Leading Hope with Kevin Jack

Episode 180 Also Available On: You Have To Get Better May 24 Leader Notes Main Idea: Leaders who have mastered self-leadership [...]

Episode 179 Also Available On: How to Live Proactively May 17 Leader Notes How to Live Pro-Actively The first habit [...]

Main Idea: To lead yourself well, you must know yourself. You must have a true foundation, and increasing grasp of self-awareness. Typically we have one overdeveloped, over-obsessed pillar, and two that are almost completely unformed.

Pillar One: Who Are You?

Character:

Are you lying to yourself about what could potentially destroy you?

Are you shaking off, or actively combating, truths that are uncomfortable?

Personality:

What energizes you? What depletes you? What’s your natural rhythms

Personality Testing: DISC, Enneagram, Leading from your strengths.

Gifting:

We try to operate in other people’s gifting because we see the impact it has clearer than we can see the impact of our own gifting.

Test: StrengthsFinder

Ethos

Emotional Intelligence component of who you are.

Question: “What’s it like to be on the other side of me?”

Further Statements

Only when we know what we’re made of and what we want to make of it can we begin our lives. Bennis

Warren Bennis on how to know yourself

1) You are your own best teacher

2) Accept responsibility. Blame no one.

3) You can learn anything you want to learn.

4) True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience.

Pillar Two: What do you want

This is one aspect of self-leadership that is almost completely unformed. People set out to be leaders, without knowing why.

“No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders. So the point is not to become a leader. The point is to become yourself, to use yourself completely-all your skills, gifts, and energies- in order to make your vision manifest.” Warren Bennis.

Reflection: I don’t think that’s true, many people set out to be a leader.

Mercenary Leader or Visionary Leader

Mercenary: Developing and deploying skills to whatever seems the most interesting and pays the most.

Visionary: The person who becomes a leader, develops what is needed, in pursuit of a vision they desperately want to accomplish.

Mercenary Leaders bail early.

Sources

The 2nd Habit of Highly Effective People from Stephen Covey, “Begin with the end in mind”.

The first element of leadership is having a guiding vision. Bennis

Aspect of it, plan, “You’re either going to be proactive or reactive- without a plan, you have a much greater probability of getting ‘off purpose’.” Harkavy

Pillar Three: Are you willing to do what is necessary to get there?

Angela Duckworth, “Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance…that is a stronger predictor of high-achievement than intelligence, talent and other personality traits.”

My belief: People over-obsess on personality tests, don’t really have a good idea of what they want to accomplish, and bail at the first sign of difficulty. The third pillar of self-awareness must be an awareness of “are you willing to do what is necessary to get there?”

Many men want to be president, few want to do president. Steven Sample

Metaphor of knowing if you can get there. Count the cost

The difference between where you are and where you want to be is the pain you’re willing to endure. Sam Chand

Close

“A leader should always act as if he himself, not history or fate, is responsible for his actions.” Steven Sample

Main Idea:

Series: If leaders do not become conscious of the culture and context they interact with and are embedded in, those cultures will manage them.

Today: A good leader is successful in a specific context (Church consultants), a great leader is able to create impact in a variety of contexts. Transformer. How to be the Transformer

Increase Diversity

Diversity increases adaptive capacity. The more turbulent the environment, the more important it is for the organization to maximize diversity.

Diversity reduces blind spots

Diversity increases options

Create Psychological Safety:

A compelling positive vision.

Formal Training, Practice sessions, coaches: Increasing competency creates safety.

Positive role models

Systems and structures that are consistent with the new way of thinking and working

Good upward communication: Without it organizations can neither be safe or effective.

Deal with the past without getting trapped by it (From, “How to lead what you didn’t start” by Tyler Reagin)

Celebrate appropriately

Honor the right things

Shift Focus: “When I’m talking about where we need to go, it’s not a reflection of good or bad within the organization; it’s a direction for the future.”

Cast new compelling vision

Move on from honoring

Close: Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself. Context cannot be the “fault”

Assignment: Ask are you successful in one thing, or all things?

Main Idea:

Series: If leaders do not become conscious of the culture and context they interact with and are embedded in, those cultures will manage them.

