Why are Christians so mean? An article from Gary Thomas in Churchleaders.com

    

Why Are Christians So Mean?

Gary Thomas

Church Leaders.com

A profound leadership principle that many don't understand

   Leaders must transition from being responsible for the job to being responsible for the people who are responsible for the job.     

Simon Sinek

This truth from Simon Sinek is profound. Too many leaders get trapped into trying to do the job they used to do or trying to accomplish the mission their organization is responsible for and lose sight of the fact that doing the job is no longer in their job description. As a leader, their new job is to build into and be responsible for the people who are responsible for the job. 

Many leaders will not do this because it is counterintuitive to them. For many, to be the leader is to get the job done - themselves if necessary.

But, in becoming a leader, our job shifts in important ways.

It is the move from focusing on my work to focusing on those who are doing the work. This includes:

• Providing maximum clarity to your team about what the organization is about, where it is going, and how it will get there.
• Ensuring that all your team is on the same page and going in the same direction.
• Mentoring, coaching, and helping your team be successful.
• Creating a high-impact team of healthy individuals working synergistically together under good leadership with accountability for results.
• Training new leaders.
• Ensuring your team has the necessary resources to get their job done.

Notice that these activities are not about our doing the job but investing in those who do the job. 

These are the leaders that the staff want to work for! And these are the leaders who get stuff done by helping their team be successful. Be that leader!

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

tjaddington@gmail.com

If you are a team leader you are responsible for ten things

Teams are integral to every organization. In fact, they are the building blocks of an organization so the health of each team is directly connected to the overall health of the enterprise. If you think of teams as the Lego blocks of your organization, think of  half of those teams being unhealthy and the other half healthy. Each unhealthy team will impact those other teams that touch it, interact with it or collaborate with.

Thus the role of team leaders is integral to the health of the organization, more important than many organizations recognize. If they understood the significance of a leader's role they would invest far more in the training and development of their leaders than they often do.

What then is the job of a competent team leader? I would suggest that it involves the following:

One: Building a strong, aligned, results oriented, healthy and synergystic team under good leadership with accountability for results.

Two: Provide great clarity to the team on how they are to contribute to the overall mission and purpose of the organization.

Three: Create a healthy team culture where everyone's input is valued, where people can speak the truth to one another and to their leaders and where new ideas are encouraged.

Four: Ensure that team member have the necessary skill, tools and authority to do their jobs.

Five: Help team members understand their wiring, gifting and lane and help them grow professionally and personally.

Six: Develop new leaders who could take the leader's role or a leadership role elsewhere.

Seven: Be a champion and encourager of team members so that they are encouraged to be all that they can be.

Eight: Provide timely feedback in order to help team members grow.

Nine: Rather than micromanage, give freedom within boundaries for team members to accomplish their work in ways that may be different than yours.

Ten: Ensure that there are results that are consistent with the clarity of the team's responsibilities.

The investment in team leaders is one of the most important investments any organization can make. It will change the return on mission or return on investment dramatically. 

Leaders who hurt others and the organization they lead

It is unfortunate but common to encounter leaders who hurt those who work for them and actually cause damage to the organization they lead. What is even more unfortunate is that these leaders don't realize what they are doing and often do not listen to feedback that could help them. If it is a business they generally will end up hurting the bottom line. If it is a non-profit they will hurt the very constituency that they are meant to serve.

What are the behaviors that end up hurting those we lead? They include a lack of empathy, an inability to listen, micromanagement, grabbing credit and blaming others for failure, seemingly capricious actions and changing of direction, unrealistic demands, dictating strategies without the input of those who must carry them out, putting subordinates down and a lack of encouragement. 

These behaviors do not necessarily come from a bad heart. Sometimes they come from poor leadership training, family of origin issues or wiring. But they do have a negative impact on the organization and their staff. 

How do these behaviors hurt the organization? First, it creates a toxic and unhealthy work environment. Second, it eventually drives out the best leaders who come to a point where they are unwilling to put up with unhealthy behaviors. That has a direct ripple affect on the rest of the staff and the mission of the organization. Both the people and the organization's mission suffer under this kind of leadership.

Team leaders straddle two worlds

Team leaders live and operate in two worlds and how well they do this will determine their effectiveness. Team leaders who do not understand the two worlds they straddle usually get themselves into trouble so understanding the two worlds is critical to leading well.

World one is the team they belong to and where their primary loyalty lies. This is not the team they lead. It is the team they belong to. Many team leaders do not understand this principle: Their loyalty is not primarily to their own team but to the higher team they are on. 

Let me illustrate. For many years I served as the leader of an international mission. But the senior team I belonged to was the senior team of the denomination. Thus my primary loyalty was to the team I was on and it was my responsibility to ensure that the team I led was always in alignment with the team I was on. 

On that senior team my job was not to advocate for the organization I led but to represent the whole organization - its mission and not "my slice of the pie." 

World two is the team that we lead. Every team has a unique mission that must exist in alignment with both the organizational mission as well as the other teams that make up the whole. That the team does this is the responsibility of the team leader. In this scenario, there is no place for politics, turf wars, silos or competition although this often exists and causes dysfunction within the organization.

Team leaders have the following responsibilities that impact both worlds.

• They must represent the ministry as a whole on the senior team they are on
• They must ensure that the team they lead is always in alignment with the organization's mission
• They cannot allow politics, turf wars, silos or competition to divide their team from the organization as a whole or from other teams
• The cannot engage in Leadership Default 

This last point is critical. Many team leaders want to be seen as one of the team. It is easy when decisions are made at the organizational level for a team leader to blame those above them for decisions because they don't want to take responsibility for those decisions. 

I call this Leadership Default because in blaming those above them, the team leader has introduced an us/them mentality to the organization and chosen to cause division between their team and the organization. This is a dysfunctional way to straddle the two worlds of a team leader. 

Team leaders have responsibility to the team they lead and the team they are on. Which one comes first matters and how they navigate those two relationships brings either alignment or division.

Coronavirus: Everything you need to know in an infographic

The Coronavirus:

Everything you need to know in an

infographic from The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong

Taking greater charge and responsibility for our lives

Most of us would be far happier and more productive if we decided to take greater charge and responsibility for our lives. 

Why is this? Because to the extent that we do not take charge of our lives - others will! They will fill our lives with obligations, commitments and "opportunities" that can suck the life out of us leaving us drained and unsatisfied.

I believe this is a major reason for low levels of life satisfaction and even depression. And the irony is that we often do it to ourselves. The greater charge we take of our lives - saying yes to the right things and no to the wrong things, the happier we become. 

Those who don't take charge of their lives are usually people who don't have a clearly defined purpose for their lives. If they did, they would steward their lives with greater passion and purpose and not allow others or circumstances to dictate their priorities and time commitments. 

The most successful people you encounter are individuals who steward their lives with great care. They know that every commitment they make has direct implications for other commitments they should or could be making. They know their purpose and act accordingly.

Taking charge of our lives takes place when we

• Are clear about our purpose in life
• Are passionate about making a difference in line with our purpose
• Are willing to say no to obligations and commitments that would take us away from our purpose
• No longer need to please people over living out our purpose
• Fill our schedules first with those things that allow us to make a difference
• Have margin to think, evaluate, get appropriate rest and spend time with friends and family
• Fill our lives with activities that fill us rather than deplete us

Taking charge of our lives has a rich payoff including a happier and more productive life.