Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 12

Dr. John Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
PC506-12
The Core Skills for Leadership
Lesson Transcript

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:02] Adam lead us in prayer, which I believe followed.

Adam [00:00:06] Thank you so much for this day and this opportunity for what it is to be able to develop leaders. I just pray for John that he communicates what he needs to communicate well and thoroughly. I just pray for safe travels on our way home today.

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:22] Amen. Today, our objective is to work largely through skills and teamwork. Talk a little bit about reading. Maybe pick one, maybe two chapters in who seem to talk about if we have time. Talk a little bit about learn to only. Okay. Be our objective since we only meet till 12. You got it. Kind of an easy day ahead of you. I only got 4 hours. This is very nice. So just by way of review for a moment, we left off last time talking about core values. Let's think through some of them. What were some of the important values leaders must have at least to be really, truly godly leaders? If that's our aim, to be godly, effective leaders. What stands out in your mind? The value of what? Integrity. Integrity. Yeah, integrity is. It's pretty much everything, isn't it? If we don't have that, we said nothing else matters. If we do have it, nothing else matters. What else comes to us? Justice. Yeah. People want to know that there's justice. We've seen that a lot recently in the news, haven't we? With, like, the Gulf. It's interesting. When you take a course like this, I hope you're finding it or I always find it when I teach this course. My intention a little bit more up on just kind of how leaders are working out there, what they're doing, what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong. You can see a driving need of followers in, say, this whole Gulf crisis is we want to make sure there's fairness. We need to know our leader, understands our plight and that he's going to fight for our justice. I mean, that's huge. That's on the news almost every night. This is a core value. This is what people will measure. A leader by justice, integrity.

Speaker 3 [00:02:35] Authenticity.

Dr. John Johnson [00:02:36] Yeah. Sandi, tell us a little bit about what that looks like in a leader.

Speaker 3 [00:02:41] I think have been real following through with these same volunteer convictions.

Dr. John Johnson [00:02:46] So what's been unreal?

Speaker 3 [00:02:50] Making a promise with somebody when you really don't.

Dr. John Johnson [00:02:55] Okay. Yeah. What else does Unreal look like? Pretentious. Pretentious. Trying to present yourself as somebody you're really not making unreal promises. Always sort of having a bit of an air of plastic that you're not really sure this guy's really real or she's really real superficial. Yeah, superficial is another. Another way to describe a leader who's not authentic. There's a veneer, but underneath. Yeah. I always felt that sometimes with Clinton, sort of a veneer, kind of a superficiality. But you're just not really sure at bedrock. That's really what he believes. He just never really won that, you know? Yeah, I remember when Clinton was going through so much of that stuff and remember like the 911 when he was there at the Washington Cathedral with the rest of the leaders and just with Billy Graham and then singing hymns. And he just, you know, the camera would pan on him. And it's such a picture, such deep devotion to God. There's a certain inauthenticity.

Speaker 4 [00:04:18] With the nomination Incorrect. I went to the other colleges report thinking about becoming a minister in the coalition, and I remember one of the classes was like pastoral deportment in 1942 or whatever. They talked about wearing a professional face. When you go out among the congregation and don't let them see the real you because you really don't want any close friends in the congregation, you know?

Dr. John Johnson [00:04:42] It actually taught that. Yeah. Oh, man.

