All posts in Catalyst 2006

Andy leads one of the fastest growing churches in America today. He is a sought after speaker and leadership mentor with a special passion for raising up the next generation of leaders capable of leading from a core of integrity, faith and wisdom. North Point’s original Alpharetta campus is located in a suburb of Atlanta. They have adopted a multi-site strategy that has launched two additional sites in Atlanta which offer live worship and interaction, yet play a video feed of Andy’s message. North Point has been a strategic partner to several other church plants throughout the country that are adopting similar methodology.

Andy has written several books including Visioneering, The Next Generation Leader, Choosing to Cheat, and his most recent book, Communicating for a Change.
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If there is one thing that is clear about leadership it is this: the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes…” Our leadership would change if we were clear about that.

It’s hard for us to understand that because we think it’s all about us… it’s our degree, our connection, our efforts… we think we got ourselves to where we are, but it’s not about us, God chose us.

One of the undeniable consequences of leadership is attention. As soon as you say, “follow me”, you are automatically in the center. And the less attention you try to get the more you will get, because people will follow a humble leader.

There is a self-centeredness about leadership that is unavoidable. How do we deal with it? We have do declare: “the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes…”

Andy talked in-depth about Daniel 4 & 5.

The context: 580 BC; the nation of Israel was destroyed by the Babylonians. In ancient terms, that means the God of Israel is dead, and that the Babylonian god is supreme, sovereign, etc. When the nation of Israel goes out of business, that means the Temple goes out of business… and if you can’t sacrifice, you can’t be a good Jewish man or woman without a sacrifice. As far as the world was concerned, the God of Israel was dead. God was instructing, teaching and disciplining His people during this time, and while He was doing that, He took the chance to teach the whole world a lesson by revealing himself to the prideful King Nebuchadnezzar and later to his son Belshazzar.

Attention and self-centeredness will ruin us. When we forget that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes…a little attention can get us off center. We are all set up and prone for failure if we forget that.

Leadership is a stewardship – its temporary – and you’re accountable.

We have all watched incredible men and women of God lose sight of who gave them their position and get caught up in their own success.

The leadership you have is a gift from One who is greater from you and it can be taken away at any time, and you are accountable.

No one has the right to question the wisdom of God. Everything He does is right and all of His ways are just. He humbles those who walk in pride.

Diligent

If in fact, the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes, if you are placed where you are and gifted to do what you are doing, you need to lead with all the diligence you have, because you are there for a purpose. Give your all. God knows where you are – and rest in that – there is a reason and purpose in that, so lead with all diligence.

Most days in leadership are doing things that aren’t seen, doing the grunt work – that’s why we get lazy and we back down – and that’s why when we can’t measure progress we assume there is no progress. Then it all turns down to us – it’s all about us.

If you see it or not, or believe it or not, there is a sovereign God who has placed you where you are.

If Jesus is building His church – that makes us a ‘sub.’ If you work within the context of the local church, what you do as a leader has extraordinary significance – He is accomplishing His plan through us, even if we don’t see it or believe it.

Fearless

If this is true, who do we need to be afraid of? Who should we fear? We shouldn’t fear the deacons! If God has placed you there, who should you fear.

Every day as a leader, you need to remember you are not working for men – you are accountable and responsible to men – but you are accountable to God. You don’t need to fear anyone.

Humility

Of all the leaders in the world, those of us who are Christians and work in the context of ministry, our hallmark should be humility.

Why aren’t we known for our humility?

Every day we should wake up with the reality we are where we are because God put us there and He can take us out anytime.

Leadership is always a stewardship – it’s temporary – and we are accountable.

There is no room for arrogance in spiritual, church leadership because we live under the idea that God is the ruler of all.

God chose to put us where we are – and He can shut us down whenever He wants.

It shouldn’t scare us, it should motivate us to lead with all diligence.

During his 17 years with the Gallup Organization, Marcus Buckingham helped lead their research into the word’s best managers, leaders and workplaces. Buckingham has taken the broad experience in management practices and employee retention and put it into three best-selling books: First, Break All the Rules, Now, Discover Your Strengths, and The One Thing You Need to Know. According to Marcus Buckingham, companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.

Marcus Buckingham holds a master’s degree in social and political science from Cambridge University and is a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
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There is so much range on the same outcomes in all companies.

There are two key differences between good teams and great teams:

1 – All great teams have great managers running them.

