The ultimate dysfunction of a team is the tendency of members to care about something other than the collective goals of the group… Team status and individual status are prime candidates. – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Best Practices

Do for one what you wish you could for everyone.

• “If I do it for you, I’ll have to do it for everyone…”
• If you want to create a culture of mutual submission, look for opportunities to be fair.
• Fairness is not a biblical value.
• Fairness ended at the Garden.
• Don’t be fair, be engaged.
• If you use fairness as an excuse to not be engaged, you’re living unbiblically.

Andy’s books include the newly released The Grace of God, as well as Communicating for a Change, Making Vision Stick, Next Generation Leader, The Principle of the Path, and How Good is Good Enough? Andy lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, with his wife, Sandra, and their three children.

• The more successful you are, the less accessible you will become.
• This isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just a truth of leadership.
• We can get tricked into thinking that we will always be present and available to everyone.
• We won’t be able to.
• It’s an unavoidable truth that could drive us to do one of two things:
• Refuse to face this reality and burn out by trying to be accessible to everyone.
• Even though your body may be present, your mind won’t be there.
• You can only be fully present to a few people.
• When you are called to ministry, it was all about people.
• Over time, you’ll become distracted.
• Use success as an excuse to become more inaccessible than necessary.
• People will start conversations with us saying, “I know you are busy, but…”
• Don’t use that as an excuse to excuse yourself.
• This isn’t a problem just for megachurches, it’s something as simple as a church that goes from 150 to 300.
• Over time it’s easy to use our success to become even more inaccessible than we really need to be.
• Unawareness is bliss.
• The more aware you are of the needs of the people around you, the more helpless you feel.
• There are no easy solutions or quick fixes.
• Our awareness of the issues and problems around us will wear us out.
• Every single day we are bombarded with information and aware of global events… disasters, need, tragedy, etc.
• The awareness of all of this is overwhelming.
• We finally want to close our doors, shut ourselves off, etc.
• Our hearts can grow cold. We’re no longer accessible. We’re no longer present.
• We can burn out or run away.
• We all have moments where there’s too much information, too much hurt, etc.
• The Apostle Paul delved into this dilemma.
• There is a collision point of our limited time and opportunity.
• Galatians 6:9-10 – …let us not become weary in doing good, at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
• Galatians 6:2 – carry each other’s burden…
• You can’t shut it all out.
• You can’t take it all on.
• This is one of the primary tensions that we have to manage as leaders.
• This is not a problem to solve.
• This is a tension we live with every single day as leaders: limited time, limited opportunity, and a responsibility for the people God has called us to live with.
• “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.”
• As kids, we were always told, “if I do this for you, I’ll have to do it for everyone.”
• That way of thinking creeps into a our thinking as people in ministry.
• “If I did your ____, then I’ll have to do everyone’s _____”
• No you don’t.
• This is how you manage your limited time with growing ministerial responsibilities: you choose to do for one what you could do for everyone.
• Don’t give up.
• Don’t get so far away from the struggles that you grow cold to them.
• Don’t use the excuse that you are so busy and “so big.”
• Don’t be fair, be engaged. 
• Fairness ended in the Garden of Eden.
• Fair is nothing
• Go deep rather than wide.
• Go deep with one person, not everyone.
• Give someone close access, not everyone.
• Go long -term rather than short-term.
• Don’t rob yourself of the joy of ministry: a success story.
• Walk with someone through their entire journey; don’t just give them an hour.
• The only way for you to be present is to decide to spend an extended amount of time with a few rather than fragmented time with many.
• Go time, not just money.
• Don’t just support missions trips, go on one.
• Go back to the same place next year.
• When you go time, not just money, it engages your heart.
• Be fully engaged with what God is doing in one place, in one person, in one situation.
• One person can give you hope for many.
• We can’t save everyone, but maybe we can save one.
• When you do for one, you often end up doing for more than just one.
• Don’t be fair, be engaged.
• Go long.
• Go deep.
• Maybe this is how you change the whole world.
• Even if you don’t change the world, you will change somebody else’s world.

