God’s very first recorded interaction with us is to delegate some of his authority. God is a delegator! And the way he delegates is both instructive and challenging for Christian leaders. We’ll look at both aspects of God’s delegation in this series. Today’s focus is on the implications for Christian ministry leaders of what God delegated. Another post sometime in the future will be about what God did so that he could delegate with confidence.

Any “Yes, but…” questions from this post will likely be answered in the next post.

What God Delegates

It is a wonder that the Creator of all that is, the Lord of the universe, the One who simply speaks a thing and then it is, delegates at all. If anyone could say “Here, I can do it quicker than explaining it to you” or “I can do it better than you,” it would be God. It is even more of a wonder that he entrusts so much to us that is so vitally important to him.

He entrusts the earth and all that is in it to us:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Gen 1:28)

He entrusts us with a significant portion of his mission to bring all the people of the world back into his perfect rule:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mat 28:19-20)

And he entrusts us with real decision authority:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Mat 16:19)

It is one thing to delegate tasks, but quite another to delegate authority. God doesn’t have to delegate authority, but he chooses to. For anyone who has trouble delegating authority, this is a powerful lesson that changes the question from “Why delegate?” to “Why not delegate?”

The learning point for ministry leaders is that God isn’t just delegating the easy tasks. He truly believes we are capable of handling significant challenges. He respects our ability to think and to act. In short, he believes in us. (Again, another post will address why he believes in our capabilities.)

Application

God delegated a tremendous amount of authority to humanity, and Christian leaders should delegate the same way. However, any time we work together, personal authority is reduced because the group must coordinate its member’s activities and manage the group’s resources. That’s the nature of an organization; individuals simply do not have authority to reallocate budget or start new programs as they please. Choices are even further reduced as you move from the leadership team to the frontline staff, because at each step more and more choices are already made.

The dilemma for Christian leaders is how to give as much authority as we can to our staff members while preserving the benefits that an organization provides. Here are some ways to do that:

• Think about what you delegate. If straight-forward, easy tasks are all you delegate, you underestimate your staff.
  • Delegate important projects
  • Delegate projects that engage the mind as well as the hands
  • Take a risk when delegating
• Delegate as much decision authority as possible to a group. This gives more people a way to be included, to contribute, and to have a share in a higher level of authority than they have on their own. Leaders may have some reluctance to do this because they are on the hook for all decisions made under their delegation, so set whatever safeguards you truly need and then delegate. (We’ll see in the next post the safeguards that God set in place.)
• Make group decisions by consensus, not by vote or decree.
• Consult with as many people beyond the group as possible. Even if they don’t share in the authority, they can share in the discussion.
• Leave as much room as possible for freedom of choice as you move from strategy to execution. If you are familiar with policy governance, this is its key principle: provide direction, set boundaries, and then leave people free to act within those parameters.

The Joy of Receiving Delegated Work

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph 2:10)

I love the word handiwork. Other translations use workmanship, which is just as great. Both convey the idea of being fashioned, molded, or artistically formed – of being crafted exactly right to fulfill a purpose.

There is a state of being called flow, which is “a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.” You get lost in the moment because you are doing something it seems you were made to do. Your strengths and gifts align perfectly with your project. Experiencing flow is one of the times when people are happiest and most satisfied.

Christians who do good works should regularly experience flow because we were designed to do good works, and the good works we do have been specifically prepared for us to perform – a perfect alignment!

Some of those good works are generic in nature and are intended for everyone to do, such as loving others, extending mercy to the poor, caring for widows and orphans, and so on.

But Ephesians 2:10 also carries the idea that there may be particular things that God wants specific people to do. God designs us with different personalities, talents, gifts, and interests so that each one is perfectly suited for the particular good work he wants us to do. I feel very blessed knowing that my “divine boss” gives me work which is exactly right for me and that gives me joy, and my life meaning and significance.

Application

When we hire people, we usually already have a job description that we try to fit them to. However, once someone is working for you, over time you may have opportunity to juggle the work between jobs so as to help people work in their areas of strength.

• Do you have an inventory of all the strengths your staff could bring to the table? They may have strengths that their current job doesn’t require, but you should know about them anyway, because you might find ways to use their strengths once you know they exist.
• Every job has a mundane aspect to it, but do you know the percentage of time that your staff experiences flow? If the job has nothing but the mundane, then consider revising the job description to add elements that the incumbent will enjoy and be challenged by.
• Is there any way to use technology to minimize time spent on the mundane and transfer it to work that allows the person to make a greater contribution?

Thoughts?

Have you any insights into today’s topic? Please share.

The post The Wonder of God’s Delegation appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Often there is a staff member who is called upon until a permanent replacement is found, or until the leader is available to return to work. But in a small organization where a staff member steps up, who will do their current job? What is the trickle down effect of the board’s emergency succession plan?

A Typical Emergency Succession Plan

My board requires that I ensure two staff members are familiar with Board and CEO issues and procedures. I fulfill that by having two of my senior leadership team members attend all board meetings. But CCCC is a relatively small organization with 15 full-time staff, and it is not sufficient that the board has my position looked after. I’m responsible for organizational health and if either of these two people were tapped to take my role, what would be the effect on our ongoing activities? Who would replace them? I don’t want to go down in CCCC history as the one who left the ministry unprepared for an emergency!

I decided to write a report to the board on emergency succession scenarios so they could rest easy knowing the details have been considered.

