On Leading Well

Category: Leadership

  • Why Your Leadership Must Change (free download)

    The world has changed dramatically in the past decade. You know this. You’ve felt it. You live with the stress of it every day.

    Your leadership needs to change with it.

    The human race is rapidly becoming a more tightly knit global community. A dip in one country’s economy can prompt falls across world markets before the next day’s trading cycle. A technological explosion of mobile devices, social networking, and cloud computing has made the world seem smaller.

    These shifts have changed the way we live, work, think, learn, and relate to family and friends. And our expectations have changed. Increasingly, we believe that information and people should be available on demand. A global economy with shrinking boundaries allows buyers and sellers to conduct business non-stop, 24/7/365.

    Companies, institutions, nonprofits, churches, and mission agencies are all struggling to keep up with this pace of change. Many are rightly questioning whether the practices that made yesterday’s leaders successful will still be helpful tomorrow….

    Want more? Download this free chapter of my book CLOSE: Leading Well Across Distance and Cultures.

    Get the whole book on Amazon.com.

  • Your Two Biggest Enemies

    As a spiritual leader you have two formidable enemies. Each picks at you daily, constantly, relentlessly.

    If left unchallenged each will undermine your ability to lead people onto God’s agenda.

    What are these two enemies? It’s not your culture. Or whatever -ism is in vogue this year. Or problems in your organization. Or other well-intentioned leaders vying for power or control (of course they would never say it quite that way).

    Henri Nouwen, in The Way of the Heart, a classic work on authentic spirituality that mines the insights of 4th and 5th century desert fathers and mothers of our common faith, suggests that the two main enemies of the spiritual life are anger and greed.

    Anger and greed are by-products of my compulsive self — my false self, or old nature — that craves affirmation from constant activity and others’ approval. Nouwen writes:

    Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a real sign of freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same — more work, more money, more friends.

    [These compulsions] are the inner side of a secular life, the sour fruits of our worldly dependencies. What else is anger than the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived? When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical word. And when my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. Thus greed and anger are the brother and sister of a false self fabricated by the social compulsions of an unredeemed world.

    I’m taking some time this week to reflect on the impact anger and greed have on my leadership. A mentor once told me, “Ken, people can’t follow anger.” James tells us that the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

    How do you fight against these two enemies of your leadership? 

     

  • The One Thing Leaders Want

    Leaders want dialog.

    You want the ability to discuss, debate, shape and influence a decision before it is made.

    The people you lead — or your teenage daughter, or the committee members at church, or the division heads of your organization — want the same thing with you.

    Honest, open dialog facilitates shared leadership. Leaders want to share leadership.

    This fascinated me, as when our organization restructured recently, one of the five principles guiding our efforts was “shared leadership.” Many leaders initially resisted this, claiming that the essence of leadership—at least in their culture—was having someone in charge to make the final decisions. Yet people don’t want to be led that way. They want to voice their opinions. They want to help shape overall direction. They long for the dynamic interaction among leader-followers that characterizes high performance teams. They want to be engaged in issues and decisions that they will ultimately own. They long to share leadership.

    Leaders want dialog.

    Read more on this topic in my book CLOSE: Leading Well Across Distance and Cultures.