or she was personally significant enough to make the decision him or herself without counsel or advice.
• The decision was much more important than anyone thought 
• The leader made the decision too quickly.The leader considered the opposition petty so did not consider it.

As a sub-point, you and I both know that there are people with petty desires. However, you should try to discern who gains by the pettiness. Who is the focus of the decision? Who gains comfort? Whose time, stress, or energy does it cost? Genuine pettiness and comfort usually do go together. Time, stress, energy and pettiness don't. If a person voices a desire that you consider petty, but seems to be genuinely concerned about it, there may be another explanation.

Good Decision Process

Contrary to a poor decision-making process, a good decision-making process results in the following characteristics:

• Although the process may seem to take too long, in the end, everyone is happy.
• The decision usually contains the fingerprints of several people. 
• Smaller forms of dissatisfaction dissipate very quickly.

As another sub-point, review the speed at which dissatisfaction dissipates. If it does not dissipate quickly, don't be stubborn. Review the process and see where you might have gone wrong. Re-process. If you don't know where to begin, start with one source of dissatisfaction; then pursue the fruit of the Spirit in that source or person and in yourself. I am highly confident you will come out on the other side of the process with a better decision and higher degree of peace and unity.

The pursuit of wisdom in our scripture verse today is designed by God to be intense and even arduous. There are some of you that strain under and during process. However, read this scripture and take comfort in the pain you are enduring. This is a very good pain to endure. 

 "Read this scripture and take comfort in the pain you are enduring. This is a very good pain to endure."

Remember how Part 1 ended? What God has to give us is much better than the pot of gold at the end of any rainbow:  

"Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her” (Proverbs 3:13-15 NIV).

Process = Wisdom = Incomparable Satisfaction.

 

You are going to love it.

Whose Time Are You a Slave Of?

Matthew 24:45-47  "Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in  his household to give them their food at the proper time?  It will be good for that servant whose master finds him  doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions."

First, let me thank those of you who participated in our e-leadership survey. Your input was very useful and informative. One subject that many of you requested I write about was time management. As a leader, what should we be spending our time on? What should we do first? 

 

It should be no surprise to any of us that we live in a fast-paced world that is getting faster all the time. Recently, I pondered whether or not I could leave my computer at home and my smart-phone e-mail off when I travel for a vacation next week. Like many of you, I am more in fear of returning to hundreds of emails at the end of my vacation than spending some time working during it. We can't help thinking that the barrage of e-mails at the end of our trip might be much worse than the alternative.

"Now more than ever there is certainly a blur of when our workday ends and our family life begins." 

 Much of our leadership lives are becoming more and more virtual, with the onslaught of e-mail and social media being integrated into the business and church world. Now more than ever there is certainly a blur of when our workday ends and our family life begins. With social media being used to topple governments, no one knows when change will level off. It may never level off. So what strategy will we use to manage our time? Will any plan work for very long? 

An Alternative to the Corporate Ladder

 

Technology makes you more accessible, making time
management even more difficult.

I have a few practical ideas for you to consider. Sharing the first one might result in receiving a few letters, but I will share it anyway. Here it is: if your goal is to climb the corporate ladder, consider instead buying your own ladder and climbing it.

Friends, many of you know of more than a few friends who have become the slave of big business, and yes, even big church. They are only off work they are asleep. Their work has become unhealthy for themselves and their family, and their organizations are so detached they cannot tend to their people. Many don't even want to. In these cases, it may be better to move on, to join a smaller organization or start your own.

Learn to Manage Leading By Following

 

For those of you that have a life, or can actually manage it, here is an idea of how to shape your day.

Focus on asking those in authority over you to supply you with a list of things they want you to do, and do those things first. If a board oversees your position, ask them what they prefer you focus on. Ask them one-on-one or in a group.

 

Our passage today describes a selfless approach. It helps us all understand that following a leader is an important aspect of developing as a leader. This should be not surprise to anyone. I know of no one who would disagree with the following statement, “If you can't follow, you cannot lead.”

