What Business Leaders Can Learn from Pastors about Speaking

book

I was asked recently by Carmine Gallo what I thought business leaders can learn from pastors about speaking. All leaders speak on some level. It may be one-on-one, in a meeting, to a department or the entire company. Everyone who communicates wants to be heard and have their message make an impact. At the very least, they want the hard work they put into something to pay off.

I think it is possible, but will take some thought and planning.

Here are 7 things to do so that you are heard and motivate your people when you speak:

  1. Be prepared. I am amazed when I hear a presentation, a breakout or a talk and it sounds like the person talking was simply picked at random out of the crowd to start speaking. Someone pays the price for a talk: the speaker in prep or the audience for listening. Be prepared, don’t wait for the last minute. 
  2. Have one point. It is hard to say business leaders can learn this from pastors because pastors aren’t always great at having one point. Instead of giving a presentation with 3 points, give 3 different presentations at different times. Your team or department will be healthier and more motivated if you work on one thing at a time.
  3. Speaking to those who are unconvinced. In a church setting, you encounter people who don’t believe you, who don’t agree with you. A business setting is the same. It is easy to think people will simply agree with you or get behind your initiative because they get paid to, but they won’t be inspired by it. You have to build bridges to them. Use this lens: how would I get them on board if they didn’t get paid to do this? This will make you hone your message in and think through more motivational and inspirational ideas. You can tell them to do it, but wouldn’t you rather if they wanted to do it?
  4. Plan a speaking calendar. Any good preacher has a preaching calendar and thinks through what they will communicate throughout the year. This helps a pastor cover what needs to be covered, moving a church to a specific goal. Not every topic is covered in every sermon or talk, but is given a place throughout the year. What if a business leader chose 12 things to discuss in his company or team and gave one per month to make sure it was covered instead of trying to cover too much? What if a business leader thought through what was most important to discuss ahead of time instead of simply sharing what they heard last on a podcast or read in a book?
  5. The goal of preaching is transformation or taking a next step. It is not the transfer of information, but to move people towards something. In preaching, that something is following Jesus, being more involved, giving, serving, joining a small group, etc. A business talk is not done until a next step is articulated, a call to action of some kind. Don’t let it hang out there. Any training must have a next step, it is not just about transferring information. A meeting must close with next steps and actions that will be taken. If there is no action after a meeting or a presentation, that was not a good use of time. 
  6. Use visuals if you have to. I think speakers use visuals too often or don’t think through them. Never, ever simply put up what you are saying unless it is a quote. There is nothing worse than being given the powerpoint in a packet and having a speaker simply read each slide. Make visuals work for you instead of against you. Whenever someone is looking at a visual, they are not listening to you, so the visual must be compelling.
  7. Always point to the vision. If what you are going to say or discuss does not move the vision for your team, department or company forward, don’t say it. Every sermon I give I try to figure out, how can I connect this to our mission? This allows your team or company to know why you are doing something.

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14 Favorite Books of 2014

books

It’s that time of year again, time to share my top lists of the year. If you are a regular on this blog, you know that I love to read. You can read my recent reviews of books here.

Each year, I post a list of my favorite books of the year. To see my list of favorite books from past year, simply click on the numbers: 2009201020112012 and 2013. To me, I love this list because it shows what has influenced me in the past year, where I’m growing and what God is teaching me. If you are a leader, you should be a reader, there is no way around that.

To make this list, it does not have to be published in 2014, I only needed to read it in 2014. As always, this list was hard to narrow down, but here are the top 14 books of 2014:

14. What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done | Matthew Perman

What sets this book apart from others on productivity: Its emphasis on understanding how the gospel impacts productivity, How the gospel frees us to be productive, and it also brings together some of the best ideas from other books on productivity to show a better system that combines the strengths of different systems.

13. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know | Meg Meeker

To me, this is such an empowering book for fathers. We often feel unsure, at a loss of how to relate to our daughters, how to treat them differently than a son, or how to feel like we are moving forward in a relationship with them. This book is about what a daughter needs from a father that a mother cannot give. This book gave me such a clear understanding of how to interact with our daughter, how to build a relationship with her and prepare her for the life ahead of her. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to Dad’s of daughters.

12. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds Carmine Gallo

Giving a presentation that truly moves people takes hard work. Let’s face it, many pastors are lazy. They become a pastor because it seems easier, they read a lot and most people don’t have a high expectation for a sermon to be great (sadly). They are simply hoping for short. Preaching is hard work. If you aren’t willing to put in the hard work, don’t preach. At the end of the day, someone pays a price for a sermon, the pastor or the church. This is the best preaching book of the year.

11 The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker | Brad Lomenick

One of the things I’ve been chewing on from this book all year has been, “To get to the top and to be successful at the top requires two different skill sets.” Such a helpful book for younger leaders.

10. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration | Ed Catmull

This book was so good and eye opening, it took me 3 posts to share all that I learned from it. You can read those posts here, here and here.

9. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Greg McKeown

Two things stood out to me in this book that have shaped a lot of my life: If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will and If it is not a definite yes, then it is no.

8. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God Timothy Keller

I debated between this book and Keller’s book on suffering for this list. Both were helpful and meaningful in different ways, but his book on prayer opened my eyes on how to pray to God as Father and how to meditate on Scripture in deeper ways. If prayer is a struggle for you, this book is well worth working through.

7. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers | Ben Horowitz

Even though this is not a church planting book, it is by far, the best church planting book of the year. So many insights from this small business guru that is relevant for churches and church plants.

6. Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church | Scot McKnight

This book challenged me in some ways I didn’t expect. How to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus was one and how to see how God worked through all of history instead of jumping from Genesis 3 to Matthew 1 when we read the Bible. The other was, seeing Jesus as King when I think about him. This may seem obvious depending on your church background, but I appreciate the emphasis that McKnight places on Jesus as King. My church background seems to focus on Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, which He is and leave the King part until the end of the world. Yet, Jesus is King, now and forever.

5. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You | John Ortberg

If you love what Dallas Willard has to say but have a hard time understanding what he says, this is a great book. I found myself challenged, encouraged and challenged some more. It is a mix of how to care for your soul, how to rest and ultimately, how to connect with God at a deeper level.

4. Hacking Leadership: The 11 Gaps Every Business Needs to Close and the Secrets to Closing Them Quickly Mike Myatt

This was the most relevant and helpful business leadership book that pastors should read this year. Myatt covers the gaps that exist in any business (church) and how to overcome them. This is a leadership book that I will re-read in years to come. I found it that helpful.

3. People-Pleasing Pastors: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Approval-Motivated Leadership Charles Stone

This book is unlike any other I’ve read. First, it hits a topic that every pastor or leader (and probably most humans) struggle with: people pleasing. This is an enormous deal for pastors and churches. Second, it combines stories and real life examples with a ton of helpful research on how our brains work and what drives leaders to care what others think. Third, it ends with some incredibly helpful insights to fight people pleasing in your leadership.

2. Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm Mark Sayers

The point of the book of the book is to show how leadership has changed, how culture has changed and what leadership looks like moving forward. I am thankful as Sayers points out, we are moving away from deconstruction in our leadership and culture and moving towards rebuilding. I’m hopeful Christians get this idea as many leaders seem to be behind the times and keep talking about deconstructing.

1. The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection Richard Blass & James Cofield

I’ve read maybe 3-4 life altering books. This was one of them. The authors walk through why we fail at relationships so often and show how that begins the before we are even born, but then our inability to deal with what our lives have been like and how to move forward. Many people cannot work well with others, can’t engage in their family or marriage, struggle to make work connections and all because of something in their past that has not been deal with. This isn’t to say that it is easy, only that, to live in true freedom and be our “true self” as the authors put it, we must deal with those things.

The Squeaky Wheel

book

Pastors, you know this conversation because you’ve had it a million times. “Our church needs to have ____. Our church needs to do _____. If we had ____ more people would find Jesus.” That blank could be more classes, more groups, men’s ministry, women’s ministry, a quilting group, louder music, quieter music, more services, more kids stuff.

Here’s the problem when someone says your church should do something.

They have no idea what they want. 

Carmine Gallo said, “People don’t know what they want and, if they do, they have a hard time articulating what they truly desire.”

This is why leadership is so crucial in a church.

You can’t lead based off what people say they want or what people think they want.

Often, we don’t know the very thing that would help us get out of our predicament. We can see that to be true in our lives.

Leadership then, is the ability to move people to where they need to be, not always where they want to be.