It’s about More than the Senior Leader

This is a question every senior leader should be asking because the same scenarios that might lead to their position being unexpectedly vacant (illness, death, resignation) could also happen to those on the senior leadership team. And the leadership team members should be asking the same question for themselves, if only because no one will be promoted when they are the only ones who can do their current job. Everybody needs to be replaceable!

So, what I did was a thought experiment involving the two individuals about what it would look like for each of the two if they had to assume my CEO responsibilities. The scenarios for each were quite different because of the different types of work that they do.

The Emergency Planning Horizon

I assumed an interim period of up to a year. By then the board should be close to finalizing a replacement or, if I were able to return to work, I would have done so by this time (I hope).

The planning horizon is important because some of the measures you might have to take are bearable for a week, a month or even a year. But stretched out to five years they could become unbearable. By capping the horizon at a year, it meant, for example, that we could delay a project for a short period without serious consequences. The time horizon basically set the limits of the choices we could make.

What Exactly Needs Replacing?

Most senior leaders do more than pure CEO work. Many spend a significant amount of time fundraising. Others, like me, do operational work in addition to our executive work. A single replacement may or may not step in to fulfill both the executive work and the other work done by the senior leader. My work might actually be split between people.

Since we track our time at CCCC, I knew how much was spent on true CEO responsibilities (40%). I spend an equal amount of time contributing at an operational level (mostly creating and delivering content), and the rest is a bunch of other activities and, of course, vacation time. This gave us a good idea of how much time would be required of the replacement to satisfy the board’s need for CEO services.

What to Consider in Planning Emergency Succession

Since it is the board’s prerogative to select the interim replacement for the executive work, I did not address this issue other than to say that I have ensured the board has at least two viable internal candidates to consider.

What I did discuss in my report was how my operational work would be handled under the two scenarios. Would the same type of content continue to be created? Would we need to rely on non-staff experts for a while?

Next I discussed how the two individuals could ensure that their current jobs would continue to get done while they were filling in for me. This was mostly addressed through a combination of cross-training, deferral of various projects, hiring of temporary contract employees, and so on.

But What If You Lose Your Strong Right Hand?

Finally, I addressed the scenario where I am still around but one of my two senior leaders is unavailable. What would I do? We did the same type of analysis for each of them.

Benefits of Emergency Succession Planning

Both the board and I can rest more easily because there is a plan of action in place should the unexpected occur. A little forethought really helps you get through a crisis situation!

It also reinforced the value of cross-training and employee development. And I think it is healthy for everyone to realize that they are replaceable. They’ll be more likely to take vacation and build a life outside of work (of course, I’m talking to myself here).

In fact, the best test of an emergency succession plan is to send the senior leader on sabbatical. That’s the proof in the pudding that you have a strong leadership team. My sabbatical of three months showed me that

• I could really and truly separate myself from my work (I never checked with the office at all except to see how we did at year-end), and
• Someone else on staff could fulfill my executive responsibilities (thank you, Heather Card!)

So, now it’s your turn! How would you replace yourself?

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Here are the two paintings:

Da Montorfano painted a true fresco, which means he painted on wet plaster. This technique has its limitations:

• he had to paint a section at a time and complete it very quickly before the plaster dried, and
• he could not blend his colours.

Da Vinci tried a new technique – painting on dry plaster. This had the advantages that:

• he could take all the time in the world to paint as slowly as he liked,
• he could do preliminary work on the whole painting and then come back and work on the details, and
• he could blend his colours, have softer textures and paint the effect of sunlight into his work.

In addition, da Vinci used perspective in his painting, giving it a quasi 3-dimensional look. From halfway back in the dining hall, it looks like the dining hall carries on in the painting and that Jesus and the disciples are at the dining hall’s head table. The monks must have got quite a kick out of that!

But my main thought, in comparing the two paintings was to feel sorry for da Montorfano because he had the misfortune that his masterpiece, being permanently opposite to da Vinci’s masterpiece, would forever be compared unfavourably to it. I can imagine him looking over his shoulder as he was painting to see what da Vinci was doing!

And yet, if his painting could be moved anywhere else, it would be appreciated as the masterpiece it truly is.

Leaders and Spotlights

It made me think about senior leaders and their executive teams. Senior leaders usually get the credit (and the blame) for organizational results. They also have a ceremonial or figurehead function to fulfill. Often they are looked to as the model for what the organization stands for and aspires to be. They are, in short, in the spotlight. But must they keep the spotlight to themselves? Not if they know what they are doing.

Good senior leaders will make sure they include others in the spotlight of attention. They can do this because:

• If they are any good, they will have hired or promoted the very best people to the leadership team. The executive team should be full of top performers, highly capable in their fields, and at least one should be a credible candidate for the senior position. Each of these highly qualified executives deserves their own place in the spotlight.
• Sharing the attention with the executive team members demonstrates the strength of the team, and consequently, the organization. The shared spotlight acknowledges that organizational success is not dependent on one person alone, but on the combined capabilities of the executive team. It is the organization, not the individual that is the main thing.
• Certainly for topics related to the ministry’s programs, individual executive team members will likely have greater experience and hands on knowledge of a particular issue than the senior leader does, so they would best serve as the spokesperson for that area. When it comes to the ministry as a whole, I would expect that any of the senior leadership team would do a good job representing the ministry.
• Allowing others to share the spotlight enhances their leadership development and expands their ability to lead, because they develop their own contacts, referral sources, etc. and become stronger leaders.
• Sharing the spotlight shares the workload of being in the spotlight. It can be a lot for one person to bear.
• Sharing the spotlight also smooths the transition to a new leader when that time comes. Think of the transitions from Moses to Joshua, Elijah to Elisha, and Paul to Timothy and Titus (eg., Titus 1:5).

