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Four steps of effective teams

February 15, 2012 in Leadership, Life, Politics with 4 Comments

Having been able to humbly serve on some incredibly talented teams and learn from some of the best leaders around, I want to share some steps I believe make teams great. Every team is faced with a few levels of growth  in order to begin to develop and move towards becoming great. These basic stepping stones are, fundamental in nature, for example, setting expectations. If you have a new hire, some ground rules should be, how long should a person take in responding to emails, what is expected of them to get done within a certain amount of time, these are considered basic expectations so everyone knows the how to roll. These keep the organization functioning smoothly but what about teams, leaders?

How does a team, already living out the values, chasing vision and upholding core beliefs go to the next level? The following steps are not the only steps but I do believe that this particular order of steps, help teams achieve greatness.

1. Ownership - The first step towards greatness starts with a person taking full ownership of their responsibilities and roles, without depending on someone else. Until a person can own up to their contribution and hold themselves accountable to the standard, the team will not take off the ground. Everyone needs to get to a place where they realize they don’t have a job, they have a responsibility to themselves and to the rest of the team. Remember the B.E.D. Principle= (Don’t BLAME others/Don’t make EXCUSES/Don’t DENY your part in it)

2. Leadership- The second step is getting people to lead themselves, getting team members to think on their own. The worse scenario is for talented people to just be waiting around for the opinion of one person. That is called a lid, or a bottle neck. Talented people can think, they need to be thinking and responding to situations and needs once they are revealed on their own, thus taking them into leadership. Leading from where they are.

3. Development- Assuming your people are now taking ownership, that they are leading in the places and situations they find themselves, most teams stop right there. The next step is incredibly beneficial but it’s almost hypocritical not to do it. Now your not only leading but you are now leading groups of people. You don’t need to know it all to develop other leaders, just start by passing on what you already know. If you get your team to start leading and stop there you rob yourself of growing your organization. The biggest difference I have seen personally from small churches to large churches is; smaller churches have a few people doing most of the work, the larger churches are finding ways to developing other leaders, coaching people, building people, so that the vision can get accomplished. Therefore smaller vs Bigger. You have to get to a point where you continue to develop other leaders. This is HUGE.

4. Influence- Finally, a team that is developing leaders now has the opportunity to influence the culture of their organization. Once your team has gotten in the game by taking ownership, once they are leading and thinking on their own, they begin to develop the next level of leaders, you can finally start to see some of their influence. Teams that are innovating, changing things are teams that have gotten in the drivers seat for their vision. When teams can reach this level, we start to see future shapers, leading from within and reaching all around them.

These four steps, in this particular sequence will help any team with ordinary results become a team with great results. There aren’t great teams right? there are just great results. If you don’t believe me, look at the LA Lakers before Phil Jackson, they had O’neal and Kobe there already but could not get it to work until Coach Jackson arrived. The difference, taking them step by step, ownership, leadership, development, influence = Championship type success.

What are some things you might add to this list or to it’s definition?

I’m not a Christian

February 13, 2012 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 10 Comments

What comes to your mind when you hear the word… Christian? Is it positive, negative? I know plenty of people who say they are Christians, they really believe they are Christians ….how they talk, how they treat others or are known to treat others, how they respond in difficult situations, what they post to their facebook wall…well it makes it a bit more interesting of a topic. Maybe in a sense, living in a free country we are just so comfortable that we’ve forgotten the  radical teachings of Jesus. Some of us don’t memorize scripture or even read scripture daily. I heard someone say once, the Devil doesn’t take a day off in attacking you so why would you take a day off from prayer and reading his word? If I were hired to be on a NFL team, let’s say the starting quarterback  I am not sure I’d get far without reading the game plan every week, or learning the play book. You wouldn’t want to hire me to be your investment adviser either if i didn’t have a weekly subscription to the Wall Street Journal and followed the trends of the market place. How would I be learning and staying current?

