Cayalyst One Day Denver

Catalyst One Day

What would a great leader do? -- Andy Stanley

This question accomplishes four things:

2) It unveils motives.

Corporate mission and vision eventually conflicts with personal goals.

3) It reveals weaknesses.

It creates a tension that deserves my attention.
If your a conflict avoider, you wont be able to be the leader you need to be.
If there was no conflict in leadership we would just need managers.
Your words weight 1000 pounds, don't power up, you lose creditability.
A great leader doesn't leverage their title, power, position to leader...rarely.

4) It will inspire you to reach beyond the limits of personality and styles.

Ask it whether or not you plan to follow through or no
You don't replace what God put in place. (story of David & Saul in cave)

God replaced what God put in place.

Leading Up -- Craig Groshel

Why is leading up important?

1) No organization will ever been what it could be without honest, upward communication.

2) Your ability to lead up now, will help determine your ability to move up later.

• The biggest myth about leadership:  You have to be in charge in order to lead.
• People will follow a leader with a heart faster than a leader with a title.

Five Things that Matter when Leading Up

1) Honor Matters

• Honor publicly results in influence privately.
• If God wanted you in a role you're not in, he would put you there.
• Respect is earned, honor is given.

2) Timing Matters

3) Motive Matters

• Don't just point out problems, bring solutions.
• If you have a critical spirit, don't try to lead up.
• There is a massive difference between thinking critically and being critical.

4) Initiatie Matters

• The best ream member don't need to be told what to do, because they intuitively find important things to do.
• If you're willing to do what others won't do, you'll earn influence that others don't have.
• If you're waiting to be handed something significant, you lower the chances of being handed anything at all.

5) Truth Matters

• If your a yes person, you will lose credibility.
• When you have the courage to tell the truth, you will earn respect.
• Example of Jeremy Hurley - 'It will keep our church small for you to know everything'

Great Leader Play to their Strengths and Delegate their Weakness -- Andy Stanley

Myths: Good leaders are good at everything.

    Good leaders focus on their weakness in order to make them their strengths

   

1) Your fully exploited strengths, not your marginally improved weaknesses, add the most value to your organization.

2) It is natural and necessary for leaders to try to "prove themselves" by doing everything.

3) What may initially be natural and necessary will ultimately undermine your effectiveness as a leader.

I.  The Two Best-Kept Secrets of Leadership

A. The less you do, the more you accomplish.

B. The less you do, the more you enable others to accomplish.

C. The Target:  Only do what only you can do.

II. When We Don't Lean into Our Core Competencies

A. Our effectiveness is diminished.

• When you do things you don't do well, things don't go well.

B. The effectiveness of other leaders in our organization is diminished.

C. The ability of the organization to recruit and keep leaders is diminished.

III. Why We Miss This

A. We buy into the well rounded myth.

• The goal is to build a well rounded organization not a well rounded leader.

B. We fail to distinguish between authority and competence.

C. We aren't aware of our own strengths and weaknesses.

• You aren't the smartest and most talented person in the organization, and you need to be ok with that.

• Leverage your authority as little as possible and make as few decisions as possible.
• 'You Decide' - What am I doing to keep people from feeling like when I say that they aren't empowered to do it?
• You develop leaders:: By giving them more responsibility than they are ready for!
• Andy: 50% of the music we do I wouldn't allow.  They aren't writing music for 56 year old men.
• Your weakness is someone elses opportunity.

D. We feel guilty delegating things we don't enjoy.

E. We haven't taken time to develop other leaders.

• Leadership is not primarily about getting things done right, its about getting things done through other people.

IV. Unexpected Outcomes:

A. Personally, you will find it much easier to establish and maintain a sustainable pace.

• Stress is often related to what we are doing not how much we are doing.

B. Corporately, your organization will reflect your strengths but not your weaknesses.

V. Getting Started

A. Discovery Questions:

• What do you do that is almost effortless from your perspective but seems like a daunting task to others?
• In what arenas do people consider you the "go to" person?
• What facets of your job energize you?
• What do you wish you could stop doing?
• What organizational environments are you drawn to?
• What environments do you avoid?

B. Discovery Project: Develop an ideal job description.

Breaking Barriers -- Craig Groeschel

5 Things to Change About How You Think:

1. Change what you believe is possible.

• Your mind does not know what you're capable of.

• If you don't believe something can be done, you'll prove it can not.
• You can make excuses or you can make progress, but you can't make both.

2. Change the way you structure your organization.

• Structuring for Growth:
• Empower the board to oversee not manage.
• Guard against unnecessary policies.
• Develop a right hand team, not a right hand person.
• (The Executive Pastor Model of leadership will limit your growth)
• Keep the number of directional decision makers small.
• Drive non-directional decisions deeper into the organization.

3. Change how you empower people to grow or help them go.

• Give them the gift of disorientation.  If a small tweak was going to fix it, they would have figured that out.  To develop people, they need to be exposed to someone 5 steps ahead of them.

• Making the Developmental Conversation Easier
• Things aren't going well.
• I want you to succeed.  I'll do everything I can do to help you.
• For you to stay, here's what needs to happen in the next 90 days.
• We're going to meet regularly to evaluate your progress.
• If you can't get there, we are going to have to make a change.
• When you don't deal with the weak player, you have no idea how much credibility you lose.  The problem is no longer the weak player, but you are the problem.

4. Change how you think about your goals.

• If you don't have any goals, you won't have any wins.

• Create Short Term Wins
• Your goals should be measurable and defined.
• The distance between the goal and the win should be short
• SBAGS - Stretching But Achievable Goals

5. Change what you believe about yourself.

Building Great Leaders - Craig Groeschel

The potential of your organization rest on the strength of its people.

Common Questions:  Where do you find great leaders?