Organizations with active founders or strong personalities in leadership can find it hard to include others in the spotlight, even when the leader is willing to share the spotlight, because the public often wants to see or hear the person they identify the organization with. This is why senior leaders should encourage members of their executive teams (actually anyone within the organization) to have their own speaking engagements, give interviews, and publish articles. Let them build up a following because it all benefits the organization by raising its visibility and expanding the channels of influence for the sake of its mission.

In what ways do you encourage your executive team and other staff to have visibility inside and outside the ministry?

The post Sharing the Spotlight: Leaders and Their Executive Teams appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

My daughter Jessica is a missionary in Bangkok and had her own blog while there. She wrote a post on role models and mentors that I think is quite good. Since I haven’t written about this topic, and she said it so well, here is my very first guest post, with some additional comments about role models by me at the end. Enjoy!

Jessica’s post

I’ll preface this by admitting that some of this is just a matter of semantics, but I hope you’ll “go there” with me, as regardless of the words used, the idea behind them is what I’ve been thinking about lately.

I was asked a question the other day about role models, mentors and the part they play in helping to guide and shape young people today. In mulling that one over, I got to thinking about the difference between the two.

A role model is someone who is looked up to, that sets an example for someone else to follow.

A mentor is someone with more experience that helps and invests in the life of a specific person.

I think role models get the most attention. From the time children are young, they are asked to identify or write reports on their role model. Celebrities and public figures are almost constantly either praised for being a good role model, or bashed for being a bad one. People are reminded to find a good role model to look up to in life.

But I’m starting to think the emphasis on role models might just be misplaced, and maybe even a big problem. The thing about role models is that they are almost always detached from those who are looking up to them. Role models live their lives however they want to (though hopefully with an effort to be “upstanding”), and while they may wax eloquent about the responsibility and burden they are under (as some celebrities seem so fond of doing), there really isn’t any personal investment on their part.

Similarly, when people look up to a role model, they are left to glean whatever lessons they want, and they are, perhaps more importantly, left to implement those lessons however they want. There are no checks and balances in place, no one making sure that people are making the right connections and actually growing and bettering themselves.

This is a really dangerous situation. You have role models doing whatever they want with their lives with no concept of how people are receiving and responding to them, and you have people taking whatever lessons they want to from their role models and applying them however they see fit.

In contrast, a mentor is an individual who actively cares about and invests in the life of another individual. There is a trust formed, and a commitment to a long-term relationship explicitly for the purpose of seeing personal growth. There is the expectation that the mentor will hold the protégé accountable, and the expectation that the protégé will be motivated and hold himself accountable, as well.

The key difference here is the relationship and the investment. With role models, there is no relationship, and at best, investment is one-sided. With mentors, the relationship and investment are paramount.

Under the guidance of a mentor, individuals not only have someone to “look up to,” but also someone to offer guidance, feedback, and a different point of view. There is someone who will not only check in on their progress to see that those things are being implemented correctly and challenge their assumptions and choices, but someone who actually deeply cares about the outcome.

I’m sure most of us could identify a role model or two in our lives, but how many of us have a mentor? If you don’t have one, it’s certainly something to think about!

Similarly, how often do we remind ourselves to “be a good role model” when perhaps what we should be doing is finding someone to mentor and invest in?

As a final note, there is a lot of emphasis in the Christian world on Jesus as role model. Now, I know I just “bashed” the concept of role model, but I think Jesus, being perfect and all, is one Person who can actually set a consistently good example for the rest of us. And what I think is most interesting is that even God Himself knows that a role model is not enough. That’s why God gave us a Mentor, the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is very clear that the Holy Spirit was sent to play the role of mentor in our lives. In John 16, Jesus tells us:

8-11″When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he’ll expose the error of the godless world’s view of sin, righteousness, and judgment: He’ll show them that their refusal to believe in me is their basic sin; that righteousness comes from above, where I am with the Father, out of their sight and control; that judgment takes place as the ruler of this godless world is brought to trial and convicted.

12-13″I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said…”[emphasis mine]

Is there any more beautiful picture of true mentorship? In our moments of frustration that we cannot possibly live up to the Great Role Model’s example, we can take comfort and even rejoice in the fact that the Great Mentor is with us, ready to “take [us] by the hand and guide” us in our journey. However, if we neglect the mentorship relationship with the Holy Spirit, we miss out on a huge foundational aspect of both our relationship with God, and living out the fullness of life God planned for us because it was His plan all along to send the Holy Spirit, too, not just Jesus.

So, when we are not sure what to do next or how to think about something, we should not only look to Jesus as an example, but we should also remember that the Holy Spirit is right there with us, fully invested in seeing us do it right, and have confidence that if we simply ask for His guidance and are open to being mentored, He will engage us.

My Thoughts

Thank you, Jessica! I have never, ever heard or read anything that uses the role model/mentor language with the Second and Third persons of the Trinity. Marvelous to ponder and very encouraging!

A couple of comments I’d like to add.