Today: Context can be learned, interpreted, and evaluated.

3 Things to Learn: Vision, Values, Motivations

Types of Motivations:

Club culture: Power-Oriented

Task Culture: Achievement-Oriented

Role culture: Position-Oriented

Existential Culture: Support-Oriented (Non-Profit)

2 Things to Observe: Interaction & Stories

1 Thing to Do: Ask Questions

Be radically open-minded

Curiosity paves the way for gaining quick influence.

Some Questions

Is the current context a culture of trust or suspicion.

What is rewarded? What is disciplined?

How’s the gossip? What does that mean about the authority and the followers?

What lines won’t be crossed?

Closing: Being in a place you don’t understand is not a weakness, it’s a place of growth if you choose to learn about where you are so you can better accomplish what you’re called to accomplish.

Main Idea:

Series: If leaders do not become conscious of the culture and context they interact with and are embedded in, those cultures will manage them.

Today: Every culture that exists was formed over time to create a specific context today. Knowing how & why that context came to be enables us to better interact with, lead within, and when necessary: shift that culture.

Context is never simply “bad”.

The effectiveness of any culture cannot be evaluated separately from the environment to which it exists.

There is no universally correct leadership style because of cultural variation.

Context has layers.

When seeking cultural change you must impact culture at the deepest level for it to take hold.

An outsider can often gain a greater sense of “what” is happening at the deepest level, but they will not know “why”.

You do not understand a context if you cannot appreciate a context.

Goal:

Leaders must understand their own culture well enough to be able to detect where there are potential incompatibilities with their culture and other contexts, and within their culture & their vision.

Leaders must be able to decipher other contexts well enough to reveal their assumptions, synergies, and incompatibilities.

Assignment:

**Get someone else in your organization & both of you write out a list describing the culture you’re in, compare your list to another person and begin to figure out where your differences came from & what it means about your deeper values.

Episode 174 Also Available On: Change Leadership April 12, 2023 Leader Notes Leadership is about change. All leadership is change leadership. [...]

Episode 173 Also Available On: Four Tools for the Change Process April 5, 2023 Leader Notes Main Idea: Everything can change, [...]

Main Idea:

Everything can change, but not everything can change equally easy. Before setting about in an undertaking of change, you need to understand the dynamics that make change difficult or easy.

The 8 Dimensions of Readiness

1. Trustworthy leadership

2. Trusting followers

3. Capable champions

4. Involved middle management

5. Innovative culture

6. Accountable culture

7. Effective communication

8. Systems thinking

Force field analysis: identify the driving & restraining forces to change.

How to Ready an Organization for Change:

1. Creating a crisis.

2. Develop a vision that creates dissatisfaction with the status quo.

3. Finding a champion of change leader who will build awareness of the need for change and articulate the vision.

The essential first two steps of the change process are discerning the organization’s readiness and then readying it for change.

The Simplest Way to Understand the Process of Change

– What doesn’t work: Data, Think Different, Change Behavior.

– What Works: See, Feel, Change.

– Most of the reason we don’t change is because of deeply held emotion, not logic. If we’re going to create change, we must operate the same way.

Main Idea: The courage of a leader lies in their ability to take risks. The courage of a follower lies in their ability to choose when to follow and when to disobey. An act of loyalty when everyone else seeks mutiny may be that expression of courage in the same way that walking out may be the act of courage when everyone else is choosing loyalty.

There is no leader who will never need to be checked.

Your obedience can be helpful and your obedience can be destructive.

– Destructive obedience is characterized by:

1. Blindly accepting the authority’s definition of the situation. Responsible followers can become victims if they must take on the role of whistleblower.

2. Allowing a shift in responsibility to take place from follower to leader. There are no innocent bystanders, only silent colluders. There are no innocent bystanders, only silent colluders.

You need to know how to fire your boss.

Closing Questions:

1. Am I willing to check my leader in a healthy way?

2. Am I maintaining personal agency and independent thinking while following well?

3. Have I evaluated whether or not I should stay in terms of “can I still add value” or “Am I able to keep following well”?