When I was in corporate sales, whenever I could not close a deal, I would always critique my strategy. I would ask myself if I gave a passionate presentation, did I love my product, was I detailed-oriented, was I too pushy or not pushy enough. The most important critique, “Did I ask for the deal?”  The fact is most people are scared to ask for the deal, but here’s the truth; “people want you to ask.” 

If I’m not willing to ask, why would I expect people to be willing to give? If I don’t have the courage, I can’t expect them to have the courage.

We can’t make excuses, people want you to beleive in your vision more then anyone else. Think about it, even Jesus tell us to “ask..seek and knock.” So when no one supports your vision, when people say no, don’t blame the potential supporter or client. Look in the mirror and find a better way to present your dream, then ask for the support! 

1. Gotta love what you do. Of course I feel a calling to launch a non-profit that  fights global poverty. So this is easy for me. But I don’t always love the “inner-workings” of a non-profit. So I focus on the big picture. 

2. Remember you work “unto to the Lord.” I choose if I want to honor God with my work. My prayer is to focus and work hard, so each day can honor God. 

3. Accountability: I need to be held accountable, and as the leader for H.E.L.P. I have to hold others accountable. Scotty, Jeff and John G all volunteer for H.E.L.P.  and work other gigs. But they all love what we do, and we all want to do it well. (hence, the first two items on the list) So we all have to be  held accountable. In order for the organization to move forward, we all have to be clicking.

4. Grace: Fact-of-the-matter, when we drop the ball we have to walk in grace. We’re in this for the long-haul, so we have to find a delicate balance in managing expectations and understanding realties. 

5. Think Small: For me this is almost impossible. For instance, if you’re a church planter, don’t focus so much on how to get your church to a certain “number.” Instead focus on how to build the next-step. If you don’t have a core team, stop putting energy into trying to gather a crowd, pray and work diligently for the core team. Sometimes our personal ambitions get-in-the-way of Spirit-led leadership! Don’t worry about step seven when you’re on step two.

6. Follow-through: This is essential to working together on a team. I need to do better myself. But, if we’re going to be leaders with character, we MUST do what we say we’re going to do. The only way we can build trust as a team, is if we actually do the things we say we are going to do, in the time-frame we commit to doing them. I need to step-up and do a better job here. 

7. Don’t sacrifice your personal time with God. Its easy to feel so overwhelmed that we work hard, but pray little. Makes no sense if you really believe that God gives you the energy and grace you need to be effective. Yet, it’s so easy to just forget God and run-wild. 

8. Rest: Sometimes you gotta just stop, rest and relax. If God rested on the 7th day, I think maybe he was trying to communicate something to humanity. The more you rest the more work you’ll get done.

My wife attended many meetings with me in NC, some of those meeting got heated as we discussed philosophy, vision and calling. What happens when two leaders disagree? You debate and argue because it’s that tension that causes greater clarity. But my poor wife was stressed as she was not used to seeing people (friends) go at it for a lack of better words. 

Weak leaders want to control situations and they desire everyone to do what they want and when they want. They desire followers to help them accomplish their vision. 

Don’t get me wrong-some people challenge the process in all the wrong ways. They create conflict and lack clarity.  These types of people can do much damage to the health of the leader and organization as they continue to drain the energy of the leader. 

Great leaders want to challenge the process, they want people to disagree. They seek key info and important people to help them become better at what they do. If the leader lacks confidence he will surround himself with followers who will do what they are told to do. 

But what happens when leaders genuinely disagree with each other? 

1. Calling: You better know you’re called. If your called and you’re willing to die for a cause, then people will respect you even if they disagree with you!
2. Conviction: It takes guts to make hard decisions. When you have a conviction you can withstand times of uncertainty and disagreements. 
3. Team: You better have a team around you who can confirm your calling and conviction.
4. Admit Mistakes: Humility is such a key. When you screw-up admit it.
5. Argue with respect: Love each other and pray for one-another. If your goal is to just be “right” then you will be stuck in a place of non-growth.
6. Take the advice and connect it with other advice. Look for patterns that could emerge to help you make good decisions.
7. Affirm: When debating, disagreeing and confronting always affirm and give thanks. Anyone who is willing to tell you the truth in love is a friend you need. Hold them tightly.
8. Follow-Up: Send an email or note. Keep the leader/friend/advisor in the loop.

Anything else you would add?

I did enjoying hanging with some new friends yesterday and learning more about media and how to utilize it for HELP. Its good to hang-out with guys who are doing good things for the Kingdom of God.

A couple of nuggets from yesterday journey:

1. Patience: You can’t build a tribe overnight. It takes time to cultivate a community and create trust. 

2. Follow-up is key: If you create buzz and cause action…You have to follow-up for continual momentum. 

3. Simplicity: If you have a complicated process, folks will not engage. 

4. People want to help, you just have to create the right pathways and become a respected source.

5. Story: Becoming a master story-teller is vital. For me I need to master sharing the vision for HELP.

6. Learning how to communicate through various forms of media, such as Imagery, story, social media, written word, web etc. Seems important to engage on various fronts not just one or two. 

7. Always give people an easy “opt-out” when creating a tribe. Focus on those who want to take action, but make it easy for those who want out. 

I can probably say more, but I have this to-do list starting me in the face, which does not make me happy.

I say this often but I think it’s vital: If you’re going to be a great leader you have to be a learner. Seek people on the journey who will stretch you, grow you and challenge you. You won’t always agree, but it will cause you to grow and I think and that is always good.  My goal is to have a continual trajectory of learning.

My ultimate goal is not to get to technical. I leave plenty of wiggle room. But I always ask myself the following question:

“What needs to get done this week…And if It does not get done it will actually hurt the organization?”

After I ask that question I work backwards. Usually the list is really short. My goal is to have two or three big items; these items require most of my focus and demand a lot of energy throughout the week.  Once I have this info in place I can understand how my week will shape up. The most important thing is making sure I don’t get stuck doing all the things that don’t have to get done but will keep you busy. This is a killer to any great organization and will ruin one’s productivity in a heartbeat.

Now on to the next phase…Sometimes you can share your vision and folks will agree with you in their words, but in their minds they will think differently. They don’t want to hurt your feeling and tell you the truth. We need to be people who walk in grace but still share the truth in love.

As I was sharing parts of my vision with Michael he was excited…But then he said some powerful words:

“Chris if you do that you’ll waste your time and make things worse.”

Leadership is not for those who are super-sensitive. You got to have balls to become great at something. (yes I said balls) Of course Michael was encouraging and helpful and he took time to paint a picture that is more beneficial to HELP and more importantly to community development, which is really want counts.

Anyhow, I say all that to say this: Who is leading you? Who is asking hard questions? If you don’t have that person in your life, then you will never reach your full potential. Because leadership takes balls.

(If your a lady-then leadership takes…something else, which I’m not for sure what that “else” is.)

But great organizations don’t become great because of one person. My theory is quite simple, I’m praying that God will surround me with a team of people who share my passion, but who do things so much better then I do.  Here is what I’m looking for in a team:

1. Passion: If I have to motivate them, then I don’t want them on the team. If someone lacks passion then they become a hindrance to the vision of the organization. Get rid of them asap.

2. Organized: It’s really hard to image someone being truly effective in any aspect in life if they don’t have a sense of organization. I’m not talking about the highly organized individual, I just want someone who can understand the importance of structure and decision-making. We all impact each other.

3. Controlled: I want the team to be passionate. At the same time I don’t want every meeting to drain the life out of the team. We all have to learn when to push buttons and when to relax and move forward.

4. Work-ethic: Again, if someone lacks proper work-ethic, there is a big issue. You want to be around a team that gets things done. If they are passionate, organized and work hard, they are going to produce. If I have to micro-manage productivity, then my life will stink and the culture we create will not be healthy.

5. Attitude: If I can’t do life with the team, if I don’t want to be around them…or they don’t want to be around me, that is not going to suffice. You gotta be able to do life together and enjoy the process.I want my team to be my friends. I want to fight for them and I need to know that they will fight for me.

6. Focused: For dreamers its really easy to have so many dreams and still get so little done. Less is more, especially in the beginning. I struggle with this issue. You have to have people who start something and finish something. This is why a team needs balance. If you have to many dreamers and not enough implementers your organization will have great idea’s but little fruit. I’m a dreamer…I gotta find the implementer. If I start something I want to finish it. Typically implementers will have a higher success rate finishing what the dreamer started.

In my opinion, the implementer is the most important member of the organization. It’s easy to dream, it’s hard to see the dream come alive and produce. Usually pioneers have to be good at both: Dreaming and implementing. You don’t have to be great at both and over the course of time it will be vital to hire the right team-member.

