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Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 14

Build with the Best

Having good people on your team is important because the team is only as strong as the weakest link. Get the right people on your team and the wrong people off your team. Trust lies at the heart of a functioning team.

Lesson 14
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Build with the Best

PC506-14: Build with the Best

I. Introduction to Effective Leadership

A. Importance of Leadership in Organizations

B. Defining Leadership

II. Characteristics of Effective Leaders

A. Vision

B. Integrity

C. Empathy

D. Adaptability

III. Building a Strong Team

A. Recruiting the Best Talent

B. Fostering Teamwork and Collaboration

C. Empowering Team Members

IV. Developing Leadership Skills

A. Continuous Learning

B. Feedback and Mentoring

C. Overcoming Challenges

V. Measuring Leadership Success

A. Setting and Achieving Goals

B. Evaluating and Improving Performance


Transcription
Lessons

Dr. John Johnson

Principles of Effective Leadership

PC506-14

Build with the Best

Lesson Transcript

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:02] You know, it goes without saying that if we're convinced that we should work as teams as opposed to being so low in whatever organizations we lead, that we build great teams. Here's something I've kind of learned the good way and the hard way over 30 years of pastoral ministry is that teams make or break you. I mean, if you have a great team, you can just ride in that wave. But bad teams, it's hard to over overcome. So finding the right people is critical. I give a list, a number of proverbs that just underscore this truth. Maybe it might be good to look at Proverbs 26. Proverbs 26. He underscores this in different versus for six. The one who sends a message by a fool's hand cuts off his own feet. He obviously has had the experience of when you have the wrong people in your mission that they become your own undoing. First ten the one who hires a fool or who hires those passing by is like an archer who wounds everyone. In other words, he lays it back at the leader. He noticed that in each of these versus it's the leader who pays. You can't say, Well, I got a bad team member, but he'll pay for it. No, actually, you're the one that pays for it. So Maxwell speaks of the law of the chain. The strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link. Adam gave a pointed illustration of that. You notice here he gives an interesting equation to make the point that it's worth thinking about this. When teams first form, it's like if you have that weak link. So it's ten plus ten plus ten plus ten plus five equals 45. But once you get synergy and now you're working as a team and everything you do impacts one another. Addition shifts to multiplication. So notice how the dynamics change. It's not plus five, it's times five. It might be an overstatement, but it sure gives you pause, doesn't it, to say one bad member could bring us all down. So I notice people who on the next page who speak to this almost any leadership book worth its weight is going to talk about the value of teams and business. If you ever come across like a use copy for maybe a couple of bucks and probably they're out there. His book, Organizing Genius is a bit dated now, but it's worth just having on your shelf if you are interested in teams. I read it years and years ago when I was in Nigeria and I just loved this book because what he does is he looks at the great teams, Walt Disney, the Manhattan Project, these different ones, and he tried to distill from these great teams what they all had in common. It's a great title, organizing genius. So his point is greatness starts with superb people. Or Useem Pick your associates well and back them fully or Welsh. Jack Welsh says when all is said and done, resource allocation is one of the chief jobs of every leader just getting the right people. Therefore, wise leaders make three significant decisions. And this goes to good to great Jim Collins, who talks about the importance of getting the right people on the bus. So he says the first thing is you got to get the wrong people off the bus if they aren't on board with you. The vision, if their performance level is not where you really need it to be, and it doesn't appear it's going to change if it's not the right cultural chemistry fit, if they're not capable of moving to the next level, then somewhere you have to get them off. The worst category is what? Oh, a Harvard review on team. I can't remember her name. She calls them, refers to them as trailers. Trailers tend to be people on your team who have a victim mentality, who sulk, who can't get off message. And I've seen them sometimes, or just negative people. They rarely speak positive. They just. Derail. They derail you. They get the train off the tracks. If you have those, you've got to eventually get them off. Here's the point I make down the bottom. Given our mission, it's too important and too costly to entrust our work to the wrong people. We look at if we're talking here in this course about godly leadership, we're talking about leading ministry. You have to philosophically say a couple of things. It's not about the person, it's about the organization. And if we're here as an organization and we're about trying to advance the kingdom of God, there's no higher endeavor on Earth. So it demands the best people. The most painful thing I know I'm just going through it is when you have to release people. But what I always go back to is this, that I have to think about what's best for the organization, not what's best for the people. If I think about what's best for them, I'll never make the decision. So sometimes I step back and go, What's best for the church, what's best for this ministry? And if I say what's best is that they're not part of the team, then you make it and you bite the bullet and you endure the pain. Because the