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Why People Attend Church

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There is power in identity. When we create the right kind of identity, we can say things to the world around us that they don’t actually believe makes sense. We can get them to do things that they don’t think they can do. -Carmine Gallo, Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds

Wrapped up in this quote is a key to preaching the works: helping people see the possibilities of a sermon on their future. 

Many sermons seem to miss this component, helping people imagine the changes that would come to their life if a change was made.

Think for a minute, what if someone began reading their bible? What if someone actually let go of a past hurt and forgave someone? What if a married couple began investing in their relationship as much as they do a hobby or their kids? What if someone actually began to see the impact of seeing God as father would make in their life?

Often, sermons tend to stay in the intellectual side of things or we focus on getting to the emotions (possibly manipulating them).

What about motivation?

I know many can cringe at this because it makes them feel like a salesman, pushy, or that they are simply being a motivational speaker who is creating rah-rah cheers in their church.

This question gets at something every pastor should answer before they get up to preach: why should anybody care about what I’m about to say?

The answer is not because it is in the Bible, most of our culture does not care what is in the Bible. The answer is not because it is true, most people in our culture do not believe the Bible is truer than some other book.

It gets at why most people show up at church on a given week.

Hope. 

Most people walk through doors of a church looking for hope.

They might be lost, they might be aimless, they may have tried other things, they may be at the end of their rope or halfway to the end.

But they are looking for hope, for possibilities.

A sermon, through the power of the gospel should show them that hope.

This is one thing I say almost every week as we get ready to take communion. We are reminded in communion that when Jesus walked out of the tomb, we have hope. Hope that one day all the wrongs of our world will be righted. Hope that we can conquer all things through the power of Jesus. Hope that we can live the life God has called us.

Hope.

How to be a Better Writer

blogger

Recently, I watched the author platform conference online. This was a series of interviews with authors, bloggers, marketers and other experts to help writers, speakers and bloggers be as effective as possible.

Below are the lessons from each interview that I watched:

Jonah Berger

  1. Create a connection with your book. Give something to people so that they make a concrete connection to what you are saying. At book events, he gave out tissues with the word Contagious: Why Things Catch On on them for his book and made the connection of “wouldn’t your like your ideas to be as contagious as the cold?”

Chris Brogan

  1. Be married to the outcome more than you are to the idea. This will allow you to enjoy the content you create.
  2. When it comes to branding, people think about people. The person sticks in the mind of people if you know who the person is.

Chad Cannon

  1. Books that sell come from authors that hustle.
  2. An author needs to provide value to the audience outside of their book.

Chris Ducker

  1. Writing a book is not like writing a blog post. Editing is by far the hardest part of writing a book.
  2. Just be you. Your readers and listeners will know if you are being real or not.

John Lee Dumas

  1. Failures happen when people don’t listen to their intuition. Successes happen when we do listen to our intuition.

Carmine Gallo

  1. Ideas are the currency of the 21st century and you are only as successful as your ideas.
  2. Most speakers fail because they don’t have their message down, they don’t know their story.
  3. The difference between a great speaker and a good speaker is the great speaker is always looking to improve.
  4. The 3 components to any great presentation: Emotional, novel and memorable.

Jeff Goins

  1. Activity always follows identity.
  2. Offline relationships still do matter in the midst of our social media worlds.

Chris Guillebeau

  1. A lot of people can launch a book well, but successful authors need to think about how to make it successful in 3, 6, and 12 months.

Derek Halpern

  1. The best way to promote yourself is to help others, to give a benefit to someone else.
  2. Content is not just about what you say, but how you say it.

Michael Hyatt

  1. Know your audience, who they are, what their needs are, and what questions they have.

There was some incredibly helpful things in these videos.

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Why Change Fails

change

If you talk to any leader or pastor, they will tell you stories of changes, new ideas and initiatives failing. Even if, the new program would do better than the old program.

Churches are notorious for change failing.

Why quit having a class when no one comes? Because someone’s grandmother started that ministry 35 years ago. Why add drums or change how worship is done? Why bring in lights or projectors? Why should we change how we do discipleship since the way it is happening right now is not developing leaders or disciples? Because we’ve always done it this way. 

Going right along with this is a failure on the part of pastors and leaders to engage change well.

In his book Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, Carmine Gallo makes this comment:

People don’t know what they want and, if they do, they have a hard time articulating what they truly desire.

The average person, when you ask them if they prefer A or B, they don’t know what they would prefer. They only know what they have experienced.

