How To Spot A Leader

The following is taken from Leaders At Levels by Ram Charan:

Many people who think they know how to recognize a leader focus on highly visible attributes and skills, such as analytical brilliance, charisma, the ability to make great presentations, and the drive to succeed. These are fine things to have, but they aren’t sure signs of leadership ability. Look instead for the actions, decisions, and behaviors that reveal true leadership potential:

What is the person’s ambition? Is it clearly for a leadership role, or is it oriented more toward making an individual contribution?

Do they take pride in accomplishing goals on the basis of their own ability, or do they talk about bringing together and motivating others to achieve those goals?

Does the person seem curious about subjects outside their area of expertise?

Do they have a grasp of the business (organization) and basics of success?

Can the person articulate clearly the requirements for doing their bosses job? Their bosses, bosses job?

How does the person ensure that she is continually learning?

How well does the person deliver results, and what is extraordinary about the results?

Does the person have an incessant drive to shape the external environment and make progress?

Does the person like to work with divers, high-caliber people, or do they bring along with them to a new job the people they are comfortable with and who are loyal to them?

How driven and passionate are they about leading? Is it just talk, or is it realistic?

Is the person dealing with increasingly complex and uncertain situations and using the occasional failure as an opportunity to learn?

Is there clear evidence that this person has a methodology to continue to build new skills and hone their personality traits to achieve their dream of what they want to become?

Daryl Fast

Goals worth having require sacrifice and hard work. Another John Maxwell quote that I love is that “You have to give up to go up”. In order to focus on achieving this years goals I am starting the year with a 40 day fast. The goal of the fast is to focus in on God and hopefully create some good habits towards my goals.

Here are the things that I will be doing without for the first 40 days of this year:

• No computer at home for me.
• No business emails outside of work hours.
• No late nights. All bedtimes before 10pm (other than nights with bowl games .
• No sleeping in (all days will start at 5am).
• None of the following food or drinks:

Beef, lamb, pork, and fish.

Milk, cheese, cream, butter, and eggs (execept limited amounts of low fat cheese).

Sugar, raw sugar, syrups, molasses, and cane juice.

All leavened bread.

All refined and processed food products including but not limited to artificial flavorings, food additives, chemicals, white rice, white flour, and foods that contain artificial preservatives.

All deep fried foods including but not limited to potato chips, French fries.

All solid fats including shortening, margarine, lard and foods high in fat.

Beverages including but not limited to coffee, tea, herbal teas, carbonated beverages, energy drinks, and alcohol.

There it is….The Daryl Fast….The next 40 days of my life. It isn’t designed to help me with all my goals but rather to focus me in on where God is leading me (to be healthier physically, spiritually, mentally). Don’t let me slack!!

The Law Of The Price Tag

The Law Of The Price Tag stats that “you fail to reach your potential when you fail to pay the price” -J. Maxwell.

I believe this is why many of us set goals this time of year and 365 days later we are scratching our heads wondering what happened.

The best thing about January 1st is that you get to start the new year with a blank page and the possibilities for this year are unlimited!! Maybe the difference for me and for you this year will be what we do with the Law Of The Price Tag. Will I and will you be willing to pay the price for our goals?

Here are my goals for 2010:

Health

• Loose 60 pounds by July 2nd and keep it off Until Decemer 31st.
• Workout 4 days a week.
• Save money and get a Trikke 8 Air and ride it.
• Make water my drink of choice.
• Less red meat, sweets and coffee drinks.
• Go to bed by 10pm 5 days a week.

Spiritual

• More structured quite time this year (5-6AM daily)
• Daily paper journaling.
• Rely much more on the Holy Spirit and less on me.
• Help my family take their next steps spiritually.

Home

• 3 Date nights a month with Kelli.
• Specific hang time with each kid (1 a week).
• Pull more weight with household choirs (dishes and repairs I have been putting off).
• Kick debt in the teeth (knock bottom 3 items off of debt list).

Work

• Implement leadship pipeline principles throughout our organization.
• Invest more time in people.
• Play to strengths more (less plate spinning and more points scored).

Play

• Get a hobby!!

