All posts tagged Willow Creek Leadership Summit

Interview with Tony Blair

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with No comments

One of Great Britain’s most internationally recognized statesmen, Tony Blair served as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007. During his tenure he helped transform Britain’s public services in education and health care and is widely credited for his contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process. He continues to be active in public life today, working as a key leader in the international community’s efforts to secure peace in the Middle East. He also advocates on issues of personal interest, including Africa and climate change. In 2008, he launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which promotes understanding between the major faiths and increases understanding of the role of faith in the modern world.

On His Early Days as a Leader

  • Sometimes people look at people in a position of leadership and think they have confidence, etc.
  • “I’ve never been like that.”
  • “I felt very normal in an abnormal situation.”
  • “I felt compelled at a certain point to step out.”
  • Conventional wisdom can be the comfortable thing to do.
  • The comfortable thing to do can be the wrong thing to do.
  • You have step-backs and failures when you step out against the norm.
  • Most people liked to be liked.

Decision-Making

  • The thing about leadership is that you have make a decision inside of yourself that there will be things you will stand on and be faced with the fact that other people might not like it.
  • Part of leadership is having an inner core, an irreducable core, the thing that cannot be chipped away at.
  • You cannot yield on what is at your core.
  • You have to do what you know is right, even if it’s not popular.
  • Your job is to stand by what you think.
  • Be prepared to walk away.
  • The times I found most difficult to lead were when I thought I was compromising on what I thought was right.
  • Most people in leadership know when they are taking a position because they actually believe it.
  • You’ve got to listen to and absorb criticism.
  • If the facts change, I change my mind.
  • You have to have a clear view.

Doubt

  • Doubt is expressed as a deep reflection of what you are doing and if it’s right.
  • You need to think through your decisions.
  • Doubt can be right, it causes you to think.
  • You’ve got to put aside fear that comes in the moment of decision.
  • You have to be able and willing to take the responsibility of decision making.
  • It’s never easy… but in the end, your ultimate duty is to decide… somebody has to.
  • If you’re not stepping up and deciding, someone is.
  • Even if people strongly criticize you, they respect your role of decision making.

Faith

  • If you are of religious faith, it’s the most important thing in your life.
  • It’s not that you make decisions in a “religious way.”
  • But it does give strength and support.
  • Faith and its role in the world is an enormously potent force for good or bad.
  • Faith plays progressive and constructive role in the 21st century.
  • There’s a lot people of faith can accomplish together.

Negotiating

  • I’m a great believer between the differene between tactics and strategy.
  • There’s strategy in the goal you are trying to reach.
  • To get there, it requires a lot of compromise and tactical issues along the way.
  • You’ve got be be prepared to have  a lot of give and take.
  • Things are difficult and tough to get through, but things should always be measured against your goal.

Leading Through Crisis

  • Do we react by pointing a finger or make a statement of our unity?
  • Made the judgement that a statement of unity was most important.
  • In the moment of crisis… get the facts, get the managerial details, get a message that meets the emotions of your people.

Pain + Disappointment

  • By counting your blessings you can endure pain and disappointment.
  • Remember it’s a privilege to do your job.
  • We’re blessed and lucky to be doing what we are doing.
  • Every day you should wake up and feel motivated.
  • Whatever pain and disappointment you accumulate, it cannot compare to the blessings you have.
  • What are you REALLY complaining about?

To Church Leaders

  • Leadership is a blessing.
  • It’s a gift that you’ve been given and a gift you can use to help others.
  • No matter how difficult, challenging or painful, it’s your duty to do it.
  • The way the world around you works, whatever it is, without a leader, things don’t get done.
  • The joy of getting something done makes all the pain worthwhile.
  • It’s a blessing and a gift from God you should use.

Hybels’ Comments

  • There are things you have to be unyielding on and you have to be ready to walk away if that’s compromised.
  • What is that irreducible core in you?
  • We are torn in leadership… people pulling us in different directions.
  • Are you willing to stay true to what you believe?
  • 1 Corinthians 15:58: be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing your work is never in vain, if it’s in the Lord.
  • Leadership is a blessing.
  • It feels heavy at times.
  • We get to paint pictures for people to aspire to.
  • We get to lift up causes and people that matter for eternity.
  • Keep in balance.
  • There’s pain, blessing and opportunity in all of it.

