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Bill Hybels on “The Lenses of Leadership” from Leadership Summit 2016

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leadership

I’m at the leadership summit with the team from Revolution Church. This is by far the best leadership conference of the year. So much wisdom and inspiration wrapped up into two days. I always blog my notes, so if you can’t attend or missed something, I’ve got you covered.

In session 1 Bill Hybels talked about The Lenses of Leadership. He had 4 different lenses on stage, that represented how leaders look at the world around them and the organization/team they lead: the passionate  leader, shattered lenses (which shows a leader who doesn’t know what could exist), performance lenses, and lenses with a review mirror to see what is behind you (legacy lens of leadership).

Here are some takeaways:

  • Armed with enough humility can learn from anyone and that is an enormous key to leadership.
  • Leadership is leading people from here to there.
Leadership is leading people from ‘here’ to ‘there.’ @BillHybels

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  • Leadership is moving people, energizing people.
  • Leadership is moving people to a preferred future.
  • For team members to pay the price to go from here to there, they will have to feed off the passion of their leader.
  • The highest inspiration for team members is to work for and around a passion filled leader. This is more important than money, benefits and everything else.

How does a leader get passionate?

  • Passion is derived from mountains of a beautiful dream or the depths of frustration that is going terribly wrong.
  • Have you encountered something that frustrates you? That you can’t stand anymore? That’s your dream.
  • Question to consider: How full is your passion bucket?
  • Question to consider: Whose job is it to keep your passion bucket full?

Shattered people lenses

  • Many leaders have shattered lenses who don’t know how to be emotionally healthy and creating a healthy team.
  • An organization will only be as healthy as the top leader wants it to be.
An organization will only be as healthy as the top leaders wants it to be. @BillHybels

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  • The leader can choose if the culture will be high functioning and caring.
  • Religion is all the things you do to appease a God you know you’ve disappointed.
  • What this world needs is not more pastors of churches but pastors who lead their businesses, schools and the military well.
  • The job of the leader is to destroy transactional noise. The talk that keeps people from performing well and kills morale. Transactional noise is when someone who is a jerk and gets promoted and people are mad (water cooler talk).
  • Leaders need to develop the skill of talent observation. 

The Performance Lens

  • Speed of the leader, speed of the team.
  • The leader must help the team maximize team performance.
The leader must help the team maximize team performance. @BillHybels

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  • A leader must lay out challenges and goals.
  • Team members always want to know what the leader thinks of how they are doing.
  • Don’t have too many goals because it will lead you to work in ways you aren’t proud.
  • You also can’t simply be faithful to your calling and have no goals. That’s laziness.
  • Are you thriving, healthy or underperforming as a team or organization?
Are you thriving, healthy or underperforming as a team or organization? @BillHybels

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  • It is cruel and unusual punishment for a leader not telling his team how they are doing.
It is cruel and unusual punishment for a leader not telling his team how they are doing. @BillHybels

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The Legacy Lens

  • What people remember about you when you are gone. Everyone will leave a leadership legacy.
  • Leadership is not about time, it is about energy. It is about where you spend your energy (what you think about, focus, decision making).
Leadership is not about time, it is about energy. @BillHybels

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  • Leadership can become a legal drug that other things will have a hard time competing against.
  • God never intended for our vocations to crowd out other parts of our lives.
  • When you look into the rearview mirror, do you like the legacy you are leaving behind?
When you look into the rearview mirror, do you like the legacy you are leaving behind? @BillHybels

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  • Legacies can change in an instant with a simple choice.
  • Leadership matters and it matters disproportionately.
  • Question to consider: How do you need to get better? How do you need to grow as a leader?
  • Question to consider: What is your passion? What is your dream? Are you feeding your passion? Are you keeping your vision bucket full?
  • Question to consider: How many of you have shattered people lenses? Do you know what a healthy team culture looks like? Feels like?
  • Question to consider: Do you need to slow your organization or team down? Do you let your team and organization flounder? Do people know what hill to climb? Does your team know if they’re winning?
  • Question to consider: Is your legacy one you are proud of? One your kids and spouse will be proud of?
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Patience & Leadership Go Hand in Hand

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leadership, patience

If you are anything like me, you are not a patient person.

