The right questions are more powerful than the right answers

Those who supervise others are often tempted to give answers to issues that arise in their conversations. It is often a mistake as it does not help the staff member think through the issues themselves.

It is far better to ask the right questions than to give the right answers. The right questions cause all of us to think, to focus and to evaluate. Those who ask us the best questions are those who often have the most influence in our lives.

Our natural instinct is to tell not to ask. Next time you are tempted to give an answer ask a question instead. An answer puts a period on the conversation. A question opens up a conversation. And, it causes people to think.

Uncluttering our lives

I often reflect on the prodigious output of individuals like Calvin and Luther who wrote in a day when there were no typewriters, computers, electricity or study aids. How did they do what they did?

The truth is that their lives were much more uncluttered than ours. Uncluttered by ubiquitous email, by cell phones, by television and the Internet, easy travel or the unending options we have for how we spend out time at work or at play.

Often, our conveniences become our challenge. Clutter is how I think of all the emails, communication, media, travel obligations, paperwork and meetings. Not that some of these are not important but because they are not all equally important, but we often treat them that way, to our detriment and frustration.

A personal goal of mine is to unclutter my life so that I don't live in the frustration of too much to do or the lack of time to do what I really should be doing well.

Consider:

Email screams at us to respond. I set aside a specific time to go through the bulk of my email so that it does not distract me through the day. The delete button is wonderful. So are short replies. I respond personally to every email from my staff, but at a time that works for me. Just because others can talk to us any time does not mean that we need to respond at any time.

Paperwork is ubiquitous. I have a wonderful pile in my office that I call the six month pile. When I receive paperwork that is of questionable importance, it goes in that pile. Every six months or so I go through it and realize that 95% of it can just go in the trash. The rest I deal with. I love that pile.

Meetings waste tons of time. Lencioni's book, Death By Meeting, is a classic. I cannot control what others do but I have resolved not to waste other people's time with meetings that are unplanned, poorly run or waste precious time. Meetings are not social occasions but missional.

The cell phone is a blessing and a curse. My strategy is to answer those calls that are important (caller ID), to return other calls when it is not a distraction and to schedule phone appointments rather than to take calls at any time. I am available to those who I need to be available to but in a way that does not clutter my day.

Obligations clutter our lives. Many of those obligations are not obligations we feel but obligations others impose on us. Saying no to those things that are not necessary unclutters life and gives us breathing room for those things that are truly necessary.

Travel is time consuming. I have increasingly been turning to video meetings, even for consultations with church leaders or other organizations to save the wear and tear of travel and simplify my schedule. Sometimes being there in person is necessary. Often it is not. Video meetings can save major travel time.

Reading: Too many books, too little time. The key is to read more selectively - we will never keep up with the information out there but we need to keep up with the critical information out there.

Relationships: They are important. Uncluttering our lives gives us time for what counts more - people.

I suffer from the disease of not being able to work in a cluttered office or study. If things are not in order I feel that my life is not in order. But life itself can be cluttered as well. I am on a mission to unclutter my life. Order and the ability to concentrate on what is most important lightens the load, clears the brain and focuses my energy.

Back to Calvin and Luther: One of the greatest downsides of clutter is that it keeps us from deep thinking. And deep thinking is the key to successful living and ministry. When our clutter crowds out time to think deeply it has compromised our lives. Our business provides the illusion of importance and significance but it is only an illusion. Those who accomplish the most are those who think the most about what they do and how they do it.

How cluttered is your life and do you have a strategy to keep it simple?

EQ potholes to avoid

Potholes can do a real number on one's alignment! That is true with our vehicles and for our personal lives. In both cases, it is better to avoid them rather than pay the price for hitting them.

Consider these personal potholes:

• Getting sideways with someone and not doing all we can to make it right
• Keeping a grudge
• Assuming poor motives without clarifying those motives
• Not listening to feedback that we don't like
• Not asking for feedback from those around us
• Blaming others for our mistakes
• Taking credit for others work
• Insisting on our way
• Criticizing others to others rather than talking to those we disagree with
• Easily taking offence
• Defensiveness
• Making life about me rather than about the mission of the organization
• Taking on the offense of others and making it ours
• Refusing to forgive an offence
• Becoming enmeshed in the issues of others rather than insisting that they work out their own stuff
• Listening to the issues of others without insisting that they go and make things right with those they have an issue with
• Not being honest about our feelings and opinions
• Telling people what they want to hear rather than what we actually think
• Speaking truth without grace
• Giving grace without truth
• Not giving honest feedback when it is needed
• Marginalizing people who are honest with us

Emotionally healthy individuals avoid these potholes and if they hit them make them right quickly. They understand that all of these are relational issues and that healthy relationships are the key to almost all ministry effectiveness. They take responsibility to the best of their ability to keep relationships healthy and to avoid relational breakdowns.

Unhealthy relationships and relational breakdown are the cause of a great deal of pain on ministry teams and within ministry organizations. Most of it would be avoided if we avoided these potholes and filled them in when they occur.

Emotionally unhealthy individuals often don't even recognize these as issues which is a tougher thing to deal with. They find ways to justify their behavior and denigrate those whom they disagree with. Where people with poor EQ create issues that hurt or distract from ministry, someone needs to help them understand the impact of their unhealthy behavior. Often that will fall to supervisors. To ignore it is to leave other team members in a no win situation.

Each of these potholes are discussed explicitly or implicitly in Scripture. If we are guilty of any of them we need to rethink our behavior. It will please God and it will keep us out of all sorts of personal alignment issues. Try not to hit these potholes and if you do, make it right quickly.

