Seth Godin sits down for a short conversation with Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A to talk about writing, leadership, and what lies at the core of success.
Perhaps my favorite Godin-isms from this short video were:
* “Success isn’t doing what other people think you’re supposed to do.”
* “Success is doing work you’re proud of and having a reputation that you’re proud of.”
I love how so much of what Godin says is simple, not necessarily profound, but mainly “duh” statements–things you know to be true deep down but have somehow forgotten about or walked away from as more and more experiences and realities get piled on. It’s nice to have his simple truths cut through all that junk and remind you of what truly is important.
What was something that really stood out to you in this video?
At IKON one of our staff values is Collaboration. We are working to make sure that nothing is created alone. We’re always working in a team of at least 3 people to create so that we are leveraging our community’s strengths and constantly equipping others to do the work of our community. So, all of our Sunday morning messages, classes, experiences, etc. from idea to finished product are created and edited by a team. Our entire Sunday morning experience from songs to scripture to creative elements are created and developed as a team. All of our curriculum from idea to finished product in our Family Groups are created and developed by a team. We want to be a community that creates together because we believe that our ideas (collectively) are better than your ideas (individually).
While we were on vacation last week, Tracy shared this excerpt with me from from Tina Fey’s new book Bossypants. I found it a great little essay not only for the rules of improvisation, but ultimately rules for better and stronger team collaboration.
—— Excerpt from Bossypants by Tina Fey, p. 82-85:
“The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we’re improvising and I say, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger. You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun.
Now, obviously in real life you’re not always going to agree with everything everyone says. But the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.
As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.”"No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?
The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND. You are supposed to agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you just say, “Yeah…” we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say “What did you expect? We’re in hell.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here” and you say, “Yes, this can’t be good for the wax figures.” Or if I say, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into this dogs mouth,” now we’re getting somewhere.
To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.
The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positive way of saying, “Don’t ask questions all the time.” If we’re in a scene and I say, “Who are you? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s in that box?” I’m putting pressure on you to come up with all the answers.
In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. We’ve all worked with that person. That person is a drag. It’s usually the same person around the office who says things like “There’s no calories in it if you eat it standing up!” and “I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice.”
MAKE STATEMENTS also applies to us women: Speak in statements instead of apologetic question. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements with your actions and your voice.
Instead of saying “Where are we?” Make a statement like “Here we are in Spain, Dracula.” Okay, “Here we are in Spain, Dracula” may seem like a terrible start to a scene, but this leads us to the best rule:
THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities. If I start a scene as what I think is very clearly a cop riding a bicycle, but you think I am a hamster in a hamster wheel, guess what? Now I’m a hamster in a hamster wheel. I’m not going to stop everything to explain that it was really supposed to be a bike. Who knows? Maybe I’ll ned up being a police hamster who’s been on “hamster wheel” duty because I’m “too much of a loose cannon” in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident. I mean, look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.”
Yesterday I posted the Top 10 Ways To Obliterate A Leadership Culture by Jon & Dave Ferguson. However, it leaves me wondering: “How do you nurture a culture that values and practices leadership development?” Well, thankfully enough Jon & Dave were so kind as to also write up a second list:
10 Simple (But NOT Easy) Practices for Creating a Leadership Culture
Make sure that leadership development is directly tied to the success of the vision. I know there is no way that Community Christian Church will ever be a church of 200 locations that has mobilized 100,000 3C Christ Followers without intentional and rigorous attention to leadership development. I know that our NewThing Network will never catalyze a movement of reproducing churches unless we prioritize leadership development.
Give leaders a dream worth sacrificing and trading their lives. The reason many churches do not attract leaders and in particular high-capacity leaders is that the church has not put before them a vision or dream so compelling that they are willing to trade their lives for it. Leaders want a bit hill!
Vision casting should include leaders in the details. When I share the vision of 200 sites in the Chicago area I always say it will come down to two things: Developing more and better artists and developing more and better leaders. I will also talk about the number of leaders it will take to accomplish this God-sized vision: small group leaders, ministry team leaders, Kids’ City leaders, Student Community leaders, etc. The trigger point for every new site is the rising up of a leader to become the campus pastor for that location. Leadership is in the details of the vision.
