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Category Archive: Church Scattered

Great Leaders Practice Feedforward

Posted by on March 4, 2016

Almost every serious organization uses some form of feedback to evaluate the performance of their top leadership team. This usually works best in a 360 type environment where the person receives feedback from superiors, peers and subordinates as well.

The concept of feedforward was developed by Marshall Goldsmith in his best seller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which is about how to coach senior executives. He encourages every leader to identify core behaviors that need to change through feedback. Then apologize for your mistake and commit to change that character quality in the future.

The primary way he recommends to accomplish this is through the four disciplines in feedforward:

Identify Target Behavior—choose the one behavior that your colleagues have told you about that you consider to be at the top of your list for change. The number one issue among the thousands of people he has worked with is to be a better listener.
Enlist Accountability Partners—the key here is to secure a personal commitment from as many people as possible to help you in this particular area. This should include family members as well as various levels of people within the organization where you work. They will all commit to help you focus on this one specific area and help you with ongoing feedback.
Solicit Specific Suggestions—ask everyone in your accountability circle for at least two suggestions that might help you achieve a positive change in your selected behavior. The key ground rule here is that there should be no mention of mistakes in the past but every comment is about the future.
Practice Active Listening—take appropriate notes if necessary but make sure you are really listening to each and every suggestion to the point that you can put it into practice. Also it is very important regardless of the quality of the input to be sure to graciously thank everyone involved who will take the time and emotional risk of telling you what you really need to hear.

Instead of waiting six months for the next performance review cycle, get feedback when you need it so you can become a better leader.

Categories: Career Development Leadership Development Pastoral Leadership | Comments Off on Great Leaders Practice Feedforward

Resolving Unrealistic Parenting Expectations

Posted by on March 2, 2016

It is incredibly important that we all have realistic expectations as parents for our children. We should want them to develop character, succeed academically, respect authority and grow in their faith.

However, the reality is they are going to fail in every one of these areas and many more on their journey towards becoming successful adults. When they do fail, we as parents must care enough to take the time to correct them for the mistakes and then encourage them to restore their confidence. They will need to learn to deal with the consequences of bad decisions and on the other hand not break their spirit so they give up on life.

Many times this process fails because we as parents have placed our own personal expectations on top of the ones we already have for our children. We are vicariously living our lives through them instead of for them.

If we are honest with ourselves we would admit that when we overreact because they fail it is partially because we have failed as well. Our own emotional needs to be successful parents have been added to the relationship to the point that our expectations for them are now totally unrealistic.

Constantly check your motives and make sure this is primarily about what is best for them and not about me. Growing up today is hard enough without them having to take on the extra burden of making us feel good about ourselves. That is our responsibility.

Categories: Parenting | Comments Off on Resolving Unrealistic Parenting Expectations

Why Speaking Well Of Your Spouse Is So Important

Posted by on February 24, 2016

A very legitimate issue we all face in today’s work culture is the expectation of bringing too much work home. A 40-50 hour work week and leave it at the office is not a reality in our ever more connected lives. However, what most company leaders are not valuing enough is that everyone also brings home to work and that dramatically effects their performance as well. Michael Hyatt makes some great points in this important post:

“As a leader, the health of your marriage directly affects the impact of your leadership. I have witnessed this time and time again. Being effective at work or in ministry begins by being effective at home.”

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Building The Business Case For Doing Good

Posted by on February 21, 2016

The whole idea of making a profit so that you can make a difference is hot right now. More and more organizations are getting a corporate conscience and that is really helping a lot of people who desperately need it. However, there is incredible internal benefit and Gwen Moran tells us why:

“Creating workplace philanthropy programs is a good way to bolster a company’s reputation while making employees feel good about the place where they work, says management consultant Michael Montgomery, founder of Montgomery Consulting, which helps companies implement such programs. However, starting a philanthropy isn’t just a matter of picking a charity to support.”

Categories: Church Scattered Missional Living Servant Leader | Comments Off on Building The Business Case For Doing Good

The Power of Gratitude

Posted by on February 12, 2016

I was thinking again about Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff by Richard Carlson where he talked about his tendency to start thinking negative thoughts with all the bad news that is out there today. I fight this as well, especially when you are going through a hard time personally or when there is this slight issue of a failing economy.

It is important to build into your life the daily discipline of thinking about all the good things that you have in your life. We all should be grateful just to be alive and the basics of life including food, clean water and shelter. There are multiplied millions of people who struggle just to make it through one more day.

Beyond that we have families and friends and hopefully we are fulfilled by doing something with our life that we know will make a difference. Through our faith we can have forgiveness for our failures and hope for the future.

The power of gratitude though is released when we go beyond thinking about it and personally telling someone else how thankful we are for what they mean to us. This sets off a chain reaction of them passing on their gratitude to someone else in their life and the cycle continues.

So as we all are waiting today for an invasion of terrorists, the fall of the stock market or who is going to win the election lets start spreading something positive in our lives by telling just one person thanks.

Categories: Core Values Servant Leader Spiritual Growth | Comments Off on The Power of Gratitude

3 Ways To Regain Personal Momentum

Posted by on February 5, 2016

When negative things are happening in your life and you feel like you are in a deep hole and cannot see how to get out there are three key personal leadership disciplines that will help you get your positive momentum back.

