10 Reasons Leaders Should Not Answer This Question

14 years ago I was meeting with our company president trying to explain why we were not making a bigger imprint in the marketplace.    During the conversation I began to outline the reasons why.
He said, “Brian why don’t you go to the board.”  I went to the whiteboard in his office and grabbed a marker.  Little did I know I was entering a teachable moment.
He proceeded, “Brian, draw two columns. On the first column, write down every issue you’re dealing with in helping churches.”  I began to write down a number of secondary items like difficulty getting by gatekeepers.
He looked at this list and said, “OK Brian, now write down the issues churches are dealing with.”  I then wrote down a number of items like vision clarification and construction, timing, seasonality, leadership unification and alignment, project clarity, trust issues, and leveraging momentum among others.
He leaned back in his chair, paused and then firmly said, “Brian, notice the two lists.  How many items in the two columns are the same?”  Knowing I was in trouble, I sheepishly said, “None.”  To which he responded, “Brian, the reason you’re not making a bigger impact in with churches is your issues are not the issues churches are dealing with.  They are not the same.  You are not focused on the right issues.  You are answering questions no one is asking.”
I remember thinking, “Jesus, if You want to come back, NOW would be a good time.”

• Pastors, are your sermons answering the questions those in your congregation are asking?
• Business leaders, are you answering the questions your customers are asking?
• Non-profit leaders, is your organization answering the questions and addressing the issues the hurting in your community are asking and dealing with?
• Coaches, are you aware of the needs of those on your team and helping them get better?

One of the worst things leaders can do is answer questions no one is asking.  Don’t answer the question no one is asking.
Leaders who do:

1. Are not properly evaluating reality.
2. Are not listening to those they are called to serve.
3. Are not prepared.
4. Are not providing solutions.
5. Are frustrating their teams.
6. Are potentially losing top performers.
7. Are missing opportunities and losing revenue.
8. Are not building a culture of success.
9. Are wasting time.
10. Are potentially short-term leaders.

Don’t be a leader who answers questions no one is asking.

Click HERE or on the image to the left and as a free gift for subscribing to this site, you can receive my new Ebook 1869 Leadership Quotes: Timeless Truths From 2015 Global Leadership Summit, That Church, REACT and Catalyst Conferences.  If applied, these insights will make you an exponentially better leader.  Enjoy!!

7 Enemies of Organizational Health

By Ron Edmondson

“Over the years of leading I’ve observed a few things that can be the enemy of organizational health.”

I love organizational leadership. I especially love attempting to lead healthy organizations. I have been in both environments—healthy and non-healthy. I prefer healthy.

If truth be told, I’ve probably been the leader in both extremes. And, there are seasons when every organization is healthier than others.
Over the years of leading I’ve observed a few things that can be the enemy of organizational health. They keep health from happening and—if not dealt with—can eventually destroy an organization—even a local church.

Here are seven enemies of organizational health:

Shortcuts—There are no shortcuts to creating a healthy organization. I’ve known leaders who think they can read a book, attend a conference or say something persuasive enough so everything turns out wonderful. Organizational health is much more complicated. Success is not earned through a simple, easy-to-follow formula. It takes hard work, diligence and longevity. Leaders must be committed to the process through good times and bad.
Satisfaction—Resting on past success is a disruption to future growth, which ultimately impacts organizational health. When an organization gets too comfortable—boredom, complacency and indifference are common results. The overall vision must be attainable in short wins, but stretching enough to always have something new to achieve.
Selfishness—Organizational health requires a team environment. There’s no place for selfishness in this equation. When everyone is looking out for themselves instead of the interest of the entire organization—and this starts with the leader—the health is quickly in jeopardy.
Sinfulness—This one is added for those who feel every one of my posts must be spiritual. (Just kidding.) Seriously, healthy organizations are not perfect (and we all sin), but it doesn’t matter if it is gossip or adultery—sin ravages through the integrity of the organization. When moral corruption enters the mix, and is not addressed, the health of an organization will soon suffer. This is why it is so important a leader stays healthy spiritually, relationally and physically.
Sluggishness—Change is an important part of organizational health. In a rapidly changing world, organizations must act quickly to adapt when needed. Some things never change, such as vision and values, but the activities to reach them must be fluid enough to adjust with swiftness and efficiency.
Stubbornness—Let me be clear. There are some things to be stubborn about, again, such as vision and values. When the organization or its leaders are stubborn about having things “their way,” however, or resistant to adopt new ways of accomplishing the same vision, the health of the organization will suffer. Most people struggle to follow stubborn leadership, especially when it’s protecting self-interest rather than organizational interests.
Structure—As much as we need structure, and even though we should always be working to add better structure, bad structure can be damaging to organizational health. When people feel they are being controlled by rules, more than empowered by their individuality and passions, progress is minimized and growth stalls. People become frustrated under needless or burdensome structure.
What enemies of organizational health would you add to my list?

