leader Archives - Passion for Planting

Grow Your Passion with Derwin Gray

Sean Cronin — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000

By Shawn Lovejoy: Passion is central to being a courageous leader.

Derwin Gray, former NFL football player, founding and lead pastor of Transformation Church, and today’s guest, believes the process of growing our passion lies in our motives.

In this episode of The CourageToLead Podcast with Shawn Lovejoy, Derwin shares how our motives, “why we do what we do,” deeply influences how effective our passion can be.

Watch or listen in on this episode of The CourageToLead Podcast with Shawn Lovejoy on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Source: Grow Your Passion with Derwin Gray

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How To Create a Culture of Honesty on Your Team

Sean Cronin — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:01:09 +0000

By Shawn Lovejoy: On every team I have ever led, we have sought to maintain the “The Last Ten Percent Rule.”

The Last Ten Percent Rule states that most people say ninety percent of what they are thinking, but they hold back that last ten percent out of fear of rocking the boat, causing conflict, getting fired, or whatever.

Growth doesn’t come from some elusive “silver bullet.”

Healthy growth emerges from the teams who best practice honesty.

That said, honesty is not something that just happens on any team.

Honesty has to be cultivated in your culture.

I wrote this article highlighting our framework for facilitating honesty on your team and giving you one of your best opportunities for growth.

7 Ways To Create A Last 10% Culture on Your Team:

Mine for Total Honesty.

Truly listening to to those closest to us gives us our best opportunity to grow. As a leader we should always push our team for that last ten percent. That’s where the gold is!

That last ten percent gets us into what people are really thinking, how they really feel, and gives us our best opportunity to gain rapport with those closest to us.

However, people are people. Defensiveness and insecurity run rampant among leadership teams. Don’t get me wrong, most teams have a deep desire to grow and get better, but for some reason, they have a hard time listening to the feedback, critiques, and heartfelt honesty.

Your job is to facilitate honesty among your team, keep it at the forefront and normalize what it means to share the last 10%.

While honesty is not natural for many on your team, your job as the leader is to make honesty normal for everyone on your team.

Promise Safety.

Most people on your team likely care about the people they work with and want things to get better. They also like their job!

If you, as the leader, are over emotional or reactionary when people are honest with you, you may not get honesty out of them.

Communicate a culture of honesty and then model they way by receiving it with maturity. When the leader is mature, the team feels secure. You want a culture of honesty, not a culture of walking on eggshells.

Be Quick to Listen and Slow to Speak.

When someone offers any type of honest feedback, our temptation the entire time they are speaking is how to explain ourselves or defend our behavior. Don’t give in to that temptation!

Listen carefully. Process what they are saying. Be teachable. Be coachable.

Model teachability for your team. When the leader is teachable, the team will be more teachable.

Don’t Argue Intent.

I had a marriage counselor tell me a long time ago, “It doesn’t matter what I meant. It matters what was received.”

Don’t try to explain what you meant or what your intention was. Just apologize for any wrong signals you might have sent.

Arguing or being defensive about intentions is crippling to a culture of honesty.

Take Responsibility.

It really doesn’t really matter if you’ve been at fault or not.

Consider this: If we are only 5% responsible for a conflict, we are 100% responsible for our 5%!

Just say “I’m sorry” and take responsibility.

Distinguish Between a Critique and a Criticism.

Criticism comes from the critics and naysayers.

Critique however, comes from someone who loves us and just wants to help us improve and improve the quality of our relationships. Why would you not listen to that person?

You don’t have to listen to everyone, but you had better listen to those closest to you. If you don’t it will negatively affect your influence, your relationships among the team and the level of honesty in your culture.

Thank People for Their Candor.

Simply respond with, “Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I don’t know my blind spots unless someone helps me see them. This will help me get better.”

Your response gives permission and language for your team to receive honesty in a similar fashion.

Need another example? Try this response: “I really appreciate you sharing this with me. As a matter of fact, if you ever have something come up like this again, don’t be afraid to come and talk to me about it. I appreciate it more than you know!”

Wish honesty was part of your culture?

Long for a team that talks TO one another rather than ABOUT one another?

Eager for a system to help you facilitate a “Last 10% Culture?”

We can help…and, frankly, it’s all too much to do alone. That’s why at CourageToLead we believe, “Every Leader Needs a Coach”…because no leader can do it all alone!

Let’s set up a call with one of our coaches to talk through leading your team and organization to discover a “Last 10% Culture.”

It’s simple, click the button below, schedule a time that works for you, fill out a brief application and show up to your call…we’ll handle the rest!

SCHedule a call

Let’s Talk About Coaching

Source: How To Create a Culture of Honesty on Your Team

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Thriving in Crisis

Sean Cronin — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 09:00:47 +0000

by Shawn Lovejoy:

There’s a great opportunity for leaders right now.

Opportunity to not only survive…and hang on…

…but to thrive.

Leaders who seize the opportunities a crisis presents will:

Separate themselves from the competition with a different message of good news
Discover new innovations only times of scarcity can present
Reemerge stronger after the crisis by how they reimagine during crisis

In this episode of the CourageToLead Podcast, Shawn Lovejoy shares practical ways to make the most of the opportunities before us during the COVID-19 Crisis.

Source: Thriving in Crisis

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5 Things Leaders Need to Give Up

Patrick Bradley — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:00:16 +0000

By Ed Stetzer: There’s a great saying that good leaders don’t see people as impediments—they seek to make people partners. But to implement this approach to leadership in daily life, we need to realize that partnering with people means sacrificing for them. Drawing from Brad Waggoner, author and executive vice president at LifeWay, here are five things leaders need to be ready to give up for the people they’re leading.

1. Leaders need to be willing to yield recognition.

How do I get so much done? Through the team with whom I serve.

If I don’t acknowledge my team, this idea develops that I have some remarkably high capacity. I do work hard, but my capacity does not just reflect my work. It reflects the work of wonderful people that I have brought around me, people who are doing good work to accomplish good things.

To be a good leader, I need to acknowledge my team’s work and share the credit with them. I need to recognize that they are a significant part of the things we accomplish.

2. Leaders need to be willing to yield comfort.

As a leader, you don’t get to be comfortable in everything you do. If you lead, you are going to make some people unhappy. I tell pastors that if they don’t have 10% of the church mad at them, they are probably not doing much. Of course, if 70% of your congregation is mad at you, you probably need to reconsider what you’re doing. But if everyone is comfortable, it’s time to assess whether you are really leading towards strategic change.

Leadership might take you out of your comfort zone. Some of us are only comfortable when everyone likes us, but leaders don’t always have everyone happy with them. There is always some resistance to leadership. Your question is how you are going to get through that discomfort.

In his book Leadership Pain, Sam Chand makes the argument that leaders grow by pursuing their vision through pain. At one point, he writes, “If you’re not hurting, you’re not leading. Your vision for the future has to be big enough to propel you to face the heartaches and struggles you’ll find along the way.”

3. Leaders need to be willing to yield convenience.

As the leader, you have to work harder. I don’t know many lazy people who are effective leaders. Assessing your organization, planning and communicating new directions, motivating your team—leadership takes initiative.

Author and former Overseas Missionary Fellowship director Oswald Sanders summed it up this way: “The young man of leadership caliber will work while others waste time, study while others snooze, pray while others daydream.”

Are you prepared for this kind of work?

4. Leaders need to be willing to yield liberties.

I get that you might like to share funny or smart-aleck comments. You might like to say outrageous things to start a conversation or poke fun at things. However, the more leadership you’re exercising, the less freedom you have for those comments.

I do not mean that you no longer have freedom of speech. Sure, you should be allowed to say what you want. But that is the behavior of a wandering ecstatic prophet. It’s not the behavior of a leader who is working to motivate and encourage and organize a team or congregation.

You have to learn how to temper your words if you’re going to be a leader.

5. Leaders need to be willing to yield reputation.

Movies, books, and television are full of leaders who take charge for their own glory or honor—Scar from Lion King, Frank Underwood from House of Cards, Macbeth. And those leaders are usually pretty horrible leaders.

As a leader, you have to be willing to give up making yourself look good so that you can serve your team. When things go well, you need to share the credit with your team. On the other hand, when something goes wrong, a leader needs to take responsibility for the failure.

Leadership is not about building up your reputation. It is about motivating and encouraging and organizing your team to reach new goals. That requires partnering with people, earning their trust, and looking out for their good. In the full biblical sense of the word, it requires loving people.

Source: 5 Things Leaders Need to Give Up

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