Growing better self awareness

How well do you know yourself? Self awareness is a critical factor in the success of our relationships, friendships and work staff. Unaware people often hurt others and their relationships because they are not cognizant of how their words, attitudes or behaviors impact others. This is especially true with unaware leaders whose lack of awareness causes staff to think that they are uncaring, harsh, lack empathy or simply narcissistic. 

Self awareness means that I understand how I am wired, how I am likely to react to others and situations, what my blind spots and shadow side are, what pushes my emotional buttons and how I am perceived by those around me. While those perceptions may not be the "real us" from our point of view, they are the "real us" to those around us. 

For instance, I can be viewed as distant and private by those who know me from a distance. To mitigate against that I work on spending quality time with those I work with and being as self-disclosing as possible so that they understand the real me. However, if I was not aware of that perception, I would not be able to take steps to counter it. 

What is important to understand is that we have a view of who we are but others around us also have a view of who we are and the two views may be very different. In fact, the more self aware we are the less discrepancy there will be between our view of us and others view of us and the less self aware we are the greater the discrepancy will be. That is because a large part of self awareness is understanding how others perceive us.

Self aware people are able to take steps to mitigate against the parts of their wiring that can be troublesome in interactions and relationships. We cannot fundamentally change our wiring (although the Holy Spirit can) but we can manage our shadow side in ways that facilitate healthier interactions and relationships. 

How do we grow our self awareness? I would suggest doing some reading on EQ or Emotional Intelligence as a start. That will at least give one a framework to understand oneself better. To drill down deeper, we need to have some conversations with those around us as to how they perceive us and what they think our blind spots are. Because we are blind to our blind spots, only feedback from others will help us understand what they are.

Find a trusted friend or colleague and ask some questions: What do you see as my greatest strengths? What do you see as my greatest weaknesses? Describe your perception of who I am to me. What things do you think I am blind to in my interactions, attitudes or actions? Are there things I do that unintentionally hurt others or damage relationships? If you could be completely candid with me about something you see that I should be aware of, what would it be?

I am blessed to have a wife who is honest with me and trusted colleagues who I can have those kinds of conversations with. I am more self aware because of it and better able to manage those parts of me that can hurt others or be perceived as insensitive. I have come a long way but am certain I have a long way to go given the complexities of how I am wired. However, my self discovery has been a major part of my growth as an individual, husband, father and leader. 

It should be obvious that this kind of self discovery takes a great deal of humility and a lack of defensiveness. It is defensive people, and those who need to project a certain image who are the least self aware because they lack the ability to hear feedback from others. In fact, if you are unable to ask these kinds of questions and hear candid feedback it should be a warning to you that you are not only self unaware but likely to stay that way because of the fear of understanding the real you. Growing our self awareness is part of the journey to becoming healthier individuals. 

Jesus centered churches

I dream of a church where...


Jesus and the gospel He proclaimed is the center of everything. Jesus changes lives, and the gospel He proclaimed changes lives and communities as God's people live out their faith in all arenas of life. The Bible is not a self help book as practical as it is. It is the story of redemption - how the God of the universe came to change broken lives through forgiveness, new life, transformation and purpose in joining Him in His work. At the center of everything is Jesus who invites us to follow Him. I dream of a church where Jesus is the center of everything.


The transformation of the gospel in our lives is the goal of all we do. Transformation of our hearts where we understand and live out grace, transformation of our minds so we think like Jesus, transformation of our priorities so our live reflect the concerns of Jesus and transformation of our relationships so that we see people like Jesus sees them and love them like Jesus loves them. Transformation is not a set of rules and regulations but cooperating with the Holy Spirit to see these four areas that make up our lives resonate with Jesus. I dream of a church where becoming like Jesus is the overriding goal.


Success is defined by spiritual transformation and not by numbers, size, facilities and programs. Too many churches are chasing the wrong dream - size, facilities and programs when the Biblical definition of success is spiritual transformation of people who live, grow and minister in community (Ephesians). I dream of a church where success is not defined by the metrics of the world but by the life change Jesus wants to bring. 


We are outward focused rather than inward focused. Jesus went to where the people who needed him were while we often hope they will come to us at our church. If you look at the typical church programming we are so scheduled with church activities that we have little time to develop relationships with those who need Jesus let alone to get involved in meaningful ways in their lives. I dream of a church where intentional involvement with those who don't know Jesus is the norm not the exception.


Grace and love reign supreme. Each of us who knows Jesus is in His family because he extended His amazing grace to us when we did not deserve it and He loved us with an everlasting love. If He did that for us, we need to do that for one another and for those who don't yet know Him. I dream of a church where His love, acceptance and grace is extended to all and is the magnet that draws people to Jesus.


God's truth is proclaimed in its fullness. God's Word contains all that we need for a life of godliness but it must be taught in its entirety - those parts that we love and those parts that are hard and inconvenient for us to confront. Jesus gladly forgives our sin but also calls us to obedience and followership. He freely gives us grace but tells us not to use that grace as an excuse to sin. The Pentateuch gives us a foundation for a moral and upright life, the historical books examples of people who did or did not follow God, the books of wisdom proclaim the fear of the Lord, the prophets, the heart of God, the Gospels the centrality of Jesus and the epistles the guidance for holy living. I dream of a church that boldly proclaims His truth in its fullness so that we are thoroughly equipped for a life of godliness.


Transparency and authenticity are the rule rather than the exception. Christians are broken sinners, saved by grace who still struggle with all the issues that make up the human condition living in a fallen world. Yet the church is often the last place that we are able to be authentic and transparent about our struggles. I dream of a church where authenticity is celebrated and through transparency we are able to experience and give grace and spur one another on to faithful followership of Jesus.


Our communities are directly impacted by the gospel. Jesus did not come just to change individual hearts. His gospel is designed to have a profound impact on society through the influence of His followers as they live out their faith in their circles of influence, neighborhoods and workplaces. Jesus Himself asked us to pray that His will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven. I dream of a church that takes seriously His call to be salt and light in their community and influence their community with the love, righteousness and grace of Jesus.


All people are equally loved, cared for, appreciated and ministered to. Jesus loved all and He had special compassion and love for those whom the rest of society spurned whether wealthy tax collectors, beggars, the poor, the lame and sick or prostitutes. All were welcome at his table, in His crowd and in His family. We cannot live out the life of Jesus or His gospel without caring about all people, not simply the ones who we are comfortable with. I dream of a church that goes out of its way to find and minister to the marginalized in society.


The reputation of Jesus is always lifted high. Congregations, like people, either lift high the reputation of Jesus or drag Him down to our level in the minds of others through our behavior, love or lack of it, grace or lack of it. Fighting and bickering congregations hurt the reputation of Jesus while those who live in unity, even in the hard times, lift it up. I dream of a church that places His name and reputation higher than its own wants and desires and always chooses behaviors that will lift Jesus high. 


And you, what do you dream for the church?

A vision without a workable strategy is an hallucination

Vision is a funny thing. Lots of people (and leaders) have vision but many cannot deliver on that vision because they cannot develop a realistic strategy that will allow them to accomplish the vision. That is why a vision without a workable strategy is hallucination: an unfulfillable dream, a false hope and an empty promise. 


The problem with this is that vision usually comes from leaders and leaders have followers and staff. It is staff who have to live with the unmet dreams of their leaders and the implications of chasing a vision that they know is a foolish dream. I remember a leader I once worked for who hired a staff member to accomplish a specific task that was vital to the organization. 


As I listened to the vision of that new staff member and his strategy for how he would accomplish it I knew in my heart that "this dog won't hunt" but I was not in a position to do or say much as I was lower in the organizational chain and this was a senior level hire of a senior level executive. Nor was I asked my opinion.


In this case we wasted three years of effort, built a staff we had to eventually let go and lost one million dollars in the process. And I had to pick up the pieces when it fell apart and the staff member was let go. Not only did we pay huge "dumb tax" for the foolish expectations and their results but the senior leader lost great credibility in the eyes of his staff for leading us down a path that resulted in organizational damage and could have been avoided. The Walter Mitty vision of the senior leader was an hallucination.


It is not that this leader (the one who hired) and the staff member (the one who was hired) did not have a strategy to reach their vision. Their problem was that it was not a workable strategy. It was built on false assumptions, optimistic rather than realistic thinking which did not even move the ball down the field a bit but rather went the wrong direction entirely.


How does one avoid moving mistaking vision for dreams or hallucinations? A key is not to develop vision by oneself. Senior leaders should work the visioning process with other senior staff who must help deliver on the vision. That includes a reasonable, workable strategy for how the organization will accomplish its vision. Usually that will mean changes in the current paradigm or strategy that the organization is using. After all, the current paradigm got you to where you are but was not designed to get you to where you need to go next. 


That raises the question of whether the organization and its leaders are ready and willing to refocus their efforts, personnel and resources toward the accomplishing of the new vision? Adopting a new vision without refocusing the organization toward that new vision is also an hallucination. Refocusing may well mean that some staff who were key in the past will need to be let go in order to accomplish the new. It may well mean that other staff will need to be refocused and even organizational structures changed to meet the needs of a new vision and a new day. It is a grave mistake to assume that your current ministry paradigm will get you to a new vision and the next level.