Andy’s books include the newly released The Grace of God, as well as Communicating for a Change, Making Vision Stick, Next Generation Leader, The Principle of the Path, and How Good is Good Enough? Andy lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, with his wife, Sandra, and their three children.

• In life, in our history, in our experience and in everything we do, oftentimes a single act of courage is the tipping point for something extraordinary.
• A single expression or act of courage can begin a transition point for something absolutely extraordinary.
• It begins a transition that takes people by surprise.
• The individuals involved often have no idea what they are a part of.
• Dec 1, 1955 – a 42 year-old African American woman decided not to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Rosa Parks became an international symbol for racial equality.
• You can go back through every kind of history and see individuals or small groups of people making single acts of courage that
• This should be of particular interest to those of us who are Christians.
• Throughout the Bible we see the very same thing: men and women who display courage that brings them onto the scene of history.
• Abraham decided to leave his home and follow God – a nation was born.
• Moses returned to Egypt to face Pharaoh – a tipping point for the nation of Israel.
• Joshua crossing the River.
• Joseph forgiving his brothers.
• David facing Goliath.
• Gideon and his army.
• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
• Joseph deciding to marry his fiance Mary.
• The problem with all of these stories is that they are so big and dramatic.
• If we found ourselves in those circumstances and someone told us how they would end it would be easy to take courage.
• In our everyday life things don’t seem so big or dramatic.
• In spite of the fact that our stories won’t be so dramatic, there are still opportunities and circumstances in our lives and in church leadership that will be tipping points for something extraordinary in our lives.
• Challenges and moments of fear in our lives will represent tipping points for our ministry.
• It won’t be as dramatic or public or the things legends are made of, but in our lives and in our context, there will be multiple circumstances that will demand the kind of courage we tend to shrink back from.
• It will be a tipping point for something extraordinary in our life and in our ministry.

3 Faces of Courage

1 – Courage to stay when it would be easier to go.

• “When I look around at the circumstances everything in me says, “go.” But when I get on my knees and ask God, He tells me to stay.” – Charles Stanley
• Some of us are in crappy ministry environments right now and that makes coming to conferences difficult. There’s nothing going on.
• Sometimes it would be easier to go. We’ve maybe even had offers to go other places.
• Whenever everything around us says, “go” but we know in our hearts that God wants us to stay, our decision to stay may be the single act of courage that is the tipping point for something extraordinary in our lives.
• You will never know unless you stay.
• For all of us in life or in our ministry, something in us will want to leave when God wants us to stay.

2 – Courage to leave, when it would be easier to stay.

• Andy faced the challenge of choosing to go or stay with his father’s ministry
• Sometimes we have to walk away from something.
• Sometimes we have to walk way, not to something, but we just have to walk away.
• To walk away can oftentimes feel irresponsible.
• Andy read the book A Tale of Three Kings and had a moment of clarity.
• Beginning empty-handed and alone, frightens the best of men. It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are God is with them.
• Andy chose to go.
• From that decision, North Point Community Church was born.
• 4 years into their ministry at North Point, Andy’s wife said to him, “What if we hadn’t left?”
• You have no idea what God will do hanging in the balance of the decision to go.
• Sometimes God will tell us to go and it will be easier to stay when things are big, huge, and already successful.
• That decision, that expression of courage is our Goliath… that’s it.
• It’s not dramatic and no one will ever know besides us and God, but that single decision could be the tipping point for something extraordinary in our lives and in our ministry.
• Some of you need to quit what you are doing and go back to school.
• Some of you need to leave the marketplace and go into ministry.

3 – Courage to ask for help, when it would be easier to pretend like everything’s okay.

• Secrets are dangerous.
• Secrets grow into ugly things in our dark places of our hearts.
• Secrets are what take Christian leaders out, not theology.
• Christian leaders lose places of influence because of their secrets.
• People won’t ask for help because they are afraid.
• One of the most courageous steps we could take is the step to get help.
• Secrets influence the way you lead.
• When you carry a secret you compensate for it in your leadership.
• It’s more important for leaders to get help more than any other segment.
• In leadership, you’re at the front and it’s harder at the front.
• We face more pressure, more responsibility, criticism, etc. We are never not at work.
• That makes it even more difficult to compensate for it in our leadership.
• Whatever you fear secretly will be compensated in your leadership.
• We won’t get help because we are afraid.
• “I won’t get help because I’m afraid that ________ …”
• We are afraid  of what people will think about us and what we will find out about ourselves.
• The simple act of asking for help may be the most courageous thing you ever do as a Christian leader.
• By refusing to ask for help, you may be robbed of the extraordinary thing God wants to do in and through you.
• If someone you love and trust says, “Maybe you should get some help with that…” you should.
• One of the expressions of courage we must face is to be willing to have the courage to ask for help.