There are many CEO’s who say that their company’s culture is their strength – but in actuality, companies don’t have one culture – they have as many cultures as they have managers. In the day-to-day reality of a company – whether you know what’s expected of you, if you feel like you are cared for, if you feel the mission of the team you are a part of is clear – all of those thing vary according to the manager.

People join organizations for all sorts of reasons – you believe in what they stand for, because a friend works there, because it’s the only job they could get – but whatever the reason, how long you stay and how productive you are depends on the person you directly report to.

People join organizations and they either physically or psychologically ‘quit’ their boss.

If you have a performance problem, quality problem, engagement problem – it’s all a management problem. The manager makes the difference.

2 – Great managers have a great approach of getting the best out of their people.

The job of a manager is to turn one person’s talent into performance.

They set expectations and establish relationships and reach people in such a way so you speed up the reaction between their talent and the goals of their team.

Great mangers are catalysts, they speed up the reaction between the talent, the person, and the goal of the team.

Sustainable outcomes come as a result of the believe that their employees’ success is their starting point.

Most of the best mangers any of us know our potential and they are tough on us. They set our standards high. They show us excellence and how to embody it. They figure out how to turn talent into performance.

They do it because they can’t help it.

Managing can be tough, though, because in managing, you are caught between the company and the people.

Seeing people grow is the fuel that keeps great managers going.

Managing can be a thankless task.

If you can’t do, teach, and if you can’t teach, consult!

Great mangers look at people as an end to themselves. They find a way to find people’s talent and turn it into performance.

Great managers find out what’s unique about each person and they capitalize on it. Average managers generalize.

Great managers spend 80% of their time on refining, sharpening and focusing people’s strengths and 20% of their time managing around people’s weaknesses.

Most organizations teach their managers to maintain a person’s strengths and work on their weaknesses. Performance appraisals are 2 minutes on what you did well and 58 minutes focused on your ‘areas of opportunity.’

Most conversations between managers and employees are on flaws and failures and how to fix them.

The world believes that way to succeed in life is to identify your flaws and remediate the life out of them!

Gallup did a poll on what people believed would be beneficial to their success: building on their strengths or focusing on their weaknesses.

The US is the most strengths-focused nation in the world – 41% believed focusing on your strengths. Japan and China were the least strengths-focused – 24%.

We live in a remedial world that is fascinated by weaknesses and takes strengths for granted. We study divorce to learn about marriage, we study sickness to learn about health. We think good is the opposite of bad – if you want to get good, you study bad and invert it.

We live in a knowledge and service economy – the value of all of us is ‘between our ears – we are innovative, creative, have good judgment, etc. When companies say ‘our people are our greatest asset’ they are really saying that their people’s strengths are their greatest asset.

The average American workday is spent 14% focusing on individual’s strengths.

With some many unique and wonderful gifts, one of the points of our lives is the opportunity to express our gifts – and, unfortunately, we’re not at work.

Marcus talked about how in order to effectively reach more people beyond writing books and speaking he tried to find new ways of getting his message out there and how he found NOOMA. He said he was blown away by the message, look, power and intimacy of the NOOMA films – and worked with NOOMA to produce a film series called Trombone Player Wanted. Check out the trailer.

There are many reasons we don’t play to our strengths – our boss, our job description, we don’t know our strengths, we don’t like to talk about our weaknesses – but one reason why we aren’t is because of what we believe.

Marcus brought out three lies we believe.

Myth #1: As you grow your personality changes.

66% of people believe that. As we grow our values, circumstances, and achievement change – but so many of us believe our personalities change. Deep down we are insecure about our personality and we believe if we work at it we can change our natural patterns of behavior. We love stories of transformation – like Scrooge.

Truth: As you grow, you become more and more of who you already are.

If you took a personality test every 10 years, the correlation of each test would be similar. We don’t need tests though, we have children… they show us that reality!

As we grow, our goals, dreams and achievements will change, but the core, most dominant aspects of our personality will remain the same. We all have unique contributions – our challenge isn’t to change them, it’s to apply them, volunteer them and contribute from them.

Myth #2: We will grow the most in our areas of weakness.

That’s why we call our weaknesses our ‘areas of development.’

He talked about how when a child comes home with a report card (A, A, C, F)… we naturally give the most attention to the “F”.

Truth: Our weaknesses are our area of least opportunity. The areas we will grow the most are in the areas of our greatest strength.

