“How much of your mission are you willing to sacrifice in order not to have to have this difficult conversation?” This is a question I’ve used with many leaders over the years, especially pastors, when I’ve sensed they were avoiding having a difficult conversation with someone. It’s a tough question to answer, and it forces them to realize the cost of not dealing with difficult situations.
How can you maximize the mission and vision of your organization if you’re not willing to have difficult conversations with people? Most of us Christian leaders know there are issues in our organizations that need to be resolved. The best leaders I know have become comfortable at engaging difficult issues and the people who are involved in them. And if those leaders aren’t comfortable doing it, they are—to use an expression from an old mentor of mine—“becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable”. Continue reading →
One of my favorite baseball quotes comes from Sparky Anderson, the manager who took the Cincinnati Reds and the Detroit Tigers to World Series Championships.
I once heard Sparky say: “Good pitching will always beat good hitting—and vice versa.”
I love that quote! It makes no sense at all—and yet somehow it does.
Another baseball great, Yogi Berra, is famous for these kinds of quotes. One of my favorites from him is about a popular restaurant. He said, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
Again, this makes no sense—and yet somehow it does. How can these nonsensical statements of opposites make no sense and yet somehow still make sense?
I’m a relatively new leader, and as such, I have a soft spot in my heart for others who are new to leadership. It’s a challenging and exciting time. I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by amazing leaders in my life and work. Several of them have taken the time to invest in my development as a leader, and in this post I’m going to share some of their advice that I’ve found especially helpful. Continue reading →
This is the second post in a series on Vows. You may want to read Part 1 before you continue.
Ever play the game of warmer and colder in order to find a hidden object? I’m going to suggest at the end of this segment that you play a version of this to help you get to a new level of Christian leadership.
As you learned in the first post in this series, vows can be positive, like the vows taken at a wedding. But many are negative and hidden from us—formed early in life and based on immature knowledge and perspective.
Vows often arise out of traumatic experiences that caused us pain. They are often created as a way to avoid this same pain in the future.
Vows can really miss the mark when they’re formed, and it’s not uncommon for them to last a lifetime.
Here’s how vows are often formed:
A significant and maybe traumatic event happens. Using the example I shared in my last post, my parents got a divorce.
We then make some kind of meaning out of what happened. In my case, as an eight-year-old boy I assumed I had done something wrong that caused the divorce. This is not at all the meaning I would have made of it several years later, but it is what I understood then.
Based on this meaning, a vow is formed. In my case I vowed to be a better boy, which might make my parents get back together. I also vowed to protect my heart—not really in those words or even in an understandable way, but I began to keep people at arm’s length so I could stay safe in case they also left me.
So, again, it goes like this:
Something happens
We make meaning out of it
We make a vow that helps us live when this happens again.
Here are several other examples of how vows are formed:
After something happened a little girl makes meaning that God can’t be trusted, so she vows to not trust God
A little boy comes to believe he is not a good person, so he stops worrying about being even trying to be good.
A girl comes to believe she’s dumb so she decides not to even try in school.
Each time a boy acts silly in his living room, people seem to love it. In fact, they seem to love him. So he learns to act silly a lot looking for more love. The older he gets, the less it seems to work so he starts acting sillier yet and becomes the class clown the rest of his life in order to get “love.”
This list could go on and on.
A problem with vows is that we are often blind to them. They may have been created when we were very young, and they were created unintentionally so at a young age they just become part of who we are and part of how we believe the world works.
So as Christian leaders, what do we do with this knowledge about vows?
Start looking for the vows you made as a child and how they are affecting you yet today.
If you had events that created strong positive emotions as a kid or strong negative emotions as a kid, you probably drew some meaning from that and then created a vow for how to live life based on that meaning.
Start looking for where you are blind to how you are. Others might have to help you with this because it’s pretty hard to see what you are blind to!
Then pick a vow or rule that isn’t serving you well and make a new vow to replace it. It might be one of the vows below:
Start trusting God where you hadn’t before
Start trusting others where you hadn’t before
Start seeing that you’re God’s beloved and that God didn’t make you bad or dumb or ugly or whatever the case may be.