With goals like these their is a hefty price tag. I will need a good plan, good accountability partners (you) and I will have to give up a lot of things. See my next post on Daryl Fast to see what I plan on giving up for the first 40days of the year in order to kick start this process.

Life Is Simple

In my profession I get to speak to a lot of different people, people with problems, people who feel like they have it all together, people with jobs, people without jobs, people with kids, people without kids, people with money, people without money, people with strong marriages, people with broken marriages, secure leaders, insecure leaders, the list can go on and on.

The thing that has blown me away in each of these conversations is this: the more that people try to control their lives, the more out of control it becomes. They are looking for solutions but in all the wrong places. The answer is not in someones blog post or a book. It’s not at a conference or in a mentor. Don’t get me wrong all of these things can confirm the solution but they are not it.

We complicate life tremendously when we look for solutions through these avenues. Do you want to know if you should take that job or marry that person? Are you considering bankruptcy or divorce? Are you wondering if you should replace that team leader? Well the truth is this, LIFE IS SIMPLE and decision making is too, ASK THE HOLY SPIRIT!!! It doesn’t matter what the book, blog, conference, sermon or your friend says if it is not what God is wanting you to do. The truth is, God’s decision and direction is the only one that matters. Does God usually confirm these decisions and directions through books, blogs, conferences and friends? I believe He does, if you’re running with a crowd that is chasing after Him, but at the end of the day, it’s God’s Spirit that you need to be listening to. It’s the X Factor.

Perception Principle

This thought is not original with me. I first heard it from my good friend Larry Brey but it’s not even original with Larry, it comes from God’s Word.

The Perception Principle is this: How you perceive someone is how you receive them.

This principle is huge. Take for instance Jesus in own hometown in Mark Chapter 6. The Son of God comes home and instead of them receiving him as who he was they received him as a common man (just a carpenter) and because of their perception of him, they missed out on a receiving what he had for them.

The awesome thing about principles is that they are usually universal. I believe that the Perception Principle is HUGE in our lives. If we perceive our spouses as nags guess how we receive them? If we perceive teenagers as worrisome trouble makers guess how we receive them. If you perceive your team as lazy or incompetent guess how you receive them?

And how you receive people is how you speak to them. If you perceive negative aspects, that’s all you speak to. However if you choose to perceive people based off of their potential and based off of God’s Word, then you speak to them in that light, you encourage, you coach, you believe the best!

Choose to perceive others through God’s eyes and not your own and see what happens!! I believe in you!!

Success = Obedience

I saw a sign once that said, “We can’t spell s_cess without u”, truth is they couldn’t spell sucCess even with u.

The funny thing about success is that when the goal gets distant, we tend to redefine it. When the vision gets cold or we don’t remind the team of what the goal is then there is a battle for what we define as success.

I will use church as an example. If our team isn’t reminded of what success is then they may look at attendance or tithes and offerings or response to the message as a goal and when those things are up, then we have succeeded and when they are down we have failed. But to be completely honest with you, if you  a christian then SUCCESS is defined as Obedience. Did you do what God wanted you to this week? Did you say what He wanted you to? Did you prepare like He wanted? Did your attitude and actions bring Him honor? THEN NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

If I am obedient, then it’s doesn’t matter how many people did or did not come, how well or not the message was received, whether or not I had to work my team alone… None of that matters if Obedience is the goal.

If you are feeling discouraged or distracted, then refocus in on the goal, be obedient to the Spirit of God and celebrate the fact that you are tracking with the creator of the universe.

Power of Ten is Exponential

The Dream Team at Lifepoint serves their tails off week in and week out and yesterday they got a blessing. We had 10 fresh, fired up volunteers that joined our setup team and 10 more that joined the tear down team.

Did it make a difference? You bet it did and the difference wasn’t an added difference, it was an exponential one.

These 10 people allowed our setup team to finish 45 minutes ahead of schedule and our tear down team to accomplish a 50 minute task in 30. Not only did they allow the team to be more efficient, their presence added life, energy and comradery to the team.

The awesome thing about these 20 people was that they were from another church. Life Community Church shut their doors yesterday and went out into the community to serve. How awesome is that? Lifepoint wasn’t the only place that their church was, but their presence was felt here.

