Catalyst 09 :: Andy Stanley, Round 2

Andy Stanley is a pastor, communicator, and founder of North Point Ministries (NPM). Launched in 1995, North Point Ministries is now one of the fastest growing and most influential Christian organizations in America. Each Sunday, more than 20,000 adults attend services at one of NPM’ three campuses in the Atlanta area: North Point Community Church, Browns Bridge Community Church, and Buckhead Church. In addition, NPM has helped 14 strategic partner churches throughout the United States and is developing strategic partnerships with ministries in 13 countries.

Andy is also a best-selling author, and his titles include The Principle of the Path,Making Vision Stick, Communicating for a Change, Visioneering, and The Next Generation Leader. He and his wife, Sandra, live in Alpharetta, Georgia, with their three children.

• Your church and your church culture should be the healthiest organizational culture in your city.
• Businesses should want to drop in and see what’s happening.
• People in the marketplace should come to our door and ask us to come to their business to help them figure out how to create a healthy culture like we have.
• This not Sundays… Mondays-Saturdays.
• The work culture of the local church has a huge advantage over the marketplace.
• Theoretically, everyone is a Christian; everyone shares the same values; everyone is crystal clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
• There’s no ambiguity about what we do and why we do it.
• A lack of clarity about what companies do and why they do it causes chaos.
• Sometimes church cultures are the most unhealthiest cultures.
• “The meanest people I’ve ever met work at churches.”
• “Some of the laziest people I’ve met were on church staff.”
• “Some of the most incompetent people I’ve met were on church staff.”
• Your systems and your product should be excellent.
• If you get this right you will attract healthy, competent, get it, get it done people.
• If you miss this you will run them off.
• Healthy people are attracted to healthy cultures.
• Healthy people to do not stay in unhealthy cultures.
• Unhealthy people thrive in unhealthy cultures.
• Have a ministry, don’t hire a ministry.

Occasionally there is a gap between what we expect people to do and what they actually do.

• Expectations vs Experience
• As leaders, we choose what goes in those gaps.
• What we choose to put in the gap consistently, the other people on your staff will put in there as well.
• We choose to expect the best or assume the worst.

• Your fears determine the people you work with.
• Your past hurt and failure will determine what you put in the gap.
• Every time there is a gap you make a choice.
• The choice you make will begin to influence and drive the entire culutre of your organization.
• The more trust there is the better is.
• Trust is a decision that you make.

Developing a culture of trust is critical to the health and success of your organization.

• Love really is blind.
• Do you really want to be married to someone who truthfully points out your flaws every single day? NO!
• They could be telling you the absolute truth and you would be incredibly unhappy.
• No one wants a friend that consistently point out what’s wrong with you?
• Relationships begin and stay strong with people who overlook your flaws and still love and trust you.
• Untrustworthy people can be come trustworthy and trustworthy people will want to be a part of your organization.
• It is a choice to believe the best.

Trust fuels productivity.

• We all want to have productive organization.
• The message of trust is this: I think you are smart enough to know what to do and how to do it and if you screw up I think you will tell me and fix it.
• If there is a gap, I believe you are smart enough to do it, and if you’re not, I trust you will fix it.
• Leaders establish and maintain trust.
• It is contagious.
• I’ll be far more upset if you spend time pleasing me instead of doing what’s best for the organization.

A culture characterized by trust attracts trustworthy people and quickly surfaces those who aren’t.

You will never know who you can’t trust until you trust them.

• The longer you refuse to trust the longer untrustworthy people can hide in your organization.
• It’s not intuitive to put “believe the best” in the gap, but we need to do it.
• If you don’t address the hiring problem you might have created a culture where everyone mistrusts everyone else in the organization.

You will never know who you can trust until you trust them.

• The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you might have made a hiring mistake.

Trusting is risky. Refusing to trust is riskier.

• A trustworthy person won’t make the same mistake twice; they correct their mistakes.

Trust enables an organization to move faster.

• In a culture of trust, communication is fluid.
• When there is a high level of trust, I will act as if I believe the best about a situation.
• It begins to feel like a healthy family, with an org chart
• The development of trust is a significant leadership strategy.
• You choose to trust.

Developing a culture of trust begins with the leader.

• Trust and suspicion are both telegraphed from the leader throughout an entire department or organization.
• People are intuitive, they know what you think.
• Proactively promote trust.
• It begins with the leader.
• We must begin to learn to choose to trust.
• Concealed suspicion poisons the entire organization.
• The energy around a lack of trust begins to build.
• When you flip over a rock there are gross things… bitterness, resentment, etc.
• When there’s a gap, you need to confront the person.
• We hate confrontation.
• If you want to build a culture of trust a big part of it is confronting fairly and quickly and refusing to sit on it and to allow it grow in our heart so that we don’t over communicate and hurt people unnecessarily.
• Before you assume the worst, ask for the facts first, then you can deal with it fairly.
• “Oh, I didn’t know that…”
• Slimy things grow in dark places.
• The consequences of confrontation are far less server tha the consequences of concealment.
• With confrontation, things are tangible and immediate and typically only impact a few people.
• Concealed things intangible and can impact many relationships.
• To develop a culture of trust, leaders must be trustworthy.
• Trustworthy means worthy of trust.

5 Commitments to Make

1. When there is a gap between what I expected and what I experienced, I will believe the best.
2. When other people assume the worst about you, I will come to your defense.
3. If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I will come directly to you about it.
4. When I’m convinced I will not be able to deliver on a promise, I will inform you ahead of time.
5. When you confront me about the gaps I’ve created I will tell you the truth.

Gaps are the opportunities to decide what kind of culture you want to create.

1. Are there people you have a hard time trusting?
2. Is it your issue or theirs? [If you don't confront it, it's still YOUR issue.]
3.  What can you do about your part?
4. What do you need to address with them about their part?
5. Who do you sense has a difficult time trusting you?
6. Why?
7. What can you do about it?

We have been selected by God for a very important enterprise.
Our success does not depend on our perfection.
We can survive bad decisions but we can not survive a culture void of trust.

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