Start seeing that you don’t need to earn people’s love with your humor or martyrdom or excessive niceness.
Then start living into this new vow.
It will feel strange at first. It will feel wrong at times: after all it might be 180 degrees different from how you used to live, which felt right at one time.
This is best done when a few people who love you know you’re making this change. They can help you know if you’re getting warmer or colder. Because you’re often blind to the thing you’re changing, you need people to give you this kind of ongoing “warmer or colder” feedback until you get the change embedded in the new you.
And finally, if you’re inclined to watch movies, there are three that I really like with regards to vows:
The first, The Kid starring Bruce Willis, is great fun. It’s a great family movie that will make you laugh and cry, and see the power of a vow made as a child.
The second, Antwone Fisher starring Denzel Washington, is a much more intense story of a man facing his childhood and the meaning he made back then, and the subsequent rules that he lived by that needed to change for a healthy future.
The third, Good Will Hunting starring Matt Damon, is my favorite movie. The language is very crude and the movie is not at all appropriate for a younger audience. It is a great story about the power of vows and how destructive they can be.
If you watch any of them, see if you can identify the vow or vows that were created and needed to be changed.
I hope that you have success as you seek to change some of the vows you’ve made that are hurting your life, and, as always, I pray you experience God’s rich blessings!
Listen to the five-minute Vows: Part 1 audio program from Coach’s Corner.
Some days my posts are pretty simple and even playful. Other days I’m in the mood for going deep into the really important areas of who we are. Today is one of those “going deep” days.
Today I’m talking about vows. Vows are powerful rules within our own personal operating system that impact how we behave. Vows can be positive, like the vows taken at a wedding. But many are negative and hidden from us, formed early in life and based on immature knowledge and perspective.
Vows often arise out of a traumatic experience that caused us pain. Vows are often made as a way to avoid this same pain in the future.
Here are two examples of vows I made in my own childhood:
When I was around eleven years old I got caught shoplifting one Saturday morning. It was scary being pulled into the store manager’s office with him telling me what a bad thing I did. He told me he should call the cops, but instead said he would call my dad, insisting that I give him my name and phone number.
I remember waiting for what seemed like forever for my dad to pick me up.
I remember being upset that I got caught, because I had gotten pretty good at shoplifting.
I remember surviving the punishment.
I also remember being back in the same stores again where I had done a lot of my shoplifting.
I remember being tempted to steal again—not because I wanted the toy or candy or whatever it was—but because it felt like a challenge to do it again and not get caught.
I remember a silent voice saying something like “don’t do it… don’t cross this line again… it only leads to bad places.” Today I thank God for that voice!
This scene played itself out a few more times over the coming months and over time I made a silent, secret vow never to steal again. This silent vow was a positive one, and it was also an intentional one. I was very conscious of it for many years.
But many vows are not so positive. And many are not at all intentional. These are important vows to understand because these more hidden vows turn into the unhealthy rules of life that we don’t even know we have.
Here’s a second traumatic example from my own life:
When I was eight, my parents got a divorce. I had no clue it was coming, or even what a divorce was. At that time, back in the ’60s, I didn’t have any friends whose parents got a divorce. This was confusing to me. This little boy tried to make sense of it all and that was pretty tough.
Like most kids in this kind of situation I figured I must have done something to cause the divorce. Based on this meaning that I made out of this confusing situation, this little version of me made some rules about how life should be lived.
Yikes, that is scary. An eight-year-old trying to make sense of divorce—of a very complicated adult situation—and then making a rule to live by based on what happened.
I actually made two vows. The first was to be a better boy hoping that would make a difference and even bring my parents back together again. Not a bad rule, though I certainly broke it a time or two—or a hundred.
The other vow I made was more subtle and less understood. I vowed to protect my heart because I never wanted it to hurt again like it did then. You might hope that this second vow only lasted a few years before being revisited and revised. The problem was that I didn’t even know I made it!