Adam [00:04:45] Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:04:45] So there certainly was an era, a generation that taught that and it created a lot of terrible pastors. We make the shift now to core skills. Let me, as I've been doing, take you through some broad pieces of this and then we'll go back and talk about it together as a class. The important thing I want to stress here is that and I think this especially applies to Christian leadership, we can sometimes get so focused on making sure that we have the core values and overlook the core skills. If you have great values, but you don't have great skills as a leader, in a way, it doesn't really matter a lot because you need both. It's sort of like t wear pants or a shirt. You've got to have both of these. Some leaders just hide, if I could say it this way, behind their great values, but they don't work much at their skills and that robs the people. Just like on the other extreme, of course, having great skill sets but not having great values also has its own problems. So that's why I put these two themes back to back and start by saying values are critical, but they aren't enough. It's just not enough to say, for example, in church leadership where this person meets the criteria of first Timothy three. So we should really move forward to vote for this person as an elder. So, for example, at Village, I'll say, well, you know, four core values aren't enough. I mean, you've got to start with first 2 to 3, but it's not the end point and some people make it the end point. But you have to move to the second question, Does this person have the skill sets? Or to put it another way, is this person gifted to be a leader? So in this particular section, I tried to think through again back to reading on leadership. What are the critical skills? And the obvious one right at the beginning is person has to just have the competence, first of all, to lead. I want to know is this can this person lead? We in our church right now are wrestling at the board level with bringing women on the board. Now, not technically on the board. For us, that might go a little bit too far. That is, we're not looking to vote in women elders, but I've been a proponent for some years that we need to have women sitting at the board to hear their voice, that just hearing the voice of men isn't enough. You know, a lot of churches, the elder board has been sort of the domain, the male domain in the church, and people get tripped up over, well, we shouldn't have women elders, let's say. And so they missed the fact that nonetheless, there are women leaders in the church. Women are equally gifted at leadership as men. Men don't have a corner on the giftedness. Of course, they have a lot of discernment and a lot of things that men often miss. So we're just about to make this addition, and I'm really glad for it. It's taken way too long. But one of the questions that surfaced last week as we talked about this was, well, but then do they need to have the gift of leadership? Well, it was an interesting question, but I thought, well, if you're going to have women at the table of leadership, why wouldn't you? I mean, that's what I would look for. I'd look for the their core values. But I want anybody at the table of leadership to have the competency of leadership. Otherwise, my observation is, if you don't have the competence of leadership, you often are just taking up space at the table. Most men I've known and as men around the table who don't have the gift of leadership often just sit there so the competent to lead some of the things I put here and would elaborate on some of these are social skills, sound judgment. I mean, judgment is really critical. I just circled that, underlined that. I'm not even sure I put it down here, but. There's got to be sound judgment along with sound reasoning. They sort of go together. But there has to be the competence to look at things and sort of have the kind of the wisdom of Solomon here, the organizational skills, at least some organizational skill to lead. The ability to delegate, certainly to problem solve. Leaders are faced with problems. That's a big part of what we do. It's our task were thrown problems all the time. We have to be pretty good at problem solving and we have to be pretty good at how we manage time that there's a certain order in our lives that there's an intellectual curiosity that just keeps asking questions. I mean, that's all part of to me what is competent to lead. And then, of course, the ability to mobilize. A second one is the discernment to respond. And part of that is the discernment to step in and say, I think I can see what God's up to here, what God's doing, not that we can ever know it completely, but part of discernment is discerning what is God doing right now? I mean, that's a huge I think that's all part of this spiritual gift of discernment that I think goes hand in hand with leadership. We need to discern we need to discern the people that need to be part of the team, get the wrong people in the team, as we'll talk about later. And that can be a disaster. Discerning where the people are at, discerning the hearts, decoding the collective mood, if you will. I like that statement. Gordon MacDonald uses that phrase decoding the collective mood or receptivity. In other words, a leader has to step into a room and be able to discern kind of the what is the collective mood, what's the morale, what are people thinking? If he steps in a room that's largely alienated, is he or she's got to discern that and know therefore how to respond to that. If the morale is low, not to heap up a lot of pressure on people, sometimes people need to be exhorted, but that's tricky to discern. And when people need to be exhorted and when it may just come off, as Hybels puts it, a beating. The sheep leaders can be really good, especially in pastoral ministry of beating the sheep. We sometimes can pride ourselves on how guilty we make people. It's really true. Sometimes people will come up after you've preached and say, Oh God, God, you really got me again. And sometimes you go, Yes, that's what it's all about. I'm out to get you. So discernment is saying discerning what people need, realizing for the most part they don't need that. But discerning where they're at with the mood is intuitive leadership. We'll talk more about that. But and I have got this article I'm going to make copies of here by Gordon MacDonald came out some time ago. It's entitled I Have This Feeling, and it's about the importance of intuiting, reading culture, reading