• Because role models often don’t know who regards them as a role model, you should always consider that someone is watching you as a role model: as a parent, a spouse, a Christian, a leader and so on. The safest thing for you to do is to assume you are a role model in every area of your life and live accordingly. You’ll live a better life and not disappoint anyone.
• Role models can be role models for thousands of years if they are well-known and documented. Recorded history is how the human race advances, by learning from others. Think about the woman who poured oil on Jesus. She didn’t hesitate to offer her best as worship to her Lord. Her example was so important that Jesus responded by saying, “Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Many Christians throughout history are great role models for us today as we learn about how they lived lives of faith, how they persevered through trials and persecutions, what they did with their gifts, how they made their decisions and so on.
• Look to role models for their character traits and priorities, not what they actually did. As Jessica rightly points out, you could be in very different circumstances, and who’s to say the role model might not have made different decisions based on different fact scenarios? I’m more interested in how and why they made their choices than the actual choices they made. They lived their lives and we must live ours. We shouldn’t imitate their decisions, but their values. That is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:16-17 “Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” Paul wants his readers to imitate his way of life, not the particular life he is living. He lived as a conscious role model, explaining in 2 Thessalonians 3:9 “We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.” Hebrews 13:7 emphasizes that leaders are role models, and it is their way of life that is imitated rather than the particulars of their lives: “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Don’t try to be someone else. Live your own life, but live it by drawing on the inspiration of others who have fulfilled their roles successfully.

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When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. Matthew 7:28-29

A Tale of the Good and Bad of Customer Service

My phone rang at 5:40 Tuesday night and a voice said, “John, my name is [first name only] and I am on staff at the [name of embassy]. What can I do to help you?” A few minutes later he said, “Be assured, we will not interfere with your travel plans. I will look after this tomorrow and do everything possible to resolve this by noon. One way or another, you will be looked after.”

I hung up the phone, and said to my wife, “I think that was the ambassador himself. He spoke with such authority.” I checked their website’s staff list (listing everybody including the receptionist) and sure enough I was right—only the ambassador had that name. My question is, why did I assume it had to be the ambassador? Why wouldn’t I expect any staff member to speak like that to fix a problem? Well, read on.

My online visa application in January was confirmed by email as having been received, so I assumed it was also being processed. But no. Even though the website doesn’t say so, the online application goes nowhere until the hard copy arrives with your passport. It takes seven business days to get a visa, and there were only eight business days left before I leave! So I scrambled to put together a new application and sent it guaranteed overnight by Canada Post (hoping that in emergencies the embassy could issue a visa in five days). Well, the application was delivered in two days, not one (I didn’t mail it from Elmira—my mistake), and the receptionist said the visa section was closed the day it arrived. Now I was really worried for a number of reasons. The visa office did not return any of the five messages I left on Monday and Tuesday. Not one.

In desperation, I hit ‘zero’ and spoke to the receptionist again, who was amazing. She was empathetic, she did everything she could to help me. She even put me on hold, walked to the visa office, confirmed the lady was there, told her of the urgent nature of my call, and asked her to take my call when she put me through. The receptionist transferred me…and the visa office dumped me straight into voicemail!! Back to the receptionist I went, who was professional but perturbed. She said she would personally retrieve my passport and send it back to me so I could leave on Sunday. She said in an emergency I could apply for the visa when I entered the country. I expressed my gratitude to her. I knew she was in no position to actually do anything about getting the visa but at least she was looking after my passport. But as it turned out…I underestimated her.

While she had no authority or power to grant a visa, she did have the ability to bring my case to the ambassador’s attention.

When he called, I assumed he was from the visa section. But he spoke with such authority that there was no doubt in my mind that this was a person who could make things happen and I knew he had to be the top person. He made me confident my problem would be solved because he made specific promises, offering no maybes or waffles, just firm commitments. He spoke with authority. And he delivered in less than a day what normally takes seven. So today, Thursday, I have my passport and visa in my hand.

Customer Service Reps (CSRs) and Their Authority

That got me thinking. My experience is that when there is a problem, customer service people rarely speak with much authority. By authority, I mean projecting confidence in making commitments that will be delivered. I assumed it must be the ambassador I was speaking with because I rarely hear other staff speak with such authority and confidence in their ability to take action. Ideally, I’m sure you’d like every staff member to have that confidence. If every employee were seen as strong, capable and powerful in their ability to commit to action, wouldn’t that raise the public’s favourable perception of your ministry? The prospect of dealing with an organization that couples staff empowerment with high staff ownership of the organization’s values is compelling. I want to associate with organizations like that!

The receptionist could have said, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do” and then have left me on my own to solve my problem. But she didn’t. She offered advice and told me to do something that was outside their policy—email a UPS shipping label so she could send my passport back faster (their policy on the website is to use only Canada Post). The receptionist made an exception to policy! While she couldn’t grant the visa (after all, there are limits to what can be delegated), she went beyond the rules and policies to understand the spirit in which they were written. She knew how the embassy wanted to serve the public, and she felt she could make an exception to policy in order to do the right thing. Ask yourself, how far up the organizational chart does someone have to go to get a decision to do the right thing? I hope it’s not very high.

Building Authority in CSRs

We can learn from Jesus, who taught with authority while the teachers of the law didn’t. Why did he teach with authority? Because he was entitled to and because he owned what he was teaching. He knew the spirit of the law. There’s a lesson!

The receptionist knows what good and bad service look like and it appears she felt entitled to make a judgment call about my case. She demonstrated that she owned the embassy’s service standards by making it her personal responsibility to see that I was served well. You expect the ambassador to speak with authority. I was surprised and delighted when the receptionist did too. She didn’t overstep her authority, but she did live up to what had been either explicitly or implicitly delegated.