What you should be afraid of…

• Our greatest fear for our lives should be waking up and realizing we are outside of God’s will for our lives.
• There’s nothing worse in Christian leadership than not having the confidence that you are where you need to be, doing what God is calling you to do.
• If you minister or lead without confidence it will show.
• If we have the fear of the Lord we won’t do anything that moves us out of the center of His will for our lives, our family, our ministry, etc.
• Fear the Lord more than what people say about us, than poverty, than missing the break-out moment.
• Ask: “When this is all over, when this all said and done, what story do you want to tell?”
• As you think about the tension you are living in with your ministry, what story do you want to tell?
• Tell the story of making the courageous decision.
• If God says go, go.
• If God says stay, stay.
• If God says disclose, disclose.
• Those expressions of courage may be the tipping point of the extraordinary thing God wants to do in and through your life.

• The local church should be the best run organization in your city.
• The people in the marketplace should be asking how we get such great people to do such extraordinary things with such extraordinary passion.
• The organizational side of our church should be extraordinary.
• All truth is God’s truth.
• It takes us time to find chapter and verse, but it’s all God’s truth.
• We all have opposable thumbs… it enables us to do things that no other thing in creation can do.
• With our thumb and four fingers we can exert pressure to lift things.
• What allows us to make progress is that we are able to exert the right amount of pressure for the right amount of time.
• Pressure and tension happen every single day in our organizations.
• Tension is a necessity for any organization that wants to make progress.
• Unresolved tension is a part of any organization that is making progress.
• Great leaders don’t solve all of the problems and don’t resolve all of the tensions… they learn to use the necessary tension of organizations life for the sake of progress.
• If you try to solve all of the problems and all of the tension, you lose the ability to make progress.

Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.

• There are many tensions and problems inside of our organizations.
  • The tension between excellence and careful stewardship.
  • The tension between research/development and sales.
  • Tension between management and leadership.
  • Tension between local and global outreach.
  • Leading people versus developing people.
• We have a temptation to try to come up with a system or solution for our tensions.

If you resolve any of those tensions you will create new tension.

• You create a harsher climate for getting things done.
• If you try to solve tensions you end up wasting a lot of time and energy and impede progress.
• If you cut off your thumb you feel the effects immediately.

If you resolve any of those tensions you put a barrier on progress.

Progress depends on the successful management of tensions.

To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions that need to be managed, ask these questions:

1 – Does this problem or tension keep resurfacing?

• Do people keep asking the same questions?
• Do the same issues keep coming up?

2 – Are there mature advocates on both sides?

3 – Are the two sides of the tension really interdependent?

• Are they leveraging each other to be a tension in the first place?

The role of leadership is to leverage tension for the benefit of the organization.

• Tension results in progress when leveraged properly.
• Identify the key tensions to be managed in your organization.
• Create terminology.
• Inform your core.
• Continually give value to both sides.
• Our words, as leaders, weigh 1,000 pounds.
• We must get into the habit of methodically speak value to both sides.
• Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
• Our goal should be to make sure the important progress-critical tensions never drop out of sight.
• We can accidentally win the argument, trump opinions and cut off our thumbs.
• Understand the upside of the opposite side; understand the downside of your side.
• We have to make sure tension remains and learn to manage the tension.
• Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.
• It’s not a win when somebody wins.
• You need passionate people who will champion their side but you need mature people who understand this reality.
• Don’t think in terms of balance; think rhythm.
• Leadership is more art than science.
• Don’t be a fair leader, just do the right thing.
• As a leader one of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is to differentiate between tensions that need to be managed and problems that need to be solved.
• Learn to leverage your tensions… they can be key to the growth and progress of your organization.

