Stupid Corporate Policies and Toxic Culture

 

I recently spoke with an individual who worked for a major Home Improvement store in Rockford, IL. He didn't look too happy so I asked him how his day had gone. Terrible he said. "I'm looking for a new job."

Here is what happened. He carries a walkie-talkie on his belt. Using the restroom, the walkie fell off and into the toilet making it inoperative. He was told that $200.00 would be taken out of his paycheck to pay for another. His supervisor told him that he was unable to do anything - it was policy. The store manager said, I don't like to do this but it is policy. 

He immediately went online to look for another job. When I spoke with him that night, he said he had an interview for the following day.

Think about this. The company valued the walkie-talkie more than they valued their employee who had significant experience in the lumber department. Just that day he had helped a customer design a large deck and sold the requisite materials.

The company just lost a valued employee. Consider the cost of finding and training a new individual compared to the cost of a walkie-talkie. 

Other employees and friends will develop an opinion about this company based on how it treats its people. It won't be a positive opinion.

Clearly, the store manager and the individual who supervised this employee are unempowered and were unable to intervene on his behalf. After all, it's corporate policy.

Why would anyone work for a company that values a $200 piece of equipment (damaged accidentally) over a good employee? Not me. I will not give the company my future business - knowing the story.

Organizational culture matters. So do your priorities. And, culture and policies always reflect those priorities. This was a classic case of stupid corporate policies and a toxic culture.

Ten Self Management Principles that will Impact your Leadership

 

Healthy leaders have learned the art of self-management, knowing who they are how they act and react, and the model they set directly impacts those who work under their leadership. There are ten critical self-management principles that all leaders should pay attention to.

Our Attitudes

Leaders do not have the luxury of being careless with their attitudes - toward people, situations, or life. One of the jobs of a leader is to inspire others toward healthy action, encourage the staff, and maintain a positive outlook on life, even when life is not cooperating. Their attitudes impact everyone around them.

Our Emotions

All of us have emotions. Leaders learn to manage their emotions so that their emotions do not cause them trouble. Think of how angry eruptions and words spoken in the heat of emotion cause harm to people. Leaders who cannot control their emotions cause uncertainty for their staff. It has been the downfall of many otherwise bright leaders.

Our Empathy

Without empathy, leaders are not seen as caring individuals but as cold and lacking concern. Some people have a lot of natural empathy. When that is not the case, leaders must cultivate the practice of empathy. Empathy is the key to healthy relationships, and relationships are the key to leadership.

Our Self Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to discern how we are perceived by others and how our actions, attitudes, and words impact others. Lack of self-awareness causes great misunderstanding and assumptions by others that we don't care. Leaders who are not naturally self-aware need coaching and feedback from others if they will lead successfully.

Our Focus

Focused leaders develop focused staff, while the opposite is also true. Good leaders hold themselves to a high standard of discipline in their work, including eliminating those things they should not do and focusing on the most strategic.

Our Empowerment

It is easy to control. It is harder to properly empower, but that is the key to a healthy team, and healthy leaders are rigorous in empowering others within boundaries to accomplish their work.

Our Boundaries

Boundaries are the things we do not allow in our behavior and in the behavior of others because it is hurtful to the culture we want to create. In effect, leaders set the boundaries for what is out of bounds within the organization or team.

Our Example

We lead most powerfully by example. When our stated commitments and examples are not in alignment, the result is cynicism. When they are in alignment, staff know that we are serious. Examples speak louder than words.

Our Humility

Everyone thinks they are humble, but that is the insidious nature of pride. Humility comes when we know our strengths are acutely and equally aware of our shadow side and our need for others. Humility is cultivated through time with God and a great deal of introspection.

Our Service

Few things speak louder than our commitment to serve those we lead and help them be all they can be. For leaders, life is not about us but about others and the mission that binds us together. The more we serve, the better leaders we become.

Each of these ten areas of a leader's life must be practiced intentionally for successful, healthy leadership.

A, B and C Team Members

 

Potential or current team members can be categorized as A, B, or C Team players. This is not about being a good or bad person but about being able to play well on your team.

