The Necessary Things

Leadership Positions as Carrots, Suckers, and Badges

This topic has been on my mind because many ministries are selecting leaders for next year and planning for the Fall.

If I had to consolidate and summarize the ways I have seen leadership positions used in ministry three images come to mind:

Carrots:

Major Upside: Motivates students to take initiative and pursue something valuable.

Major Downside: Taps into performance mentality and compromises long-term fruitfulness.

Suckers:

Major Upside: You temporarily calm down an immature student :)

Major Downside: You temporarily calm down an immature student :)

Badges:

Major Upside: Rewards behavior that's ALREADY happened

Major Downside: Hardest to integrate into ministry culture

To find more posts related to leadership and selecting leaders click here.

Helpful Tweets Related to Leadership, Entrepreneurism, Start-Ups

Used Twitter search to explore a few tweets related to my favorite topics. Hope you find them helpful!

Corporate Leadership Development: Roles and Goals http://bit.ly/8mG23iless than a minute ago via APIKelly Gutierres
kellygutierres

RT @rflectionldrshp Leadership Development: Just in Case or Just in Time http://ow.ly/1qtRcJless than a minute ago via TweetMemeAkira Sasabe
akirasasabe

Check this video out -- Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Eric Ries, "The Lean Startup: Innovation Through ... http://bit.ly/d2NFgKless than a minute ago via TweetDecktanomsak
tanomsak

When you create more value than you capture, you do create value for yourself - Tim O'Reillyless than a minute ago via TweetDeckNexPeople
NexPeople

Pursue Experience Above Training--Or Burn Your Manual and Go Get Some Pirates

Training is no substitute for developmental experiences. The best "training times" I have had come AFTER I have stepped out in faith. It's easy to get turned upside down and focus on knowing more instead of doing more.

Extreme Example!

I watched this video of Dutch Marines subduing a group of Somali pirates and realized how much better experience is than training in facilitating development (one of the coolest YouTube videos I've seen this year btw).

Before you go to another conference or take another class consider subduing a group of Somali pirates as a viable next step in your leadership development! Click here if you can't see the video. Thks @kottke for the link.

Get Your Project or Vision Off the Ground--Use Scrum Methodology

The teams I lead seem to grind when we have an important but time sensitive project--I have a hard time balancing the need to go for something big and the reality of getting something done.

Andre Barnes (Twitter, his church) excels at integrating solid communication principles with social media. He also helped significantly with the coding of the RE-Think CCC Blogference. He shared this video on Twitter and after watching it I wanted to share it on my blog.

Scrum methodology goes after this problem (love this): 

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner.

As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.--from Wikipedia

The video is worth taking a couple minutes to visualize how it works and how you might be able to pull something from it to make leading your team more effective.

Can't see the video? Click here to watch it on Vimeo.

Is the Top Down Model of Leadership Old?

Andrew Lundgren shared these files with me that concisely represented two different business models. Would love to hear your thoughts if you scan over them.

First the "Old Model"

Now the "New Model"

Thanks to Jennifer Jordan for sharing these documents that came out of a seminar entitled Finding the Work You Love.

Do You Empower Efficiency or Volume?

This post complements an earlier one on how to diagnose whether your ministry is too big or small.

This diagram ranks popular tech companies by revenue per employee:

 

I've been following this closely because I have seen more young leaders concerned about their efficiency rather than their hours. In ministry I have seen a focus on "more"--more money, more students, more time spent, more strategies, more planning.

But isn't "more" worthless if your team or ministry is inefficient?

One more thought related to "more": the thing that are most valuable in ministry require a tremendous amount of faith, and engender a significant amount of internal and external resistance.

If we are really being efficient ministers than shouldn't we be "working" a lot less, but on extremely significant things?

I'd appreciate hearing your experience with determining you or your ministry's efficiency!

You can read the context of this diagram and lots of good comments here.

Starting a Ministry Tip: Maximize Leadership Behavior

Retaining students proves extremely difficult when starting a ministry.