Bono, the Church… Three Years Later

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with 1 Comment

Bono is the lead singer of Irish rock band U2, which has sold more than 140 million albums and won numerous awards, including 22 Grammys. A well-known activist in the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, he co-founded DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) in 2002, The One Campaign in 2004, and Product (RED) in 2006, and was named TIME’s Person of the Year for 2005. Interviewed for the Summit in 2006, he challenged church leaders to mobilize against the ravages of global AIDS and poverty. Be a part of the continuing story, as Bono talks in an exclusive video about the church’s inspiring response and about his continuing life journey as a “single issue protagonist.”

  • JFK lead and the world followed.
  • Putting the man on the moon proved what American innovation and technology was capable of.
  • The problems we can fix, we should.
  • What is possible when the church unites to solve a global crisis?
  • Only love can leave such a mark.

How is the church doing?

  • Since the last time Bill and Bono met, “the church has done incredible things.”
  • “I thought the church was ‘the sleeping giant’ but I didn’t know it could run that fast!”
  • It’s an offense to Christ or any concept of truth and justice that we aren’t reaching out to help people in need.
  • The church is in the lead, not in the rear.
  • 41 million bed nets were distributed… malaria deaths are down.
  • In some places Rwanda is sending back drugs!
  • Had the church not woken up on the issue of AIDS we would not have 2 million Africans on anti-viral drugs.

Loving our (global) Neighbor

  • The concept of “our neighbor” has changed.
  • It’s not advice, it’s a command.
  • In the global community, Africa is just down the street.
  • Can we enjoy the benefit of globalization without taking some of the responsibility?
  • They are our neighbor.
  • Eaglebook Community Church in Minnesota has woken up to the call to do something globally.
  • A mark of maturity is when people give out of what they have.
  • We’re going to be asked what we did for “the least of these.”

Where the Streets Have No Name

  • Bono wrote the lyrics for the song “Where the Streets Have No Name” in Ethiopia about people in Africa.
  • He says when he sings it, it changes him and he “feels God walk through the room.”
  • Sometimes you don’t know what you’re singing.
  • As smart as somebody can be, intuition is greater than intellect.
  • Our best work is done when we have no idea what we are doing.
  • Whittier Area Community Church got it too, gave $518,000!
  • Jesus has created the church to exist for the world.
  • Why did it take a rock star to tell us that?

On The Economic Situation

  • It’s funny that we can’t find money to save hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa but we can find $700 million to save our economy.
  • That says that in a crisis, we can find the money when we need it…
  • Doing so shows we believe somebody begging for their lives is not in crisis.

On Church

  • On church attendance: I go where the life is.
  • “What I find hard to take is lifeless ceremony… and I see that a lot in churches.”
  • He wants to go where he finds honesty and humanity.
  • A place where everyone is welcome.
  • When you make a sermon, people don’t want things to be too complicated, they want you to be honest. They want a spirit of humility.
  • We need to stand for poverty.
  • It’s not charity… it’s justice and equality.

Grace

  • The church tends to separate itself from people and pick the divisive issues.
  • That’s not grace.
  • We would be much better served if we stood for things instead of against things.
  • Grace is defying the thing that is uncommon.
  • Whenever I see grace, I am moved.
  • When you see the grace of how people behave in dire circumstances you will be moved.

On Giving Up

  • He considered giving up.
  • We should never think things are dependent on us.
  • It’s hard, there will always be resistance.
  • There’s resistance on the journey to equality.
  • Where have you drawn the line?
  • Where does your sphere of empathy end?
  • Everyone is created EQUAL in the eyes of God.
  • Indifference is an enemy to the greatest of possibilities.

Bill Hybels’ Challenge to Leaders

Jesus spoke with blinding clarity about the issue of our relationship with under-resourced people (Matthew 25).

  • He said, “I was hungry… naked… sick… in prison…”
  • Some of the people responded by saying, “we never saw you in those situations.”
  • He replied, “when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me…”
  • Others said, “if we would have seen YOU…”
  • He replied, “you wouldn’t have done it for me.”
  • There’s a lot of things we’ve got to get better at in leadership.
  • If we neglect using our leadership positions to serve the poor in some way, we will stand accountable before Christ some day.
  • “I get no joy out of saying this because I feel the weight of it every day…”

What Bono has done is asked everybody of every faith who leads anything to do something.

  • I have a deep-seated trust in the sovereign wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
  • If people get this on their radar screen, God will show them how to do it and finding out what their part is.