Do You Lead a Team? Then You Need to Learn to Deliver Great Feedback

Do You Lead a Team? Then You Need to Learn to Deliver Great Feedback

By Adrian Pei One simple thing you can say to eliminate 90 percent of problems when you’re delivering feedback.
In the last post, we discussed how to discern if and when to give feedback. Now we’ll cover Feedback Principle #3:

When feedback is appropriate, we need to learn to deliver it well, not avoid it because we’re afraid of doing it badly.

Delivering feedback well requires two things: courage and skill. We need to be brave enough to give feedback when it’s necessary or important, and we need the skill set to do it thoughtfully and effectively.
I’ve found that most problems arise when we have one without the other. Sometimes we charge into giving feedback when we’re fired up about something or someone, and don’t really take the time or thought to learn how to do it sensitively. In other words, we have courage but lack skill. Often we’re tempted to defend this by saying “we have good intentions.” But good intentions aren’t enough … after we’ve told our friend that she has a weight problem, does it really make her feel better when we say, “I was just trying to help”?
However, I think the majority of the time we avoid giving feedback at all, because we don’t want to mess things up. Regardless of whether we have skill, we lack courage. And this is why so many important conversations never happen, whether it’s employees addressing a communication breakdown with a coworker or their boss, or family members getting to the root of why a fight happened.
On which side of the spectrum do you land? Do you tend to have courage, but need to grow in skill? Or do you not give enough feedback or have enough hard conversations because you’re afraid of doing it poorly, or of what it might do to your relationships?
The good news is that either way, there’s something you can do about this! We’ll cover some practical things you can do to deliver feedback with skill, and I’ll recommend some books and resources as well. Let me start with something extremely simple that you can say that could save you a lot of grief, before you attempt to deliver your next piece of feedback.
Try saying this:
“I really want to say this in a respectful way, but I’m still learning how to give feedback well. I apologize for the parts that don’t come out well, and could you please tell me afterward what I can improve for next time?”
How does reading that feel to you? Liberating or empowering, hopefully?
Here are a few things this accomplishes:

• It communicates a desire to respect and value someone.

  This sounds incredibly simple, but it’s amazing how often this element is not part of a feedback conversation.

• It acknowledges that our words and feedback have an impact on this person … and we care about that impact.

  Again, so simple but incredibly important.

• It communicates that we’re a work in progress as we learn to give feedback well, and we’re inviting them to be part of that process!

  In other words …

Yes, we’re asking for their feedback … about our feedback! It can set the tone for the entire conversation, from defensiveness to openness. Again, when we give permission to others to help us through their feedback, they are more likely to open themselves to us as well.
Addressing the three things listed above can go a long way … in my opinion, it can eliminate 90 percent of the problems we tend to encounter during feedback conversations. It’s not only more honoring of people … it’s more effective too! 
It’s something you can apply right away, in just two sentences … so try it and see how it works for you!
Check back for more on delivering feedback well soon. Thanks for reading!

Adrian Pei works as Director of Creative Arts and Resources at Epic Movement, the Asian American ministry of Cru. He earned degrees from Stanford University and Fuller Seminary, and is passionate about writing and developing culturally-aware leadership. You can find him on his blog at www.adrianpei.com, or on Twitter at @adrianpei.
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Why God Is Not Logical

By Barnabas Piper

God doesn’t always make sense.