A-team players are self-directed, highly competent, committed to the team, and hard-working. They are committed to your values and mission, require little management, and are results-oriented. A Team players have high EQs, work well with others, and have good self-awareness. They live and breathe the culture and the mission.

B-Team players are committed to the team, work hard, buy into your values and mission, are results-oriented, and have high EQ, but may require more direction. Generally, B-team players are less creative or entrepreneurial than A-team players, but given concrete direction, they will do their work diligently and faithfully.

C-Team players may or may not be competent (some are very competent and may even be  'stars'). But they have a fatal flaw that disqualifies them from serving on your team. Disqualifiers include lack of tangible results, laziness, lack of buy-in or adherence to your mission or values, low EQ that disrupts relationships on the team or elsewhere, inability to work productively as a team player, or immaturity requiring constant management. 

Let me say what many in the Christian world are unwilling to say: C Team players do not belong on our teams, no matter how 'nice' they are or how long they have been with you. To allow them to stay is to condemn the rest of the team to frustration and to compromise the organization's mission. Remember, we are using God's resources to further God's Kingdom. We are responsible to our donors, the Kingdom, and the organization's mission to ensure that we deliver on the mission.

The question one needs to ask about C-Team players is whether the fatal flaw can be dealt with so the individual can move from a C-Team player to a B-Team player. People operating at a C-Team level in terms of results are in the wrong job (wrong seat), so you may want to do some testing and try an alternate job if one is available. What is not wise is to leave an incompetent person in place. Your credibility as a leader will be legitimately tarnished with the rest of your team if you do not deal with performance issues - or other fatal flaws.

No matter how competent an individual is, if they don't live your values or believe in your mission, they don't belong on your team. Your culture and mission are sacred, and those who don't live both do not belong on your team. Culture is fragile and critical. Those who don't live the culture are hurting you no matter how smart and competent they are. This is evidenced in many ways, especially in how they treat others. No one who violates others should be on the team. They will destroy your team. Anyone who uses people like objects rather than appreciating them as people will help you build a healthy culture.

Before deciding whether someone is a C-Team player, ask whether they have ever been coached or mentored. And whether anyone has ever been honest with them regarding problematic issues. If not, you owe it to them to put them through a process to see if they can be retooled and brought up to a B-team level.

A and B Team folks are the heart of any good team and organization. In some higher-level jobs, you will need A-Team players. In many jobs, a solid, faithful B Team player is precisely what you need. Know that you need and work to fill positions based on that need.

One of the realities of organizations is that someone who is an A or B Team player at one phase of an organization's life can slip to a B or a C at another. Most people have a built-in "capacity ceiling" where they cease to be effective. Thus, a youth worker who was a star when she had 20 youth in her group (she could personally relate to 20) starts to slip when she has 60 (she cannot relate to 60 and is not able to build a team to help her).

It may be a case of being unable to multiply themselves to lead a larger number of people, or they have just quit growing (an all too common scenario). If coaching and mentoring do not solve the issue, you may have to move them to another seat on your bus or help them, redemptively, find a seat on another bus. What you cannot do is allow someone to function at a sub-standard level without directly impacting the rest of your team and the results of your ministry. At any stage of your ministry's life, having the right people in the right seat is critical if the ministry is going to develop to the next level of effectiveness.

Your first responsibility as a leader is to ensure the health of your organization while always acting redemptively when a change is needed. People who are not doing well are usually not in their sweet spot, and they often know it. Leaving them there is not fair to the organization and others on your team, and in the end, it is not in the best interests of the one who cannot play at the level they need to play at.

What the Gospels teach us about how we should relate to and treat others

 

I am convinced that an understanding of how Jesus related to people is critical to our own interactions - at least as believers. There are four Gospels which is maybe a sign that we were to pay attention to them.

It is intriguing that we read in John 1:14 that Jesus came full of grace and truth: in that order. My observation is that those who claim to be Christ-followers love "truth." Just read social media and listen to those who share their thoughts in social media spaces. There are plenty of our versions of the truth. I say versions because not everything we call truth is actually God's truth. But absent all too often is grace.

Unless he was speaking to the Pharisees who were serial grace killers and legalists, Jesus negotiated conversations with amazing grace. Take the woman at the well in John 4. She was an individual with a broken life, living in immorality and deeply in need of truth. Jesus engages her without judgment and with amazing grace. He acknowledges her brokenness but did so in a way that did not scare her off or shame her. 