So as I grew, into my teens, into my twenties, and even into my thirties, I kept people at arm’s length without even knowing it. I never became aware of this vow until my mid-thirties. By that time this innocent little vow—made by an eight-year-old boy—had taken a toll on my life, especially in my closest relationships and also in my ability to love and lead people.
I have since tried to replace that vow with a healthier one created by an adult who has greater understanding and perspective. This new vow is to love people fully even though they may hurt me.
When I look at my parents’ divorce now, I have a very different perspective than I did when I was eight. I realize that the eight-year-old me didn’t cause the divorce, and therefore didn’t need to try and fix it, which didn’t work anyway as you might have guessed. I also know God now and I didn’t then. I know that God will always be with me.
God who loves me more than any other can. God who loved me first so I can love others fully and without fear.
Even if another person does hurt me, I have confidence that God will give me the strength I’ll need to survive and even thrive. God will help me get through the hurt that might come, whether intended or not.
This is a vow I’m still learning to live into. It’s a good vow that I want to nurture. The vow I had from the age of eight was not a good vow and it caused me to miss out on a lot.
In my next post I’m going to tell you when vows tend to form and how you can change them. Until then, I pray you experience God’s rich blessings!
Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, `It can’t be done.’ I think this is true.
Another expression along these same lines that I like is, “If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can’t, you can’t.”
This is the power of beliefs. If you believe you can, then you can! And if you believe you can’t then you can’t.
Last week I spoke with you about the power of beliefs
I spoke about the difference between our actual beliefs – those that are revealed by our decisions and behaviors – and our preferred beliefs, those that are spoken.
I’m a huge fan of the expression, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions speak too loud.” As such, great leaders work hard to ensure what they say aligns with what they do.
Great leaders have learned what their real beliefs are and have come to integrate their real beliefs and preferred beliefs so their actions match their words.
I know of three simple but difficult things that you can do to pursue this integration.
First, be brutally honest with yourself about what you really believe is true;
Second, get feedback from people that know you well;
And third, close any gaps you discovered between your actual beliefs and your preferred beliefs.
Allow me to spend a bit of time on each of these.
The first thing you can do is to be brutally honest with yourself. Again this is a simple thing, but for many of us it is difficult because honesty with ones self often leads to painful realizations about ourselves.
And most of us work pretty hard to avoid pain rather than take on exercises that will thrust us into it. But even though the truth is often painful, the truth DOES set us free.
Ask yourself what things you find yourself telling others that you believe – AND by the way, I’m sure you do believe that you believe these things – but your actions might say otherwise.
Here’s an example – do you say that that the Lord is with you at all times but act like a scared child at times… as if you’re all alone? So what do you really believe about God’s presence with you.
The first step of integrating your preferred beliefs is to be honest with yourself. The truth you uncover may be painful, but the truth does set you free!
The second thing you can do to integrate your beliefs is to be on the lookout for trustworthy feedback.
Very often leaders are blind to any disconnect between their words and their actions. When this is the case, even brutal honesty won’t help them make the changes desired because they won’t see what the issue is.
However, others that know them well often do see the disconnect. This is why honest feedback is so important in the development of any leader.
What I am blind to in me, many others see. Their feedback helps me to see my actual beliefs so I can determine if they align with my preferred beliefs.
The best feedback will come from people that know you well and also care for you. These are people whose intentions and perspectives you trust.
You can also gather unsolicited feedback just by paying attention to how people respond to your comments and actions. These natural responses can tell you a lot if you are paying attention to them.
But make sure to consider the source. Some people only project what is going on inside themselves and not what is a legitimate response to an interaction with you.
If I tell Tina a fact and she rolls her eyes as if to say, “yea, right… a fact” – this is feedback. This might be a clue that I tend to exaggerate or am often creative with my facts. Maybe these are even “facts” I believe… but nobody else does.
If someone’s response confuses you – especially someone you respect – you might ask them about what they experienced in the interaction. You might ask Tina what caused her to roll her eyes.
Often this act of gathering real feedback is a little too awkward for leaders to do on their own so they hire someone like me to help them find out how others view them.
There are many ways to gather this feedback. I can talk face to face with people that know you well to find out how they experience you – all the way down to simple online feedback tool that people can fill out anonymously.
Either way, the gathering of this kind of feedback is something I highly recommend leaders do at some point in their career – if not several times in their career.
So the first two things you can do to integrate your actual and preferred beliefs is to be brutally honest with yourself and to gather feedback from those that know you well.
The third and final thing you can do to become an integrated leader is to close any gaps you discover between what you say you believe and what your actions say you believe.
Again, this is a pretty simple step, but so hard for most of us.
Let’s say you have come to realize that your preferred belief of trusting those that work for you isn’t an actual believe. Feedback and brutal honesty with yourself have led you to realize you don’t really trust them very much even though you thought you did. Maybe you’ve learned that you don’t really trust anybody that much.
It turns out, you’re a micro-managing control freak! Of course this may have served you well throughout much of your life because you’re smart and highly committed… more so than others.
Now is the decision. Do you stop saying you trust your team, which would close the preferred vs actual gap, OR do you start learning to trust them and find out if they really are trustworthy?
I suspect, you would want to do the latter – to start to really trust them. But maybe you just really can’t trust them. In this case I would be coaching you to STOP saying how much you trust your team. I would encourage you to look at why you can’t trust them and we would explore together what could be done so you could.
Maybe they just aren’t trustworthy. This could be for several different reasons which we could unpack and seek to fix.
Maybe they are trustworthy but you have an issue with trusting anybody. This also could be for several reasons which we might work on fixing.
Either way, my point in this segment is that great leaders say what they mean and mean what they say. They know their actual beliefs and they only profess beliefs that align with them.
So where are you? Do your actual beliefs and preferred beliefs match up?
You might think and pray about this in the coming days. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal truths to you that you have been keeping at bay.
You might ask some people that know you and love you if you say that you believe certain things that your actions would suggest you don’t
If you want to hear this segment again, go to MissionMagazineRadio.org. If you have any comments or questions for me, you can write me at cornerthecoach@gmail.com.
Next week I’ll talk about another topic that will challenge all of us to be better Christian leaders.
I hope you’ll join me.
Until then I pray that you experience God’s amazing grace and rich blessings.
Is it OK to go five miles per hour over the speed limit?
Is it OK to answer your cell phone when you’re having lunch with a friend?
Should you trust people before they’ve earned it?
We all live by a rulebook. And each person seems to have his or her own unique rulebook.
As Christians, some of our rules have been clearly defined for us. No killing. No cheating. No stealing. No idols.
But what about the other rules… those that relate to questions similar to the ones just asked?
Where do those rules come from?
As a Christian leader, is it OK to fire someone even if they didn’t break one of the 10 commandments? Is it OK to fire someone just because they don’t meet your expectations for the job?
As a Christian leader is making ridiculously high profits OK if your customers are happy and your employees are happy?
How you answer each of these questions will depend on what you believe to be true about the world… about what you believe to be good and what you believe to be bad.
The answers you have to these kinds of questions make up your beliefs – the rules of the game so to speak – for how to live your life.
In my work with leaders I choose to focus on six characteristics that go into defining who they are. These traits are their beliefs, their values, their passions, their gifts, how they are wired around personality, and even their unique version of brokenness.
I would argue that the most important of these traits is everything that makes up their system of beliefs. We each have hundreds of beliefs – many of these are just minor – but some are major.
This is where the incredibly important trait of integrity resides. And compassion, and excellence, and humility, and Faith in God.
This is the set of rules that each person lives by and I’m convinced from a leadership development standpoint that this is the most important part of who they are.
Our actual beliefs and values are the greatest drivers of our behaviors and decisions. And our behaviors and decisions are the greatest drivers of the impact we will have in the world.
