Trust busters and builders

There are practices that contribute to cultures of trust and those which contribute to cultures of mistrust. Leaders of others set the pace by choosing practices that support cultures of trust.

Trust Builder: Choosing to trust.

Trust Buster: Starting from mistrust

You can count on me to trust you unless you give me a reason not to do so. In the event that trust is broken, I will clarify how trust can be re-established.  I will always start from a position of trust rather than a position of mistrust

Trust Builder: Being candid and up-front.

Trust Buster: Being vague and fuzzy

You can count on me to tell you what I am thinking, what my expectations are, how I perceive your strengths and weaknesses and if there is a performance issue, what you need to do to solve it. You may not always agree with me but you can count on me to be clear a bout what I am thinking and why.

Trust Builder: Keeping my promises

Trust Buster: Breaking my promises

I will commit to those things that I can commit to and you can count on me to follow through with my commitment. If for some reason I find myself unable to carry through on a promise, I will tell you. I will not commit to those things that I know I cannot deliver on.

Trust Builder: Acting consistently

Trust Buster : Acting inconsistently

My life will match my words and you can count on me to be consistent in how I treat those who report to me, in the pattern of my life and in living out the commitments of the organization. Inconsistency will be an exception rather than the rule.

Trust Builder: Listening carefully

Trust Buster: Not engaging in real dialogue

I will respectfully listen to and dialogue with you and will be candid in my responses. This means that there is always opportunity for dialogue, questions, clarification and my commitment is to carefully consider your opinions and suggestions even if in the end I choose a different path.

Trust Builder: Being fair and equitable

Trust Buster: Giving preferential treatment

You can expect me to act with your best interests in mind and to always seek to be fair and equitable in decisions that impact you.

Trust Builder: Caring for people

Trust Buster: Using people

You can expect me to genuinely care about you as a whole person and never simply use you for my or the organization's purpose. This means that I will also seek to engage you in your sweet spot where there is convergence between your gifts and our needs.

Trust Builder: Self disclosing 

Trust Buster: Secretive or unable to 'read'

You can expect me to be appropriately self disclosing about who I am, what I am thinking, where I am going and my own challenges.

Trust Builder: Empowering

Trust Buster: Controlling

Where you are given responsibility I will empower you to carry it out within clearly articulated boundaries rather than micromanage you or control you.

Trust Builder: Clarifying

Trust Buster: Making assumptions

If it appears to me that you have violated my trust or acted inappropriately, I will ask you for clarification on what happened and why rather than assume that you deliverately chose to do something unwise or inappropriate.

Don't resaw the sawdust

How many of us live with high levels of regret: issues from the past that continue to haunt our minds, our hearts and our conscience! Yet we know intellectually that God has taken care of all that has been forgiven and sin which we have forsaken. But our intellectual knowledge often does not match our heart acceptance.

The regrets of life are like sawdust and you cannot resaw sawdust. It is dust that has already been sawn and now is good for nothing but to be swept up and left in the sawdust bin.

God's grace covers all of our sin and all of us have plenty of sin to cover, and his grace is always greater than the amount or severity of our sin. He has made sawdust of that sin removing it from us as far as the east is from the west.

The evil one wants us to continue in our guilt and shame. Both which have been lifted and paid for. Don't let him.

The next time you think of those regrets, remind yourself, "You cannot resaw sawdust." God shredded it, leave it in the bin. It is a simple reminder that can free us from what God has already paid the price for.

Healthy teams

Consider this definition of a healthy team: A high impact ministry team is a group of missionally aligned and healthy individuals working strategically together under good leadership toward common objectives, with accountability for results. All of these same criteria apply to healthy church boards as well.

A team is not simply a random group of people thrown together because there are slots to fill - at least healthy teams are not built that way. Think of the team you are on or the team you lead and consider these key elements of healthy teams.

Healthy teams are missionally aligned.

They are made up of people who are all committed to the same mission and understand with great clarity what that mission is (see the last blog on alignment). Mission is the true glue that holds the team together more than any other factor. Non aligned teams are not teams because by definition they cannot be moving together in the same direction (the arrows don't all point in one direction).

They are made up of healthy individuals.

Too often we ignore the issue of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) when building team. Healthy individuals are open to the opinions of others, lack defensiveness, are aware of who they are and how others perceive them, are able to release people rather than control them, can engage in constructive and robust dialogue and have the ability to abide by common decisions.

When you consider the definition of a healthy person above, you realize how critical that is for a team to function well because in the absence of that kind of health teams will be dysfunctional and dysfunctional teams are never high impact.

They work strategically together toward common objectives.

Good teams are those where the members are committed to working syneristically together rather than simply doing their own thing and showing up for meetings and pretending it is "team." This means that team members embrace the objectives of the whole team and take the whole team into consideration in decisions that they make. It is about "we" not "me." Teams that are about "me" rather than "we" are not true teams and do not see the same results.

They have good leadership.