It's tempting to give away leadership positions to aide in retention but my experience reveals that this prevents establishing a culture of leadership behavior (ownership, initiative, humility, teachability, courage, boldness).

If you are in year one or two of a ministry start-up then you probably have no more than five true leaders (that is someone who has arrived, not someone you are hoping will come around soon). As soon as you give someone a title you are setting up a model for your ministry and thus directly setting your ministry culture.

I've found it tremendously valuable to make people wait to become leaders--the positions that are available actually have meaning to it, and there should be a CLEAR LINE visible to non-leaders about what is required to be a leader outside of personality (in my case it's participation in evangelism).

Micro or short-term leadership roles work well for determining whether a person is a leader or has leadership potential. These positions allow space to demonstrate leadership behavior and for students to develop and grow without a title.

I've written this before but I see many ministries use leadership positions as pacifiers. If more than 40% of your ministry is "leaders" I would guess that your leadership culture is diluted and that your overall ministry culture lacks a clear focus to the mission, vision, and values. 

True leaders are scarce--Scripture demonstrates this over and over. When we pretend that they are abundant we end up hurting our ministry more than bettering it.

Does your ministry culture demonstrate leadership behavior or is it saturated with leadership positions?

photo courtesy of billselak

Do You Experiment in Your Ministry?

"Companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward."--Dan Ariely, from his blog Predictably Irrational.

Dan is a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight--he knows what he is talking about.

Have you ever been in a meeting where there are two or three strong opinions with little to no evidence to support any of them? Have you been guilty (like me) of picking one out of frustration, convenience, or fatigue?

Dan goes on to share this:

"Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies."

The equivalent of focus groups in my ministry is what we have done or what some other ministry has done in the past. This is a great place to start but unfortunately most of the time teams make small adjustments on what's been done before instead of using it as a launch-pad for thinking creatively.

...final quote from Dan:

"We tend to value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action, while questions mean that we need to keep thinking. Never mind that asking good questions and gathering evidence usually guides us to better answers."

How are you doing at asking good questions and gathering hard evidence? I could use some work!

photo courtesy of mgdtgd

Church Planting on the College Campus?

What is your experience with church planting on the college campus?

I have seen a rise in local and non-local churches planting churches on college campuses. I have also seen a rise of college ministries that start and "flame out" within a couple years.

It seems from these trends (and others) that the college campus needs new models.

Here are some questions to start the discussion. I'm hoping to expand this discussion on the CCC Blogference site once I get a better feel for what others are thinking and doing.

Are you a church planter on a college campus? How long have you been doing it? What are some challenges you face?

If you are on staff with CCC: Have you ever thought about planting a church as a complement to your ministry? What is keeping you from moving forward if you have yet to do so?

Have you seen an increase in college church plants in your local context?

photo courtesy of donnagrayson

Go the Distance for Leadership Development

...went through this diagram with my student interns and it seemed to make sense to them; wanted to pass it on and share it as a complement to the last post.

Observations:

Your corporate leader is the easiest person from whom to receive development because of relational frequency and geographic proximity.

A corporate and non-corporate mentor are difficult to receive development from because they can be both relationally and geographically distant.

Insights

Corporate leaders, although geographically close, can/usually are much different than you in terms of strengths, giftings, life-stage, weaknesses. The proximity often deludes people into thinking that their leader is "God's best" or even "God's gift" to their development.

Corporate and Non-Corporate mentors represent the greatest opportunity to develop and steward the strengths and giftings that God gave us because WE get to choose/pursue them.

The people in ministry that I have seen thrive have had a VARIETY and ABUNDANCE of mentors. Emphasis on thrive--it's easy to float along in ministry and move "up" mostly due to attrition.

Social Media has made it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to have mentors who are geographically distant.

I connect with five people that I would call mentors--only one is in my town. I connect with the rest through email, skype, and phone.

It's not pretty to find mentors but it's definitely worth it. Unless you want to skim the surface.