Those of us who believe in God credit him with being in control of “all things.” And we mean it. He is control of absolutely everything.
We run into trouble, though, when we start trying to piece that together logically. We try to add up the causes to equal the effect or lay out the events in sequence so that they make sense.
But God doesn’t always make sense.
He is a puzzling being who often leaves us baffled and frustrated.
God is good and loving. He doesn’t do bad things. But he’s in control of bad things.
So that means he is responsible for tragedies without being at fault for them. Huh? That doesn’t make any sort of logical sense. By our logic, 2+2=4, and anyone responsible for bad is guilty of it.
Those delightful debates over election and soteriology rest in the fact that God doesn’t make logical sense. God decides who will be saved and who won’t; He chooses His elect. Yet we’re all responsible for our own actions and face judgment for our sins.
It doesn’t seem particularly good to judge people for actions that were predetermined beforehand. Or is it that each of has free will and chooses our own way, and somehow God is sovereign over our liberty.
Logically, that doesn’t make sense either. It sort of lets God off the hook, but it sounds dumb.
Now I’m flustered. God makes no sense.
What if our seeking to “make sense” of God is based in the wrong place? What if 2+2=4 isn’t the right system of thought for understanding God? We seek to limit God to something we call logic, but what if that isn’t enough?
God is not logical because logic is for the finite and the fallible. It is a structure created and given by God so that beings with limited knowledge could solve problems and have a reasonable world.
Logic is a framework for understanding created beings and their doings, but God is not created. He is not finite. And He is not bound by logic. What we see as the ultimate basis of understanding is not ultimate at all. It is a created thing too.
To say God is not logical isn’t to say he is illogical. No, God is beyond logic.
He is, as the Bible puts it, “inscrutable.” He is outside our ability to understand. What we understand of God is but a sliver of who is, revealed to us out of kindness. He doesn’t fail to make sense. To accuse Him of such is blasphemous. We simply don’t have the limitless knowledge to understand him.
It is fair to say that God doesn’t make sense but not to say that God isn’t sensible.
It is never fair or right to make a judgment of God based on a lack of logic. Think of a father who can stay up late, drink caffeine and watch scary movies but doesn’t let his second grader do the same.
Why is that OK? What’s right for the parent isn’t always right for the child. The child won’t understand this, may get frustrated at it, but must abide by it. It’s what’s best.
In the same way (only infinitely more so), what’s right in the mind of the Creator won’t be understood by the created as right all the time. It’s not that He is playing us; we simply cannot understand.
It may be frustrating, but we must abide by it. It’s what’s best.

My Love/Hate Relationship With Leadership

By Ed Stetzer

“Everything is not about leadership, but we must recognize leadership impacts every other area.”

I like to write on leadership. Indeed it is one of the most commonly used tags on The Exchange. There is no question it’s a topic we should review often.
I hope you enjoy and are helped by this addition.
I have a love/hate relationship with leadership.
First of all, I hate it because I’m not a natural born leader. I’ve never been able to step into leadership roles effortlessly. I meet people who just become leaders because of who they are. I have never been that person. I was a bookworm and a nerd. Leadership was not something I naturally inherited; it was a skill and a practice I had to learn. And learn I did.
Because of my experience, I think all of us can learn to be leaders. I don’t think leadership is simply something we are born with or not. We can learn skills, activities and practices that help us in the area of leadership.
The difficulty is that leadership has fallen on hard times in evangelical churches. I think part of that is a backlash to what I call the Maxwellization of leadership in the last couple of decades, when John Maxwell’s books seemed to be required reading for church leaders.
Everything was leadership in the ’80s and ’90s, but now the pendulum has swung the other way. We’ve moved away from leadership, especially leadership based on business principles. We hear people say, “I don’t want to be a CEO leader. I don’t want to be a dictatorial leader and hold things over people.”
When Mike Dodson and I were researching and writing Comeback Churches we may have gotten caught up in that backlash. We wanted to find what factors led to church revitalization. We expected to find prayer, preaching, evangelism, etc. We researched and we studied more than 320 churches. We called them and did multiple interviews with dozens of them. Do you know what we found? Everything rises and falls on leadership.
We were focused on prayer, preaching, structure, evangelism and ministry, but we found leaders led churches to engage in those areas. In his essay on Paul’s leadership development for the book Paul’s Missionary Methods, Chuck Lawless writes:
I have served as a church consultant for more than 15 years. The work has been steady, as few churches on the North American continent (or around the world, for that matter) are fully healthy. The weaknesses in most churches are several, including a lack of evangelism, a failure to disciple, a focus turned inward and a myriad of other issues. At the core of most concerns, however, is a singular pressing issue: a failure in leadership.
And, by the way, though I was concerned about the Maxwellization of leadership, the number one author credited and cited by those who led church revitalizations was John Maxwell.
Scripture is unapologetic in holding up the value and the example of leadership. We need to be clear about the biblical teaching that leadership matters. Leadership matters to God. God chooses and uses leaders. Leadership matters to churches. God uses leaders within churches to lead people to that which he desires them to engage.
The lack of leadership development is, in my view, one of the primary reasons churches plateau. Too many pastors are incapable (or unwilling) to identify and cultivate leaders within the church. They struggle mightily just to recruit workers! But, until pastors are able and willing to train leaders and leaders of leaders, the church will always stop growing at the furthest reaches of the pastor’s own ability to work.
We know the names of great leaders of God’s people and why they matter. We know what they did. Leadership is not just a biblical concept in the church, but it’s a godly practice shown throughout Scripture. It is both prescribed (it’s a noble task, it needs to be done, raise up leaders), and described (stories of how leaders have functioned well and poorly). Leadership is both a biblical practice and biblical principle.
Many of us need to get beyond the pendulum swing and to think more biblically and more discerningly about the issue of leadership. Obviously, there are extremes and reaching for a counter-extreme is not good. But we should carefully consider the widely quoted statement: “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” Everything is not about leadership, but we must recognize leadership impacts every other area.