problem is, I probably have shared this in ministry. The pain part is that when you do get the wrong people off the bus, it can feel particularly ministry like you're removing family because in a sense you are. These are our brothers and sisters in Christ. But if you don't. Just like we just ran Proverbs 26, eventually you're the one that will pay. It's just not wise at all. Now, the other part of that is to get the right people on the bus, in the right seats on the bus. Leaders go after people. They go up to the right people. What Collins does here in this chapter in Good to Great, it's kind of revolutionary to me. It is. Anyway, as he makes the point that it's more important to get the right people on the bus than to figure out where the bus is going. Our tendency is to say, okay, go figure out the vision. Where am I going and get the right people to get there? That makes logical sense. That's how I've often thought. But Collins because he sees the importance of people, says Ashley, You're probably wiser to say, I'm going to go out there and find the very best people I can and I'm going to build the team, and together we'll figure out where we're going. Now it's okay to have an idea. The leader should have an idea where he's going. He might say, You know, I have a vision to take this where I'm going to Boston, so I don't want to go out there and find a bunch of people who have no interest in Boston. So I don't think he's saying that. But what he is saying is go out and find the very best people you can impart a little bit of. Here's where I'm thinking. But you know what? Let's see, when we all get together, we may decide there's a better destination in Boston. But I think part of how you attract people is that you've got to have some sense of where you're going. I mean, if I say to Sandy, hey, Sandy, I want you to come and join our team. I want to build the best team I can. And Sandy says, Well, but what's your name? Where you going? If she's a great team person and I see that in her, that probably means she's probably looking at other teams, too. And she might tend to say, I'm going to go with somebody who has an idea where they're going. Now, if I say to Sandy, Well, here's the vision, here's what I'm thinking, but you know what? I'm building this with the kind of quality network that we may decide when we all sit this thing down that with their money and be a better place, that might actually intrigue, might make her feel like I'm part of a movement, a destination. But there's also some room to even expand that. That makes sense. So what Collins here says is, look, I really don't know where we should take the bus, but I know this much. If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the seats who care about the cause we're engaged in. So it really gets back to the more the mission and the vision, which we'll talk about later. And the wrong people off the bus. Then we'll figure out how to take it somewhere. Great. And that might be for some of you like it was for me. I remember when I read that, I went, Whoa, I got to think about that. I had never thought about it quite that way. But Collins would say, If you're going to pick, start with this. Start with building the base. So let me talk about what to aim for then. Let's come back and talk about that for a moment. So it says here at the things you aim for or. Not necessarily him, but as I've read from lots of other people, obviously aim for character, core values, things we've talked about integrity, work, that ethic, dedication, trust, loyalty. I mean, that's huge. Lyndsey only puts it this way Trust lies at the heart of a functioning team. Knowledge skills are critical, but these can be taught. And I would just circle that Trust does lie at the heart of a functioning team. You want to find somebody that can just say, Look, I got to know that you trust me. Even sometimes, if things don't make sense. Because if I don't have your trust, I don't have anything. Secondly, aim for excellence. And here are some of the things that I got from organizing genius that I thought were good original minds. And that's a good thing to look for. You're building a team. Look for someone with an original mind, not someone who's always stealing somebody's ideas and bringing them. So my idea is to sort of make this a Willow Creek kind of church, or I think there might be some good things from that. But look for original minds that want to create their own their own idea. Problem solvers, future oriented deep generalists versus narrow specialists. Now, maybe worries going there is that narrow specialists can be fine if you have the luxury. Most of us in ministry don't have the luxury of narrow specialists. We're only almost always going to be shorthanded. We're almost always going to need people who can adapt to other roles relational ability to work with others, fire in the eyes, Hungry, urgent minds is how he puts it. I like that phrase hungry, urgent mind, you know, funny people that just say, Man, I want to grab a tiger by the tail. I'm ready. I only got one life, one short life. It's not a dress rehearsal to find that kind of person, you know, That's what you want to go after. That's somebody who just wants to keep, maintain the status quo and then aim within and without. I think we talked a little bit about this, but when you build the team, it's great. If you can build your own farm team, which amounts to no tissues, forwards your own leadership engine and then aim for those without who are excelling in other venues. But keep this in mind hiring superstars doesn't have a good track record, which is an interesting came out of Harvard study where a guy looked at corporations that tended to hire superstars, a CEO over here that led the corporation to great success and brought it over here. And they turn out to not be so successful. We may have talked about that a little bit, but what was the issue he discovered? Why doesn't that tend to work? You would think it would.

Speaker 2 [00:13:21] Have.

Dr. John Johnson [00:13:22] Context. Yeah. Context is everything. So a great youth pastor, I'd have a thriving youth ministry here and not have such a great ministry. So it's not to say avoid superstars is just don't immediately assume they're going to be superstars.

Speaker 2 [00:13:38] I think of like even Ichiro from the Mariners. Yeah he was moved. Yeah he's that is interesting if he has his left over from that.

Dr. John Johnson [00:13:48] Yeah I think that's a great illustration and you see that a lot of times. And teams don't shoot somebody, let's say, who's a great running back on this football team and kind of has a so-so year over here. And so you tend to say, well, maybe he just lost a step or he was a great quarterback here and he's so-so over here. But it was the rest of the team around him who determined that obviously the right chemistry is really critical. You've got to really look and ask yourself, does this person's chemistry, because every team has a chemistry and it certainly don't want to upset that too much. Here are some wrong chemistry's pretty obvious ones, people with enormous egos, people who create mistrust, who kill teamwork, people who are negative, toxic, people who need tight management, people who are like you, people who are immature. And here's what I'd start in your notes here. Put all kinds of stars all around this. Circle. Underline when in doubt. Keep looking. It's a painful lesson I've learned. There have been times I said, Well, looked really hard. Looks like this is the best we can do. It's never worked out. I've always paid a high price. And what I would say today is I will just keep looking. God just hasn't revealed that person. I'll bite the bullet. You know the old adage, it's a lot easier to hire than fire is really true. Once you get somebody on the team, it's a lot harder to get them off. So unless you're thoroughly convinced or the right person seated in the right seat on the bus, I'd say let the bus seat stay empty and deal with the consequences of that rather than the consequences of the wrong person. Okay. So let's talk about building with the best. A vessel bit questions, thoughts.

Speaker 3 [00:16:07] People who need type. Wrong chemistry, people who need type management. Kind of like they came to the attitude of the kettle.

Dr. John Johnson [00:16:19] You know. So what I'm talking about, they're kind of my philosophy of leadership is I think it's great to find the best so that you can say, I'm going after you because I know with you I'm not going to have to look over your shoulder if you're bringing on people that are going to just require more of your time. What have you accomplished? The main objective of bringing people on the team is to free up your time. If you're bringing people on that are going to require even more management of your time. But if you've I've had high maintenance people on my some I've inherited, I mean, when I went to Holland, I had this gal beautiful, vivacious, really sweet girl who could be a terror. I mean, if you cross the line with her, her husband even was afraid of her. I mean, she was scary, really scary. She became high maintenance. I mean, I was always putting out fires. She was my youth pastor and she was constantly getting parents all ticked. And I one day said, she's not saving me time. She's taking up my time. And I knew at that point, I've got to let her go, I've got to bite the bullet and it will be an explosion. But I'll deal with blow out any day rather than slowly get it done, patch the hole, keep moving on instead of driving always on low tires.

Speaker 3 [00:17:51] What to look for are for situations borrowing from situational leadership. Yeah, you know, so that it doesn't take.

Dr. John Johnson [00:17:59] Yeah. And I don't mind even hiring as two as three or maybe I should say or two or three person if I know that I have great confidence they're moving right into our four. But if our four is to on predictable, don't do it. I'd say this if you inherit team members and most of us will, it's really important to say right up front something like this, you know, I really hope it works. I like to work as a team, but I'm not going to guarantee you it'll work because I don't know. And if it doesn't work, I want you to understand right from the start that I may have to release you. It won't be a surprise. We'll talk this through, but I don't want you to assume that you're a guaranteed place because it may not work. A lot of times it does. I think if you don't say that right up front, then you lose a lot of leverage and it gives you a certain amount of leverage. In my first church, I inherited two step people that I ended up keeping all ten years I was there. It was really one of my worst mistakes. If I had to do over again, I probably would have released them both within the first six months. But they had been there for years and years and years and I didn't want to upset things. But looking back now, I know without a doubt I'd just bite that bullet and cut my losses and then move forward with the right people. And I think would have made a huge difference. If you come into a situation where, let's say your board says, well, no, you don't have that prerogative to release or say the words I just said, you might really question whether you should go there because you need to have that prerogative. As a leader, we all should have the freedom to choose our own teams. The other extreme of that is just some guys will come in and automatically say, I start fresh, so thank you. I'm going to bring in my own team. I think you could just create a lot of alienation. I think a nice balance is to say, I hope it works, but it may not. And I want the freedom to say and it may not be anything huge person might be performing, but you just go, it's not the right person. Other thoughts on building the best team.

Speaker 2 [00:20:38] I don't see myself as a leader. I came here as a writer, but one of my mentorships was during the writers conference and last year I had four girls turn out to be on my team to withdrew. The first week of January, which was actually when we were going to start preparing for the writers conference, which is mid-March. So I had two members left on my team. And I'm not I'm just disappearing. I'm not a real serious person, just my personality and my mother's heritage from myself. I'm just not assertive. And so anyhow, I think that somewhere in my notes seemed to be assertive. I had one woman who was from a work environment, very strong personality. Another girl who started dating somebody in southern Oregon and showed up just not showing up for meetings and said, I won't even be there on the day of the event. So I had one person on my team and so I prayed about it. I mean, I really felt that I want to meet and learn what's what can I learn from this, even if it's my best moment. I went to visit a church near your church by visiting lecturer, which have just six Gideon. And the whole idea was God kept saying smaller number was good so he could give credit is great team. And so that's what I carried with him for two months, was God was going to provide. I didn't know how. And it wasn't until I went down to the student boxes, I was putting up fliers and I saw that the boxes were about 300 and I had been meditating on this for a month or two. And I thought, I think I need to ask the student body for help because I felt like I had said to me that he would provide for the student body. And then I asked my professor to ask for help. And I'm like, I can't you know, I have a list of every work assignment I needed. And for all the people I got, I got a placement for the exact time and I needed someone to fill that need. I needed about 30 people. And that was just a sense of feeling like it wasn't the normal way. 15. You know, my professor advised me to develop my team, but in the end, and that was her comment back to me was God had something else in mind of how I was going to build. And he prepared it instructing. But I felt like that was sometimes it's not typical to just this whole idea about Colin's approach to, you know, get the right people first and then communicate your mission. Sometimes I feel like maybe there's two approaches and you have to discern, do you do your destination first, communicate that first and then find the right people. So maybe, I don't know, semicolons.

Dr. John Johnson [00:23:24] Yeah. But I think, again, what I was saying there is you have to have a clear mission. And if people aren't signed to be on the same mission with you, then it's going to be the wrong people. But in terms of the vision, the dream, the destination, that's where there's a little more latitude. You still need to have some semblance of where you're going. That's part of leadership, But it's okay, I think. And actually a good thing if you're going after the very best people to say, you know, we'll all have a seat at the table and sort of as the bus is going, we may decide the destination goes differently. Given who now is on the bus. See, that's the thing. Now that you see the make up of your team, it might argue for going to Florida, but that's okay. But I think you need to start with the destination in mind. Let me move on to a third. And this is something we've already talked about to a point, and that is pay attention to follower readiness, which we talked about in situational leadership. But three things begin to pay attention to pay attention to ability, willingness and the task. We want to be careful is not to let people get over their head, no when to let them fail, avoid micromanaging all of these things we talked about in situational leadership. Number four, treat people with dignity and respect. And here's some things we need to respect their basic worth, their need to be encouraged, because obviously people like us, we all need encouragement. There need to be needed. I give a quote by Perkins on the next page. I've never seen a cohesive team When vital information is hoarded or restricted to a few key decision makers or treating others as if they have nothing to contribute. Here's what I've discovered about teams. If you want to build a really cohesive team, people like to feel like they're really a part and they're part of the inner workings and you share confidences together. This really brings the team together. Where it gets really dicey, which I've just recently experienced, is when you have to withhold information from the team. And the reason you have to is because it is decision making you're making about the team. Think what I'm saying. If I say to the team, you know, I can't tell you where we're going. We're just going to get there together. People might join in. But if you can say, you know, it's not really public, it doesn't need to be public, but here's where we're going. I need you guys to embrace this. And you share some of the details where you're building a real esprit de corps. Sort of like I remember that famous raid, 30 seconds over Tokyo is a great movie made years and years and years ago. But Pearl Harbor replayed the scene where these two little raiders are going to bomb Tokyo. So they get these B 20 fives to take off of a carrier, which is just unheard of. And so they sneak as close to Japan as they can to get these bombers to fly just above the ocean so they can't be detected to do this surprise raid, which was early, very early in the war. It was more symbolic than anything. It didn't strategically do a lot, but it it suddenly told Japan they're vulnerable. It was one of the great moments of World War Two. But these guys had to train and train and train without knowing what they were training for. And it was hard until one day they were brought in to the okay case. I'm telling you something the whole world doesn't know. And you can't tell. You can't tell your wife. You can't tell anybody. So that built a team, right? I mean, you're realizing you're in it. That builds great morale. What kills morale is when you have to make a decision and the team kind of says, well, why weren't we brought into that? That's really hard. I've really had to deal with a morale issue with my staff in relation to staff people because instinctively their first. Question is, what do you think? Why weren't we brought in on this? I mean, we're family. Of course, you try to say, but I can't. How can I do that? If I bring you in on this decision? But then what do we do? So Adam goes, Well, thank. I'm glad I'm part of this decision. I think Dominic should go. Well, no, obviously you can't do that. It's a struggle. And it's a struggle when you're trying to really build morale and team and camaraderie that they feel they're part of the inner information, if you will. What I put on your notes I do believe in. But I would put as a side note there. Where this breaks down is when there's vital information that relates to the team. Like who do you release? Sometimes as a leader, you just kind of have to suck it up and say, I'm sorry, I know you feel this way, but think logically what that would mean. And sometimes because we're pretty emotional creatures that may not even satisfy. Part of respecting is respecting the need for boundaries, because there are boundaries that we as a leader need and thorough, obvious ones like sexual boundaries. You know, just making sure that you don't say things even if they're funny sexually, especially to the opposite sex, that you show deep respect. Part of it is work hours. It's easy for leaders who are thinking about the objective to burn people out. But a leader has to say, you know, I think you put in enough hours, please go home sharing emotional problems that should not be shared. Sometimes over time, we can develop this really sense of such camaraderie as a team that with various members or even with the team, we feel this well, I can be totally transparent. You're my family. I mean, I'm closer to you than anybody on Earth kind of thing. You have to really be careful with where that thinking goes. Sometimes people have shared things with me that I'm thinking I didn't really need to know that. In fact, I really wish I didn't know that. So be very careful with boundaries. I know I make a lot of application to church and just kind of the world I live in. So some a lot of my applications are there part of the boundaries sometimes just let's say with board and staff and I get into that in other classes, so I'm just going to make a passing comment sometimes. And the desire to build a team and say, We're all in this together. You can say to a board, for example, Hey, you guys just don't have the fiduciary responsibilities here. We're pastors, we're shepherds together, and that sounds really good, and there's a certain amount of truth to it you want. We're all shepherding the body together, but there are lines still. Some day you may have a board member say, Well, if I'm a pastor and you're a pastor, what makes you any different than me? Should there be a difference? Well, I'm the board chairman. You're the senior pastor. How come you're the first among equals and I'm not? And I've faced these kind of things. Be careful with transparency. You can go too far. Be careful with flattening things to make us all feel like we're a team. There still are roles. Sometimes we can flatten too much and then people lose sight of roles and then they get confused. Or they'll challenge your role or transparency. You'll share too much and you might do damage that will be hard to recover. Part of what we also want to meet are people's need for meaning and fulfillment. I had a guy from Shell share this with me once. He almost became the CEO of Shell, so he was really high up in a very, you know, huge organization. And what he discovered over time was that what team members want more than even money is a sense of fulfillment. People will settle for almost anything they receive financially if they feel like they're part of something big, right? If you say something like this, look, we don't pay a lot, but I'll tell you, you're going to be part of a big endeavor because we're we're doing something we believe is world changing. That's part of meeting people's need for meaning, fulfillment. And where's that? Is that that story? I can't remember who it was. Was it back when? I want to say Apple was trying to woo the CEO of PepsiCo?

Speaker 3 [00:32:57] Right, John Scully.