In fact, even though he acknowledged her brokenness, she promptly went and called her village to come and meet this man. She said  “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him." Now she would never have done this if Jesus had not led with grace rather than a harsh truth.

Truth without grace is not Jesus yet we practice it all the time. We judge others for their sin, we say things that lack the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we treat people poorly as if we have the moral right to do so and we do it in the name of God. I suspect that when we do so we are not speaking for God, and certainly not like God. Those of us who know Jesus only know Him because He showed us grace - amazing grace and invited us to Himself.

The lack of grace and the focus on truth and our requisite judgmental attitudes is a large reason that people are not attracted to us, to our congregations, and ultimately to Jesus. He came to us full of grace and truth. People may listen to truth but generally only when that truth is full of grace. As Gandhi famously said, I like Jesus but I just don't like Christians. He did not see them as nice people.

I have been the recipient of harsh truth as well as amazing grace by others. Which of those do you think healed my heart? Which of those do you think encouraged me to look again at Jesus? I would guess that you have had the same experience. I would also guess that you can name those who treated you like Jesus did and those who didn't.

Growing up in an evangelical tradition that majored in truth at the expense of grace, I have been more and more attracted to Jesus and His example in the Gospels of speaking truth saturated with grace. Remember, He came full of grace and truth - in that order.

How are you doing in relating to others on the basis of grace before truth?

TJ Addington is the lead at Addington Consulting. We solve dysfunctional cultures and teams and help you build healthy, scalable organizations of clarity, alignment, and results. If the pain is high, you need Addington Consulting. tjaddington@gmail.com

The day between Good Friday and Easter Morning

 

What do you think it was like the day after the crucifixion of Christ? Did Pilot wake up with a guilty conscience and wonder if he had done the right thing? Did the guards, who had mocked Jesus and then seen Him on the cross, wonder if an innocent man had died? Did the crowds, who had called for His life, keep an embarrassed silence in a quiet Jerusalem? Someone was nervous,  for they asked the Roman garrison to post guards at His tomb. On the day after, Jesus' friends mourned, the Romans were nervous, and some who had watched the execution were sure He was the Son of God.

It had to be a day like no other in Jerusalem. It had to be a day of quiet and consideration. It had to be a day of sober doubt after a day of impetuous action. I'll bet there were many disturbed consciences that day. The day between death and resurrection. A day of uncertainty and guilt. A day of hopelessness and sadness. But it was done and there was no undoing the events of the night before.

We have days like that! I have experienced whole periods of life that hang between hope and despair. Uncertainty reigns. Sadness is prevalent, maybe dominant. It is the time in between life as it was and life as it will be - but not yet knowing what will be. It is the dark night of the soul with all the questions, uncertainties, and unknowns. It is those times of personal chaos when we have no idea and little hope that life will become whole again. It is the loss of hope most of all.

It is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is real and it hurts and all of us experience it just as the disciples did, only in different ways. But there is another day coming...we know and we look forward to that day of hope. Always remember in the day of despair that morning comes, and it comes with hope and resurrection power and salvation. In the in-between times, we need the words of Habakkuk, "Be still and know that I am God." Easter comes and so does Hope.

There is a whole book in the Old Testament devoted to those in between times. It is the book of Lamentations. To lament is to mourn and to be in sorrow. Jeremiah is literally walking through the burnt out ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonians had destroyed the city. The city is largely deserted, the temple in ruins, most of the population had been taken into exile into Babylon. Think of the pictures you have seen recently of the cities destroyed in Ukraine and you get the picture. People living in the middle of rubble, hope gone, lives destroyed, bank accounts empty.

Jeremiah is deeply distressed as he wanders through the ruins and then these amazing words. “Because of the Lords’ great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

In the time of pain and hopelessness Jeremiah says, “your mercies are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.” Great is your faithfulness.

Jeremiah was living in that “in-between time” as we also experience. Where life hangs between Hope and Despair. It is the dark night of the soul with all the questions, uncertainties and unknowns. It is those times of personal chaos when we have no idea and little hope that life will become whole again. But we know from Easter that there is another day coming. Jeremiah knew that there was another day coming because he knew the character of God, who is always faithful. His mercies are new every morning. Tomorrow, as we celebrate Easter, we are reminded once again of His faithfulness and mercies toward us.