Teams are not led by committee. Someone must lead and provide the necessary clarity and direction and accountability but in an open, collegial atmosphere where robust dialogue is practiced and the team has ownership of their objectives. But there must be leaders. In fact, good leaders are those who can do just that.

Passive leaders cannot lead healthy teams and in the absence of leadership someone else will step in or the team will exist as a "gathering" but will not be team.

This requires team leaders to put a lot of time into team meetings for the sake of missional alignment, increasing the health quotient of team members (development), white boarding strategy together, determining common objectives and ensuring that there are real results. Team leaders cannot treat team meetings lightly if they want to lead a healthy team.

They hold members accountable for results.

This is not very popular or common in ministry circles. We focus more on relationships than we do on ministry results and do not exercised the discipline which teams in the marketplace must exercise in order to stay viable. It is sad, however, because the mission of the church and other ministries has eternal implications not just quarterly returns. Thus results matter, quality matters, discipline matters and measurement of how well we are doing matters.

Where there is no accountability for results, there cannot be healthy team. Nor will you attract or keep high quality ministry personnel who want their lives to count.

How healthy is the team you lead or the one you serve on? What could you be doing differently to raise the level of its healthy and effectiveness?

Nine Leadership Essentials

EQ matters a lot!

Emotional intelligence is one of the most overlooked issues when hiring or building a team. Those with poor EQ leave relational havoc in their wake while those with good EQ are able to maintain good relationships, are generally not defensive or arrogant and can play well on a team.

Clarity is critical

The first job of a leader is to provide maximum clarity to their team on what the organization is about, how the organization will achieve its ends, the values it espouses and the culture that it is committed to create. Clarity is job one.

Coaching is necessary

The intentional developing of staff cannot be taken for granted and is the job of its leader. Monthly check ins with a mentor/coach mentality focused on helping staff become all they can be is a non-negotiable for good leaders. Leaders who do this develop a world class staff.

Feedback is essential

Leaders both provide honest feedback to their staff and want it themselves. They are honest with what they see in their staff, and want their staff to be honest with them on issues they see.

Mission drift easily happens

Mission drift happens all the time and it is the leader's role to keep the team focused on what is most important. Leaders never take their eye off the ball and are always pushing the missional agenda and asking the questions that will keep the team on that agenda

Activity does not equal results

Leaders are not fooled by activity. Everyone is busy but not everyone sees the same results. Leaders ensure that they and their team are focused on the right kinds of activity that will bring maximum missional results.

Wiring must be understood

Leaders are students of the wiring of their staff and work to ensure that staff are in their sweet spot where gifts and strengths converge for the best results. Leaders don't fill slots with people. They put people in the place where they will be the most productive and successful.

Empowerment and accountability both

matter

Leaders empower their staff to do what they are responsible to do in ways that align with their gifts and strengths. They do not micromanage! But they also hold staff accountable for measurable results. They know that empowerment and accountability are two sides of the same coin.

Consistency is key

Leaders are predictable. They treat people consistently, have predictable and consistent behaviors and stay the course they have chosen. Their consistency becomes an anchor to the rest of the team. They are seen as trustworthy

What we know, think we know and don't know

Most of us believe we know more than we actually do – which is a dangerous position to be in. In fact, the greater our ability the greater the risk that we confuse what we know with what we think we know and minimize what we don’t know.

Jim, ranks as one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. Yet, he rarely makes a key decision without bouncing it off of a few key advisers who are in a position to tell him exactly what they think – some from outside of the organization he leads. With all of his skills as a leader, Jim wants to make the right call, not simply the call he thinks is right. In his use of a few key advisers in whom he has great trust he minimizes the risk of a bad call. It also demonstrates great humility and EQ.

There is a massive third category: what we truly don’t know! Here is one of the key distinctive between leaders with good EQ and real humility: those with it acknowledge on numerous occasions that they don’t have the answer and seek wisdom from those who might while those without it pretend or believe they have the answer and pay for that foolishness dearly.

I know many leaders who believe that they must have the answer and that their internal compass is always right. Thus, not only do they not solicit feedback or wisdom from others (with the exception of those who would agree with them) but they consistently get themselves into trouble with others because they went it alone (of course it is never their issue). It rarely occurs to these leaders that they don’t actually know what they ought to do. The result is that in a universe of possible solutions on any one topic, they are stuck in the small prison of what they actually know – or think they know.

Humble and healthy leaders do not assume they know the right course of action or that they can figure it out by themselves. In fact, they are by nature curious, always asking questions, desirous of knowing what others are doing and approach issues with an open mind that invites the best thinking to the table. They do not doubt their ability to get to where they need to go in the end but they are humble enough to realize that in the world of possible solutions, they know only a few and if there is a “game changing” solution they want to know about it.

For this reason, humble leaders rarely make quick decisions but “think grey” and solicit the opinions and ideas of the best people they know – in the area where they need to make a call. Often, they bring multiple voices together at once to think through an issue.