Here are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed if a vision is going to be more than a dream:

• Is this a realistic vision and is it the right vision for us as an organization?
• Do we have buy in from senior staff toward a new vision and what is our plan to create a guiding coalition within the organization to move in a new direction?
• Do we have a realistic and workable plan to accomplish the vision?
• What are the unintended consequences of moving in our new direction?
• How do we need to restructure staff, budgets or organizational structure to focus on the new vision?
• How will we know if we are being successful and how do we monitor progress?

Vision is a wonderful and necessary element of leadership. But, a vision without a workable strategy is simply a hallucination.

Don't gunnysack stuff

Have you ever had a situation where your emotions toward someone erupted with an explosion, seemingly out of nowhere and you wondered, where did that come from? Why did I do that? Often, the reason is that you had gunnysacked issues rather than dealing with them and the gunnysack got full and you exploded. It happens to the best of us. We can do it with a spouse, with other family members or colleagues - anyone with whom we have regular interactions.


Gunnysacking happens when we take irritations, slights or offenses from others and toss them in our gunnysack rather than either dealing with them by a candid conversation or forgiving them. One cannot carry around a heavy gunnysack forever without the weight of it affecting us. When the gunnysack gets full enough of unresolved issues it is likely to explode with an eruption of emotion that we regret afterwards.


It is not always offenses that cause us to erupt. It can also be irritations to us from the quirks of others. All of us have quirks of personality which can irritate others. When we allow those quirks to fester as irritations to us they also can cause us to erupt in unhealthy ways of we have gunnysacked them. Often this happens with extended family when someones attitudes, biases, actions or words irritate us to the core but there is nothing we can do about it.


How do we prevent gunnysack eruptions? First, always be aware of the danger of gunnysacking when we are with people that irritate or who have slighted us. Remember that tossing those irritations, slights and offenses into our gunnysack is going to hurt us in the long run.


Second, keep short accounts. Most issues that we take as slights or offenses do not come from ill motives and judging motives is the worst thing we can do as we are usually wrong in our judgement. If needed, have a conversation where you can clarify the issue: "This is how it felt to me when you said or did such and such and I am sure you did not intend for me to feel that way, so can you help me understand?" Much better to get the issue on the table than to toss it in your gunnysack.


The harder thing to deal with are irritations. Sometimes it is good to tell people that when they do such and such it is irritating to you. Other times it is best to simply give them space and even to limit your exposure to them if having a conversation about the behaviors will be counter productive. There are people in my life that push buttons in me and the best way to deal with it is self awareness and limiting my exposure to them. 


However we deal with issues that irritate or cause offenses, the one thing we don't want to do is throw them in our gunnysack and carry them around. The weight is unhealthy for us and eventually may cause an unhealthy response on our part. 

Ethics in hiring staff

We often don't think of ethics when it comes to hiring staff but the truth is that there is a significant ethical dimension to hiring, for the organization doing the hiring, for the individual under consideration and for the individuals that the new hire will impact. Consider these issues:


One: From an organizational point of view, we obviously are looking for staff members who will help us accomplish our mission. One of our key responsibilities, however, is to be as candid, honest and forthcoming about the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Unless the potential staff member knows the true state of the organization, they are not in a position to make a fair analysis of their potential fit. 


One way to facilitate this is to invite the individual to talk with as many key individuals in the organization as possible to receive candid and unvarnished feedback. When hiring individuals who will be working for me, for instance, I invite them to talk to others who also work for me so that they get the best picture of what they are getting into as possible. They will hear things that I would not even think to share because they are not on my radar screen. My bottom line is that I don't want a staffer to tell me he/she was surprised by something six months in. My ethical responsibility is to ensure that they get the best information possible.


Two: From the candidates point of view, I need to ensure that the job being offered is truly in the lane of the person under consideration. If I hire someone who does not fit the position, I have messed with their life. Yes, they have a responsibility to answer the question of fit as well but if I am hiring it is my job to do the best due diligence possible to mitigate against a bad fit which will hurt them and the organization should it not work out.


This means that I should be willing to make whatever time and financial investment is needed to ensure a good match. On the time front it includes dialogue and discussion the potential staff member and with references. On the financial side it may well mean testing to determine competencies, wiring and fit. While we may not get it right all the time, our commitment is to have done all that we can to get it right.


A key practice here is never to do the hiring by yourself. None of us have the insight necessary to see all the angles, upsides and downsides of a candidate. I involve as many people in the process as I need to in order to ensure the best evaluation. If one of my key staff members has a yellow or red flag, I pay great attention to that and am unlikely to hire until that flag has been resolved. The stakes are too high. In this process, one of the most important questions I am trying to answer is whether the candidate has good Emotional Intelligence (EQ) or not. The answer to that question will be one of the chief determiners of a successful hire. (For more information on EQ, see blogs with the EQ label).