No one is exempt from taking responsibility in this great challenge.

  • What is the right thing to do?
  • If you’re not engaged, get engaged.
  • You will want to stand before the One with nail pierced hands and say, “I made the grace you made available to me available to the poor…”
  • Some of us will be called to life-saving acts of compassion.
  • Others will create jobs and opportunity for long-term solutions.
  • God will guide you.
  • This is something that in our lifetime could be ended.

Switch

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with No comments

Dan Heath is an insightful and engaging communicator, widely recognized business consultant, researcher, and entrepreneur. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and is co-founder of Thinkwell, a publisher of innovative textbooks.

Chip Heath is an author, consultant, speaker, and popular professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Management. His unique research on what makes ideas succeed has been featured in a wide range of popular media programs and publications.

  • Switch is all about how to change when change is tough.
  • Think about something about you or your organization that needs to change.
  • People’s first knee-jerk reaction to change is the idea that people don’t like change.
  • If your goal in life is to minimize the amount of change you experience, you’ve made a terrible mistake!
  • There’s certain kind of changes that are big (marriage, children, etc) that come effortlessly; but there’s other changes that are excruciating.
  • Sometimes the smallest things are the most difficult to change.

An Elephant and A Rider

  • Change is filled with conflict.
  • Part of wants to save for retirement; the other part wants to spend.
  • There’s a battle in any circumstance of change.
  • Part of us sees the need for change, the other part of us resists change.
  • There’s two parts to our brain: the thinking side and the side that actually does the work.
  • The rider can think of where we need to go, but the elephant doesn’t want to move.
  • Part of change is aligning the goal of the rider with the will of the elephant.
  • Emotional appeal triggers change.
  • Reach past intellectual arguments and tap into something that motivates for the long-haul.

From a ministry-perspective… you have 9 major ministries… 2 are working well, 5 are marginal, and 2 are failing miserably… what would you do?

  • Ignore the bottom 2; brush past the working 5 and focus on the main 2.
  • In a time of change, there’s a lot that’s not working… you’ve got to find what’s working, find the bright spots.
  • Bright spots prove success is possible.
  • You’ve got to study and clone bright spots.
  • There’s a new type of therapy that is focused on bright spots instead of negative memories or issues from the past.
  • Bright spots prove we are capable of solving our problems.
  • We tend to focus on areas that are weakest, but we need to focus on where God is really working, the bright spots.
  • When dealing with problems, ignore the True But Useless info (TBUs) and focus on learning from what is working and replicating it.

Big problem, small solution.

  • Big problems are rarely solved with big solutions.
  • Big problems are typically solved by a sequence of small solutions.
  • To accomplish meaningful change, you must be convinced that there is a goal worthy of the pain of changing.

Shrink the change.

  • By breaking big problems into a series of small solutions, those small success provide motivation.
  • If you find yourself demoralized, it’s a sign you haven’t shrunk the change enough.
  • Small victory is impetus for great change.
  • We often get frustrated and depressed because we ourselves can’t change and we can’t get people to move.

The Valley of Insight

  • When IDEO starts a new project, the team leader goes to a whiteboard and draws a “U-shaped” curve… you’ll start on a “high” called hope and you’ll end on a “high” called confidence. In between there will be a “dip” of insight.
  • Insight won’t come as quickly as we want it to come.
  • We have to struggle through it, because struggle leads to confidence.
  • We can equate the valley of insight to hell.
  • How to people interpret hard times?

A Growth Mindset + Failure

  • People with a “growth mindset” view life through the lens that they can get better, with work.
  • A “growth mindset” has a tolerance for failure.
  • Built-in to the “growth mindset” is a tolerance for failure.
  • We often equate failing to missing God.
  • Failure is a necessity in a time of change.
  • If you are going to have a growth mindset, you have to pursue to the point of failure.
  • Failure is an early warning sign of success.
  • Some people need to be empowered to fail!

We might not have a person problem, but a situation problem

  • When we make assumptions about people, we attribute things to them without questioning their situations.
  • The Fundamental Attribution Error – we look at people but we don’t look at their situations.
  • We need to think broadly about people’s situations.
  • Good leaders have the gift of seeing people’s situations.
  • Sculpting the path is part of creating change.

When change occurs, there’s usually a predictable pattern.