How Leaders Can Empower CSRs

As leaders, we should do two things very well:

1. Ensure that all staff are entitled to speak with authority about upholding agreed-upon standards of service and values. Back them up when they do. If we will always do what is right, and if we have agreed that our ministry values and standards of service are what is right, then how can we go wrong by giving people at all levels the authority to make things right? Julian Byng, commander of the Canadian Corps at Vimy Ridge, said in the context of empowering front line troops to make decisions, “In a crisis situation, the man who does something may sometimes be wrong, but the man who does nothing is always wrong.” I used to understand a crisis as a problem or a threat. But since studying biblical Greek, I know now that the Greek word for crisis means “to make a judgment based on taking various factors into account.” In other words, to think. I now understand a crisis to be something that demands a decision, and that is a much better way to think about it. I find that thought empowering. Anyway, when a situation arises that must be dealt with, let your staff know you will support any decisions that align with your values and the spirit in which you want to serve. The receptionist obviously had no difficulty going to the top when a co-worker didn’t live up to the standards. Senior leadership needs to delegate to staff the ability to always do the right thing.
2. Ensure that all staff are exposed to the ethos of the ministry. You can’t make them accept it deep down as their own (only they can do that), but you can promote it to them. Culture-building is one of the most important responsibilities a leader has. Anybody can mouth the words, but only those who really own the words can speak and act with conviction and power about them. The teachers of the law knew the words of the law, but not its meaning and intent.  Jesus did, and that is why he  spoke so powerfully.

Not only did Jesus himself have this authority, but he gave it to all his disciples as well. It wasn’t just the senior leader who could be authoritative, but everyone could be. He told his disciples they would do even greater works than he did (John 14:12), and we know from Acts 4:33 that they did so with power: With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all.The apostles were entitled to speak and act with the authority of Jesus, and they owned that authority by acting on it. Imagine if that could be said of all of your staff about the mission and values you stand for.

You know what to do, so now in the immortal words of Jean-Luc Picard, “Make it so!”

The post Speaking with Authority! A Tale of an Ambassador and a Receptionist appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

High Potential Employees

The June 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review contained new research into the anatomy of an employee with a high potential for leadership (“Are You a High Potential?” by Ready, Conger and Hill). Here’s their definition of high potential employees:

High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances. While achieving these superior levels of performance, they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ culture and values in an exemplary manner. Moreover, they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization—more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.

Let’s unpack that definition. As I considered it, and thought back over all the people I’ve met in my own career who progressed or did not progress, I realized how important both hard and soft factors are to a person’s career progression. You need both. This definition captures the two elements quite well, so it is worth paying attention to it!

• High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances.
  • Merely doing the work you are paid to do well will certainly get the appreciation of leadership, but it won’t wow them. That’s just doing what you were paid to do. No one hires someone thinking they won’t do the work well, so thanks for doing your job!
  • Doing something really great every once in a while will also get leadership’s appreciation, and its special thanks. But this is still not enough to identify you as high potential because it does not show consistency over time, which is what really counts.
  • Continuing excellent performance “in a variety of settings and circumstances” is highly valued because it shows what leaders are looking for: people who can consistently deliver, who are adaptable to different scenarios and who can rise from the specific to the more general, who can solve problems, who show initiative and creativity, and who have skills and talents that are transferable to leadership.
• They exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies’ culture and values in an exemplary manner.
  • No one will be invited into leadership who does not reflect the organization’s culture and values. Whatever the organization aspires to be, its leaders must model that. You should be an exemplar of everything the ministry stands for. So take a close look at your ministry’s aspirational statements of culture and values and act accordingly.
  • In Parliament, the duty of the Opposition is said to be to oppose. That isn’t at all helpful – that is just being obstinate and a pain. The duty should be to propose. If the Opposition does not support the Government, then it should propose an alternative. It’s quite easy to oppose, but many opposition parties have found it much more difficult to propose once they are the governing party. They suddenly realize how complex and complicated the world is!  In a work environment, opposition will rarely work to your benefit (I want to say never, but who knows?). Most organizations value cooperation and collaboration, working together to solve problems. In Christian ministry that value should be universal. People who only oppose have set themselves up as the opposition and therefore are not aligned with the management team and will not be seen as suitable candidates for promotion. An “us vs. them” mentality is a sure way to stop your career progression in its tracks! What leaders want is people who will work with them bringing multiple perspectives to a discussion, not working against them. Remember, the most effective persuasion takes place in private conversation, not in public confrontation. Proverbs 15:1 says “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” The same can be said about how contrary ideas are presented. Leaders highly value ideas that challenge the status quo. Having real choices is a crucial ingredient for good decision making. But how those contrary ideas are brought forward makes all the difference. And of course, nothing will ever happen if the Opposition never engages the Government but simply chatters within its own ranks.
• They show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization—more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.
  • If the only way you get to move ahead in your career is to change employers, that indicates you are pretty good at selling yourself to someone who doesn’t know you, but you probably find it difficult to deliver what you have sold. In sales training, they say that the first sale is easy because you are selling hopes and dreams. It is an emotional sale. It is the second sale that is hard because you are asking someone to invest again in something they have already experienced and it is a logical sell. Sometimes there is no room to advance at an organization for reasons beyond your control (most ministries are quite small), but otherwise take a hard look at yourself if you need to change employers to get a promotion. Perhaps you have an inflated view of your potential or you are sabotaging yourself in some way. Usually the sabotage is not due to lack of skill, but to attitudes and behaviours that are not helpful in leaders (and, frankly, are probably not helpful to you in any capacity).
  • Take a look at yourself today compared to a few years ago and define how you have grown professionally in that time. If you haven’t grown much, you need to consider why. Even if there are few development opportunities at work, there is nothing stopping you from finding some on your own outside of work. For example, the best thing I ever did outside of my job was to join Toastmasters. I did my MBA on my own time and paid for it myself. I volunteered on the leadership team of the local Institute of Canadian Bankers chapter, which raised my profile within my banking unit. I served on a board early on and was volunteer president for a couple of clubs or groups, which taught me how to run meetings. All of these activities gave me experience and skills that I could not get at my paid job, and they all have served me very, very well over the course of my career. My employers never told me to do them. I did them on my own initiative and almost entirely at my own expense, and then I brought what I had learned and applied it in my job so that my employer benefitted.
  • If you are growing, it makes a difference whether you are growing more capable in doing your current job or are growing more capable for the job you want. If you want a promotion, you should be doing both. Show yourself to be ready for promotion by demonstrating the skills, judgment and attitudes that the next job will require. Leadership won’t promote you until you are ready to be promoted. While you may still need a lot of training to fully do the job, leadership needs to see enough capability that they think you will be able to do it.  Preparation comes before promotion.
  • No one who is a ‘high maintenance’ person will be promoted because leaders just don’t have the time to give you that much attention. If your good results are only achieved because your manager spends a lot of time working with you, if you bring problems for your manager to solve that you should be able to solve yourself, if you require a lot of hand-holding to do your job, or need a lot of stroking to keep you motivated, you are going to be stuck where you are. Instead, leaders will promote people who are self-motivated, self-managing and who through their initiative and creativity actually push the leader. A leader does not want to think for you;  a leader wants you to think for yourself and contribute to the cause.

