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Category Archive: Church Scattered

8 Unrealistic Expectations That Will Ruin You

Posted by on August 8, 2016

One of the most significant responsibilities of leadership is the setting and managing of expectations. If they are unrealistic, no matter how hard your team works you will still fail. If they are realistic, then everyone feels this is doable and gives their best effort. This post by Travis Bradberry is great:

“Your expectations, more than anything else in life, determine your reality. When it comes to achieving your goals, if you don’t believe you’ll succeed, you won’t. The tricky thing about your expectations is that they impact other people too. As far back as the 1960s, Harvard research demonstrated the power of our beliefs in swaying other people’s behavior. ”

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When You Must Resign

Posted by on August 5, 2016

If you are an A player as defined by Jim Collins in Good to Great you are a character driven leader. This means that you are willing to set aside any personal agenda for the good of the team and the organization.

It also means that as a leader you are by nature a change agent. You want to deal with the brutal facts facing your team and find new solutions to old problems.

In some situations the people that you report to are not as open to change. This is where your character must lead you to deal with this situation in the right way.

The right way is to approach you boss directly and openly share what you are recommending to do and why. The absolute wrong way is to talk about your superiors to someone else in any negative way that would be disloyal.

If after a long period of respectful dialogue you are not sensing any openness to change within the culture of the organization then your decision is clear. What you must not do is to try to change your boss, that is not in your job description.

A players realize one fundamental truth about organizational culture. You will over time help be a part of a team effort that will change it for good or if you stay too long in the wrong culture it will change you. That is an unacceptable price to pay and that is why it’s time to leave.

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The Value Of Character

Posted by on July 27, 2016

Simply put everything you eventually accomplish in life will be based upon you personal leadership DNA. What you do is based upon who you are.

Someone has well said: ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there. If you do not believe that then just ask the former chairman of the DNC.

I had to learn the importance of this lesson very early in my career. I changed jobs four times in five years right out of college because I did not realize that the major problem was not the company I was working for or the supervisor that I had, the problem was me.

All I did was move from company to company and take all of my unresolved character problems with me expecting different results. I learned the hard way that if you are consistently failing where you are there is no real reason to believe that you will be successful somewhere else.

However, if you learn how to be successful where you are regardless of your circumstances and become an A Player then there is every reason to believe that you can be successful anywhere.

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How To Access Your Peak Performance

Posted by on July 15, 2016

The whole idea of time management is a little bit of a misnomer. You really can’t manage time as much as you can give leadership to how you use it. The ability to identify what must be done from what should not be done at all is critical. This Forbes post offers some practical help:

“There is a feeling some people call “being overwhelmed.” It makes them unsure about where to start because there are a trillion things requiring their attention. Others call it “being off-balance.” Something feels just not right.

And then there are those who keep repeating what nobody can hear anymore because everyone is feeling the same thing: “I am so stressed. I don’t even know where to start.”

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Why Do We Fight For What We Don't Want

Posted by on July 6, 2016

This post by Celinne Da Costa is challenging to read and even more dangerous to live. She is pushing back against living your life by the script that the American Dream culture has handed you. If indeed we are going to have to fight for something, then why can’t it be something that we care passionately about doing.

“As I sat on the edge of Horseshoe Canyon, overlooking the majestic landscape of Page, Arizona, it hit me: “I don’t have to do this.” “This” was my life in New York City, which was an endless grind of work to make money, look good doing it, go to a social event every night, and work some more. For years, I felt like I was fighting an emotional uphill battle working for a company I didn’t believe in, in a role I didn’t terribly care for, for money I didn’t need to spend. I worked hard for that life, but my heart was not in it.”

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The Real Test Of A Leaders Legacy

Posted by on July 4, 2016

In a day when markets and shareholders demand short term rewards for their financial investment it is extremely difficult for leaders to have the courage to lead with the long term as a priority. The temptation to make easy decisions that will make the leaders bottom line look good today are setting up good companies for failure down the road.