the crowd. A third skill is the inspiration, of course, to move people. And that's a huge and that's a very necessary skill. Leaders must be able to, as I put it here, to win minds, motivate hearts, understand the followers. Churchill would spend hours, for example, in front of a mirror for one speech because he understood that one of the core skills of a leader is the ability to persuade and inspire and create positive energy inspiration to move. It's about being able to win minds, motivate hearts, read hearts, read minds, and then know how to hopefully get up in a way that compels people. I was reading last night just before I went to bed. I've been in this book on Churchill's life for years, the second of Manchester's wonderful biographies. England has just been wimpish all through while Hitler's rising to power Chamberlain Others are all trying to appease Hitler. Well, he's not such a bad guy. It's a little upset because. But he has a reason to be upset. Everybody sort of turned against Germany after World War One. Give him a little slack, okay? There's some people that really are. Are Germanic that that really do. He has a right to say, Hey, I want to recover this territory. And so they're just go on and on and on. And Churchill always through all of this is going, What are you guys doing? This guy is a monster. This guy is he's out to dominate the world. Can't you see it? Open your eyes, You know, and all the appeasers and the people after long World War One who don't want war are just gone. We don't want to go there again. You know, that was just so painful. Let's just let's just try to get this guy. Give him a little bit, give him a bone, hope he'll be happy. But of course, Hitler, you know, he's he's never content easy. You keep giving him. So. Okay, give him give him Austria. Okay. So. Okay. Yeah. It's unfortunate. We're sorry for the Austrians, but, you know, way back historically, it was all part of the empire. Anyway, it's not such a bad thing. And then what? Czechoslovakia. Okay, well, we're sorry for that. So it keeps going. Now it's Poland. So this is where Great Britain finally says. This is where we draw the line. Hitler, You've taken all of this. But Poland. We have this relationship. We have this treaty. If you take Poland or you in any way invade, interrupt Poland, then then you cross the line. And now it could be war with us. So Hitler, what does he do? He invades Poland. So the English parliament meets, Right? And they need Chamberlain, their prime minister, to stand up and say, you know, the time has come. I'm saddened, but the time has come. We must prepare for war. But Chamberlain gets up at this moment. Everybody's waiting and he stands up and he goes, Well, let's still negotiate. Let's give a little more time. Let's not be in a hurry to kind of work this through, think this through. And he sits down and of course, what do you think? Everybody's just gone. That's it. That's all you have to say. And of course, all of this is going to lead to Churchill, you know, just filling the huge vacuum. What did they need? They needed somebody to inspire them, try to just challenge them to be that voice at the moment, to speak a little bit like Bush at 911 member with the bullhorn there in New York. There comes this moment, there's this window. And what leaders have to do is always watch when the window opens or at these little moments or I should say, really these huge moments, the window opens and, you know, it's the moment to inspire. And if you don't jump into it, the window closes. I was reading this last night and I was thinking chamber and how could you be so dense? How could you so misread? Because when it got done, nobody responded. I mean, there was no applause. There was everybody just sat there. It was like I was reading this thinking, Wow, what a failure of leadership. Part of the core skill is you have to know when to inspire, right? When the moment calls for somebody, the leader, to stand up and say, Come on, we can do it or we must do it. I quote from Daniel Goleman here. I don't know if you've read his book on emotional intelligence, but if you have it, it's a great book to read because he talks about this emotional intelligence, as he puts it, a leaders have to have that you're able to read people. His whole premise is that great leadership works through emotions. A leader's got to be sensitive to this. So emotional intelligence includes, first of all and I've made a list here on the next page of some of the own things you read in your own life, your own awareness, your own emotions, reading your self, listening to your feelings. What are they saying? Feelings are tricky, aren't they? It's a good thing we're not always ruled by our feelings or we can make tragic mistakes. But there's sometimes you do listen to your gut. There's something that says, I got to do this. I just got to do this. So that's part of it. Part of it he talks about is self-management, self-control, not allowing things to eat up time or eat you up. A big part, of course, is social awareness. This goes back to context. The section we looked at and looked. In it all the layers, putting on the different set of glasses, the ability to read faces, relationship management. And then a key one here he talks about number five is optimism. Now, what made Reagan such a great president in many people's eyes? And there was optimism. He his smile conveyed so much leadership. He always instilled confidence and he viewed adversity as temporary great leaders back to inspiration. They breathe life into the hopes and dreams of others. When you read that little section of Hybels, Don't Beat the Sheep, you know, Mark, that is one of the important chapters in that book and read it every now, especially when you get down, when you get discouraged, read it, when you get really upset with the people you're leading. Because the very the temptation is to beat the sheep when actually what you really need to do is inspire them instead of standing up and saying, you know, look, there's a lot of behavior here that is really off the charts that doesn't belong that's killing us. Now, maybe sometimes you have to see that. And it's not wrong to say that at the right moment, but you can't in there. There has to be the moving to say, but you know what? We're thinking too little of ourselves. We can do this. This is part of it. Another score listed here is the tenacity to persevere. But I think before I move on to this one here, let's stop for a moment and just talk about the skills we've talked about so far. Thoughts, questions.