So two very cool things happened yesterday. I saw how united the CHURCH is in our city and I saw how important it is for our teams to always continue to recruit, train and equip new team members. Teamwork makes the dream work and strong teams go farther, faster and stay in the game longer.

Lack of Passion = Lack of Details

I have been fortunate enough in my life to be a part of some great teams, great organizations and great churches. Each of these groups had some things in common. They all had great chemistry, clear mission statements and winning attitudes. They also had people that were freakishly passionate about the mission and were sticklers for details.

I believe that those last two ingredients go hand in hand with each other. I believe that when you are passionate about the goal, the project, the person then you leave no stone unturned, no i undotted, no phone call unmade. There is just this sense of responsibility and this weight when you own the mission.

So when I see people or projects that are lacking in details, I wonder if they are passionate about what they do.

Are you late to meetings, unprepared, is your work sloppy or mediocre? Are you always looking for or making excuses? Do you forget to communicate key information? These all could be signs that you either don’t understand the mission or you are on the wrong bus. Don’t panic just either get on board and get excited or get on another bus that you can get excited about.

Blind-spots

If you are old enough to drive a car you know what I am talking about. That spot that you can’t see in either mirror and when everything appears to be clear and you go to change lanes you hear a loud horn, two cars do this crazy swerve thing and then you wave at each other. That’s a blind-spot.

I was thinking about this in a leadership light yesterday. We all have blind-spots in our lives areas that we can’t see or understand. One of those blind-spots was made very evident to me. A huge blind-spot is created by our area of strength. Whatever it is that you are good at, you can’t understand or see why everyone isn’t good at that same thing.

For me, (and I say this as humbly as I can) it’s common sense. I am baffled when people can make a seemingly simple decision. Something that is so black and white yet they struggle to come to a logical conclusion. For my boss, it’s vision. He can’t understand why people can’t see farther down the road or why they can’t get up and share a picture that will inspire people to move. For each of us it will be different but it is there.

I have to be honest, this has been a frustration of mine for a long time and I am in the wrong. If we were all the same that would be useless. Imagine trying to put a puzzle together that all the pieces looked and were shaped just alike, it wouldn’t work. Same thing in life and leadership, a team is a group of people that fit together because they complete each other not compete with each other. We don’t need more people that have our gifting, we need to use our gifting to complete the team.

So, next time that you get frustrated with someone who doesn’t appear to have what you think they should, check and make sure that they aren’t in your blind-spot before you write them off. If they are, then you are there to complete them.

Confirmation Number

I love confirmation numbers! I feel powerful when I have one and I feel lost when I don’t. How could anybody operate with0ut them?

In ministry I have found this to be true as well, I need a confirmation number. Life is to short and linking people with Jesus is so important that I can’t afford to go down paths that God is not leading me down so there are a few confirmations that I look for.

• First is adversity or resistance. I learned this early on.. we are in a war and war is messy. If the direction you are heading in is comfortable and doesn’t meet obstacles then you may what to make sure your heading in the right direction. I went to a church for 6 years that led no one to Christ and everything was easy. Each week the services went off like the week before, no resistance, no change. Then I switched over to a church that was very active in the community and many lives were being changed and guess what… it was messy. The power would go out during the services, projectors would break, key people would get sick, the list goes on. What was the difference??? The difference was that satan could care less about the dead church reaching no one and is working his tale off to distract the one that is reach people.

The same is true in your lives. If you are on the right path, you have an enemy that is working against you, your marriage, your finances but the Bible says that He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world (that means that Jesus rocks!). So press on, we win! You should get excited when things are a little rocky because you are on the right path, that is your confirmation number.

• The next thing that I look for is that what I am doing lines up with scripture. If it doesn’t I am in big trouble. I can’t say that it feels right so it must be right, that’s stupid. There is a peace that comes with doing the right thing but it never comes at the expense of God’s word. God will never lead you to do something that doesn’t line up with his word. NEVER.

There is a few other indicators that I look at but these are the main two that print the confirmation number of my life. Once I have my confirmation number I am confident and I roll with it!