In the process they learn a lot – one of the reasons they are truly good leaders and they develop a cadre of highly competent people who they add to their circle of friends that they can call on in the future. Ironically, their history of making good calls my seem brilliant but if you peel back the process you realize that they did not make them in a vacuum but through their willingness to engage other bright people in the process and admit that they did not have the solutions themselves.

In contrast, prideful leaders – those who cannot admit their need for the wisdom of others either copy someone else’s solution (it may have no context in their case) or trust their limited wisdom never realizing how small their world of knowledge actually is!

One such leader that I know, believes that leadership is all about “making the directional call” and ensuring that everyone knows that they are in charge, in control and “the leader.” He actively resists the input of others and rarely solicits input. He lives with the allusion that he is a great leader when in fact, his ability to lead is seriously impeded by his pride and lack of openness to the feedback and wisdom of others. People around him are not fooled by his lack of wisdom - only he is. 

What we don’t know is a powerful stimulus to living with a spirit of humility. The more we understand what we don’t know the more open we are to soliciting the input and wisdom of others. And the more we learn from other bright people, the better our own leadership and decision making. Wisdom does not come to the insecure and prideful but to the secure and humble.

Attitudes of grace

There are few more important themes in Scripture than that of grace. One of the hallmarks of Christ is that He was full of "grace and truth" (John 1:17). The gospel is all about the grace of God applied to our lives, His unmerited favor given freely to us not only in salvation but on a daily basis!

As one reads the gospels, one sees Christ interacting with graciousness with all, with the exception of the Pharisees who were hypocrites. There was always truth in His conversations but it was a gracious truth.

Organizational leaders set an example and monitor the culture of the organization or team that they lead. In the Christian world, one of the hallmarks of our ethos should be a graciousness in our interactions with one another.

There are many attitudes that do not exude grace: gossip, cynicism, mistrust, assuming the worst rather than the best, anger, and impatience. These are often encountered but they do not reflect the character and attitudes of grace. In fact, they are the opposite of grace: ungracious judgement of others.

This does not mean that we cannot address questions, issues or press into dialogue on difficult subjects. Just the opposite should be true and Jesus certainly did not dodge the difficult conversations or issues. What it does mean is that as we interact with one another, the grace that Jesus gave to us ought to be evident in our interactions with one another. His grace to us ought to be our grace to one another. To not show grace to one another is to deny God's grace to us.

Grace and truth is a powerful combination that creates a unique and God honoring ethos in any organization. Leaders model it and call others to it.

It is policy

Last week I stayed at the Hilton Mexico City Reforma (yes they deserve to be named in this blog and I have kindly forwarded a copy on to them). On my first morning I was sitting with a colleague in the lobby with my eyes closed as we waited for our friends to arrive for the day. All of a sudden I was prodded by a security guard who proceeded to lecture me in Spanish for some unknown infraction. It turned out I was not allowed to “sleep” in the lobby which I was not in fact doing. Just because one’s eyes are closed does not necessarily constitute sleeping. My colleague will attest there was no requisite snoring.

Once I understood what he was adamant about I went to the front desk to share my unhappiness regarding my treatment.  The answer was, “It is policy sir.” I asked for the front desk manager, told her what happened and was told, “It is policy sir.” She knew that I wanted to talk to the hotel General Manager but he was unavailable and we left for the day.

Inexplicably, the General Manager did not attempt to leave a message for me although he had been told of the situation so I called him later that afternoon to dialogue with him about my treatment as a guest at his hotel. “Sorry sir, it is policy” he said. “We have had people from the street come and sleep on our chairs so we have this policy. It is unfortunate but it is our policy.”

I suggested to him that it would be fairly evident that I was not a homeless individual from the streets of his capital – I was wearing professional clothes including a white dress shirt, had a camera and was sitting with a colleague but that seemed to make no difference. After all, he said he had not met me personally so he could not make a judgment on that. Policy is policy. And this is the hospitality industry and I was paying to stay in his hotel. 

I asked him why I should consider staying in his hotel again for which he had no answer nor seemed the least bit concerned: So much for “hospitality.”  Incidentally, I have Diamond Status with Hilton which seemed to make no difference in any of the three conversations.

Now I stay in a lot of hotels around the world each year and this has never happened to me although I have had many adventures in lesser hotels – which is to be expected. When I shared this with the manager he just said, “I am sorry, but that is our policy.”

It got me thinking about policies. It is easy to write policies but harder to write policies that get the right outcome. In this case, in an attempt to stop street people from sleeping in their lobby the hotel developed a policy that disenfranchised their own guests. They were also evidently unable to differentiate between a street person and a hotel guest. How dumb is that? Yet we do the same thing in organizations all the time, especially when we write policies to solve problems that could and should be solved in other and better ways.

Following his lead, I will never stay at his hotel again. It is my new policy! I learned from the best. What policies do you have that are counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish?