Leading Hope with Kevin Jack

As a leader your primary focus should be developing trust within your team.

Trust is complicated. You’re looking for a Team that is predictable.

1. The level of confidence in your team according to your execution, thinking, and motivation.

2. The lower level is a commitment to completion, the higher level is a commitment to process.

3. The lower level is a commitment to the vision, the higher level knows why they are committed to the vision.

Trust makes everything quicker.

Trust is a strategic advantage.

Slow isn’t fun.

Trust is a cultural advantage.

Q: How about advice or suggestions on coaching or leading up? Don’t think this topic has been discussed on the podcast. Examples always help! I enjoy what you’re covering. Keep it up!

Q: Where have you seen the biggest change/impact from your leadership development focus at Be Hope?

Q: I have an employee that has been identified as having leader potential… he seems to want to be at leader status but isn’t necessarily putting in the work to get there… I have offered him a variety of different opportunities but I don’t feel the initiative is there. You mentioned in one of the podcasts that if people keep denying the opportunities that you have presented to allow them to advance then you stop asking. The questions:

1. Do you tell people that if they continue to deny opportunities then you’re going to stop asking them to do things? Would this be a one on one taking point?


2. Am I just offering the wrong opportunities?


3. Is there some consideration I should make in changing the way I facilitate the opportunities?

Q: Is there a leadership checklist? What I mean by that is if you feel like your team is doing well and you’re trusting their choices but you want to make sure that everyone else feels the same what do you do? I often do one on one meetings with each staff member usually at least quarterly and I always ask for feedback on my leadership and what I can do better and very rarely does anyone give me an answer…. and I don’t think that’s because I’m doing a fantastic job all the time. Our company is going to roll out some sort of 360 manager survey that all staff will receive so that will be helpful but without that what do you do?

Q: You seem to have the ability to take in a lot of ideas and suggestions and quickly process them and get to the root concern, or the core ideas that needs to be addressed. How did you learn to do that?

Q: What are you listening to and reading that excites you?

Q: What should the church be doing differently to draw men out of isolation and into becoming the godly leaders they are designed to be at home, work, and the community?

The great separator between mediocre and great isn’t intention but execution. You don’t just need a get it done person, you need a get it done system!

4 Disciplines of Execution:

- Focus on the Wildly Important.

- Act on the Lead Measures: Influenceable & Predictive.

- Create a Compelling Scoreboard.

- Create a Cadence of Accountability.

Why We Don’t Do Execution Well:

- We don’t know what we’re working towards.

- Task Completion isn’t public.

- Beneath You, You’re big Picture:

Why Not Teams?

- Speed is their highest value.

- Don’t Like People.

- Love Glory.

Why Teams?

- Longevity

- Wisdom

- Better Development: Helping people see a level ahead.

- Joy

Basic Common Thoughts:

- Culture before Competency

- Speed of the Leader, Speed of the team

- Great teams compliment, poor teams compete

How to Think About Teams:

- The team is ineffective if the role is more important than the goal.

- Unhealthy People can’t survive on a healthy team.

- Great Teams have the highest levels of Trust.

What is a system: How we seek to accomplish our vision.

Key Pieces to Systems Thinking:

- Never stop at symptoms.

- Look for High-Leverage.

- Easiest to improve on the good, not to eliminate our weakness.

Further Reading:

Systems Talk from Andy Stanley

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

Culture is what is normalized in a group.

Three Truths of Culture:

1. Creating what is normal has the greatest impact on your future.

2. Creating what is normal is complicated.

3. Culture requires constant attention, just because it’s normalized doesn’t mean it’ll stay forever.

The Key Levers to Creation: (Think back through family dynamic)

1. Values

2. Leadership

3. Attention

Further Learning:

Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership

Ben Horowitz, What you do is Who You Are

Vision is the address of the destination that you intend to go to.

Three Components:

Clarity

Commitment

Communication

If you don’t have a vision, then you’re not leading- you’re just wandering around.

From Leading Leaders to leading organizations.

Make it broadly applicable – could be small or large and need these skill sets.

Key Idea:

– Your chief job is creating a leadership development culture: Moving from Management & Leadership to Culture Shaping

– Next Series: Basics of Leadership: Systems, Culture, Vision, Communication

How You do It:

1. Create Clarity on What it is: Terminology, Behaviors, Wins.

2. Clarify Expectations Towards It: Job Description

3. Create Rallying Points around it: Team Night

4. Praise & Empower the Heroes of it: People who do it naturally will slide to the background.

Danger:

– You cannot allow front-line manager to clog the pipeline. Be on the lookout for where it stops: Develop up, or Move Out.

– If you don’t: You’ll lose your best people, frustrate individual contributors, stop the pipeline.

Note: Just one aspect of culture, going to get into that next month series on the basics of leadership.

What the Role Is: Focusing on the People Side, not financial or other resources.

Manage Your Direct Reports: You are still a manager (have direct reports), you need that skill set.

1. Your danger is that you manage the people who your direct reports manage: Create Chaos & Frustration, Blame your managers when it’s you.

2. Encourage publicly, Clarify priorities and give coaching in private.

Develop Future Leaders: Yes, you need pour into people who have the potential for great impact, but you’re not smart enough to know who those people are. “Gather many to find one.” Chris Hodges

Micromanage Details, Not People: Need a complete understanding of the business model. Howard Schultz & Starbucks

An idea: Less is more

You will not have less work. But you should have less work assigned to you (if you don’t you managing people 2 levels down— your work can be proactive.

The more “things” you are doing, the more you are taking out of the hands of others. If they can, they should.

The Idea:

Leading Others is the work of a manager.

Manager is not a cuss word—> matters.

When we have leaders but not managers we can “take ground” but we don’t know how to keep what we have. Sustain success.

The Role:

Setting Key Priorities.

1. Monitoring, Problem Solving, Communicating)

2. Address Micro-Management: You’re probably not!

3. Note: Must be involved in their work!

Holding Accountable:

1. The equivalent to you’re now a parent: you’ve got to get yourself ready in the morning and someone else. (Most leaders at this level who fail say “I don’t want to parent my employees, I already parent my kids”, well, you have to).

2. Key piece is most of our progress is stunted because we weren’t great at being accountable to ourselves. But the issue is most managers are unwilling to hold anyone else accountable.

3. Don’t rely on your position to push people, but don’t abdicate your position. (Find other ways to motivate, but don’t settle for less than the standard).

Getting Better

1. As a manager you most importantly a coach—> you must help people take steps forward.

2. Where the leadership piece comes in: throughout all of these you can fulfill those roles with a diminishing or empowering posture. One that teaches people to follow orders (follower) or teaches people to think through problems and create leaders.

3. Two guides: (1) People come with solutions instead of problems. (2) You ask questions instead of giving orders.

Two Dangers:

1. You manage everyone the same: everyone is unique.

2. You focus on personal productivity instead of team progress and the development of others.