Dr. John Johnson [00:32:58] Yes, Scully. Right. And the kind of the basic tag line as well. You can stay PepsiCo. But, you know, I mean, if your life is largely about selling sugar water, fine. But we're trying to change the world over here. You want to be part of it, Meaning fulfillment is really huge. Let me stop there. Questions, comments.

Speaker 3 [00:33:23] Going back to that concept. But, Bones, I can be your team person. Mm hmm. Maybe one of the reasons that works sometimes is because maybe that is part of the mission is having people with you because otherwise you can't have a vision. Maybe for some situations that is what really works, because in the end, that's actually part of the steps of forming your vision, because you've got to have the right pieces in place.

Dr. John Johnson [00:33:50] No matter how good Scully is, you're not going to attract him if you don't have something that's going to capture his imagination. But the little piece, I think sometimes we can add to it, as you know, we're over here changing the world. We want you to be part of it. But I also want you to be part of helping us figure out how we're going to change the world or maybe where we're going to do it.

Speaker 2 [00:34:11] So national convention.

Dr. John Johnson [00:34:14] Yeah, When we get to mission and vision, we'll show the distinctions of that. And what you're not getting people on the bus to figure out is the mission. Everybody has to buy into the mission to begin with. But the vision in terms of where you're going to dream your after. That's open to more negotiation. If somebody said to me in Village, Are you guys open to changing your mission? I'd go, Absolutely not. The mission is set. It's given by God. This is the church's mission, your vision where you want to see the church go, Oh, we're open, just like in your own personal life. And we'll talk about that. So Steward Resources with wisdom is number five, because leadership and teamwork boil down to stewardship, taking human capital the most important asset and making it valuable. You know, the best leaders leverage the full range of people's capabilities. That that's what leadership is about, maximizing people's potential, unleashing them. When I was in the Middle East recently and I mentioned this, I think that when I taught on leadership, one of the things they have to get over in their culture is this concept of the leader is the one who has control and power and does everything and the people in a certain passive way watch and just don't try to upset things, which is a massive failure of stewarding resources, especially in the church or main roads. Ephesians 411 and 12. Right? God giving gifted leaders to equip the Saints. Equipping the Saints is another way of saying stewarding the resources. It's our main task. The wonderful place to try to get everybody is to what Bobby Clinton calls convergence, where person's best gifts converge us with the best opportunity. He would be the perfect church. In a way, you're pastoring or leading is where people's best strengths gifts have matched up with the most perfect ministry opportunity. Can you imagine a church like that if everybody was doing that? You looked at Sam and Bill and Terry and Ann and they are unleashed and who they are is being challenged to the maximum and they're in their sweet spot and the church is enjoying the fruit of that convention. If everybody imagine that, what that could look like or just imagine the team you build, even if the team you built look like that, because sometimes you'll inherit a team where you go, This guy's not in the right place. I'm doing okay there, but we're not maximizing him at all. So that becomes a big decision to do. You want to just settle to limp along with this person? He'll never be what they could be. And what happens if you shoot him to where his sweet spot is, but you already have another person Who? That sweet spot. Well, what do you do then? You're going to have a decision. Another thing I put here, and this is a real fundamental mistake often made, avoid the mistake of assigning the best performing people to deal with the problems. They might go, Oh, wait a minute, I thought you. Key is to find really great problem solvers. Well, yes, I mean, that's true. But Drucker calls it the deadly business scene. Think of it this way. This metaphor helps me. You get the very best people on the bridge of the ship. So there are on the deck on the bridge is where they're making all the decisions, where the ship goes, right. How fast destination. All of these decisions. But then you discover there's a fire in the fire room and you go, Wow, I got to send my very best people to put out that fire. So you send your key bridge people down to put out the fire. What happens on the ship?

Speaker 3 [00:38:42] Loses direction.