Always remember in the day of despair that morning comes, and it comes with hope and resurrection power and salvation. In the in-between times, we need to remember. Easter comes and so does hope.

On Easter morning:

The evil one was defeated once and for all

Our sins were paid for on the cross

Jesus rose victorious from the grave

We received hope of our own future resurrection

Death was defeated

Hope was restored

The world was forever changed

The Holy Spirit came

No matter what you are going through today, remember, Easter comes and so does hope. With God it is always so. The in-between times are not the final word. Easter and Jesus and the resurrection are the final word.

Father, thank you for the hope you give us daily in spite of our circumstances. Hope that is grounded in Easter when you rose victorious and our sins were paid for once and for all. Great is your faithfulness. Amen.

The word for today: Hope. His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

TJ Addington is the lead at Addington Consulting. We solve dysfunctional cultures and teams and help you build healthy, scalable organizations of clarity, alignment, and results. If the pain is high, you need Addington Consulting. tjaddington@gmail.com

Good Friday: Things are not always what they appear

 

Things are not always what they appear to be!

One of the lessons of Good Friday is that what appears to be true is not always true. On this day, the cosmic battle between Satan and God culminated in what Satan thought was his greatest victory. That battle had been waged from the time of the fall when God made it clear that one day Satan would be defeated (Genesis 3:15). But on this day, Satan knew he had won. The Son of God is on the cross, alone, abandoned even by His Father, who didn't seem able to rescue Him. Thirty pieces of silver were all it had taken, the best deal ever in the history of evil.

The disciples knew it was over. Jesus' friends knew it was over. The religious authorities knew it was over - their problem solved, a rival gone. Not only that, but evil had won over good and righteousness for those who cared. For the followers of Christ, this was the ultimate sadness. They had expected righteousness to triumph, but instead, evil had prevailed. The one who had called Himself the Son of God, dead on a bitter cross. The dreams of a new kingdom were shattered. Hope itself in the person of Jesus. Gone.

Little did they know that what appeared to be the final chapter was only the beginning of a new chapter. Out of the jaws of apparent defeat, Christ would not only be resurrected, but in that resurrection, he sealed the fate of Satan, evil, and unrighteousness for all time and made it possible for the created to have a relationship with the creator. The apparent defeat was only the prelude to total victory! Things are not always what they appear to be. 

Not for one moment had the events of Good Friday been out of the control of the heavenly Father, even though it looked like the Father had lost all control. He is always sovereign, and nothing under His control can ever be out of control. The world learned that on Easter Sunday but on Good Friday it could not understand.

Think about your own life for a moment. Where are the areas that seem to be out of control? Where does it feel like evil has won? Where are the areas where you feel apparent defeat, discouragement, sadness, or pain? It is easy to see the Good Friday moments in our lives when it is clear that God has not acted, and we need His help. However, it is harder to wait for the resurrection moments when God shows up, as He always does, and redeems what we thought was unredeemable - often in surprising and unique ways.

I have had whole seasons of life when it seemed that the darkness prevailed over light. I remember leaving my pastorate years ago, depressed, defeated, and convinced that I had failed. I had been caught in a power struggle where the "bad guys" won, and the rest of us left the church. I was out of a job, out of hope, clinically depressed, and even, at times, suicidal. Yet out of that experience came a new journey to understand God's grace, and a new passion for helping hurting churches so that leaders could lead with greater health and less pain. What looked like Good Friday to me, where life was hard and hope was scarce, turned out to be anything but. I came out of the experience with greater faith, wisdom, and understanding. Yes, it took a while, but it happened. I now realize that what seemed out of control was always in His control, and what seemed like failure to me was part of the building blocks of future ministry.

Whatever your circumstance, you can be sure that Easter is coming and that things are not always what they appear to be. In the end, nothing that is in His control can ever be out of control. 