Myth #3: What the team needs for you to do is ‘chip’ in and do whatever it takes.

Truth: What the team needs you to take it upon yourself to identify your strengths and volunteer them most of the time.

It doesn’t mean you won’t step out of your strength zone occasionally and chip in – you will, that’s not the essence of teamwork, it’s the exception of it.

What the team needs isn’t a vague willingness to do whatever it takes.

The best teams are not made up of well-rounded people playing every role equally, they are made up of sharp people – people who have taken a stand for their strengths and volunteered them. They are surrounded by people who have strengths in areas where they are weak so the team is well-rounded because every individual in the team isn’t.

Know where your shoulders are broadest – your strengths are the answer to that.

To assume everyone shares the same pattern – and to build a team around your strengths and weaknesses is self-centered. To assume everyone is wired differently and what strengthens you might weaken someone else is wise.

We’ve got to identify the myths and blow them up.

There is a risk to playing to your strengths…

Marcus closed with this quote; “And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud became greater than the risk it took to blossom.”

There is risk to not playing to our strengths is far greater than playing to our strengths.

We all have unique strengths. We will be at our most creative, contribute the most, develop the most when we play to our strengths and take a stand for our strengths and when we do that – everyone will win.

It matters what we believe. Let tomorrow be a different day than today. Let tomorrow be stronger. Let tomorrow begin with us looking at our strengths and thinking of how we can volunteer them. Then and only then will the world see our best.

As a cutting-edge entrepeneur, best-selling author, and dynamic speaker, John C. Maxwell has cultivated an extensive following among the most highly respected and influential leaders across the globe. John has authored more than thirty books, including the New York Time best-sellers, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Failing Forward and The 360 Leader. Called the nation’s foremost expert on leadership, John is committed to developing leaders of excellence and integrity by providing the finest resources and training for personal and professional growth. He speaks live to over 350,000 people every year and is in high demand on the topic of leadership with many churches, corporations, and entrepreneurial organizations.
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This session was in an interview format with Andy Stanley.

When you start off as a young leader you usually do everything, but as quickly as possible lean toward what you are good at. On a scale of 1-10, you can only go up a few numbers by focusing on you strengths. People don’t pay for average. We need, through trial and error, to determine our strength zone.

Just  because you have a college degree doesn’t mean you know everything.

When you work to equip people, you need to encourage them to work toward their strengths.

Anything that you are a “5” or less in, is your weak area. You need to find your “6” or “7s” and focus on those. While you do that, develop people around you who are stronger in the areas that you are weak.

One thing that  is difficult to do in leadership is hand off things you are good at or that you enjoy doing, but you have to be willing to let those things go in order to focus on what you are great at doing.

The apostle Paul said – this ONE THING that I do…not these ‘40’ things I dabble in.

Value everybody.

We attract who we are, not who we want. Likeness begets likeness.

You will not spend equal amounts of time with everyone – Jesus was constantly withdrawing from the crowds to be the with 12 – withdrawing from the 12 to be with the three – and from the three to be with the One.  He picked different types of people with different types of giftedness to advance His Kingdom.

Put your best in the best. Influence seldom goes up.

Leaders space their time – they distribute themselves and their time differently.

There are certain things you can’t change about yourself, but one thing all of us have the power to change is our attitude.

The more choice you have in a situation, the more you can change.

You can’t change your skills – your natural gifts and abilities – but you can change your attitudes and your choices.

Find potentially great leaders and train them to develop great leaders.

Choices lead to big-time growth, but remember that growth takes time. Spiritual growth is a choice – and it takes time.

Many people aren’t the main leaders and we need to learn the art of being a 360 leader, a leader who leads from the middle of the pack, influencing at all levels.

Leadership is influence, not position – leading without a position of leadership.

99% of people with leadership influence will not be the top leader, but we’ve bought into this myth that you aren’t effective if you are not leader, when in reality, many of the greatest leaders in our time weren’t at the top: Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., etc.

The people who have influenced the world the most didn’t have a leadership position. It’s not determined on position, it’s based on how to influence and engage people.

One thing that John cautioned was that as young leaders we have seen many prominent leaders fall – and John pointed out three things that they have all had in common…

1 – no accountability
2 – they weren’t continually in the Word
3 – they never thought it would happen to them

John was very vulnerable and shared about a time in his ministry when he was being tempted and realized that he could have the potential to fall. It was incredibly moving to hear what he had to say and the tenderness in which he communicated the value of us having accountability, being in the Word and remembering that we are truly vulnerable… being mindful to protect ourselves, be safe and not to get too close to the edge.