My Own Non-Researched-but-Nevertheless-I-Believe-Still-Valid Career Advice

Here are a couple of bonus tips:

• Be predictable and transparent. Just as you want this from your leaders, they want the same from you. A leader should never have to wonder where you stand on an issue. They should never hear from someone else what you really think about something. A leader must be able to count on you to present your honest views and to be honest about your results. Operate on a “no surprise” policy. Never blindside a leader and never hide bad news. These are trust-busters and a leader needs to trust the people on his or her team. If you want to join the management team some day, then start thinking like a manager now.
• Leadership skills include influencing people, planning, directing, visioning and much more. Ask to lead a project or develop a strategic plan for an existing or new service and propose it to management. Start applying leadership skills in your current job even if you have no staff reporting to you. Leadership is about more than leading people, it is about leading a department or a whole organization. Apply those organizational skills to whatever is within your current responsibilities.
• Leadership is all about change. If nothing ever changed, all you would need is management. (Before you think I am disparaging management, let me tell you that leadership without management is chaos, and management without leadership is stagnation. The two go together.) Those who aspire to leadership need to understand that to be a leader is to be a change agent. So become a change agent right where you are. You don’t need a formal position or authority to positively influence your peers. Jesus had no formal position to be a change agent. He spoke from a powerless, informal position, but in fact his moral authority gave him all the power and authority he needed. You can do the same. Show that you are an effective change agent by creating positive change among your peers or anywhere else at work where you have influence.

Well, there you are. Some ideas to get a promotion. Now back to you who are already in leadership. What tips would you pass along?

The post So You Want to Climb the Ladder? Help for the Aspiring Leader appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The truth is that I didn’t love it and didn’t have the passion for it and that what I was doing wasn’t my own voice. I wanted to be a university president. I didn’t want to do university president. Now that was a huge lesson for me, because if there is one single thing I have found out about leaders is that, by and large if not every day, they seem to love what they’re doing…[The] question made me aware that administration wasn’t for me. I found my calling as an advisor and a coach to leaders.  

Managing/Leading vs. Doing

Managing and leading are very different from doing. Of course, all leaders do a mixture of leading, managing and doing, just as any doer can also do some managing or leading (even if informally). It is just a matter of the percentage of time allocated to each activity.

You may be very skilled at doing, and you may be the best person on the team doing your work, but that doesn’t mean that you should manage or lead it. Our culture promotes the idea of career progression up a hierarchy, so most people aspire to rise as high as they can in their organization rather than staying at a level they are better suited for. (If you want to be promoted to management, here are my tips.)

Should You Accept a Promotion?

The problem with always seeking promotions is that you may be promoted right out of your areas of strength and into your areas of weakness. This is the Peter Principle: People are promoted to the level of their incompetence. How many people who are team members say to themselves, “I could lead this team better than that!”? They make the mistake of thinking that the ability to do is the qualification for the role of leader. Far from it. The skills for leadership are different from the skills needed for doing. Team members can get promoted and have no idea what leadership is really about, and then they fail as a leader or have a miserable time of it because it is not the sort of doing that they love and are good at.

Be What You Are Suited For

The sad thing is, when people are promoted beyond their competence, not only do you remove your best worker from the team and lose the related productivity, you also usually end up losing the person to your organization entirely because it seems the only way out of a leadership role is right out the organization’s door. I’ve always thought this is too bad. Surely there should be honour in recognizing your gifts and their limits and stepping down to pick up once again at the job where you were performing at your best. But our culture doesn’t cope with such ‘failure’ very well. I acknowledge that it would take a very self-aware person to be willing to step down to a different position (if a position should still be available). The unfortunate reality is that usually all you can do is go to a new organization.

How to Decide

So, should you continue in your leadership role? If you are having difficulty, two key questions are:

1. Am I called to be a leader? See my post on discerning your call. If both you and your organization affirm your call to leadership, then persevere!
2. Can I become the leader this ministry needs? It may be that you are called to lead, but for various reasons this ministry is not the place for you. But if you are called to lead this ministry and yet are experiencing difficulty, then professional development is what you need. I’ve written a number of posts about professional development, but The Most Daring Case Study of All is by far the best starting point.