• The internal tension all of us carry is associated with our appetite.
• The internal tension we all carry because we want more.
• The only word our appetite knows is: more.
• Appetites aren’t just about food or hunger; there’s the appetite of food, sex, fame, etc.
• God has designed us in a way that we are a bundled with many different appetites.
• Each one of our appetites creates tension.
• Every appetite creates tension because they only have one word in their vocabulary: MORE.
• When it comes to leadership there are heightened appetites we face.

Tensions we face in ministry/leadership include:

• Progress
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Win
• Growth
• Fame
• Achievement
• To Be Envied

3 Things to Know About Appetites

1 – God created them and sin distorted them.

• All of our apetites are given

2 – Appetites are never fully and finally satisfied.

• we think there is something, somebody, some achievement or responsibility that will absolutely fully and finally fulfill our appetite.
• We can spend our lives and make poor decisions trying to achieve it.
• There is always, always tension in this area our lives.

3 – Your appetites always whisper now, never later.

• Our response to our appetites will determine the direction of our profession, our family and our life.
• Look at your parents.
• Some of our parents wrecked their lives over their appetites.
• We can lose everything over our inability to manage our appetites.
• If you don’t get this right it doesn’t really matter if you get the rest right.
• If you are ruled and controlled by the voice that says “…a little more” ultimately we will experience loss.

Jacob & Esau

• Genesis 25:39-34
• The story of Jacob & Esau is centered around the ancient idea of a birthright.
• The oldest son was made wealthier than their siblings because of their birthright.
• You were given the authority over the rest of the family, the judge.
• A birthright was associated with the blessing of God.
• Esau came in and wanted the stew Jacob was preparing because he was famished.
• The older brother rarely needs the younger brother; the younger brother always wants something from the older brother.
• When older brothers need the younger brother, younger brothers think about what’s most valuable to the older brother.
• Jacob asked for Esau’s birthright.
• Who would throw away their ministry, influence, leadership, etc for something so small like a bowl of stew?
• We would.
• We would do the same thing if it was the right bowl of stew.
• Appetites are powerful and they are never fully and finally satisfied.
• This tension represented in this story is a tension we will carry as leaders every single day.
• We will be offered something with temporary and to solve a tension that is about now and not later.
• What good is a birthright to me?
• Impact bias – a simple appetite magnified out of proportion.
• Our brains lie to us and deceive us into thinking something will be much better than it really is, satisfying our appetites.
• Focalism – focuses our minds on one thing and blurs out everything else.
• We have appetites that get blown out of proportion and they lie to us.
• Esau says, “who needs a birthright when I can have a bowl of stew?”
• This happens in our brains every single time an appetite gets blown up out of proportion.

Reframe Your Appetite

• We need to reframe our appetites.
• As leaders, this tension will never, ever go away.
• Whatever you want you will only want more.
• All of our appetites will always whisper now not later.
• Our only hope is to develop the habit of reframing our appetite in the broader context of what God has called us to do .
• Focus on the future, not now.
• There are opportunities you should never take advantage of because they are going to pull you away from what God has called you to.
• There are places that are bigger and better you should never go to because they are big, messy and not where God wants you to be.
• Don’t allow your appetites to dictate your leadership.
• Don’t give up your legacy or leadership for something temporary.

10 Years from Now…

• … write whatever comes to mind.
• What do you want to see God do?
• What do you want to see God do in your family?
• Through your ministry, in your church?
• In your business?
• This will reframe all of your appetites.
• The clearer, bigger and more defined the frame, the less grip your appetites will have on your lives.
• Properly reframe your appetites, they always want more.

Questions to Ask

• What’s your bowl of stew? The thing being held out to you right now that you are finding difficult to say, “NO!” to?
• What are you talking yourself into? You already know what you would tell someone else in your situation but think our situation is unique – it’s not, you’re just in the moment.
• What are you contemplating that your spouse is uncomfortable with?
• What are you are doing that’s not illegal or immoral but you hope nobody finds out about? Never do anything that you would have to stand up before a crowd and explain.

Reframe, then refrane.