 If all agree, then why do we find so many who cannot follow? Even if you are at the top of your organization, certainly this passage also implies that God is not going to give you a larger assignment to lead until you begin to listen and follow His current directions. Don't be a slave of your own instructions.

 

So I ask you all this question: are you following the directions of your leader at work? If you are the CEO, ED or senior pastor, are you listening to your Lord, your board, and following directions? If you are not, I challenge you to change.

Larger assignments await you.

Righteous Anger Management

Today's Scripture  Ephesians 4:6 Psalm 4:4 Exodus 34:6

Last issue, we studied and learned that anger itself can be righteous. God got angry; Jesus got angry; and even on our best days, we can get angry. However, God gave us guidelines on how to use anger. Three of them are:

 

We can practice self-control techniques, like
stepping away, to actively slow our anger.

1. Don't sin while you are angry.

2. Get angry slowly, and don't stay angry.

3. Let your love abound much further than your anger.

 

The first and second are fairly simple, but not obvious. As a leader, you will sometimes gain respect while angry because, in light of circumstances and venue, it might actually show you stand for something of value, be it integrity, honesty, and/or fairness. Show me a leader who really stands for something of value and/or meaningfulness, and I will show you someone worth following. Therefore, here are a few more signs of when your anger is not sinful and could be considered righteous. Does your anger look like this?

 

1. It takes a lot to make you angry.

2. You refrain from using profanity or the Lord’s name in vain.

3. You are angry at the offense, but you do not degrade the person.

4. As a result, you don't take revenge against the person.

5. Your anger will visually and inwardly fade very quickly, even the same day.

Unfading Anger Becomes Bitterness

 

For the most part, my anger fades quickly, most of the time within minutes or hours. Early in my marriage, I could have a heated argument with my wife and an hour later take her out for dinner like nothing even happened.

However, I must admit that, recently, some friends hurt me, and the hurt cut so deep that it lasted for months. Part of the reason for my lingering hurt was the fact that they did not even know I was hurt. This made my hurt turn into anger. That anger simmered for months until it began to turn to bitterness. I became bitter, until the Lord revealed to me the sinfulness of my condition. I was amazed since I have always had the ability to cool off and forget quickly. My encouragement to you is to never take yourself for granted. The devil can get a hold on even what you consider the strongholds of your life. And he got me until I forgave.

Lives that Abound in Love 

 

Our third guideline is the key to all righteous anger management: love. The question is this, "Does our life abound with love in contrast to our anger?" How would you measure yourself in this? Does your love for those you lead abound far beyond your anger with them?  

We should constantly be thinking of how we can be kind.

Our church pastor is preaching a series on 1 Corinthians 13. The resulting challenge is that I am consciously trying to do one deliberate act of love every day. Some take minutes; some take longer. If it will help spur your thoughts toward superseding your anger with abounding love, I will risk forfeiting God's blessing by giving you some examples in my own life this week. I helped some older women connecting their computer in an Internet café; I tried to evangelize in a county fair booth. Twice, I bought some construction workers bottles of Gatorade, and a few minutes ago, I offered some cash to a lady having trouble with an ATM machine. This was not much, I admit, but it was the best I could do during a week when my management was shorthanded and "Murphy's" law seemed to prevail. (This is just an expression my friends; it is not theologically correct).

 

Friends and leaders, learn the art of righteous anger management. May those you lead recognize the heart of the matter, and that is the heart of Christ in you.

 

Measure your anger by your love.

  

Good Leaders Do Get Angry

Exodus 4:13-14a  But Moses said, "Oh Lord, please send someone else to do it." Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses and he said, "What about your brother, Aaron the Levite?"     Matthew 21:12  Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves

Peace, love, unity. These are some of the desirables of the Christian faith. They are what Christians should strive for at home, at work, and at church. They are noble goals that are hard to achieve for any length of time. Some can enjoy them for longer periods than others. However, in both the business arena and in ministry, there is something that eventually will get in the way of your enjoying these goals. That something is us—humans.