If your church only does Sunday School and you begin exploring small groups, people who have never experienced them will be resistant. Especially because pastors don’t know how to ask. They ask if “they would go to a home group?” “NO” is the resounding answer.

When a church begins exploring a second service, all people can think of is what they lose if the church goes to 2 services and how it will change their life and bring them a different experience.

Churches exploring multi-site and video preaching run into the same thing. People in your church only have one lens to look through, what they know and have experienced. 

A better way to change something is to ask:

  • Would you be open to trying a small group in a house?
  • Would you be open to going to an earlier service so we can open up seats for guests?
  • Would you be open to attending a church plant we send out?
  • Would you be open to trying a church with video preaching?

Now, when they say no and someone will, you are having a different conversation. Now you are talking about vision and buy in. Now you are talking about idols, resistance to change, what their fears are to new things. You also have an opportunity to help a person wrestle through what they don’t know and helping them see that they don’t know something. This is a great opportunity to shepherd someone into new things and help lead them.

Leaders, we need to learn how to ask better questions.

Four years into the life of Revolution Church we changed from meeting on Saturday nights in a church building to Sunday morning in a school. We had to raise $50,000 to go portable, set everything up and tear it all down and we changed days and times. There was some resistance. But we asked people if they would be open to trying it. Most everyone said they would try it. Same when we transitioned from semester small groups that met for 12 weeks to moving our church to being on mission in missional communities.

Leader, as you lead change, ask better questions to move your people and your church forward.

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How I Structure my Week

week

I get asked by a lot of pastors or church planters how I structure my week and when I do things. I have tried systems and using an ideal week, but no one system has really fit my style the best. I’ve kind of blended things together.

While this won’t be as neat as a laid out calendar, here are principles that I use (not in a particular order):

  1. Determine what is most important. This is something that Brian Howard helped me with. Determine the top 8 things for your job and then determine how long those tasks will take and how much time you want to get give them. Stick to that.
  2. Do what is most important when I’m most awake. For most people, this is the morning. Reserve this time for the most important thing on your list of 8 things. For me, this is sermon prep. It is when I need the most brain power, need to be the most alert, so I do this then. During this time, turn off social media, email, your phone and alerts.
  3. Check email twice a day. Email is a destructive, helpful, necessary force. It is great but can be a time sucker. Do whatever you need to do so that you check email only twice a day, at lunch and then right before you leave. What if someone calls or stops by your office and asks, “Did you get my email?” Say, not yet, I’ll check it in an hour. You may want to put an auto response to let people know what time they can expect a response, but don’t let email control your day.
  4. Take breaks every 90 minutes. This is helpful. Every 90 minutes, stop what you are doing and walk around, stretch your legs. This helps to move your blood, wake you up, and bring more creativity to the task you are doing.
  5. Make meetings matter. Meetings are also necessary but can be a huge time waster. Here’s how to make meetings matter: stack them back to back so you get into meeting mode, always know the agenda of every meeting you go to (it is amazing how many meetings you could skip or could be phone calls if the agenda is clear), keep meetings to no longer than 90 minutes (at 90 minutes your brain is toast so end the meeting for your break).
  6. Nothing before my sermon prep. Or your most important task. On the mornings I do sermon prep, I have no meeting before that. If I do, I’ll spend the whole sermon prep time thinking about the meeting I had. I want to wake up with a clear head and dive right into my sermon.
  7. Stick to hard deadlines. Everything has a deadline and an end. My sermon needs to be done at a certain time. Make a deadline for the end of your day and get out of work on time. Nothing is worse than things being passed til next week because you mismanaged your time or getting home late because you didn’t prioritize. Think about what happens the day before you go on vacation, you get everything done. Now, do that every week.
  8. Everything that is important gets put on the calendar. No matter what it is, it gets a minute on your calendar. I get asked how I motivate myself to workout, one answer is that it is the next thing on my calendar. If something is going to get done, no matter what it is, it needs to have a minute on your schedule, otherwise, it will get passed.
  9. Start with bible reading. First thing in the morning, meet with Jesus. This changes the mood and feel of the day.
  10. Then, spend 1 hour on reading for yourself. If you can work it into your schedule, read to grow for yourself. Read books that push your thinking on the gospel, leadership, theology, church, being a man or woman, whatever you need to grow in. Again, if you want to grow, it needs to have a space on your calendar.