• What’s true of Esau is true of us.
• We have no idea what God wants to accomplish through our lives.
• No one will be there to help us reframe our temptations.
• Whatever you do, don’t trade your future for a bowl of stew.

• I’m not going to try and inspire you.
• I want to take you back where you began.
• We began with specific leadership principles.
• It’s always tempting to look at mature and successful leaders and think they know it all.
• It’s tempting to look at successful churches and think they have it all together.
• All of their challenges/problems are just great stories because they are great leaders who know how to solve them.
• The myth we tend to believe is that if you are a great leader with a well-lead organization that you will solve all of your problems and get rid of all of your tension.
• The general notion is that problems and tension are a result of poor leadership.
• Great organization have tensions and problems that are never solved.
• Leaders learn to leverage the problems that never go away in a way to create progress for the organization.
• The right amount of tension and pressure at the right moment can lead to extraordinary results.
• Tension and pressure can lead to progress and can allow us to go farther and faster.
• We can create a third-category for all of our problems.

Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.

• Example: The tension between work and family life.
• It’s not a problem we can solve, it’s a tension we can manage.
• In business there are many different problems and tensions… but they are VERY specific to individual industries/companies.
  • Marketing/sales
  • Systems/flexibility
  • Led by the Spirit/Led by the Clock
  • Attracting/Nurturing
  • Local/Global
  • Numeric Growth/Maturity
• If you “resolve” any of those tensions, you create will new tension.
  • What if you opt to commit to excellence without regard to finances?
  • What if you are all theology and no application?
  • What if you let the Spirit lead and neglect your volunteers?
  • If you were to cut off your thumb the results would be immediately recognizable.
  • In organizational life, we cut off our thumbs by solving the wrong problems.
• If you resolve any of those tensions, you create barriers to progress.
• Progress depends not on the resolution of those tensions but on the successful management of those tensions.
  • How do you know the difference between problems and tensions?

To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions to manage, ask the following:

• Does this problem or tension keep resurfacing?
  • If it keeps coming up you have a tension to manage, not a problem to solve.
  • If it resurfaces seasonally, it’s more than likely a tension.
• Are there mature advocates for both sides?
  • If yes, you’ve stumbled on a problem you can’t solve but a tension you have to manage away.
  • Every single healthy church should have the tension of calling seekers and teaching believers. We must be comfortable living with this tension.
  • We must get comfortable living in the tension.
• Are the two sides really interdependent?

The role of leadership is to leverage the tension to the benefit of the organization.

• Identify the tensions to be manage in your organization.
  • What are the problems we need to quit trying to solve and need to learn to manage?
• Create terminology.
  • When you create terminology you create a third category for your teams.
  • When you get two strong personalities on opposing sides of an issue, if there is no third category it’s only win/lose.
  • Some people shouldn’t win.
  • It gives you an option to say, “this is a tension we are going to have to learn to manage.”
• Inform your core.
  • Make sure your key players understand this principle.
  • Help create new terminology around the idea.
  • It allows conversations to go better.
  • Don’t try to solve, leverage.
  • Certain tensions are key to progress.
  • If you decide them out of the conversation you miss an opportunity to grow your organization.
• Continually give value to both sides.
• Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
  • We have an opinion.
  • We all have personal values.
  • As a leader, if we aren’t careful, we are by personality and the weight of our words, will accidentally take things off the table because we don’t want to talk about them anymore.
  • We can’t afford to weigh in too heavily as leaders.
  • Understand the upside of the opposite side; understand the downside of your side.
  • “Our churches are characterized by something that is a weaknesses for me.”
• Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.
  • We need passionate people who will champion their side, but we need mature people who will understand its reality.
  • We need people who are passionate but mature enough to understand there’s a tension we have to learn to live with.
• Don’t think in terms of balance. Think rhythm.
  • When you think about two opposing sides of an argument, we have a tendency to look at both sides and we try to figure out a way to be fair.
  • Fairness ended in the Garden of Eden.
  • Don’t think in terms of “fair” or “balance.”
  • In the rhythm of your organization there is a time to weigh in heavily and times when you need to lean away.
  • There’s a time in the rhythm of church life where you need do more of something and less of something else.
  • It’s not about balance or fair, it’s about paying attention to the rhythm.
  • Make the call in the light of what’s going on around us.