 

Our natural tendency is to break union with each other, creating an environment that no one wants. In these times of conflict, what is a Christian leader to do? Do we, in the name of peace, retreat? Or should we express ourselves with anger?

Two Kinds of Anger

 

Our scripture today expresses two kinds of events that caused our Lord to "burn" and physically demonstrate His anger.

 

1. Natural relational behavior

2. Sin in the church

 

Our first scripture example is quite simple. Most of us can relate by remembering a subordinate who was just being stubborn. Moses was stubborn, dishing out excuses to his Lord and frustrating Him to the point that he "burned" with anger. I am not sure if Moses felt this anger, but I suspect he might have, since he finally did as he was told.

 I can remember a time a few months ago when my anger got the attention of some of my employees. However, the following meeting, in which we all fleshed out how to prevent the cause from happening again, went well.

Do I wish they could have just listened and followed the directions of my calm voice? Of course I do! However, man's indifference does get in the way, and this time it needed to be addressed boldly and with a certain level of force. Do I believe I behaved within the bounds of my faith in Jesus? Yes I do. Can your anger be righteously used? Yes it can.

God’s Righteous Anger

 

Let us not forget our ultimate review on judgment day. I don't read anything that would lead me to believe that God will send unbelievers to hell in a calm, sweet voice. The puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards’ most famous sermon was entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” While we experience propitiation (God's wrath against us being averted or satisfied), it does not mean that His original anger was unrighteous, nor should we believe that all of our anger is unrighteous. In fact, there are times when it is MORE righteous to express our anger than to sit quietly, thinking that peace is more important.

 

An example of this is found in Jeremiah. As you know, Jeremiah was known as the wailing prophet, constantly prophesying against the sins of the Israelites and their priests. The priests were letting the sin of idolatry to co-exist with their Godly culture in the name of "keeping the peace.” The Lord told Jeremiah what He thought of this behavior Jeremiah 6:13: 

"From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though they were not serious. Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all: they do not even know how to blush. So they will be brought down when I punish them.”

 

Friends, we need to be upset with sin in the church, even to the point of anger, if need be.

 

In summary, there is a thing called "righteous anger.” However, before you go out and chew someone out, be careful. You might want to wait to read part two!

Are You Lonely At the Top?

Psalm 102:2-3, 6-7 Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call! For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places. I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with a pastor who shared with me a feeling that few people experience, a feeling that had to do with being a senior pastor. He explained that, you really don’t know how being in this position feels, until you are there.

The Loneliness at the Top

While I have not held the position of senior pastor, what he was trying to explain is something most leaders at the top, or near the top, feel. I have been the CEO of a small business for 15 years. I can talk to you all day long about the pressure and responsibilities of business ownership, but you will not know how it feels until you are the owner. And unless you are the owner, you won’t know what if feels like to meet a pay roll or to lay off good people during hard economic times. Everyone thinks the top is a grand place. No one really knows about the unpleasant details—unless they have been there.

Everyone thinks the top is a grand place. No one really knows about the unpleasant details—unless they have been there.

I believe that our scripture reference today exposes what all of us at the top feel from time to time, and that is loneliness. How many times during your life at the top have you felt like you were a desert owl? When you look down from your perch, do you feel like a lonely sparrow? I have from time to time. In fact, I have even felt this way recently.

By Helping Others We Help Ourselves

 

Those of us at or near the top of our organizations need to help and encourage others who are at the top of theirs. By God's grace, I have been able to help others even in the midst of  my own loneliness. Read the following message I received this month (which I have permission to share with you.

Ron, 
As I think about the past few months since 'meeting you' on-line, experiencing the leadership assessment and personal coaching as a leader who works with leaders, and those who will, these thoughts come to mind. 

For some strange reason, loneliness seems to be a part of leadership. Certainly it has been a part of my experience as leader in a wide variety of situations. Recently, in a time of questioning my role, my value a church-staff person, of wondering HOW I could be of real help to my new context as Coordinator of Leadership Development, of feeling somehow disconnected from the heart of things in a new congregation, I stumbled one night upon TheChristianleader.org.