Patience is hard.

I always hear people joke, don’t pray for patience.

Why?

We want things now. We are an instant culture. We want fast food. We want to post pictures instantly. It’s even called Instagram.

Patience is hard when it comes to leadership as well, not only because of the reasons just mentioned and the way we are wired and how our culture operates but because of how long things take in leadership.

Let me explain.

Leaders are future oriented people. One of the things that separates leaders from followers is the ability of leaders to see a desired future and move people towards it. Because of this, by the time things become a reality, leaders have lived with them for months, sometimes years.

When a church launches a new initiative, ministry, program, a building campaign, buys land or hires a new staff member, the leaders have anticipated this moment for months or years.

Patience is hard. And crucial.

For leaders, because change feels like an eternity to them, it is easy to forget how whiplashed our followers can feel when a change happens. For a leader, they have read books, prayed, talked to mentors and other leaders, listened, and waited for months to launch something. When their followers give pushback, they think the problem is with the followers (and it may be), but often they are not giving their followers the same time to process the change as they had to think about the change.

If you are in a spot as a leader who is about to make a change or launch something, here are some ways to handle it:

  1. Be patient. Yes, you may need to wait a little longer. The time may not be right, the funds may not be there, the momentum may not be in your corner. You may need to have a little more patience.
  2. Give people time. If you took weeks or months to research and process this decision, give your followers at least some time to sit with it. Let them ask questions. Just because someone has questions or gives pushback does not mean they are being divisive or are not on board. They are processing.
  3. Be honest about the loss, not just the excitement of the future. When discussing a change, talk about the loss. With every change there are gains and losses. Leaders see the gains, followers see the losses. Leader, look at the losses and talk about them, let your followers know you hear them, but help them see the gains.
  4. Be excited and decisive. At some point the time for patience and waiting is over, and it is time to be decisive and move forward. When is that time? It depends on the situation, but you are the leader, so you’ll know.
4 ways to lead when it is hard to lead.

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Leading Up

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leading up

Leadership is hard. That isn’t news.

It is hard to lead people. It is hard to lead followers. It is hard to lead those under you or those who work next to you on the organizational chart (you know, the ones you can’t make do something).

It is really hard to lead those over you, to lead up.

Yet, to get anywhere in leadership, you must learn to lead up.

Why?

The person above you probably controls your budget, your salary, your benefits and if what you want to do gets done.

The person above you potentially controls a lot.

So, to accomplish what you want to accomplish at work and in your life, you need to lead them well.

This is especially true for guys who want to plant churches.

If this is you, you will at some point, find yourself working under someone. Someone that you are smarter than, someone that you are more relevant than, someone that you are more biblical than, someone that has sold out to risks and is now just collecting a paycheck.

Now, you won’t say these things to them.

But deep down, you know they “lost it.”

They now look and sound like the guy from Up. 

So how do you lead up? Here are 5 ways to lead up and accomplish what God has called you to without losing your leadership. Because don’t mistake this: if you don’t lead up well, you will have a hard time leaving your current spot to get the role you want. 