Healthy leaders work hard to ensure that healthy relationships are maintained on their teams. When they see potholes developing they work to get them filled in and relationships back where God wants them to be. Where that cannot happen, they move those who constantly create potholes off of their teams.

Loyalty: To the leader or to the mission of the organization?

Recently I led a retreat for a senior group of executives who desire to go to the next level. Each of them is fiercely loyal to their founder/leader. Yet, among themselves there is a fair amount of dissonance with sometimes poor cooperation, siloed departments and lack of cooperation. Why is that when there is such strong loyalty to the leader?

The answer is relatively simply. If my primary loyalty is to my leader I will do everything I can to please him/her but that does not mean that I need to relate well to my peers. It may even be that I jockey with my peers for the "affection" of my leader at the expense of relating and cooperating with my peers as I need to.

Now think about this: If my primary loyalty is to the mission of the organization I will have a different perspective on cooperating with others on the team. After all, for the organization to be successful it must have an integrated, results oriented, synergistic team all pulling in the same direction. Pleasing the leader is replaced by the success of the organization and the fulfillment of its mission.

It is a small difference in focus that has huge consequences for how we act and think. In this case, the leader was frustrated by the lack of commitment to a common mission. We clarified that mission and did a reset of the team's loyalty around that compelling mission which will necessitate that they think and relate differently than they have. A small shift with significant consequences.

Spiritual poverty

The greatest poverty of all is not physical poverty (as profound as that is in our world) but spiritual poverty, poverty of spirit and of the soul.  It is the poverty of being out of fellowship with our creator!

Satan delights in spiritual poverty for he knows that it robs life of its true meaning as men and women made in God’s Image. Anything he can do to encourage a substitute for the true God He will do. It may be an alternate definition of truth, the pursuit of stuff and wealth, the distractions of life or for believers, encouraging us to keep God on the periphery of our lives rather than in the center. Anything that keeps the created from the creator is fair game for Satan. For he knows that it is the creator who brings meaning to the created.

As a mission leader I have the opportunity to travel to many places in our world and we see first-hand the poverty of spirit that pervades our fallen world. It is seen in many forms. In India with Hinduism it is wondering which of the 30 to 40 million Gods one should worship and appease, never really knowing if you chose the right on. In Buddhism it is the endless cycle of existence in some form or another until you get it right.

In Islam it is either a fatalistic fear of God or trying to perform well enough to please Mohamed. In much of the former communist block it is atheism with no God at all. In each case there is a spiritual poverty that keeps people in fear or substitutes some lesser thing for the fullness that only Jesus can offer.

Solomon, with all his possessions understood how empty life was when lived apart from a relationship with God. In fact, he said that it is only God Himself who gives us the ability to truly enjoy those things God has given to us.

“Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him – for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work – this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20).”

Even those who profess faith in Christ can experience spiritual poverty when Jesus is not at the center of their lives. It is He who gives our lives meaning and purpose but unless we are living out His call on our lives we can experience significant emptiness. Life is more than the abundance of our possessions, the toys we can accumulate or the leisure we enjoy. All of those can be gifts of God, according to Solomon but only when God is at the center for it is He who gives us the ability to truly enjoy all of life.

How do we defeat Satan’s attempts to diminish our lives? We keep Jesus at the center of all that we are and all that we do. This includes nourishing our relationship with Jesus through His Word and prayer, being attentive to the voice of His spirit in our hearts, using the gifts He has given for His purposes and the advancement of His Kingdom and loving others as Jesus loved them. When Jesus is central to all that we do Satan is robbed of his ability to deprive us of God’s goodness, joy and purpose. Everything that takes away from our relationship with our Creator should be resisted and everything that keeps Jesus central in our lives should be embraced.

I will empower you but you need to keep me informed

I am a deep believer in the need for leaders to empower other good people rather than to micromanage, control or insist that things be done my way. It is only through giving opportunity away that we are able to sustain growth and see the organization realize its full potential. Leaders who don't empower others are doomed to plateau their ministry at some point. And to disempower other staff who could be doing a great deal more.

There is, however, a reciprocal responsibility to those leaders who empower and give responsibility: staff have an obligation to always keep their leader informed of things he/she need to know. In giving opportunity away, leaders take a risk: if things are not handled well it can come back to hurt the organization. Yet one cannot grow a scaleable ministry or business without empowering others. 

The responsibility of leaders is to build the right team and empower that team. The responsibility of that team is to keep the leader informed of things that the leader needs to know. No leader likes surprises, or to find out from others that something went south.  Sometimes things will go south, that is life but the first one to know should be the leader of the team or organization.

Wise leaders empower other good people. Wise staff keep their leader informed when there are issues. It is a relationship of mutual trust and support. 

Regrets in our lives

We all have them - no one goes through life unscathed by regrets. What do we do with them?

First, acknowledge them to yourself. They may be regrets of things we should have done or things we regret we did. Some may be sin, others simply choices we made that were not healthy. Acknowledging them is the first step in dealing with them.

Second, where forgiveness is needed, ask for it whether of God or others. It is amazing what happens when the grace of God washes over our regrets. When others forgive they exhibit God's grace in a personal way. Once dealt with, there is no point in re-sawing the sawdust. What God and others have forgiven is past and we can put it to rest. 

But, there is a third piece. That is reorganizing our lives so that we don't repeat the behaviors that caused us regret in the first place. It is choosing new decisions, paths and behaviors. If we do, we have learned from our failures and allowed them to move us into healthier places. It is the lessons not learned in regret that are most painful.

We have a gracious God who forgives willingly and quickly when we acknowledge our failures. Don't live with regret. Deal with it, learn from it and allow His forgiveness to wash over your heart.