How do we deal with the Good Friday moments of life when life is hard and hope is scarce? Sometimes you have to borrow faith from others. When my faith is thin and fragile, I can borrow faith from someone whose faith is strong. That is why relationships are so important in the Christian family. We don’t exist alone. We need one another. When I am weak I need someone who is strong and when I am strong I can lift up the weak. Never be ashamed of needing to borrow the faith of others.

We also need to keep our relationship with Jesus current. If He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15), then we need to stay connected to the vine. There are plenty of times in life that we don’t know what God is up to and times when we are discouraged and perhaps even despair. But there is never a time when we cannot stay connected to Him, knowing that He is the source of life and hope. 

Remember in the Good Friday moments this truth: “Christ Jesus who died - more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:34-39). 

Clearly things are not always what they appear because behind the realities that we see, there is a spiritual reality that is always present and God is always up to something. While life may seem to us to be out of control, nothing under His control can ever be out of control. That is the lesson of Good Friday. And that is true today in those areas of your life where life seems out of control.

Father, on this day the world thought that evil had prevailed. We now know that You prevailed against evil once and for all. Remind me often that life is not always what it appears and that nothing under your control can ever be out of control. Even in my life today. Amen.

The question for today: What things in my own life do I need to remember are under God’s control today?

TJ Addington is the lead at Addington Consulting. We solve dysfunctional cultures and teams and help you build healthy, scalable organizations of clarity, alignment, and results. If the pain is high, you need Addington Consulting. tjaddington@gmail.com

How Jesus prays for you

 

We pray for a lot of things and we are invited to do so on a regular basis. We have a heavenly Father who loves to hear from us and if you listen, He also loves to speak to us. But have you considered how He prays for you? In John 17 on the night of his arrest, Jesus prayed for His disciples and He prayed for you and me. In this prayer, we see the heart of God for us and it reveals what He cares about for us.

“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

What does Jesus want for you? He wants you to have eternal life and to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He sent. He doesn't call you to a religion, a church or a denomination. He invites you to know Him and to know the Father and this is eternal life. Knowing God and being in relationship with Him is the most precious gift we could ever have. This is why He died. This is why He took on Himself our sin. So we could genuinely know Him and live in a loving relationship with Him. It changes everything.

Then Jesus prays for His disciples. “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”

Did you catch what he prayed here for us? That we would have the full measure of joy within us. Even though we live in a broken, crazy world He says that we can live with the full measure of joy because the joy is found in a person - Jesus Christ. Not in our possessions, success or any other place, but in the person of Jesus. Then He prays for our protection from the evil one. You and I know that the evil one’s greatest desire is to derail our relationship with Jesus and our joy. So He prays for our protection and for our sanctification. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit changes our character into His character.

And then He calls us to a mission in our broken world. “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” His mission to bring the Good News to the world is now our mission. His work is now our work. We are now His ambassadors to a broken world. This is why he wants us to be sanctified. So that we represent His character and love to a world that is in desperate need of both.

But then He prays for you and I who will believe the message because someone was faithful to share it with us. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

What does He pray for us? He prays that we would be one. That just as He and the Father are one he prays that we as His children would be one. In fact He says I have given to them the glory that the Father gave me so that we could be one, “I in them and you in me” so that we would be brought to complete unity.”  I am fascinated that Jesus would pray for our unity together as members of His family. Why? Because our oneness is proof to the world that the Father sent the son and has loved us as the Father loved Jesus.

There is something supernatural about the unity of the Father and the Son. And there is something equally supernatural about the unity of you and I together. Only the Spirit of God can take people from different ethnicities, social classes, political persuasions, disparate backgrounds with all our personal baggage and dysfunctions and make us one. That is the proof to the rest of the world of the divinity of Jesus. Unfortunately all too often we don’t live as one but that is what He calls us to and that is what He prays will be the case.

Finally, He prays “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

“Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

We will be known, Jesus prayed for our love. 

Father, remind me today that I have been called into a living relationship with you and a supernatural unity with my fellow believers. May I love you well and love your family deeply. Amen.

The Question for today: How is my love quotient for my fellow believers?

TJ Addington is the lead at Addington Consulting. We solve dysfunctional cultures and teams and help you build healthy, scalable organizations of clarity, alignment, and results. If the pain is high, you need Addington Consulting. tjaddington@gmail.com