I am no longer comfortable calling myself a Christian. I just honestly believe it doesn’t represent who I am trying to be, I am calling myself a Christ Follower instead. Being a Christ follower, tells me all I need to know every single moment of my day..FOLLOW CHRIST. Jesus said “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.“(Matt 10:38). Did you get that? We aren’t even worthy of being his if we choose not to take up our cross and follow him. What does that mean, follow him, it means follow his word, follow his heart, his way of living, crucify your will and live God’s will, or in easier terms, pick God’s game plan everyday and leave YOUR game plan at home. This is pretty significant because the difference can be seen by others. The early church, the one talked about in the book of Acts was becoming known by their love for one another and because they were living lives, similar to Christ, they were preaching, teaching, reading God’s word daily, baptizing people, attending to the sick and poor….so people associated them with Jesus Christ and began calling them…”those Christians.”  We are talking about upholding the name of Jesus Christ by how we live. Let me add this here, we aren’t perfect, no one is…but we are being perfected by grace. My favorite Bible verse is in Phil 1:6, it’s God’s promise to continue improving our lives until we are ready to join him in heaven, the question is are we allowing him to perfect our lives, is there a sign of progress and improvement?

Jesus said “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.” Is Jesus judging a person? No. He is simply stating facts, when we hear the phrase, “don’t judge a person” we are trying to convey that we may not know everything about them, but based on what we DO know, here is the verdict. My desire is to live and glorify God in all that I do, with Jesus being my example, his word my guide and his spirit my strength. Yeah, I am a follower of Christ, radically saved, drastically obedient, I am a follower of Christ.

Which describes you best, Christian or Christ Follower?

Four simple words

February 1, 2012 in Leadership, Life with 10 Comments

“It’s not what you say but how you say it”, ever heard that quote before? It’s true. Our choice of words, if chosen correctly, in a critical moment of a person’s development or vulnerability can either give them wings to fly or shoot them down to the ground. Words impact what we believe, how we feel and how we lead our lives. Our heart is an ocean of desires, wants, needs and emotions. What we feel in our heart, get’s processed in our mind (our brain reasons with our feelings, emotion- searching for what to direct our focus on), what we think, we say and what we say ……we eventually do.

Encouragement is a bi-product of a positive perspective, the desire to lift someone else up is an overflow of gratitude and confidence that seeks to express and share it with others. Today, you and I have the opportunity, as leaders, followers to share four amazing words when delivered with honesty, passion and conviction. Here they are: “I BELIEVE IN YOU”

When you say these words to someone, you are saying; I am with you, I support you, don’t be afraid to try or fail, my confidence is in you, you have permission to grow and develop, GO GET EM’. There isn’t a better feeling than to know your friends, family or co-workers believe in you. It’s empowering, liberating and inspiring to hear these words from someone who is doing life with you and is on your side. We should share these words more often, to our wives or husbands, our children, to the volunteers who work with us and the team around us daily. Give it a try, don’t start tomorrow, start today.

When someone tells you, “I believe in you”, what does it do for you?

It’s time to let go

January 27, 2012 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 8 Comments

Deep inner strength is required to hold on in life. We take things as they come and some of them knock us over. We can prepare ourselves for trials and tests, making us stronger mentally. We begin to get used to pain after a while, becoming tougher emotionally and we acquire what some say is “thick skin.” I have discovered that some of us are stronger than we think, we can take some pretty tough blows from life. Sometimes we are so good at being strong, we actually form a bad habit, a habit of holding on too long. We never get past some things and end up keeping them very near our hearts. I heard this said once, “when we don’t forgive, we allow the people who have hurt us to live in our hearts, rent free.”

The same amount of strength required to hang in there is the very same source of strength that allows us to let go. Problem is, we forget how to let go well, in fact we might actually forget how to rid ourselves of emotional baggage sometimes. As the years of struggle, pain and testing pile on, we end up carrying things around with us, things that reside in our past but because we don’t heal properly, we carry them around in our present, making it feel and seem like the incident is happening over and over, when in fact it happened already, it’s in the past.

In order to be really healthy, we need to be able to sit alone, meditate, pray and clear our minds from some things that have kept us back from emotional maturity, some things that just aren’t worth carrying around anymore. Maybe we hold on because it just feels better to still have someone else to blame, maybe we like being the victim. Either case, only in silence, getting on touch with spirit that lives inside can we find these things, address them, bring finality to them and once and for all decide that it’s time to let go.

Have you learned how to let it go?

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