  I really expected no or little response to my query, but you responded quickly and allowed me to speak, even pour out my heart. The resulting Personal Assessment was interesting and helpful to me.   The coaching times helped me see my value to our present church situation.

The results are unfolding, to be sure, and there is a level of excitement and joy, even anticipation of more to come, as we mentor leaders to tackle new horizons. It’s great to be affirmed in your calling and learn once again that what the Lord Jesus spoke into your life has not changed. 'Feed my sheep, tend my lambs.'  He still means to use the gifts He has given, for the good of all. 

And it is even a greater JOY to affirm others!

P. Allison
Nova Scotia, Canada

Are you lonely as a leader? Sometimes the best thing you can do to fight that loneliness is to help someone else who is also lonely at the top.

How is Your Success Defined?

Nehemiah 1:11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man." Now I was cupbearer to the king.

What aspect of life, if not examined properly, will produce in us the wrong theology and practice of leadership? There are probably more, but I would suggest that the study of successful leadership causes the most problems. Let's start by looking at Dictionary.Com's first three definitions of the word “success.”

1. The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors

2. The attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like

3. A successful performance or achievement

Now add the word leadership, and then try to measure the success of Jesus’ leadership life. Was Jesus a success or failure as a leader?

By the above criteria, most would agree that He looked like a failure. Read page 88 and 89 of Christian author Scott Rodin’s book The Steward Leader, and you will be sure that Jesus' leadership life WAS a failure. (By the way, I loved every other page of this book; buy it!) Rodin believes that Jesus came to save sinners, but in doing so IS NOT the model for every aspect of life, especially leadership.

Was Christ a Successful Leader?

In order to follow Christ, we need to re-define our idea of successful
leadership.

If you look closely at the phrase "successful leadership," it is no wonder that there is debate about whether Jesus belongs among the rank of successful leaders. We simply cannot use principles and methods that Jesus used to lead because our minds are imbedded with a definition of success that presents us with pictures of worldly achievement that Christ did not attain. In the process, we have transformed the phrase "successful Christian leadership" into an oxymoron. We cannot be “successful” Christian leaders because the world and Jesus defined success in very different ways! But because we define Christian leadership this way, we look everywhere but the life of Christ for leadership models.

Why do we Christians, who are supposed to be acting as “little Christs,” look outside of our ideal for leadership guidance? I suggest that one reason is because we don't desire the end result of Jesus' life, and that my friends might be literally having "something to die for.”

 You see, by the world's definition of success, Jesus' death represented total leadership failure. Expose yourself too long to that worldview, and you will begin to feel the same way.

 In reality, Jesus' death was the total successful fulfillment of His mission, yet his leadership is largely unrecognized. To recognize this, we just need to define success as receiving God's favor, not man’s. Only then can we take it to the next level and study what, if anything, Jesus wants leaders to know about their own "recognition.”

"If you think prosperity is requirement of success, you will never examine the life of Christ in your pursuit of  “successful leadership."

Prosperity & Success

Now do not be confused or misunderstand me. I am talking about leadership, not a successful business, church or organization. There are many moral, spiritual and good things to achieve that will bring a level of wealth and prosperity to a person or organization. Prosperity in Godly terms is not a measurement for successful leadership. It could be a sign of it, but it is not a requirement.

If you think prosperity is requirement of success, you will never examine the life of Christ in your pursuit of  “successful leadership.” Instead of looking for prosperity, we need to ask and answer this question: does God intend to teach us something new about leadership if we just study the life of Jesus a bit more? The answer is very important. The answer has a lot to do with what we believe success really is. It has everything to do with which way we seek to learn about leadership.

I am not done studying this aspect of leadership yet, but I am confident of one thing: if you continue to pursue a leadership life full of "the favorable termination of your attempts and endeavors" that help you attain "wealth, position, honors or the like,” you will always be in the pursuit of a great "performance or achievement.” People may, and probably will, enjoy what they see but you will fail in Christian leadership.