As a leader, one of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is differentiate between tensions your organization will always need to manage vs. problems that need to be solved.

• If you’ll identify and leverage them, these problems and tensions will actually become part of your story and part of the progress of your organization.
• Taking your organization to the next level and keeping it relevant will mean you living with these tensions and problems and managing your team through them.
• There’s a tension that benefits you and a tension that benefits your organization.

• Momentum = Forward motion fueled by a series of wins.
• You love your problems when you have momentum.
• Ministries that lack momentum are a drag.
• We all know what momentum is not by definition but by experience.
• In the marketplace when a company lacks momentum hey do something about immediately.
• The church can go generations without changing anything.
• Churches can tend to be anti-leadership culture.
• The mission for most churches is “pay the bills.”
• If we pay the bills, why do we need to change?
• Momentum is disruptive.
• For some church people, if momentum showed up it would scare people to death.
• Momentum is all about moving forward and leaders like thing to move forward.
• You either have it or you don’t.
• When we come across churches with momentum in our community, it’s our natural tendency to say, “If I had _________, I would have momentum too.”
• We tend to excuse momentum of other organizations.
• If you have momentum right now and don’t understand what to do with it, you are one decision away from killing your organization.
• If you lack momentum, you’ll expend a lot of energy trying to gain it because you don’t have the principles of how to gain and sustain momentum.
• We have a bad habit to say “well God’s just blessing…”
• Be careful.
• What exactly is God blessing?

Three Components of Sustained Momentum

1. New
2. Improved
3. Improving

1 – New

• New triggers momentum.
• ANythign new, by definition, generates some kind of momentum.
• The momentum can be positive or negative.
• Negative Events – Negative Momentum [9/11]
• Negative Events – Positive Momentum [Rescue]
• A senior pastor leaving can great both.
• Negative circumstances are the fertile soil for a burst of positive momentum.
• Positive Event – Postivie Momentum = New Sports Franchise.

Organizational Momentum is often triggers by one of three things:

• New leadership
• New direction
• New product [program]

Implication: When evaluating an organization or program or  program that lacks momentum, ask “Do we need a new leader, a new direction, or a new product? Or do we need some combination of the three?

Momentum is never triggered by tweaking something old. It is triggered by introducing something new.

• We spend too much time in meetings trying to tweak something old.

Warning: New does not guarantee sustained momentum. But new is  an essential trigger for momentum.

2 - Improved

• The new must be a noticeable improvement over the old.
• When evaluating a new option, ask, “Is it a significant improvement over wheat we had before?”
• If you can’t afford an improvement, let go of what’s not effective to make space for something new.
• In business it’s easy to make these decisions because things rise and fall on money.
• Churches can sustain themselves financially for generations without making change.
• Find a way to fund it by unfunding something else.

Warning: Even a significant improvement has a shelf life.

3 – Improving

• Momentum is sustained through continuous improvement. [Example: household products that continue to improve]
• Continuous improvement requires systematic evaluation. [Evaluation has to be built into the rhythm of the organization.]
• Continuous improvement requires unfiltered evaluation. [Feelings will be hurt. Sacrifice the one for the many.]
• Continuous improvement requires that nothing and nobody be off limits. [If you are not evaluating the areas where you are experiencing momentum, the clock of your success is ticking down.]
• Everything you do and everything your church does is being evaluated every week. Are you learning from other people’s evaluation of you? Why not build a feedback system?

Applying “New and Improved” to the World of Ministry

• New Personnel
• New Programming
• New Season [Shut programs down for a season so they can relaunch]
• New Series
• New Look
• New Venues

Improving

• Look for ways to upgrade your presentations.
• Visit other organizations.
• Attend other churches.

Momentum Stoppers

• Disengaged leader.
• Overactive management. [ Momentum always creates an element of chaos, managers like to minimize it. Managers manage, leaders create momentum]
• Complacency. [Nothing works forever.]
• You rarely regain momentum by simply doing what you did to create it in the first place.
• Understanding momentum is sometimes more important than knowing your history.
• Complexity [New organizations are always simple.]
• A breech of trust.