If you are not yet a leader but aspire to be one, the questions you should ask are:

1. Am I really called to leadership? Again, see this post for a good discernment process.
2. Have I already led, or could I arrange to lead, a project to test out my leadership skills before taking the risks of team or organizational leadership?
3. What am I really attracted to: the leadership role, the perceived perks and privileges, or fulfilling societal expectations about career advancement? Do I have the right motivation?
4. Am I willing to accept the much greater scrutiny of my personal and professional lives that leaders are subject to from their boards, their staff members, and the public?

All Jobs Are Important

The upshot is that every position in an organization is important, valuable and respectable. One role is not better than another, it is just different. There are different risks and commensurate rewards with various levels of positions. Some are more demanding on your personal life than others, and some take their toll with heavier responsibility. But all positions can be satisfying and intrinsically rewarding. Which position that is simply depends on who you were made to be, what you have been called to do and your willingness to invest yourself in becoming excellent at what that role requires. For some, the answer is a leadership role and for others, it is a doing role. If you are not where you should be, the tragedy would be to not make a correction.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good….But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.
1 Cor 12:4-7, 18

The post “Maybe leadership isn’t for me!” appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Any exceptional enterprise depends first and foremost upon having self-managed and self-motivated people—the #1 ingredient for a culture of discipline… If you have the right people, who accept responsibility, you don’t need to have a lot of senseless rules and mindless bureaucracy in the first place.

Who Gets Your Time?

Marcus Buckingham, in First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, talked about how poor performers stunt the results of top performers. He said that star performers are often neglected by their managers because under-performing staff drain all the manager’s time away from their better-performing peers. The best managers, however, support their winners with their time and help them do even better. Under-performers must earn the right to have more of their manager’s time by improving their performance.

In Managing For Results, Peter Drucker addressed the opportunity cost of problems such as poor performance. “Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems,” he wrote. He said that the best one can do by solving problems is to restore normality. Solving problems won’t take you to a new level of results.

These three observations raise concerns about how we as Christian ministries deal with under-performing staff. In this post, my focus is on the cost of under-performance. Sometime later I’ll write another post and discuss how we can work to improve staff performance.

Should Supervision Be Necessary?

I call dealing with performance issues supervision in distinction to leadership and management. Leadership deals with vision, goals, values and culture, shaping corporate identity and mission. Management deals with ways and means, providing resources and coordinating action. Drucker said that both leadership and management are important because leadership is about doing the right things and management is about doing things right. Leadership decides which wall to scale, and management ensures someone brings a ladder! Leadership without management is chaos, and management without leadership is pointless. The two go together.

So where does supervision fit in? Hmmm. Maybe it doesn’t. The dictionary claims that  ‘supervision’ means oversight, but maybe it’s really just a polite code word for dealing with performance issues. In Leading Self-Directed Work Teams, Kimball Fisher wrote that the job of supervisors is to control subordinates by telling them what to do and then making sure they do it properly (as opposed to team leaders, who facilitate, train and equip).

I associate supervision with old school Theory X management and lack of trust. Surely we expect better from our staff than this!  I don’t want to supervise people this way and I can’t imagine that anyone wants to be supervised this way either. If after training and coaching, you still can’t trust your employees to do their work correctly, well, you either haven’t done the staff development work very well or you have the wrong employees.

The Hidden Costs of Supervision

When performance issues persist and people don’t learn, there is a terrible cost of supervision:

• Their managers must invest time coaching them for better performance, checking up on their progress, and sometimes even fixing their work, instead of using that time to find new opportunities for the organization;
• The organization needs to put detailed rules and procedures in place for how to do things the right way, which starts to make the work environment seem heavy-handed, stifling and overly bureaucratic to those who perform well and don’t need those systems;
• Whole new systems are created to do nothing but ensure the results of poor performance don’t make it outside of your organization  (such as quality control);
• Organizational performance can start to drop as people settle for mediocrity and the environment becomes less motivational; and
• The salary and other expenses related to underperformance and supervision is wasted budget that could have been used to fund those opportunities that are now lost.

A Better Way

In The Wisdom Of Teams: Creating The High-performance Organization, Jon Katzenbach shows us a better way. Teams don’t need supervisors, he says. Rather, they need leaders to equip and resource their teams, manage the team boundaries (how a team relates to everything outside of itself), and then get out of the way and let the team do its thing. To support such teams without having to have supervisors, Katzenbach says the organization needs a strong performance ethic that drives everyone in the organization to relentlessly pursue common performance results.

Stop for a moment and realize the significance of that last sentence. Katzenbach is not giving team members license to do whatever they want. There is an obligation for all team members to live up to a strong performance ethic. When you hire, you hire people who have the same performance ethic as the team. (See my post Hiring with the Team in Mind.)

So if the organization’s leaders choose which wall to scale, and its managers make sure there is a ladder to get up the wall, then team leaders train their members to climb ladders. But you shouldn’t need supervisors standing by the ladders making sure everybody climbs the right way. All you need do is provide your staff with the goal (scale the wall) and the means (the ladder) and then let them do what you’ve trained them to do (climb).

Don’t Rescue Poor Performers

While it may not seem too inconvenient to chip in and cover for poor performance, underperforming is a very serious problem. Jim Collins (in How the Mighty Fall) writes:

“If I were to pick one marker above all others to use as a warning sign [of an organization starting the downward death spiral], it would be a declining proportion of key seats filled with the right people [those who take responsibility and are self-managing/self-motivating].”