Do You Have a Problem with Excellence?

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (24) The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

My wife and I are different in our personal approaches to excellence. She is as close to a perfectionist as you can get, and I am an entrepreneur and business-minded production person, closely monitoring the return on expended energy. Today, I’ll filter these attributes through scripture and discuss how each of them affects your life as a Christian leader.

Raking leaves gives a good example of how we put these attributes into practice. When my wife rakes leaves, she will get into the corners of our 1 1⁄2 acres and spend whatever time it takes to get a result she can find satisfaction with, usually down to the last leaf. I, on the other hand, see that 25% of the leaves are still in the trees. I know many of them will fall tomorrow. In fact, within hours, the yard might have a new coat of leaves, whether that coat be thick or sparse. With that in mind, I hop on our tractor and mow/mulch as many as possible, holding back on putting forth my best leaf-raking effort until the trees are empty. I think she frowns on me from inside the house. When the situation is reversed, I wonder why she "wastes" so much energy. I think excellence is great—when it is needed.

How Much Excellence is Enough?

Ponder with me for a moment this question for Christian leaders: When should we require excellence from those we lead? When should we encourage it? When should we replace someone who is falling short of expectations?

Before I go any further, let me exclude a portion of society (or your followers) that I am not talking about. These are the people who will always be unemployed. They do not want to work or follow instructions, and some are just plain lazy. In your church, there may be a segment of volunteers who, frankly, are not believers and who don’t take their ministry seriously. These will never reach their full potential no matter how you lead.

No, I am talking about your average follower or employee who needs good leadership to produce work that reflects the next level of quality for them, while simultaneously supplying you with a level of quality that will sustain the purpose of your organization. I would suggest to you, that within this context, we require from those we lead the same level of perfection or excellence that God requires of us.

The Perfection that God Requires of Us

If you believe in progressive sanctification, a life that increasingly reflects the life of Christ, you know that we will never achieve our perfection until Jesus returns, when "our whole spirit, soul and body is found blameless.” Theologically, this takes place first by being "justified,” being declared righteous when we were not, then through the continual transforming work of the Holy Spirit. Finally, it occurs all because of the grace of God. In a lifetime wherein we, especially us leaders, will always fall short, the Holy Spirit keeps inspiring us to be sanctified to the next level of our leadership ability. I would suggest to you that without the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit, you would cease to be a leader immediately. The pain of always falling short of excellence would be debilitating.

In the same way, when leaders are given the spiritual gift of leadership, they are also given the ability to continue to sustain their followers, while hopefully demanding of themselves a certain level of excellence. Leaders who observe and are conscious of their followers’ attitudes toward quality, and who work toward improving those very attitudes, will be much more effective in progressing their followers to the next level of excellence, inspiring management skills.

"May the ministry leader realize that, ultimately,
he or she is responsible for helping grown people,
not things, into the likeness of Christ."

A good leader does things to improve the followers’ "beliefs" about quality. If you demand quality, it only reveals that you and those you lead think differently about quality. Keep demanding from those you lead and you will lose respect; your environment will be a strain to work in, and people will eventually leave.


Which kind of leader are you?

So is my wife's raking excellence better than mine? I would say both are valid. While my wife demands a level of perfection from her own work, I, as the family leader, don't drag her down by explaining to her how her energy could have been better used.

The trees in our yard are now almost barren of leaves. Recently, I mowed, raked and burned my final pile of leaves. While many leaves have now blown back into our yard from our neighbors’ yards, last week you could not see a single one of them under the new coat of snow. It was then that we both thought the yard looked perfect. Only God could bring perfection to our yard.

I suspect we would agree that, in this journey of "excellence sanctification,” we all will welcome that ultimate day of "perfection.” Until then, may I encourage the business leader reading this to stress a level of quality that "exceeds the competition”? And may the ministry leader realize that, ultimately, he or she is responsible for helping grow people, not things, into the likeness of Christ.