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Category Archive: Pastoral Leadership

What Does It Mean To Be A People Leader

Posted by on March 17, 2019

One of the greatest problems facing the church today is that we have the wrong metrics for success. As long as we place a higher priority on how many people are coming to the building over how many lives are actually being changed, we are going to fail. All leaders fall into the trap of measuring the means and loosing site of the end result. This Forbes post is a great reminder of what all great leaders know:

“Leadership can mean many different things to different people, but it often directly ties back to how a person’s contributions impact a business’s bottom line: “My efforts saved us X amount of money,” “My strategy resulted in X amount of new clients,” “I closed a huge sale that brought in X dollars.”

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6 Lessons For Every Leadership Style

Posted by on March 4, 2019

One of my passions is to help church leaders develop the ability to lead in their context with the same level of effectiveness of any corporate leader I coach. So as a regular priority, I will be posting best practice leadership development content to increase our potential to impact the kingdom. This Forbes Post will be helpful:

“In my experience as an entrepreneur and coach of business executives, I’ve seen that great leaders can at times be treated as if they’re invisible. Not many people see what goes on behind the scenes to create and shape new leaders, whether you’re in charge of a team or an entire company. And unfortunately, leadership training isn’t always a priority.”

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The Single Best Way To Motivate Your Team

Posted by on February 24, 2019

The classic leadership division for the last 50 years has been between leaders who can primarily drive results and those who have the ability to prioritize relationships. The first group would be in operations and the second in sales. Today unless you can do both and everything in between you will not be effective. This Carey Nieuwhof post is excellent:

“There are some kinds of leaders (often in churches and not-for-profits) who are wonderful with people, but whose organizations don’t produce great results. Often there’s little accountability, a general drift, poor metrics and just a lack of overall excellence. But the leader’s a really nice person.

There are other leaders (often in rapidly growing churches and businesses) who are not so great with people, but there’s tight accountability, laser-like focus, clear results and tremendous progress.”

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The Lifelong Journey Of Personal Development

Posted by on February 17, 2019

From a Christian worldview perspective we would see this as a journey toward spiritual maturity. If you integrate faith and leadership into your life as a means to that end then there is much to be learned from corporate best practices. This Forbes post has much to offer pastors on leading yourself:

“The term “personal development” is very much a part of today’s lexicon, but have you ever thought about what it really means? I describe personal development as a transformational journey, and improving your emotional intelligence (EI) can be a major part of that journey. This is because EI develops your self-awareness and gives you the tools to understand your own needs and the needs of others.”

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5 Meaningful Words Of Encouragement For Spiritual Leaders

Posted by on February 10, 2019

The hardest leadership job on the planet is leading a local church. In reality your customers are both your volunteer work force and financial investors all at the same time. When they stop helping or even worse leave that immediately causes concern if something is wrong. This post by Dan Reiland is an inspiring reminder:

“As a leader, you know the importance of encouraging people. It’s impossible to over encourage people as long as you are sincere. And I’m sure you’re not only generous but intentional about your encouragement of others. However, leaders need encouragement too, right?”

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5 Keys To Reducing Stress And Anxiety In Leadership

Posted by on January 28, 2019

Margin is the gap between demand and capacity. Today with all the multiple inputs with most of the media and culture being overwhelming negative, it’s no wonder we are all stressed beyond measure. The church is no safe place from this toxicity and in many ways is even harder to lead. This is a must read for pastors:

When someone asks you how you’re doing, how do you answer? Most of the leaders I talk to these days answer with two variations: “stressed” or “busy.”

Dig a little deeper and you it’s easy to see that at a deep level, most leaders today feel anxious and overwhelmed. Welcome to life in the 21s century.

There are a million reasons why:

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4 Things To Do Before A Tough Conversation

Posted by on January 23, 2019

One of the hardest things to do as a church leader is to talk to people when you have to deliver bad news. It could start out at the beginning as a quality of work issue that eventually leads to a chronic lack of performance. Eventually, you begin to ask yourself the real question, Does this person really belong on our team? This HBR post is very helpful:

I was in denial for about a year and a half before I admitted that I needed to fire Randy.

His work performance had made the conclusion inescapable for years, but he was so darned nice and likeable that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Not only did I like him, I also knew his income was crucial to his family. Furthermore, over the nine years he worked for me, his income had grown to the point that he would find it difficult to get comparable compensation.

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It’s Time To Regain First Generation Faith

Posted by on January 8, 2019

Over the years I have served in many different churches. Some small and some very large. Some long term and a couple of church plants. As in any organization, the ability of leaders to maintain the vision and passion of the founders over time is an incredible challenge. This post by J.D. Greear is a must read for all church leaders:

“Many years ago at The Summit Church, there was a group of people who said, “Jesus and his mission will be first.” But here’s what happens: When churches like ours get big and “settled,” so to speak, they experience a natural inertia. Within a generation, they move from mission to maintenance. They go from being reckless in the mission to being comfortable in the institution.”

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The Right Way To Respond To Negative Feedback

Posted by on June 5, 2018

The major mistake I used to make in receiving feedback was to react to the negative instead of listening to what was helpful. Many times, what I was hearing was wrong and I was determined to change their mind. Now, I try to listen to what is true even if it only represents 30% of what they are saying. Feedback is your friend and this HBR post is excellent:

“Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. And indeed, leaders who ask for critical feedback are seen as more effective by superiors, employees, and peers, while those who seek primarily positive feedback are rated lower in effectiveness.”

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5 Ways To Prevent Decision Fatigue From Ruining Productivity

Posted by on April 27, 2018

Multi-tasking felt so good because we were almost always doing something. Eventually, when I evaluated all of the important work I actually did at the end of the day it was almost nothing. I now block time for deep important work so that I can stay focused long enough to make real progress. This Fast Company post is very helpful:

“More and more, our careers depend on making good choices. And by understanding decision fatigue and how we can counter it, we can make sure we’re operating at 100% all day long. Decision fatigue is the deterioration of our ability to make good decisions after a long session of decision making.”

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