Collins says one notable distinction between the right and the wrong people is that the wrong people see themselves as having a job while the right people see themselves as having responsibilities. Certainly in your key positions, the ones the public sees, or the ones who achieve direct results or who represent the ministry to others, these positions must be filled with people who perform well.

I’ll talk about improving staff performance in another post. Until I write that, if you have staff reporting to you, I suggest you begin working on defining the performance ethic of your team. If you already have one, work at getting the team members to firmly adopt it as their personal performance ethic too.

At CCCC, we have two sets of statements that provide a very strong performance ethic that sets standards related to everything we do. Our team values include:

• dependability, productivity, and quality,
• knowledge,
• competence, and
• initiative.

Our aspirations include:

• to provide accessible, practical and relevant services that offer high value to our members, and
• to be respected educators who create, source and share expert knowledge as we model how Christian charities should operate.

A final thought. Everyone on staff is a team member and everyone reports to someone else (even the senior staff person reports to the board). Why not take ownership for your own results and lead and manage yourself? Make it your business to supervise your own work. Make the team values your own values at work and be sure you work by them. Study the organizational culture as promoted by management and adjust your work habits to fit it. You’ll have a far more enjoyable work experience and be far more valuable to your employer. Be self-directed and self-motivated and take responsibility for your results. Your manager will love you!

The post The Terrible Cost of “Supervision” appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

When a leader requires without relating, the leader is seen as autocratic, demanding, hard-nosed and a bunch of other not-so-nice attributes. When a leader relates without requiring, not much happens, but everyone has a really good time as the ship goes down.

I suspect that some leaders feel the tension between requiring and relating and struggle with doing both. Some leaders may have difficulty with the relating part, believing that if things get mushy and touchy-feely the organization will fall to pieces. And other leaders may not have the intestinal fortitude and confidence to insist on performance, so they avoid confronting poor performance in a misguided attempt to be nice.

Two Tips

This leader made two points about R&R that should help you lead with both strategies.

1. Don’t settle for an either/or approach to the two Rs. The concept of requiring and relating, of demanding performance while at the same time showing care and compassion, is thoroughly biblical. John 1:14 says that Jesus came “full of grace and truth.” Randy Alcorn, in The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance, shows how Jesus demonstrated grace towards other people while at the same time not compromising the truth at all. He welcomed the woman caught in adultery, but also said, “Go and sin no more.” Grace is like relating, and truth is like requiring. Jesus showed how grace and truth work together seamlessly to produce his desired result: they drive people to a decision point—will they, or will they not, live for God? Requiring and relating can likewise co-exist in your leadership style to produce your desired results—accomplishment of your ministry’s mission. So don’t be squeamish about insisting on performance, and don’t be shy about building strong relationships with your staff.
2. Requiring performance by clearly setting out the expected activities and results is simply good stewardship. I thought this was a brilliant insight, connecting performance with stewardship. After all, if you had a program that did not perform well, you’d either cancel it or redesign it to perform better. You wouldn’t knowingly continue a program that was inefficient or ineffective, would you? Of course not. So why would you knowingly put up with inefficient or ineffective performance? Both programs and salaries are funded by donors who expect you to make good use of their hard-earned donations. And as a leader in ministry, you are accountable to God for good stewardship of everything entrusted to you.

Employee Responsibility

But employees are accountable for good stewardship too. Any paid worker in Christian ministry has two kinds of stewardship to think about with respect to their incomes:

• First, in their personal capacities, they are to be good stewards of the cash they receive. That is the normal way to think about stewardship.
• But second, in their work capacities, they are to be good stewards of the time they traded for their income. I don’t often hear people talk about stewardship of their work time. Most often when stewardship of time is discussed, it is in the context of volunteer service. But every person should think about how they are using their work time and ask the question, “Am I right now being a good steward of the time I have sold to my employer?”

And if leadership needs to help some people become better stewards of their work time, then that too is good stewardship on the leader’s part. If we don’t address performance issues in order to be nice, well, just hear what Randy Alcorn has to say about that! According to him, we’ve redefined Christlike to mean “nice” and with that definition, Jesus himself wasn’t always Christlike, because he confronted people with their sin. Requiring that work standards be met may not always be seen as nice, but done well it is good stewardship.

A Helpful Biblical Model

In Shepherds After My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions And Leadership In The Bible, Tim Laniak discusses the protection, provision and guidance that the Lord gave to Israel while he led them through the wilderness. These three words are a pretty good description of leadership responsibilities, but it is the word guidance that I think is most closely related to the R&R style of leadership. There are three Hebrew verbs used in the Bible that are translated ‘to guide.” The three nuances Tim gives these words are:

1. gentle leading (which is shown in several verses as the Lord carrying Israel in his arms, or leading the nursing ewes of his flock);
2. leading, even against the will of those being led; and
3. capable, visionary leadership guiding a group toward its destiny.

Perhaps the best way to encapsulate what is meant by Require and Relate is that leaders should provide gentle leadership guiding people towards their common destiny, even when some prodding is required.

By the way, on a completely different topic, Alcorn’s book has a statement that just leapt off the page at me. As a bonus thought, here it is:

“Most sinners loved being around Jesus. They enjoyed His company, sought Him out, invited Him to their homes and parties. Today most sinners don’t want to be around Christians. Unbelievers tore off the roof to get to Jesus. Sometimes they crawl out the windows to get away from us! Why is that?”

Alcorn asks a great question that we all should carefully consider.

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