This mentality usually results in a strong almost dictatorial leadership style that builds the business around the charisma and determination of the celebrity type leader. There is very little delegation and certainly no succession planning taking place because that does not serve the crisis of the moment mentality.

The real test of any leader’s success must not be simply measured by the timeframe when they are working but by what happens to the organization when they leave. If everything seems to fall apart and all positive momentum is lost then you cannot believe the leader set the team up for future success.

John Maxwell makes the point when he writes, “Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him. Significance comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into a position to do great things without him.”

When we value the success of others over the long haul more than any short term success we may have for ourselves, then we are leading with integrity. Anything less than that is nothing more than selfish ambition and that is not true leadership.

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Circle of Influence

Posted by on July 1, 2016

Several years ago Stephen Covey wrote one of the all time best selling leadership books The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a book that I have read several times and refer to often.

The first habit in the book is to be proactive and take responsibility for leading our own lives. He writes, “It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values.”

One of the most practical tips for doing this on a daily basis is what he calls the circle of concern in our lives vs. the circle of influence. The circle of concern represents all the things we really care about but have no control over to change the outcome. If we are not careful we can spend most of our day here with nothing to show for all the emotional effort.

The circle of influence though contains all the things that are important to us as well but we do have the ability to control the outcome. When we focus on what we cannot control during the day that just means there were many things that should and could be done that were not.

The amazing thing about this principle is that the more you prioritize the things you can do and start accomplishing them the things you cannot control proportionally diminish in their importance.

When we are doing the things we know we should do it not only allows us to accomplish something but it also gives us the needed perspective to deal with all the things that are beyond our control.

To quote another Covey principle: WIN WIN

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The Difference Between Trying And Doing

Posted by on June 29, 2016

The end result of many things are not due to the obstacles we face but the attitude we bring to the situation. If there is a sense that I cannot do this, then in all likelihood you will fail. On the other hand, if you are highly committed then your chances of success dramatically increase. Michael Hyatt has a great post:

“There’s an instructive scene in the Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Yoda is instructing Luke Skywalker in how to use the Force. He asks Luke to retrieve his disabled spaceship out of a bog where it has sunk, using only his mind. Luke, of course, thinks this is impossible. Sure, he has been able to move stones around this way. But a spaceship? That’s completely different. Or is it?”

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Don't Get Surprised By Burnout

Posted by on June 27, 2016

This is a painful subject if you have ever had to admit you lost your margin and that you did not know it until the crash occurred. I have had to put in place some early warning alarms to try to avoid this happening again and again. This is not inevitable but you must have a plan. Steven D’Souza has a plan and it’s a great one for you to adopt:

“Coming back to the UK after an intensive, three-day consulting trip, I was on the edge of a panic attack. For a few seconds, I had a vivid “day-mare” of myself in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, with no way to cope or communicate coherently. As the vision passed, I became aware, for the first time in a long time, of a great heaviness and tiredness in my body. I realized – with some surprise – that I was burned out.”

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The Critical Distinction Between Goals vs. Desires

Posted by on June 24, 2016

Many times we put a tremendous amount of emotional energy and effort into something only to realize that nothing has changed. We are worn out with all the work and feel very empty because we are not getting any positive results.

The core problem most of the time when this happens in my life is when I confuse goals and desires. A desire is something I want to happen but in the end have no control over the outcome. On the other hand a goal is something I want or need and do have direct control over the outcome.

For example you could have a relationship that you care about deeply but no matter how hard you try the other person seems to be unresponsive. Even though my motives may be right when my methods center around trying to change the other person I have taken a desire and turned it into a goal.

In relationships the only goal that I should ever have is to change myself. In doing that it may indeed have a positive impact on the other person but that must remain a desire and never become a goal.

We hit the wall when we are working on things over which we have no control and that drains us. Even worse it keeps us from doing the very things we can control and that discourages us.

This principle applies both to our personal and professional lives. None of us has the responsibility to solve the global recession but we do have control over our own character.

The old axiom of do what you can with what you have right where you are is a great place to start.

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