  • What’s effective is a deep emotional appeal.
  • The reason we get married and have children is because there’s something deep and emotional we experience.
  • Think of all the things society does to shape the path.
  • We need reverse engineer successful changes when facing new ones in front of us.

If there’s something you’re facing, God will help you overcome what you see as a challenge.

The “dip” is a place to gain insight.

Eyewitness to Power

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with No comments

Editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report and political analyst for CNN and PBS, David Gergen has served as a White House adviser to four presidents; Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. He is also a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Leadership. An active participant in American national life for 30 years, Gergen has a lifetime of experience in observing and participating in high-capacity leadership, which he’s distilled into seven vital elements needed for future leaders. The author of Eyewitness to Power, he firmly believes that by identifying the traits of other leaders (and learning from their mistakes), we can increase our own effectiveness and leadership potential.

  • One of David’s areas of expertise is the study of leadership.
  • He teaches leadership at Harvard.

On Leadership Development

  • Leadership is a journey. Each one of us has to take our own path, and get there our own way.
  • There are people that can help us get there… mentors, teachers, friends.
  • These people introduce us to the literature of leadership.
  • A teacher of leadership cannot produce a leader.
  • What you can do is make people aware of the principles of leadership and introduce them to role models they can fashion themselves after.
  • Especially with church leaders, if you are in leadership it’s not a question of teaching people, but creating a culture where people are encouraged to serve and lead each other.
  • The proudest moment for him is not what students learn but what they do.
  • Leaders have to get better at leading.
  • If you are born with it or not, you have to get better at it.
  • Be a reflective practitioner.
  • Reflective practice means that where you really learn leadership is in the arena of doing it and continually reading, learning, etc.
  • “Not every reader is a leader. But every leader is a reader.”
  • It’s the combination of doing, reading and reflecting on the two.
  • General Patraeus has soldiers reflect on what happened… what they did right, what they did wrong, etc.
  • Leaders can be so activistic that they don’t reflect, journal, write, discuss, etc.
  • It’s easy to confuse motion with progress.
  • Best leaders choose their big goals and go after them relentlessly, with a lot of feedback.
  • Peter Drucker wrote “The Effective Executive” and teaches at the beginning of the year to write down what you hope to accomplish and how you hope to get there, and go back and review. Hold yourself accountable.
  • One of the easiest things to do is fool yourself and be self-justifying and defensive.
  • You have to be willing to wrestle, like Jacob.
  • If things go right, question what the contributing factors were.
  • If something goes wrong, admit how it went wrong and why you did what you did.
  • When you’re down on the dance floor dancing it’s important to go to the balcony and look down. Observe the dances going on.
  • The moments “out” allow you to see things more clearly.

Strengths of Presidents He Served Under…

  • Nixon: best strategist. Could look into the future and see how history was going to unfold and had a gift at bending the future. “Someone who can look farther back can see father ahead.” Understanding your past helps you envision what the future will be.
  • Ford: most descent. You didn’t have to keep your back to the wall. The saying goes “nice guys finish last,” but in today’s society we’ve come to prize people who are descent. Ford looks better and better through the review mirror of history.
  • Reagan: contagious optimism. If you’re around leaders who always believe you can get higher, who can encourage… it makes the effort exciting. There’s a sense you are building something. He and the WWII generation had a sense of humor. People who can laugh together can pray together and do a lot of things to build a sense of team.
  • Clinton: his resilience. Got knocked down a lot in life, but was always willing to get back up.

Weaknesses…

  • Nixon: his dark side. “You have to understand the struggle… he had people who appealed to his right side and those who appeal to his dark side.” He could not control his demons. He was the author of his own tragedy.
  • Ford: too naive. Politics is a rough sport, school of hard knocks.
  • Reagan: detachment. You always have to keep your hands on the wheel, and sometimes he gave the wheel to others. When he had a good team around him, things were great… things went off track when he didn’t have a right team around him. You can trust to the point of detachment. Inspect is as important as respect. You have to keep your eye on what’s going on and not turn it over to other people.
  • Clinton: cracks in his character. He was earnestly working through the flaws in his character. He made mistakes. The worst mistake was not the relationship with Monica Lewinsky… it was his failure to come forward and ask for forgiveness. If you’re straight with people, they’ll forgive you.

Great leaders carry with them great flaws.

  • Maturity is all about trying to come to grip with your flaws.
  • Self-awareness is important.
  • You’ve got to admit to yourself you have a dark side.
  • The challenge is to integrate the two so you have an authentic, integrated person.