  1. Affirm and back their vision. Right now, if you aren’t the leader at the top of the organizational chart, you are a follower. If you can’t follow well, you can’t lead well. What if you don’t support their vision? Unless it isn’t biblical, you chose to be there. You need to be submissive to that. As long as it isn’t heretical, just different from what you would do, follow well. But you know better. You are an entrepreneur who God has called to something else. I know. But wait. Affirm them as the leader. Believe it or not (see #5), you will need them in the future.
  2. Be patient. Your timing is not God’s timing. I knew when I was 21 that I would one day plant a church. I didn’t know where or when, but I knew. It was when I was 29 in a state I had never set foot in before. Those 8 years were hard, sometimes painful, but they were formative. Be in the moment. Seek to learn what you can. If you aren’t in charge, relish that. Prepare for when you will be. Watch. Listen. Ask questions. Seek out mentors. Read books. Be ready for when God says “Go.”
  3. Risk when the time is right. This is a timing and heart issue. I’ve watched countless guys say “Go” and it was terrible timing for them, their families and the church they left. Can God overcome anything and call anyone at anytime? Yes. God is also wise and doesn’t always call us to the stupidest thing we could do. If you think, “Is this stupid? That must be God’s will for my life.” That is a terrible way to discern that. But lots of people equate crazy risk with stupid. Don’t put your family in a bind. Don’t put the church you are leaving in a bind. Remember, the way you leave a church is how they will remember you. They will forget everything else you did.
  4. Be open and honest. Talk to those above you about what God has placed on your heart. What if they fire you? You don’t want to be there then. This also shows if you feel called or if you think planting or being the lead guy just sounds fun.
  5. Don’t leave unless they back you. The first question I ask a church planter who wants money, people, support or resources from Revolution Church is, “Does the church you just left support you? Are they giving you anything?” I’m very cautious of the guy who says “No” and then has a story or reasons why not. Is it always their fault? No. But to me that is a sign, a red flag that often reveals a character issue.
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Balance is a Pipedream

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balance

As the holidays get closer, schedules get busier. There are parties to attend, pageants to go to, rehearsals for Christmas shows, tree lightings, decorations to buy and hang, presents to buy and wrap, food to prepare and all the while, still keeping up with everything else you do.

December 26th will roll around and most people will want to fall over in a heap of exhaustion, but there’s no time. We have to return clothes that don’t fit, clothes that are ugly, buy things that are on sale and get Christmas cards and decorations for next year because they are on sale for 80% off.

Over the next several weeks, people will quietly vent about all that they are doing and will do to friends and family, they will make resolutions in January about slowing down, eating better, working less, checking Facebook and email less, and signing their kids up for less activities. Only to find in February that they can’t wait for summer to hit so they can take a week off and sit around.

But we all know how summer goes.

In these conversations about pace, tiredness, doing too much, working too much, sleeping too little, an interesting work and concept comes up.

Balance.

Whenever someone says they are tired or doing too much, a friend with good intentions will respond, “You need to get balance in your life.” We talk about work life balance. Balancing schedules, checkbooks, planners, and activities.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, balance is a pipedream.

The next time someone tells you that you need to have more balance in your life, ask him or her what that means or looks like. You’ll get blank stares.

No one seems to know.

Yet, everyone is going for it.

Here’s a better way to think about life, work, kids, money, sleep, food and anything else you try to get balance in.

Every time you say yes to something you say no to something else.

Think about it like this. Whenever you say yes to staying up too late watching TV and eating ice cream you say no to a good night sleep, more sleep and a trimmer waist line.

Whenever you say yes to sign your child up for everyone team and activity you can throw at them, you say no to a sustainable pace, family dinners and overall health.

Whenever you say yes to work late you may say yes to a promotion and more money, but you also say no to family time, relaxing, time with friends and unwinding with a good book.

When you say yes to going into debt, you say no to peace in your life and bank account.

When you say yes to that extra piece of pie over the holidays, you say no to health.

Remember, balance is a pipe dream.

Are all these examples wrong? Not at all. You should eat some good dessert over the holidays. You should sign your kids up for fun things. You should buy nice things you can afford and bless others with nice presents. All of those are great things.

Take a minute though and remember last December, last January and February. What did you feel? Exhaustion, a longing for a break and rest that never came.

Now, the question isn’t should I do these things, it is more about, and what do you want to say yes to and say no to. Because, every time you say yes to something, you say no to something else. Every time.

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The Importance of Organizational Culture

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organizational culture, analysis and development concept

What an organizational culture does to a church:

  1. Culture shapes our lives and all our beliefs.
  2. Culture is vital to effective ministry.
  3. Our culture affects the way we conduct our ministries in the church.
  4. Culture helps us understand better the different people we seek to reach for Christ.
  5. Cultural understanding is essential to leaders if they are to lead their established churches well.
  6. Cultural understanding is essential to leaders if they are to lead their planted churches well.
  7. Culture may cannibalize strategic planning.
  8. Understanding culture helps the church cope with changes in its external environment.

From Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture by Aubrey Malphurs.

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