4 Tips that will Make your Presentations, Talks, and Sermons Sticky

by Charles Stone

If you are a pastor or a leader, you deliver sermons, talks, and presentations. And you probably spend significant time preparing them. So it makes sense to deliver them in ways that make them sticky, that is, stick in the listeners’ minds and hearts. In this post I share some science based insight to consider as you prepare your talks and sermons.

Tips to improve how much people remember your sermons and talks:

1. Remember how much of the listener’s brain is dedicated toward visual processing.
   • God created our brains so that about 20% is dedicated solely to visual processing (the back part called the occipital lobe). Add to that the parts of the brain that indirectly deal with visual processing and almost 50% of our brain is dedicated to the visual directly or indirectly. So, a lot of brain real estate is ready for visual stimulation. This insight alone should make us think how to maximize the visual in our talks and presentations.
2. Use color in your power point presentations as much as possible.
   • If you’ve ever wondered why Facebook and Twitter use blue, well, the brain really likes the color blue. Color evokes emotion and feelings. Color improves retention and enhances learning.
3. Use pictures over text.
   • The old adage a picture is worth a thousand words is based in neuroscience because of number 1 above. Pictures are easier on the brain than words are. It takes twice as long to process and recognize words as it does to do the same for pictures. One study found that we can process pictures 10 times faster than blinking the eye.
   • And faces…God hard-wired our brains to respond to faces. When we were born the first thing we focused on were faces. And a specific part of the brain is dedicated to facial recognition.
   • If you only hear a piece of information, a few days later you will only remember 10% of it. But if a picture were added to it, your recall increases to 65%. And you can remember up to 2,000 pictures with little learning. That’s not true with learning words. So, use pictures in you presentation.
4. When you must use text, use short words.
   • We’ve all probably endured someone deliver a talk with powerpoints filled with words. And you probably forgot everything. Why is that a problem? It’s because we actually process words we see using the auditory brain pathways. So, when you are listening to someone give a talk, we’re actually having to use our auditory pathways doubly, to listen and to process the words from the screen. We’re actually switching our attention back and forth.
   • So, do you eliminate words from your presentations? No. But when you do use them, use short ones, draw attention to them with circles, arrows, etc., and be consistent with each slide (don’t have a different layout each time).

It’s amazing how a few tweaks in your talks can improve listener retention.
What have you done that has helped your listener retain more of what you say?
Related posts:

• How Neuroscience can Improve your Sermons
• How Often should Preachers Practice their Sermons?

The #1 Christian Leader Everyone Should Follow On Instagram And Why

I love telling the stories of how God is using other people.  This is one of those stories.  I know him as Dave Adamson.  He is a friend who is a great father and constant source of encouragement for me.  Dave and I met shortly after his presentation at the That Church Conference this past year.  As the Social Media Director for North Point Ministries, he gave an amazing presentation.  My notes from his session can be read HERE.

While I know him simply as Dave, most of the world knows him as @AussieDave, the Instagram and Twitter superstar.  If you do not follow him on Instagram, click HERE and sign up TODAY.  Trust me.  You will not be disappointed.  HE IS THE BEST!!!