Dr. John Johnson [00:38:43] It loses its direction, or most likely to avoid it losing its direction or cracking up on the rocks. You do what with the ship. Stop it. Stop it. Right. Yeah, You have to. You put down the anchor, you say, Well, we can't go any further till. And here's I believe is a reason a lot of churches don't make very great progress and they stay stuck. A lot of times it's because they keep sending their very best people down to put out the fires and they're thinking to themselves, Well, I'm doing the I'm doing the logical thing, right? I've been on boards how many times where we have this major problem that surfaces and we sort of all look around and go, Tom is our you know, Tom is the best guy on the board. He's our seasoned, mature, he's the best person to put out the fire. So we got Tommy, we need you to go put out the fire. Tommy goes, I'm good at putting out fires. But the problem is, without Tommy, we really can't go forward because we need Tommy to help us see where we're going to go. So we have to either really slow down or we anchor. You see what I'm saying? And I can see why. Drucker says it's common, and it's one of the deadliest business sins, because you paralyze what you're trying to do. So what should you do then? Here's a fire. What do you do?

Speaker 3 [00:40:13] Like the fire squad.

Dr. John Johnson [00:40:15] Sent a firefighter. Right. Don't send Captain. Yeah, don't send the captain or the the team. Send somebody else and then keep everyone focused on the mission and the vision. Because if you do, then you won't be putting up with a lot of lesser things. You won't get tripped up. You won't lose your course. And then communicate. And communicate and communicate with the team. Tearing down silos. That's why I gave you Lindsey on this book. So what's required there is obviously the basic communication skills and repetition and visibility and clarity. Here's what I keep learning about working with teams. I have to keep sitting down with people, especially one on one, and I have to keep going over the same things. I have this idealistic notion when I share something, people get it, but I have this painful reality realization that sometimes it takes seven or eight times and then a person says, So is this what you mean? Yeah. Oh, okay. It's part of teamwork. Spending time with them. It's huge work. Any questions on teamwork today?

Speaker 3 [00:41:53] I'd just really appreciate that point about the rescue. You know, take care of certain things just as well, and might be very careful to do that. This book has been really helpful to me and the strategic thinking to readers. I think I talked about last time board needs in churches and there always will be a barbecue. There's a there's a hole up there and the urinal doesn't flush. You know, it's like, you know, there's got to be something that's a bigger picture for us to talk about, you know?

Dr. John Johnson [00:42:26] So yeah, because there is one of the largest challenges is to get guys off of just going through the agenda and assuming they accomplished their mission. We talked about incrementalism. Remember that? What's incrementalism? Again.

Speaker 3 [00:42:43] It's those.

Dr. John Johnson [00:42:44] Small changes.

Speaker 3 [00:42:46] From.

Dr. John Johnson [00:42:47] Small things is what is a waste of time, small changes to small things. That's incrementalism and that's a waste of time. A lot of times agendas can be like that. I mean, it doesn't mean that there aren't important things on the agenda, but every now and then you have to stop and ask the question, okay, so let's put all this business aside here. Where are we going? How are we doing at getting there? I mean, we have been called to change the world, advance a kingdom, accomplish our mission, chase after our vision. How are we doing with those things now? Please know what I'm saying? Every now and then you just have to bring people kind of back up to the surface because you can get so much down underneath the water in all of the stuff and it's the leader because they're not going to do it Most of the time. The leader's got to kind of say, hold on, timeout, or you know what, like we try to do in our staff meetings, the last Tuesday of the month is not an agenda staff meeting. We meet as a staff and I take them through something. I'm learning just to try to think big picture or we bring in different experts on things and you have to do that with the board too, every now and then. Okay, Come on, guys. We're going to take a timeout. We're going to go away and retreat and talk about the big picture. It helps. Then when you have the engine fires, then when you say, you know, I don't want to send any of you down to do to take care of that problem because we have a bigger agenda. They know what it is. But if you're just agenda driven, they're going to go, well, I shit, I'm good at this. No, I need you to be here. As we think about the vision in the mission.

Speaker 3 [00:44:49] So ten over here and then if you give us the values of kind of very good metrics on placement given by Max. Mm hmm.

Dr. John Johnson [00:45:01] Yeah. Yeah. In that helpful.

Speaker 3 [00:45:04] Oh.

Dr. John Johnson [00:45:04] Yeah.

Speaker 3 [00:45:05] Wrong person in wrong place. And Rick was.

Dr. John Johnson [00:45:09] Absolutely.

Speaker 3 [00:45:10] The right person in the right place. Progress.

Dr. John Johnson [00:45:13] Yeah. And then pay attention to those in-between points. Yeah. Okay. Ready for a break? Okay, so let's come back at 1130. And what we're going to do the last half hour is we're going to talk about our reading a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about housing and maybe a little bit about lengthening.

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