How do you come to grips with your flaws?

  • We have to be realistic enough to know most people won’t conquer their flaws.
  • Make sure you are aware of your flaws so they don’t hurt you or others.

How do you bring alignment between your private behavior and public life?

  • People who can be great leaders oftentimes have very messy private lives.
  • Martin Luther King was one of the great moral leaders of the 20th century. He helped lift our moral sight, yet he had a very chaotic private life.
  • He worked hard to bring his private life under control… he knew he was a sinner.
  • Nelson Mandella said “get up every morning and try to do better…”
  • We should be more forgiving and less invasive about people’s private lives.
  • We should be very demanding of their public lives.

Leadership does not have to be lonely.

  • “The day of the Lone Ranger as a leader are over.”
  • Leaders today get the best results when they have great teams, and build a team of leaders.
  • Your role as a leader is to have team of leaders.
  • The world is increasingly complex and you, the leader, have to work with many other groups and many other leaders.
  • Leaders need to learn how to partner and collaborate.
  • We build things together.
  • “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – Patty Stonesifer

Importance of symbolism

  • Leadership is working with others in the pursuit of shared goals.
  • In old times, leadership was command.
  • Today it’s about persuasion.
  • Leadership is about trust and communication.
  • You communicate by how you role model.
  • Symbols matter to people. Your brand.
  • The “V” for victory with Churchill gave people hope and inspiration.
  • Ghandi gave up the clothing of the law and went with the lion cloth to communicate his simplicity.
  • Mandella was seen in prison garb, but was one of the greatest leaders of our time.
  • Reagan’s horse… we have a Marlboro man image in our culture… and Reagan said “there’s nothing greater for the inside of the man than the outside of a horse.”

Communications + Leadership

  • “Speeches take place in a situation, not a vacuum.”
  • Who the speaker speaks as loudly as what he says.
  • We are bombarded with words.
  • The demand is to figure out who we are going to listen to in the midst of the chaos.
  • Your willingness to listen depends on trust.
  • You trust they are being real, authentic, and that they know what they are talking about.
  • You look for people who can explain things in a way that’s clear and simple.
  • The person who first understood public speaking was Aristotle, his book about rhetoric.
  • There’s three elements to a good speech: 1) Ethos – the personality, authenticity, believability of the speaker. 2) Logos – logic of the speech. 3) Pathos – the emotion. You want to appeal to someone’s reasoning power and their emotional grip on something.
  • Whoever is communicating needs a rhythm.
  • A speech shouldn’t be more than 15-20 minutes.
  • 1/4 of the audience can’t keep up after 30 minutes.
  • Your ethos should be established up front… let people know who you are.
  • Logos needs to be the body of your message
  • Pathos needs to be the emotional call to action, not just an appeal. Inspire people.
  • The best preachers bring the argument and the emotional appeal that inspires us.

On Personal Habits of Leaders

  • Self-discipline is like self-awareness.
  • The best leaders have regular habits.
  • It’s important to be physically fit.
  • People who let themselves get flabby often let their minds get flabby.
  • Leadership is physically demanding, you need endurance.
  • You need to build time into your day to reflect.
  • You need to build time into your day to spend time with the people you love.
  • People who are in loving relationships at age 50 tend to live a lot longer and be a lot happier in life.

What do you hope is going to happen in you and to you when you go to church?

  • Church should be a place where one can find inner-peace. Not about them, but something larger.
  • Likes to learn something from the pastor or the readings.
  • He wants to not only hear the words but read them, and study their context.
  • Many of the young people today care deeply about social change. Many of them are on a spiritual journey.
  • This generation is on a search for their spiritual well-being.
  • Whatever their faith may be, spirituality is important for the foundation of their leadership.
  • It helps you find your moral compass. You’ve got a “true north.”
  • Going to church is where you nourish it.
  • It’s important to have good anchors in life.
  • Our ego can get so inflated that you become arrogant and think that the rules don’t apply to you.
  • You can fly too close to the sun.
  • Faith, family and friends are good anchors… they remind you there are things bigger than you that you don’t hold it in your own hands.
  • You are one of many… part of a grander scheme.
  • If you want to change the world, be the change you want to see in the world.
  • Each of us has warmed our hands around a fire… and our role is to bring a log to that fire and keep it going to others.
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