7. Clarity: I have so many ideas that it’s easy to overwhelm people. Just ask my friends. The team has to be clear about the initiatives that they are working on. This is the leaders job. So vital…yet so hard. The team needs to know that they are working on the right things at the right time with the right people.

8. Leadership: Can the team lead when we need them to? Can they make tough decisions? Can the fire when someone needs to be fired? Can they confront when someone is not doing the job right? Can they sacrifice and set an example? When I hire people, I want to hire leaders. No matter what role they fill, I want them to lead.

Questions to ask:

Is the strategy clear? Do you have the right team in place? Is the team cohesive and effective? Did you hire leaders? Or did you hire workers…?

Anything else I should add?

First of all I’m not a productivity freak, David Allen is not my idol and I don’t spend hours upon hours on 43 Folders. Although their is a lot of good stuff from those cats.

My goal for productivity is quite simple. The more efficient I am in “doing” things the more time I will have to simply “be.” So productivity is not the end goal but creating balance is vital. This helps me to slow down, breath, spend time with family and friends, eat better, workout more and hopefully avoid major times of burn-out.

We’ve had some vision drift at Vista for the past 2-3 months. Lot’s of vision frustrations. I addressed that in this post. So we made a few key changes that has brought life and energy back to me personally and our organization as a whole.

1. Clarified The Vision: We hear this often. But trust me, you will have constant vision drift. After hours of conversation and many moments of prayer we were able to find peace & direction. This has given me much hope.

2. Ceased meetings that did not benefit the org:  Basically we decided to stop wasting time in needless staff meetings that took so much life out of us. We are now meeting every-other-week. This has given us more time to work on key issues that are vital yet we never seem to have time to focus on them.  Meetings can be the biggest time-waster. For some reason we feel validated or formal if we have them. But truthfully most meetings are led poorly and only cause confusion and stop momentum.

3. Rearranged The Bus: We had some people out of position. So we are focusing on making sure the right people are in the right place. Also, the right people are at the right meetings. Again this has brought life to me personally. I can stay focused and not feel so mentally worn-out by have too many conversation that produce little to no fruit. But those conversations cause me to go all psycho cause my patience level is somewhere around minus 2 or something like that.

4.  Change office locations: I just heard the founder of 37 signals state that his company is better when everyone is not together. There are simply to many interruptions. I tend to agree with him. Especially in small organizations. So Jeff and I both created home-offices. Man I’m so much more productive. I hope to spend 2 days at home and 3 days out-and-about at coffee-shops. I LOVE this balance. I feel like I have total control over my focus.

And I still feel highly connected as we utilize technology to stay in touch and communicate throughout the week.

5. Cut Costs: Moving office space will eventually save us some much needed funds. The past 4-5 months we’ve struggles financially and it’s become a huge burden for us. So we need to be pro-active in our approach and create more financial health.

6. Empower People: The greatest resource we have is our people. A few months ago the band that helped plant Vista moved on. We had a few weeks to change our entire worship ministry. It caused a great deal of stress for a season. But we had a key volunteer step-up and run the ministry. Now we have three worship leaders and I love it. I love seeing Vista folks getting to do what they love to do. Jeff and I rarely have anything to do with this ministry. We just get updated and we provide wisdom when needed.

We’ve also turned over our finances to one of our deacons. This dude is sharp and we will be a better church because of this move. And Jeff will be a lot happier.

Another key volunteer took over our set-up and tear-down team. No one asked him, he just did it. Because of that we were able to move the previous leader into the finance position.

Now let me say this. We still have a long way to go. None of the above ministries are completely healthy by any means. But I feel like we’ve been able to make some changes that will create more fruit in the long-run. This is a never ending journey that always needs to be defined and sharpened.

Ecclesiastes 10:10

“If iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one succeed.”

I love vision-casting, dreaming, planning, sharing and pouring into people. It’s just so freaking vital that we pastor types spend time pouring into people and helping them on life’s journey.

Sample of my week: I preached Sunday, hung with our Africa missions team last night, met with Com Group leaders today, studied theology with Jeff and Bedwell yesterday morning at Starbucks, meeting with some folks tonight to train them to take over our greeters ministry on Sunday and now I’m getting ready for an outreach that we are doing next Tuesday in E. Austin and I also get to prepare a message to speak next Sunday. I

love it. Rock on!