The first is Perspective. When things are not going well today it is very important to put the present in the context of the long look that includes both the past and the future. All of life both the good and the bad tend to run in cycles. You cannot choose many times the circumstances about what happens to you but it is your responsibility to choose how you respond to them.

Adversity in life will either make you a better person or a bitter one and that choice is within your control. The key thing about your past is you must learn from it but never live in it. Failure never has to be final unless we let it.

The same is true about the future. You can choose to watch the news 3 hours a day and live with fear, worry and doubt or you can be grateful for what you have and face the future with hope and a positive attitude.

The second personal leadership discipline in dealing with change is Priorities. The one incredibly good thing about a down cycle is that it always forces us to separate what is important in life from what is not.

We must start by not asking the question what have I lost but what do I still have? I would encourage you to write down everything that is still in your life that is important and when you see it all you will be amazed by how blessed you really are.

Someone has well said the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon but we wait so long to begin it. Regardless of your age or stage of life this dramatic period of change we are all going through is the perfect time for you to decide how you want to spend the rest of your life. If you need some help get a life coach to walk through this process with you.

The third discipline to deal with change is to be Proactive. When some people face dramatic change they choose to live in denial as if this is not really happening to me. On the other extreme others know the change is real to the point of becoming emotionally depressed about their new state of life.

I must assume personal responsibility to change myself first and start leading myself by making good daily decisions before my life can begin to turn around in different direction. The only way to do that is to do what you can with what you have right where you are and do it today with all your heart.

Categories: Personal Leadership | Comments Off on 3 Ways To Regain Personal Momentum

Stop Trying To Achieve Work-Life Balance

Posted by on January 29, 2016

I have never like the whole concept of work-life balance. It implies that both areas have equal importance and the honest truth is they don’t. Balance also creates competing priorities instead of integrating your life around core values. Mark Merrill has some compelling thoughts:

“I’m talking about the work-life balance that we are so often told to pursue; the search term brings up almost 200,000 Google results. The idea is that if we try hard enough, we can keep everything in our life in good order and perfect harmony.”

Categories: Work Life Integration | Comments Off on Stop Trying To Achieve Work-Life Balance

Leadership Demands Authenticity

Posted by on January 27, 2016

There are many generational issues that have to be resolved between the Baby Boomer generation of existing leaders and the Next Generation workforce that is coming onto the scene. The old positional power model of simply telling everyone what to do and they automatically follow with no desire for involvement in the process is gone.

Potentially the single greatest leadership quality new leaders are looking for from those in positions of responsibility is authenticity. They place a high value on working with people that are real and genuine compared to others who like to play mind games.

A leader must know who they are personally and what they believe are the core values for themselves and the organizations they lead. Then when the hard decisions must be made and there are many of them today, everyone on the team will trust their motives instead of questioning them.

Jack Welch placed a very high value on authenticity for his top leadership team. In his book Winning he wrote, “Leaders can’t have an iota of fakeness. They have to know themselves-so that they can be straight with the world, energize followers, and lead with the authority born of authenticity.”

There is nothing better at the end of a long day than to look back and know that all your actions were consistent with your character. No more playing games just keeping it real.

Categories: Leadership Development Pastoral Leadership Servant Leader | Comments Off on Leadership Demands Authenticity

7 Keys To Marriage Maintenance

Posted by on January 25, 2016

I have now been married for 44 years and still realize that if I don’t evaluate the basics on a regular basis we can easily get into trouble. Never assume that you have reached a point where it’s not important to do the little things because in a great marriage the little is really the big. Mark Merrill has another great post:

“But owning a car also means learning how to maintain the car to keep it running well for a long time. In the same way, it’s critical to regularly maintain your marriage so it will last for life. So here are 7 keys to marriage maintenance.”

Categories: Church Scattered Marriage | Comments Off on 7 Keys To Marriage Maintenance

How To Have A Winning Attitude

Posted by on January 20, 2016

Lou Holtz the famous football coach once said, “Ability is what you’re capable of doing, motivation determines what you do and attitude determines how well you do it.” We have heard all our lives how important a role our attitude plays in everything we do every day.

In John Maxwell’s book The Winning Attitude he says that it is absolutely your key to personal success. His list several key principles about how attitude impacts every part of our lives:

Our attitude determines our approach to life
Our attitude determines our relationships with people
Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure
Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else
Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings
Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective

Maintaing the proper perspective is probably the most important one for me. We are all going to encounter problems and setbacks in our lives. It is very important to remember when you are going through difficult times not to focus on what you have lost but what you still have to be thankful for all around you. When you choose to see the glass for the way it is more than half full it will give you the perspective you need to deal with all the other issues.

I found the following to be very helpful about What is an attitude?

It is the “advance man” of our true selves

Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward

It is our best friend or our worst enemy

It is more honest and more consistent that our words

It is an outward look based on past experiences

It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them away

It is never content until it is expressed

It is the librarian of our past

It is the speaker of our present

It is the prophet of our future

Categories: Personal Leadership Servant Leader | Comments Off on How To Have A Winning Attitude