Tell stories of leadership development. Some of my favorite stories are the stories of some people who are now on our executive leadership team who started at COMMUNITY as an apprentice leader in a small group or a Kids’ City group. In time they became a leader of a group; then a coach; soon they transitioned to staff leadership and now they have as much influence at COMMUNITY as anyone. WHen you tell these stories other leaders think, “maybe I could do that too.”
Make known your leadership pipeline. I was at lunch the other day with a high-capacity leader and they told me that one day they would like to be on staff at COMMUNITY and then asked me how that could happen. I drew on a napkin the following: apprentice leader->leader->coach->staff. That simple explanation is our leadership pipeline. Some people refer to it as a career path. I see it as the way that a leader proves their faithfulness and expands their influence. If you want to create a leadership culture you should be able to write your leadership pipeline on the back of a napkin.
Make risk-taking a value. At COMMUNITY, risk-taking is not only a value; for us it is a synonym for faith. And risk-taking is attractive to leaders.
Success is measured in terms of leadership development. In the last few years we have developed a tool we call a dashboard. It comes out once a month and it gives us an update on how the overall church is doing and how each COMMUNITY site is doing. There are about a half dozen key indicators that we watch and one of the most significant indicators is the development of new and emerging leaders.
Reward faithful leaders. We try to reward people who faithfully fulfill their leadership capacity. There are lots of ways to reward leaders but the best way to reward an emerging leader is with greater influence and responsibility. This perhaps as much as anything will foster a leadership culture.
Use small groups to develop leaders. Small groups are a great and safe place to take risks on emerging leaders. It is a great place because the emerging leader knows these people and they are really rooting for him/her and will give them good feedback. It i a safe place because there are only 6-15 people in a small group.
Have high expectations, but easy entrance into leadership. Set the bar for leaders really high. Leaders want to be a part of something that is challenging and exceptional. But at the same time do not insist that a person has to be around for a long time to move into a leadership role. If an emerging leader will adhere to the leadership expectations they should be able to move into leadership ASAP!
Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve been pondering this list written by Jon & Dave Ferguson about how to easily obliterate a culture of leadership. It’s certainly stirred my thinking about how we do things at IKON and ways to move forward as we wrestle with what a leadership culture will eventually look like for our community in San Francisco.
I’m not sure I realized how exciting yet challenging it can be to create a new culture from scratch, but that’s exactly the situation we church planters find ourselves in. It’s also funny to think that you can obliterate a leadership culture when the culture doesn’t exist quite yet, but I’d say that it’s easier to obliterate the possibility of a strong leadership culture before it even begins.
So, here are the Top 9 Ways to Obliterate A Leadership Culture (Before You Even Begin):
Make really small “ASKS” of people. In other words, don’t challenge people to do anything that requires a significant level of investment or sacrifice. Minimize whatever you need them to do just so they’ll say “yes” to being a “leader.”
Decide today that Small Groups won’t work anymore. Conclude that people are really best cared for and leaders are better developed in a classroom setting. This alone could kill your leadership culture overnight.
Lead with “NO” (this is the opposite of leading with “YES”). Get really good at helping people understand why their idea is not a good one and how it will never work. Phrases that can help you expand your “no” vernacular are: “I doubt it,” “I don’t think so,” “Probably not,” etc.
Never celebrate “Wins”. No matter how successful a leader or team of people may e, don’t take time to honor their accomplishments in any way. Send the message that what they did was simply expected and deserves no special recognition.
Don’t expect artists to develop artists. Establish such high standards for your artists (vocalists, musicians, etc.) that they convince themselves and everyone else that they are irreplaceable and couldn’t possibly find anyone that could be developed to their level.
Hire more staff to coach leaders. Believe the lie that developing an unpaid layer of leaders to coach other leaders is nearly impossible and does not work. This will force you to hire way more staff than you could ever afford.
Make it really difficult to step into leadership. Create lots of red-tape and put people through all sorts of hoops so that it is extremely difficult to step into leadership. One way to do this would be to insist that anyone aspiring to lead needs to attend a weekly leadership class for six months.
Turn your teams into Committees. Stop your leadership team cold in their tracks by insisting that they are now committees, that they can only make a decision if there is unanimous agreement, and that they must operate based on Robert’s Rules of Order.
Offer no on-going training. Make the assumption that once people have said “yes” to leading they have all the tools and resources they need to be successful. In addition, provide absolutely no coaching, just figure if they need some help, they’ll let you know.