Dave was kind enough to share his personal journey of his growing social media influence and how God is using him to impact thousands of people for Jesus Christ.  If you want to grow your social media presence, read Aussie Dave’s comments below.  You will want to bookmark this post and revisit it often.

__________________________________________

Three simple things have changed the way I use Instagram forever and increased my followers and reach by more than 1300%.

Now, I know that modern blog writing etiquette says I’m supposed to hold off sharing these three things until I’ve drawn you in with a witty anecdote – or at least until you’ve scrolled past the fold – but since I consider myself to be a bit of maverick who doesn’t play by the rules you choose to live by, here they are right at the top of the post (sorry BuzzFeed et al):

1. My youngest daughter has dyslexia, so she learns and recalls information best when she hears it in a story and sees it as an image.

2. I want my three daughters to have a permanent record of everything I know about Jesus.

3. I read a quote by theologian Leonard Sweet that “photos are the language of the 21st Century.”

In 2014, I was blissfully posting photos of my food, or my feet on vacation, or shots out the plane window (#ImOnVacationAndYoureNot, #ImSoWordly) like everyone else and getting about 20 likes and 2 comments from my 500 followers. But then I decided to let these three things guide what I posted on Instagram (like I said, I’m a maverick) and everything has changed.

You see, most people use Instagram as a window into their life … but I wanted to use it as a doorway into my faith. I specifically wanted to invite my daughters into the Bible and my own spiritual journey by using Instagram photos in the same way Jesus used parables. I decided I would only post my original landscape and portrait photos that linked to a Biblical concept or story that I had learned about, was wrestling with or was applying to my own faith.

It started at the beginning of 2015 when my youngest daughter was struggling with dyslexia and I was working to help her comprehend and recall written information. I realized that whenever I attached information to an image, a lightbulb came on for her. When looking at a photo, she could see and interact with information, and it gave her a trigger to recall said information during a school test. So one morning, she asked me a question about God and I applied this same technique, using one of my landscape photos on our wall to help answer the question. In that moment I saw her connect with God and experience Him in a new way. So I continued doing it every morning over breakfast – showing her a photo and teaching her something about God.

I decided to start posting the images and lessons I was using with her to my Instagram account, and there was an almost immediate response. Within days, the number of likes I was getting had doubled, and within weeks the number of followers I had did the same. People seemed to be learning new ideas about an ancient book.

The increased traffic was a nice surprise, but I continued posting daily devotions not because of demand, but because of my daughters. I have three girls, and as a pastor I believe they are my first congregation. I want to teach them what it means to be a follower of Jesus. I want to show them how  many practical truths can be found in the scriptures. So I decided to use Instagram to leave a legacy for them. Long after I’m gone, I want them to be able to go to my Instagram feed and continue learning everything I know about Jesus. I hope my account will be a source of learning, encouragement and blessing for them for the rest of their lives. I hope my future grandkids, and great grandkids can use it too.

As a pastor, I want to teach the Bible and provide hope from the scriptures, but I also realize that each generation needs to use modern methods to teach the ancient story of Jesus. The Apostle Paul used the technology of his day – letter writing – to pastor people, and modern-day pastors have the opportunity to do the same. Social media is the technology of our day, and finding ways to leverage Facebook, Instagram and and Twitter will make us more effective as pastors.

There is a generation growing up who has not known life without Instagram. They are used to getting their news from Twitter. They take in information on-demand in caption-sized portions and if there’s an image attached to it, then statistically more of them will engage with that information. This is what they’re used to and why Leonard Sweet is right in saying that “photos are the language of the 21st Century.” Photos posted on social media are how people interact with the world.

In order to teach people about Jesus and show them what it means to follow him, then we need to go where they are – and where they are is on social media. Whether they’re on their lunch break, in the carpool line are school, walking between meetings or classes, at the grocery store checkout or sitting in traffic, people are on social media – and Christians need to be there too.

So for these reasons, I use photos and caption-sized daily devotions to teach my kids – and thousands of other people – the Bible every day. I’m not saying days of the 30-minute Sunday sermon is over, but when I start a conversation on Instagram, and then engage with people as the dissect the message, I’m reaching more people through one post than most churches attract on a Sunday. I’m a pastor, and I’m simply using a 21st Century method to tell a 1st Century story.

Peace.

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