The best gift an older generation can give to younger leaders is the gift of being better than they were.

Gary is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School. He worked as a trial attorney with the Police Misconduct Task Force of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1994, he was seconded to the United Nations to serve as the Officer In Charge of the UN’s genocide investigation in Rwanda.

He previously worked for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and has published numerous popular and scholarly works on international law and human rights.

Gary now serves as the president of the International Justice Mission.
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One of the saddest things in life is to have the sense of going on a trip but missing the adventure.

Gary shared the story of when he was younger and went with his dad and his brother to Mt. Rainier outside of Seattle in Washington state. When they were about to go on the path to hike, Gary decided to stay at the visitor’s center, and in the end, missed the adventure of having a day with his dad.

At the visitors center he felt totally safe, but he also felt totally stuck. When they returned from the hike, his dad and brother had stories and memories, and all Rick had was a missed adventure.

Many of us go through life traveling with Jesus, but missing the adventure and one of the challenges of being leaders in today’s culture is getting our people OUT. Jesus is outside. We must prepare our minds with clarity of where Jesus is going – clarity of the world into which Jesus is going.

We face a struggle in our journey with human hurt and human need. One of the hardest things for people to believe is that God is good.

There are 1.5 billion people in the world without adequate medical care, AIDS running rampant in Africa, sex trade, slavery… what is God’s plan for making the fact He is good believable?

We are the plan. God doesn’t have a plan B.

In Matthew 5 Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world.

In seeing the needy and giving them a drink, food or clothing, we are doing things to help them see the body of Christ and help them to believe that God is good.

Many people in the world are suffering today because of injustice. Injustice (in the Bible) refers to a specific type of sin – an abuse of power to take away things God intended for us to have life and freedom.

King David, although he was a man after God’s heart, was unjust. He abused his power and took a man’s wife and ended the man’s life.

Ecclesiastes 4:1 – Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:
I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
and they have no comforter.

In 1994 Gary led the US Depart of Justice’s investigation into the genocide in the nation of Rwanda. Many of the mass executions took place in a place where many people were gathered – churches. The people were crying out for God do withhold the hand of their oppressor.

It is estimated that between 20-27 million people are in slavery today. The people in slavery haven’t gotten used to it – they are people just like us – and every single day they dream about living in freedom. How can they believe God is good?

According to UNICEF, over 1 millions children are entered into prostitution.

How does God regard this suffering?

Psalm 10:17-18,
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

The Good News is that God is against injustice. He yearns to bring rescue. What’s His plan? WE ARE. God does not have another plan.

Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Isaiah 1:17
Learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

We can feel so powerless with despair over the situation in our global community. We can be so paralyzed that we just stay in the ‘visitors center’ instead of going onto the mountain.

Gary talked about the feeding of the 5,000 in the Gospels. Jesus had been talking all day long and the disciples suggested that they send people home so they could eat, and instead Jesus instructs them to feed the people. There was nothing unclear I what Jesus said, but the disciples looked at the size of their need and their lack of resources and figured it wasn’t enough. All they had was a boy with some loaves of bread and some fish.

So many times we can just sit paralyzed out of despair.

Jesus asked them to give Him what they had – and He took responsibility for performing the miracle. He just asked the boy for what He had.

Gary shared the story of a young girl that they rescued from a brothel and when they went with her to the room where she had been held captive, they found she had scratched Psalm 27:1-3 in the wall:
The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.

If that girl, even in the midst of living in such terrible conditions had faith, who are we to sit back? We need to trust God. We need to take hope in the fact God still changes lives and still changes history.

Throughout time Christians have led the way in fighting injustice and slavery, and our generation needs to carry hope into some of the darkest places on earth and let the light of Christ shine through us.

Going back to his story about being at the visitor’s center, Gary said that he didn’t trust his dad. Our Heavenly Father is calling us – how do we express our trust? God is calling us to come up with Him on the mountain.

Why in a world with so much suffering and need to we, in the Western church, have so much? It’s crazy for us to have ‘great climbing gear’, but not even attempting to climb a mountain.

We need to pray for God to rescue us from all things small, and things done out of fear. We need to pray for Him to lead us out of the visitor’s center and onto the mountain. May God find us useful for doing what matters to Him.