Speaker 3 [00:21:16] I like that in competence, it talks about time management. Mm hmm. That's a huge frustration. And a leader doesn't manage time. Isn't aware of time. Yeah. There's a meeting where she says.

Dr. John Johnson [00:21:29] Yeah, and when there is of respecting followers own value of time, then the tricky thing there, Sandy, is that everybody has a different value one time, especially in a multiethnic environment, as I pastored in multiethnic environments now for 17 years. Part of the challenge is everybody has a very different sense of time. Somehow you've got to read that into people, too. You know, I remember when I pastored in the Netherlands, the Dutch, you could set your watch by the trains and Holland. Everything's very precise. But then I passed through Nigerians and intelligence who they could come in a half hour late or was okay with them if church went for 2 hours. Didn't matter. Time is an important. Relationships are important. Other thoughts on these four core skills.

Speaker 3 [00:22:28] I felt around being present in your notes as far as social skills and your comments early. I mean, you can have both temperaments. And when you clarify what you mentioned in another lecture, that Randy has a little more quieter personality.

Dr. John Johnson [00:22:51] Personality doesn't dictate if somebody is defective or ineffective leader. But what we're talking about here, nonetheless, let's say you're more on the quieter side. Even if you're on the quieter side, you can't shrink from at times when you do have to stand up and inspire. For example, this is not something you delegate to somebody who's more exuberant and outgoing. The leader has to do this. These things here we're talking about or what leaders have to do. Part of a skill is making sure you know what to delegate and what not to delegate. I think of my my son has a mild form of Asperger's. I don't know if you're familiar with Asperger's is becoming more of a public thing. It's kind of there on the autism scale. I mean, that's a pretty normal kid, actually. Pretty bright. But he can't read faces. Part of the Asperger's thing that you. You have a low IQ, if you will. He can come in a room, but it's hard for him to read the mood. He just can't see because he can't read a face. It's just one of those blind spots. It's kind of a strange thing, but in a certain sense, Nate would never make a very good leader. I mean, I think he would acknowledge that himself, because part of leadership is you have to be able to read faces. And that's tough because just like me reading your face, I don't know really. We can make our face say a lot of things that really aren't there. But a leader has to has to somehow be able to get a little bit underneath a layer post 13.

Speaker 3 [00:24:32] Eugene can't say that, but that's how he would intuitively follow whether another man needed more time to work on problem solving. Mm hmm. Was I reading your face? Mm hmm. Yeah. You know.

Adam [00:24:47] Usually the politician or leader, they have a mask. The man by the smiley face. So can we look at the face of the normal people? We don't know what we.

Dr. John Johnson [00:25:04] Yes. Sometimes. On the reverse. Trying to read a leader's face isn't always easy, is it? Because sometimes they're coached to put on a face. We sometimes need them to put on a face that maybe isn't really their real face. But we need a face of assurance or a warmth that we need to make us feel good, you know.