Right Question: How do you develop great leaders?

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled and ordinary, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

Acts 4:13

4 Steps to Build Great Leaders:

1) Identify talent that others overlook.

• We don't recruit volunteers, we release leaders.
• You don't get your values into people, you look for people with your values.
• Its easier to educate a doer, then to motivate a thinker.
• Things to look for:: Doer, Overcomer, Resilient, humble, teachable,

2) Attract them to a vision bigger than themselves.

• You don't need a big ministry or successful business to attract great leaders, you need a vision worth following.
• Great people are not attracted to average causes.
• A great man, made a great sacrifice, to serve a great cause on a great mission.
• Don't just use people as a means to accomplish tasks, see tasks as a means to develop people.

3) Develop them to go further than they thought possible.

• Watch what I do
• Do it with my feedback
• Do it on your own
• Do something I can't do
• "The local church should always be bigger than any developed leader"

4) Empower them to fulfill their divine calling.

• You can have growth or you have control, but you can't have both.
• High control equals limited growth
• Limited control equals higher growth.
• If you delegate tasks, you will build followers.
• If you delegate authority, you will build leaders.

Common Question: What if we empower these people and they leave us?

Right Question:  What if we don't and they stay?

The Menace, Myth, and Mayhem of Autonomy -- Andy Stanley

Great Leaders resist autonomy and the evolution of a court.

• Autonomy - Self-governing

• We equate success with autonomy.

• If you aren't happy with your wife, your kids, your car, or your church, its because you aren't happy with you. -- You chose her, you raised them, you bought it, and you lead it!

The quest for automoney is dangerous:

• There is a fine line between being as free as you can possibly be and prison.
• Power is intoxicating.
• Entitlement is addicting.
• Entitlement begins somewhere.
• If you don't choose where to draw the line, it will be drawn for you,
• Those are most impressed with you will feel like they can't share things with you...this is done because YOU have not drawn the line.
• Relationships become a means to an end.
• Entitlement is not done by a person, but done to the person.
• At the end of the day, it leads to isolation.
• Once you're surrounded by people who are getting a paycheck, you end up in isolation...no one wants to tell you know.
• Control the outcome
• David permanently undermined his credibility and moral authority with his children.

Collin Sewell Learning Leadership (As a man Thinketh & Interview Discussion)

The discussion between Collin and myself centered strongly around the book ‘As a Man Thinketh’ by James Allen.  In another post I have posted a chapter summary of the booklet.

 A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

Until thought is linked with purpose, there is no intelligent accomplishment.

-       What has been the most influential thought shaping process in your life for the good?

·       Stanley - 'Be Goals’ (podcast) (A ‘Be Goal’ is something you want to become)

·       Some of Collin’s ‘Be Goals’: faithful, steward, leader, generous, trustworthy

·       Without setting a 'Be' goal of being generous, Collin realized he would never be in the position he was today to be generous

·       Collin shared a great story of a man he has lead to faith in another city all because he wanted to be trustworthy.

-       What has been the most influential thought shaping process in your life for the bad?

·       Believing the Lies of Satan.  Allowing myself to get sidetracked from the routine that has produced positive thought processing.

-       How did you develop 'Be' goals?

·       'Its always a mistake to decide what your going to do before who you become'

·       Decide what you want to be known for:  What would ppl say at your funeral?

·       What are the adjectives that you use? Collin choose 7 so he could pray for one each day of the week in his own life.

-       How do you ‘think’ like someone who is successful and growing as a leader/person?

·       Define Success in thinking (Happiness (bad goal), fulfillment, accomplishing Gods plan, etc)

·       Collin had to make a choice that he would not be a perfectionist when it came to people.  He will be a perfectionist in processes, but NOT with individuals.

-       What are the best interview questions you have asked?  Greatest Differentiator?

Framework for Hiring: 

- Every person talks to at least 3 people, major positions would be more

- Each person has a list of questions - loading the lips of the candidates    

- Collin wants to take them to a meal and get them to pay to see how much they will TIP as well has how they appreciate the service, the waiter, praying in public

- ask situation questions, 'tell me a time' - get them to tell a story

- how do i know when your mad or upset?

- Tell me about a time when you had to do something more than you got paid to do...framework tells if they get pissed about the style of questioning.

- I want someone to interview who is not emotionally invested in the hire, be sure to have a non-bias -- it’s their best, which is why it is an interview (expect 80% of what you perceive at an interview)

- What do you consider on time? 

- Tell me about your study habits?

- Discover where people are, and develop a framework for how that would apply here.

James Allen 'As a Man Thinketh'

Below are some thoughts and quotes from James Allen in his book As a Man Thinketh.  It was a book aged well over 100 years and still selling copies.  He has a great story of business sucess that he dropped in order to follow his dream of writing.  You can find his booklet, one of his more popular here on Amazon.

Chapter 1:

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts.

Man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment and destiny.

For only by patience, practice and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the door of the temple of knowledge.

Chapter 2:

A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will bring forth.  If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.

Every thought seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance.

Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.

…not until a man has extirpated every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare that his sufferings are the result of his good and not his bad qualifies…

Suffering ceases for him who is pure.

A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life.

Let him encourage good thoughts, an no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame.

Chapter 3:

The body is the servant of the mind.  It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.

Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts.  When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.  Clean thoughts make clean habits.

To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be  confined in a self made prison hole.

Chapter 4:

Until thought is linked with purpose, there is no intelligent accomplishment.

They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pitying’s, all of which are indications of weakness…

He who has conquers fear and doubt has conquered failure.

Chapter 5-7:

All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.

The higher he lifts his thoughts, the greater will be his success, the more blessed and enduring will be his achievements.

The dreamers are the saviors of the world.