Q&A

• Gather feedback from multiple sources.
• Check out Zoomerang.
• Evaluation has to be environement-specific.
• Clarify the win for everything you do.
• You can’t evaluate effectively if no one knows what a “win” is.
• The goal is never to be fair, the goal is to do the right thing.
• We don’t add programming, we add steps.
• When considering something new, ask “Is it an easy, obvious step toward community?”

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.

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.

• We need to take the subject of leadership and look at it through the lens of scripture.
• What man is a man that does not leave the world better?
• The reason we are here and love to study and learn about leadership is because we want to make our world better… we want to make our mark.
• We’re impatient with the slowness of progress.
• We want forward motion.
• We want to make the world better.
• We want to believe when we are gone we will be missed.
• We want people to say: Our world was better because they were here.
• That’s not an ego, it’s  the mark of God on our lives.
• Leadership is a gift.
• It’s a gift we’ve seen abused.
• Every leader leaves a mark. The challenge is: what mark are you going to leave?
• If you are discontent with the status quo and want to see change it’s because God has put that desire in you.
• Leaders always leave a mark the question is what kind of mark are you going to leave?
• You won’t understand the mark you’ve left until long after you’ve left it
• You won’t recognize your greatest mistake until after you’ve made it.
• You won’t know your defining moment until it’s already happened.
• The challenge and problem for leaders who want to see change is that we don’t know the thing that we will do that will make the greatest difference.
• As you study leadership and leaders, you see they don’t realize the significance of what they’ve done until long after they’ve done it.
• In the OT God’s greatest concern for Israel was that they would not forget the Lord their God.
• God’s greatest concern was that they would be so fat and wealthy that they would grow less and less dependent on God.
• Joshua is on the verge of making his mark, doing a great thing.
• He was set up to move away from his dependence on God.
• Joshua 23:8  – cling to the Lord your God; continue to love the Lord your God; choose today whom you will serve; as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.
• Joshua said this at the end of his life, not the end.
• We would like to think at the end of our life and our leadership and to continue to be in love with God and believe God has used us in a significant .
• You make a mark you are proud of a as a leader when you leaan your leadership into God’s personal call for your life.
• Joshua 5:13  – “Are you for us or against us?”
• The significance of this moment was as if God ewas saying to Joshua,, “ I’ve not come to be a part of your story or the story of Israel… I’ve come to discover if you’ve come to play a role in MY story.”
• Your response to that question defines what kind of mark you make and whose mark you make.
• This is a question few leaders wrestle with.
• “AM I willing to submit my leadership gifts to a bigger picture and a larger story?”
• God is not “invited” to play a role in our story; we’ve been privileged to play a role in His.
• Joshua asked, “What message does my Lord have for His servant?”
• Joshua decided not to be a man in authority, but a man under authority.
• Joshua decided to be a leader who would not worry who was for him or against him; but wrapped his identity around who he was for.
• Before your name is great, before you make your mark… decide who’s side you’re on than trying to figure out who’s on your side.
• Joshua went on to do amazing things.
• At the end of his life he was a submitted servant of God.
• “God takes full responsibility for the life wholly committed to Him.” – Charles Stanley
• It’s not about the mark you leave but the mark God makes through you.
• My responsibly is to be obedient to God and to trust him with the consequences
• You need to settle once and for all, who’s mark is this for?
• Be consumed with Who you are for.
• Once you decide that, you can live your life with freedom in knowing that God will take full responsibility for your life and your leadership.
• You have no idea what God wants to accomplish for you.
• When God has done His greatest work in the world you won’t know it.
• We all have goals, visions, dreams, plans and burdens… but we won’t know the most significant thing we’ll do when we’ve done it.
• Living life to make my mark is too small a thing for us to give our whole life to.
• Live with greater concern about who you are for.
• If you settle this once and for all, you’ll be perfectly positioned for God to do His most extraordinary thing through you.
• You are going to leave a mark.
• The real question for you is, “Who’s mark is it gonna be?”
• Let’s not live our lives trying to live our small marks when we’ve been invited to play a role in God’s story and to make His mark in our world.