Adam [00:25:27] Kind of leader in the face of time and the leader in a lot of times. Mm hmm. But when most together, we still see some common feature among the guys in the village, the leader of us. We think that they and the other remain steadfast behind the core of the clear purpose and take the bold move when they see with the vision and they take action.

Dr. John Johnson [00:26:08] Yeah, I gave Chamberlain's as an example. Can you think of a time that the leader totally misreading talking or inspiration to move discernment to lead? Have you been in awkward situations where you're thinking he or she is? They're not kidding where we're at or what we need at this moment? Or maybe the other side is when it matched up really perfectly. Can you think of moments recently, one or the other?

Adam [00:26:44] Some people that think the sample in the ashes of Hitler is kind of. Then I had maybe over a dent.

Dr. John Johnson [00:26:57] Did you say a devil? You'd be interesting to read, to just understand why he why there was such a failure of leadership. But of course, you know, when you go back historically, it wasn't tragically, it wasn't just England. It was also who else could have had a huge leadership moment and failed in terms of countries.

Speaker 4 [00:27:25] We could have missed it because there was a lot of it was a lot easier about World War Two.

Dr. John Johnson [00:27:29] Yeah, well, I'm I'm thinking about this period in the thirties in particular. We weren't so much part of it, but the other huge void was France. After World War One, there was sort of this in Germany along the Rhine, there was this kind of neutral area. So here's Germany and then France and England. I mean, these were the main powers. So what they said to Germany was this was sort of protection to them, that this stays neutral. It's sort of like the demilitarized zone, let's say, in South Korea and North Korea, that there's this buffer zone so that if you cross into this, it's an act of war. So protecting this buffer zone ensures peace. So Hitler decided to test this early on way before he was testing by taking Czechoslovakia and Poland, all these countries. So he sent his troops one early morning, I think March. He sent his fighters and his troops to take what really was German territory back out of this neutral zone. So it was a real test. And the German generals were terrified because they knew that all France and England had to do was to say, hey, what are you doing? And send troops. And they would have been instantly defeated and Hitler would have lost face and Nazis would have never had a chance to gain any momentum. Imagine that. The shape and course of history. What fascinates me with a leader like Churchill is Churchill could see this. And so he was saying, What are we doing here? But France just didn't have the it just it's like after a long war, it's say, let's say one day all the troops come home from Afghanistan in Iraq, and there's another conflict over here. It's natural. It'd be kind of natural to go, You know what? I just don't want to go there. Okay? We're tired of war. We're recovering financially. Our soldiers are worn out. So I think there was a little bit of that, along with just probably even more. There was the lack of a courageous leader. Churchill could see this and he's kind of said, Come on, you guys, but nobody would act. And so Hitler, he goes, Wow, Well, look, look at this here. Nobody. I mean, they all got a little upset, but okay, so get over it. Obviously, that just said, well, why not try Czechoslovakia? Let's see what happens there. And you know, Austria and nobody did anything. England comes to a place which goes, okay, all right, but we really mean it now if it's Poland. So they invaded Poland. And so two days they're bombing every major city of Poland. And Chamberlain gets up and goes, well, can figure out a way to negotiate and bombing this, you know, country, every city. It's a classic picture of what happens when there's a failure of leadership. I find those things fast, don't you? I mean, I just think they're fascinating just to find these moments in terms of history when leaders do get up with the skill to inspire move. And let's face it, you know. Well, you could say Hitler didn't have core values. He had what? He had core skills. He had the competence to lead. He could inspire people and move them to action. So what is Hitler do? How could he lead a nation to do this? It's because he tapped in. He like a leader who can discern. He tapped into the nationalism of a nation that wanted to recover their nationalism. Their pride had been after World War One. They, you know, made to pay the huge debt. They had to give up a lot. They were no longer invited to the. Party, so to speak, with all the other major countries. They were sort of a social pariah of Europe. And so Hitler emerges to say, We're German. I can't do that. You know, and of course, he he's smart, right? He's skillful. He taps into what people want.

Adam [00:32:14] He knew the history.

Dr. John Johnson [00:32:16] He knew the history. Exactly. And this we'll talk about later on. The greatest visionary is the greatest historian. This is what leaders do. They tap and they tap into the fervor, the heart, the interior. He could read these things.