Third, from the team's point of view I want to ensure that the potential hire will be a good fit on the team they will serve on. That means that I need to involve other members of the team in the decision. Every hire has an impact on the rest of the team. I have a responsibility to them to ensure that the hire will serve the team well rather than hurt it. Not to involve them is both foolish and potentially harmful. Never hire an individual that cannot work in a healthy team environment no matter what their brilliance or skills. To do so is to disempower and therefore hurt the rest of the team.


In the hiring process, a guiding principle is that we pay now or we pay more later. In other words, the cost of getting it wrong is high, in disruption to the staff member, disruption to the organization and the complicated process of letting someone go. One either does good due diligence on the front end or one ends up paying significant costs to sever the relationship. There is no upside to a bad fit for anyone.


It is a sign of carelessness with people when we do not take the hiring process seriously. Too much is at stake for the individual, organization and team. 

Reclaiming corporate prayer

It is interesting that for all the talk about the necessity of prayer in our ministries and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the time devoted to prayer in most weekend services is minimal and sometimes almost non existent. In addition, it is often obvious that when there is prayer it has not been thought through and yet it is meant to represent the whole congregation. Corporate prayer is often an afterthought in our worship experiences. 


Here is an interesting question. Where do people learn how to pray? I am not talking about praying for personal needs, as we are all pretty good at that, human nature being what it is. But where do we learn to pray for the work of God in our lives, for the expansion of the gospel, for confession of personal and corporate sin, for our communities to be touched with God's grace, or to thank him for the amazing grace He has showered on our lives? 


Think of the prayers of the Old Testament or the New and ask yourself, "When do I hear prayer like that in church?" If not modeled in our services, where will it be modeled? If that kind of prayer was important to the prophets, Jesus or the Apostles, why is it not equally important to us? Often we are left with an anemic idea of what prayer is about when it is central to all we will become as Christ followers. 


Those who come from a tradition of liturgy know the value of well thought out prayer. Sure, it can become rote, as any worship can, but the value of carefully crafted prayer that reflects the priorities of God (not always the same as ours) and lifts up the majesty and greatness of God is powerful. Whether prayers of the people, prayers of blessing, of confession or praise, how we lead people in corporate prayer says much about our own value of prayer and about what we are teaching our people in this regard. The very language we use in leading people in corporate prayer either lifts Him up or "dumbs" him down to those we lead. 


We ought to put the same time, preparation and effort into corporate prayer as we do for all other parts of our services. It is a holy moment when together we lift our hearts to God's throne and corporately confess, praise or ask for His intervention for the sick and hurting. I suspect that off the cuff prayer is treated as such by the congregation while seriously thought out prayer is treated with equal seriousness by those who should be silently (or sometimes verbally) participating. 


Take time to look up the great prayers in Scripture and think about the concerns that were lifted up to the Father. And, encourage the practice of well thought out corporate prayer in your congregation.

Pastoral and staff reviews

I remember my first annual review as a pastor. It was painful: not because the elders thought I was doing a poor job but because it was not based on a clear job description so the comments were random, some felt petty or unfair and simply reflected the personal biases of various board members. I remember thinking, "well that didn't feel good!"

As a firm believer in feedback and reviews I also have strong views on the context in which they are done. 

First, they should only be done after a staff member or pastor have been working with a clear set of expectations for at least a year. In our organization, we use Key Result Areas and an Annual Ministry Plan which define the key results expected from the job and the plan laid out by the staff member to achieve those results. This changes the equation from a focus on activity to results, and it is based on agreed upon results and plans so there can be objectivity. Without agreed upon results, any review will simply be a reflection of the biases of a particular board member and not a fair evaluation of the staff member. 

Second, it is critical to do a review annually, not when the board or supervisor starts to believe there is a problem. Often, the first review a pastor gets is when there is disagreement between them and the board. The review is then used as the means of addressing long standing problems but unfairly so since there has not been agreed upon outcomes up to that point. 

Third, reviews should not have any surprises in them. Good supervisors or boards talk about issues long before they become major issues. There is ongoing dialogue between staff and supervisor or senior pastor and board in healthy ministry situations so that there is never a surprise. Surprises are an indication that such dialogue has not been taking place.

Fourth, reviews should be honest and candid. Don't dodge issues that need to be addressed. If you do, staff don't grow and become all that they can be. Direct and candid feedback is a critical element in growth. When we are not honest - often in the name of grace - we compromise the development and growth of staff. Be direct, honest, candid and invite dialogue to ensure that the issues, if there are any, are understood.

A full paradigm for Key Result Areas, Annual Plans and annual reviews is found in my book "Leading From the Sandbox: How to Develop, Empower and Release High Impact Ministry Teams." It lays out a simple, clear and results oriented process to clarify expectations as well as a healthy process for creating dialogue around work results. Do it right and annual reviews are a key part in creating a healthy environment for staff. Do it wrong and the opposite occurs.