As Christians we have some common beliefs that bind us together. But we also have many individual beliefs that the Bible doesn’t make clear and these are what make our overall belief mix quite unique.
For example, do you believe the Bible is to be taken literally? Even when Jesus talks about gauging out your eye when it makes you sin.
Do you believe that the Bible was written within a cultural lens that requires it to be interpreted today through a different cultural lens in order to really understand what God is telling us?
For example, the role women were expected to play two, three and four thousand years ago, is very different that how we all view this today. Does that difference come into play when we seek to understand what God is telling us through his word?
How you answer these questions is based on what you believe.
A key part of leadership development is understanding who you are as a unique person. A person that was created by God with a unique plan for your life.
Several deep thinkers have suggested that “knowing yourself” is one of the most difficult things to do in life. Knowing yourself starts with knowing your beliefs – the underlying construct of what rules your life.
Stop for a moment and think about a couple key beliefs that rule your life. PAUSE
Here are a couple of mine:
You can’t give more than you receive.
If you choose to trust people more than normal, they will respond by being more trustworthy than normal.
You may not believe these two. That’s OK… they’re mine and hopefully my life reflects them.
If I were coaching you specifically for the purpose of growing you as a leader, I would work to help you gain a clearer understanding of your beliefs. And we would be exploring your real beliefs, not the set of beliefs you say or even think are real.
Let me clarify what I mean by that…
I have come to believe (here we go) that one’s real beliefs are revealed by their actions. If I say I believe that you can’t give more than you receive, but my actions show that I’m very reluctant to give generously, then maybe I don’t really believe that.
My preferred beliefs are those things I say I believe. Like me, you probably really think you believe many of the things you say you believe.
My real beliefs are those things that my actions reveal I believe. These are often aligned with my preferred beliefs… and sometimes they’re NOT.
Here is another example. As Christ followers I think we could all agree that we believe we are to love our enemies… and even pray for them. But do we? How much time have you spent in the last week or month praying for an enemy?
Have you even cursed your enemies in the last week or month?
A few years back I hear the term pragmatic atheist and think it describes quite well what I can easily be. This term stems from the inconsistency between by my spoken or preferred beliefs and my actual beliefs as communicated through my actions.
I can be pragmatically an atheist – even though I profess to believe in God.
I contend that great Christian leadership depends on one knowing his actual beliefs and then working to integrate them together with his preferred beliefs.
This describes a truly integrated leader. A leader who’s words align with her actions. A leader who leads herself and others with real integrity. A leader who’s words can be counted on to align with her behaviors and actions.
Next week I’m going to talk more about this topic of integrating our preferred and actual beliefs and how that journey happens.
Maybe you could pay attention this week to what your behaviors communicate about what you believe… and if those seem to align with what you profess to believe.
I hope you’ll join me next week.
And until then I pray that you experience God’s amazing grace and rich blessings.
She LOVES to chase tennis balls and bring them back. She does it with every fiber of her body and it’s fun to see her do what she seems to be designed to do as a retriever.
When she is pursuing that thrown ball she does it as if it was the most important mission in her world.
But when she brings it back to me, she won’t let go!
It’s frustrating because I want to bless her by throwing it again so she could experience the joy of doing what she was designed to do. But NO, she won’t let go.
If I try to “encourage” her to let go, she just holds on more tightly. It’s only when I ignore her that she finally drops it and puts it at my feet so I can throw it again.
When she lets go, I bless her again.
I think I am often the same way with God.
God blesses me with something amazing and then I hold on to it so tightly that he can’t bless me again. I hold on with white knuckles to the past blessing not trusting that I will be blessed by another.
I’m trying to change my ways. I’m trying to learn to hold on loosely.
Welcome to The Coaches Corner: A place to grow for Christian Leaders.
Last week I introduced this concept of holding on loosely and I spoke about a book of the same name by Pablo Giacopeli (Gia-ko-pelli).
I spoke about how I think this is related to Jesus’ directive to us to empty ourself… to die to ourself so that we may live… and live abundantly in God’s continuous blessings.