Adam [00:32:33] The big mistake we learn from the failure of Hitler. He very good. But he don't know when or how he can stop.

Dr. John Johnson [00:32:45] That's because what's missing is core values. So he has no values. It's all greed. It's power. Power corrupts. And Hitler's heart was totally corrupted by power. Let's look at some more core skills here. The tenacity to persevere. A good leader has to still like quiet and calm this determination or this resilience. Collins talks about it. This hedgehog concept, this slow, methodical, knows where he's going, a determination to carry on. Remember we said this at the beginning that leaders can have all kinds of personalities. They can be audacious, they can be humble, they can be quiet, they can be verbose, they can be all of these things. Leaders can come in many stripes and colors. But what they all seem to have in common is this tenacity, this tenacious will, that underneath even the quietest leader is a determination of where they're going. So this tenacity to persevere and carry on. You know, you think about it. This underscores one of the real failures, in my judgment, of a lot of ministry leaders, especially pastors who when you read that the average turnover of a pastors two and a half years, what does that say about leadership here? I would say it's largely a failure of leadership because the tenacity to persevere says, okay, we're going through some rough waters. There will always be storms. Problem is, for some, they interpret a storm as well. God's calling it somewhere else. Now it's not. Not necessarily. It might just be saying, okay, so it's time to batten down the hatches and lead the people through the storm. Obviously, forward looking to see is another core skill. There has to be a sense of direction goes back to our definition of leaders. Leaders are leading people towards a particular goal. One of the skills is this ability to see, to be destination or to be oriented towards tomorrow. And then another one I've listed here is the adaptability to adjust. And this is a huge one, isn't it? I mean, this is the core skill that makes or breaks a lot of leaders. Leaders can be really great for season and then they're no longer so great and it's because they can adapt. You know, I gave you this adage I think last time what got us here won't get us there. That's all part of adapting because everything is in perpetual motion. It's adjusting to generational differences. It's adjusting to different needs of people at this time of life. It's adjusting to cultural changes. Creativity to create. I don't know how you think about that as a skill, but it seems like skillful leaders are imaginative leaders, and it goes back to this inquiring mind. This curiosity goes back to this personal discipline of reading and reading and reading, and then the mastery of context. And a skillful leader has three contexts to navigate through his own mastery of himself. So paying attention to your strengths, your weaknesses, paying attention to the condition of your soul. Ruth Haley Barton talks about that, that there's got to be this ability to master your own context. Serve your soul, read your soul, know when you're depleted, know when you're dry. Context of culture. Where it is going in the context. I like this one to close with this context of reality. A leader has to be in touch with what's really real out there. Reality is the first duty of a leader. Or Tom Peters puts it this way Make sure your passport to reality is stamped off and make sure your passport to reality is stamped off. What does he mean by that?

Adam [00:37:26] Frequent visits.

Dr. John Johnson [00:37:28] Reality checks through passport control. Right.

Speaker 3 [00:37:32] Don't live in your dream. Ideal world.

Dr. John Johnson [00:37:34] Yeah. So keep checking every now and then in my living in the real world. Because leaders can get off into unreal worlds. People have to know you feel their pain, but yet you have to maintain a certain stability and coolness under fire that says you're in control. That's a tightrope, isn't it? It's a real tightrope the leader has to follow. And it all depends. Sometimes you have more emotional types that go where is your feeling on one side and you have more cerebral types on the other. I need a thinker here, not a feeler. But the reality is you have to be both a thinker and a feeler, and you have to keep a certain balance to it all. For all of us, failure is one thing that you could say about Clinton. Clinton never had a problem with being visceral. You know, there were certain amount of people that love that. To a certain extent, Reagan was visceral, You know, when he stood up there at the Berlin Wall and yelled over to the other side. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It was a visceral moment and everybody could just stand and go, yes, he feels. And he would every now and then do that. And that's what made Reagan so great. He could discern the moments to be visceral. Talk about skill. That's the challenge. Okay. Well, I think we're ready for a break. Let's come back at 915.