Perhaps one of the hardest things about starting a new church is patience. Patience is the one thing that wars against the driven personality of now, now, now, let’s do this and get it done now! I’ve heard it said that patience hurts, it’s not something we’d do willingly but ultimately its about letting go of our selfishness–our wants and desires–and instead putting the interests of others before yours. That’s really hard to think about and accept for the church planter. (Isn’t everything we’re doing in the interest of others, isn’t church planting the ultimate act of altruism? — maybe in a perfect world!)
We’ve been in the city of San Francisco now for 8 months and we’re still 6 months away from launch (October 11th) still needing more time to pull together resources (financial and equipment and location) and a full launch team that’s committed to making this thing go once we do launch. We’ve started our monthly launch gatherings and have seen new people come, listen, learn and commit to what’s taking place but I can’t wait to get to that point where we’re fully operational as a church and can truly begin moving past some of these early stages of preparation and instead push into the dream of being a community that truly makes a difference in the city for the Kingdom.
Sometimes it’s hard to realize that the work of breaking ground is absolutely necessary to building the DNA, culture and foundation that will allow this church to preserve–especially when you just want it to be there now. It’s hard to realize that patience is really about other people, allowing them the space to think through, accept and jump on board with the vision of helping people find their way back to God, of joining in on the hard restorative work of Kingdom building. But patience is still hard for a church planter… it’s hard to work day in and day out towards a dream that is so close yet seems light years down the road.
I’m sure that patience will probably continue to haunt me after we launch in October. There will always be bigger dreams that we’ll strive for as a church, always seeking to push forward to make more of an impact for the Kingdom.
I like how N.T. Wright helps to put things into perspective:
“Paul’s vision of the Christian life is thus… The decisive battle has been won [because of the cross]; the battles we face today are part of the mopping-up operation to implement that victory.”
(Following Jesus, p. 21)
Realizing that we’re here not to win the battle, but to “mop up” in the aftermath seems to take some of the pressure off, but still pushes us to desire the full realization of the Kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven. I want to see that take place in the city of San Francisco… I want to get started on a bigger scale than we see now… and all I keep hearing God say is, “patience, young grasshopper… patience.”
Leadership books are worthless. At least that’s what I continued to tell myself most of the way through college, grad-school, and throughout the first 10 years of ministry. They were always the books that everyone pined over, drooled on and referenced at every corner with the goal of helping you take the world by storm. I very much loathed and despised this genre of book and instead chose to skim, push through, or simply ignore them all together.
My thinking on the subject was simple: what does leadership really have to do with pastoring? How is learning business models of leadership really going to make me a better pastor? The church world and the business world are two completely different spheres that narrowly intersect… why waste my time? For many those questions may seem asinine whereas for others its a perfectly valid line of questioning. Today I have moved from one sphere to the other and for the (perhaps) the very first time, I completely understand why pastors seek after these books and strive to understand the issue/subject of leadership.
As a church planter, despite all the assessments, all the training, all of my previous 10 years of experience combined in a variety of settings and roles, never have I felt more unsure and incapable of leading a group of people to start something new than I do on this journey. The questions that keep me up at night are: How do I maintain this momentum (as small as it may be)?; How do I lead our staff team to create the cultural environment that’s only alive in my mind?; How do I balance all these plates that are spinning overhead?; How do I not lose my mind?! So, I have found myself turning not only to my coaches and mentors for advice but diving headlong into leadership books such as Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us and Tom Rath & Barry Conchie’s book Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow or Alan Roxburgh’s The Missional Leader. In the pages of leadership books, both far and wide, I have discovered my own reasoning for seeking the wisdom within (and perhaps the reasoning for why so many others clamor after them as well).
I have found they provide me (as an uncertain, confused, sometimes desperate leader) a security blanket to fall back on for ideas, strategies and even a zone of ideological bliss when I don’t know where else to turn. This genre of book has become the leaders version of self-help. (Now obviously this is a gross generalization, and many leaders turn to a few a year not in desperation or self-help but as ways of tweaking and improving their skill.) Whether you agree or disagree with how the leader uses this genre, one thing that’s not debatable: it’s not going to change anytime soon.
As I continue to struggle through, wrestle with and strive to lead a “start-up” church I’m quite certain I will be visiting and re-visiting the leadership section of the bookstore multiple times in the coming years for any wisdom that can help make this dream a reality.