It all depends on holding on loosely and being willing to let go.
Today I want to further this discussion. In particular, I want to answer two questions:
First – how do you do this holding on loosely thing?
And second – why am I talking about this in the context of leadership?
I would like to speak to the second question first… kind of the order of things in Jesus’ world. After all, the last shall be first. Smile!
So, why am I talking about this topic in relationship to Christian leadership?
Here’s why.
I’ve gotten to know hundreds of successful leaders at a pretty deep level, and it’s clear to me that many are not able to let go of their success.
Much like my dog Bella they do a great job of chasing the prize and bringing it back – but they just can’t seem to let go of it and it starts to cost them their health and sometimes their family.
The thing they wanted most – and went out to get – starts to own them. They become a slave to their success.
I think this relates to being willing to die to self which is what Jesus tells us to do.
By not being able, or willing, to let go of the results and let them be God’s, many leaders lose a lot of sleep and experience high anxiety. This can create a negative impact on their decision making and on their relationships.
Holding on tightly can appear to lead to great “success” [quote/unquote] – but cost leaders their spiritual, physical, or relational health.
Long ago I heard an expression that describes how we are to live and lead:
“Row the boat as if it all depends on you. Pray as if it all depends on God.”
If you can row the boat with everything you have AND realize that God is sovereign and will do with your efforts what he desires, you can accomplish much AND experience God’s peace and joy.
In my view, the abundant life does NOT include high anxiety and chronic fear of losing important things. It does include lots of freedom to do what God is leading me to do and then do it to my fullest and turn the outcome entirely over to God.
My experience is that the very thing I’m worried about loosing is the thing I will get more of… just by letting go. Just like with my dog Bella.
This depends on me trusting God. Just like Bella would need to trust me to throw the ball again I need to trust that God will give me more blessings just like the previous ones.
All I have to do is believe that God is there, that God is capable and that God’s wants what is best for me and my organization.
Of course sometimes when Bella gives up the ball I put it away so she doesn’t end up getting it back. She doesn’t like this, but it’s all part of a bigger picture that she doesn’t understand.
And similarly, when I let go of my “tennis ball” God might put it away because of a bigger picture that I can’t understand. My fear of this keeps me from letting go.
My Christ centered understanding of how to live and how to run an organization is that I am supposed to give my blood sweat and tears to my work and then turn the results over to God.
But this letting go is really tough. And if you can do it, you will experience a peace and freedom that is unexpected. AND you will be blessed many times over in unexpected ways.
Leaders that can do this accomplish great things AND they experience great joy.
They trust that faithful efforts will be rewarded one way or another. There IS a tension in this but they’ve come to find joy in that tension.
As Pablo Giacopelli puts it in the title of his book, they are “Holding on Loosely” and “Enjoying Life in the Beautiful Tension”.
OK, so that is a long answer to the second question about why this is important for Christian leaders.
Now that first question of how do you do this holding on loosely thing?
Well, that is a good question and I’m not sure I can answer it. I think it has something to do with loving God so much that you’re willing to give him anything and everything you have, including your precious “tennis ball”.
When I give my absolute best effort and then allow God to own the results, I feel like I’ve given a real sacrifice. Maybe I did my best but the results don’t reflect that and others will think poorly of me. But God knows I gave my best and I choose for that to be enough.
Is it possible that my holding on tightly has to do with me trying to look good? What if I wasn’t worried about looking good, but just truly doing good… for God’s sake.
Would that make me feel more free? I think so.
Would I likely do even better? I think so.
Would I end up being even more blessed by God? I think so… though that shouldn’t be my motive.
What do you think? Does it make sense to give it my all and then hold on loosely?
If you would like to hear this again or even read the text, check out missionmagazineradio.org.
Next week I’ll talk about another topic that will challenge all of us to be better Christian leaders.
I hope you’ll join me.
And until then, I pray that you can let go of YOUR tennis ball and experience God’s amazing grace and rich blessings!
Listen to the Difficult Conversations: Part 2 audio file from Coach’s Corner.
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