By Carey Nieuwhof: Your head likely hasn’t stopped spinning in 2020.

Same.

Maybe on one or more occasions you’ve done what I’ve been tempted to do as well: bury your head in the sand because it’s just so discouraging to see what’s actually happening.

As much as it’s healthy to unplug for a day (or a week) to catch your breath, refresh your soul and tap into hope, ignoring reality isn’t a great long term strategy.

Leaders who ignore the culture have a hard time influencing it because they no longer understand it.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll try to put 2020 into perspective and focus on priorities for 2021, all with a goal to cutting through the clutter to help you enter 2021 strong.

To help you with that, I’ve got a brand new free resource called The 2021 Church Leader Toolkit, a 5-part collection of brand new videos and fresh PDFs you can use personally or for team study. It’s free, and it’s designed to help us all get a head start on 2021. You can get immediate access here.

In the meantime, here are 7 things that disappeared in 2020 (temporarily or perhaps for a while anyway) that are making leadership in 2021 even more tricky.

And because the news has been largely depressing, I added three things that 2020 didn’t kill. We all need to stay encouraged.

So what disappeared in 2020, making leadership that much harder? Here are 7 things.

Ignoring reality isn’t a great long term strategy.

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1. Consensus

2020 ended any dreams of achieving consensus in leadership.

No one can seem to agree on anything anymore. The hate we seem to have for each other has reached crisis levels.

While I miss civility, leading by consensus was a tough goal at the best of times.

The problem with consensus is that consensus kills courage.

Very few good, innovative ideas gain consensus before a leader acts. Instead, consensus emerges after you act, provided the decision was a good one.

Regardless, if you’re hoping to find consensus on your ideas before you lead,  at this point you’ll wait forever.

Consensus kills courage.

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2. The Returns You Get From Incremental Change

Many churches and organizations relied on incremental change to get them from year to year.

In a good year, a few changes here and there might result in 2%-5% growth, or at least stave off decline or minimize it.

When the crisis disrupted everything, any returns on incremental progress went out the window because you had to change pretty much everything.

Heading into 2021, it will be tempting to try to find ‘normal’ and lock back in for incremental gains.

That might work, but there’s a far greater chance it won’t.

Crisis is an accelerator and many of the trends that were already making incremental growth difficult have accelerated even faster.

Which shouldn’t be such a great loss anyway.

The problem with incremental change is that it delivers incremental results. And that’s not what you were hoping for anyway.

The problem with incremental change is that it delivers incremental results.

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3. Control

Most of us in leadership struggle with control to one extent or another. I do.

And even though control is both an illusion and a bad leadership strategy, there has hardly been a season where control has been more elusive.

Moving forward, instead of trying to gain control, focus on looking for new opportunities and align your mission around them.

Control won’t bring you into the future nearly as beautifully as vision and momentum will.

Control won’t bring you into the future nearly as beautifully as vision and momentum will.

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4. Easy Answers

If easy answers were falling on hard times prior to COVID (and they were), 2020 demolished the utility of easy answers.

Leadership has always been complicated, but 2020 raised it to a whole new level.

As a result, many of the approaches that might of worked for you earlier suddenly stopped.

The point?

Leadership right now really is complex. If it feels hard, it’s only because it is hard.

Knowing that can make you dig deeper, consult more broadly and experiment more widely.

All of those are good approaches in normal times. In a crisis, they’re essential.

Leadership right now really is complex. If it feels hard, it’s only because it is hard.

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5. Public Events Everyone Is  Comfortable Attending

It’s shocking to see how quickly social behaviours can change.

Watching shows and movies filmed before the pandemic with people crowded into elevators, shouting at each other or leaning on each other in exhaustion just seems so…foreign now.

Public events will definitely come back in the future, but how long it will take not just to distribute a vaccine, but to get us all comfortable rubbing shoulder with strangers and breathing the same air…well, that’s a whole other story?

The point? If your future hinges on holding large (or densely populated) public gatherings, make plans now for a gradual reentry to that space. And better yet…make supplementary and alternative plans.

If everyone rushes back and things are back to normal in minutes, you’ve lost nothing and have some prep for any future pandemic or public health emergency.

If the culture embraces a gradual ease back into crowded public gatherings (which might be the more likely scenario), then you’re ready.

6. Community

Community may not have vanished entirely, but it really took a hit in 2020.

People are lonely, and no, Zoom, FaceTime, texting, streaming and social media do not replace face to face human contact.

The challenge here for churches is that, with many people cut off from church for months or not comfortable yet returning to in-person services, people are likely forming their own notions of future community.

The need for human connection is great, but that the connection would automatically be through the church the way it used to take shape might be a stretch.

The key?

Work at cultivating community as much as you work on cultivating content in 2021. Even if digital community is your only or main option (I know, it’s not the same), it’s still something the church is helping to shape.

Culture is already highly individualistic and has been drifting to anti-institutional for decades. If you ignore community, not only do you ignore some of the core of the mission, but people will form community without your help.

Of course, people are completely free to do that, but shaped community is part of the essence of church and any tribe.

Church leaders, work at cultivating community as much as you work on cultivating content in 2021.

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7. Unity

Of all the things we lost this year, this might be the most important and most painful.

Rarely have we seemed so divided. Although unity has been eroding for years due to politics, ideology, tribalism and a profound and concerning self-righteousness (I’m talking about the church here…not just culture), 2020 saw it sink to a new low.

Unity is both a theological prerequisite (Jesus talked about it a lot, and early church worked hard to achieve it) and a practical necessity. Division destroys. Unity builds. An organization divided against itself crumbles.

Moving forward, look past masks/no masks and partisan politics and opinions for common ground. You’ll find far more common ground than you imagine.

Focusing on what unites you, not on what divides you, is not just a great way to build unity. It’s a great way to make real progress.

I wrote more about this here.

Unity is both a theological prerequisite, and a practical necessity. Division destroys. Unity builds.

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And….3 Things 2020 Didn’t Kill

Hopefully knowing what shifted this year can help you gain a footing for what you can tackle in 2021.

Naturally, though, 2020 didn’t bring all bad news. Global crises can’t kill everything.

Here are three things that are very much alive and can help propel you into 2021.

1. The Mission

When the crisis hit, a lot of methods broke, but the mission didn’t. It’s stronger than ever.

And arguably, more necessary than ever as well as people look for hope.

So how do you move your mission forward? Rethink your methods to ensure they still support your mission.

As you move into planning for 2021, hold the mission tightly and the methods loosely. In that, you’ll find the greatest opportunity.

The same crisis that broke your methods can give new life to your mission.

The same crisis that broke your methods can give new life to your mission.

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2. Hope

Sure, hope isn’t a strategy. But it is essential to the human spirit.

Somehow the idea that things can get better and will get better is the central to leadership. While the crisis threatened hope deeply, it didn’t extinguish it.

And, of course, the Gospel itself gives hope that nothing can extinguish.

The more secular culture becomes, the more it loses its mooring around hope, which opens up an even greater opportunity for the church.

Focusing on hope while you take your next steps is a great way to help move people together into the future.

3. Innovation

Many leaders are desperately trying to find (or manufacture) a sense of normal.

That’s understandable, but a better focus is to keep innovating. Aftrer all, it’s hard to go back to normal when normal disappeared.

The ‘innovation’ that happened in the crisis so far, for the most part, wasn’t really innovation. It was adaptation.

The real innovation for most churches and organizations is ahead. So as you move into 2021, ask yourself “What does this make possible?”

That’s a great way to begin a dialogue around innovation.

The future belongs to the innovators. It always does.

The future belongs to the innovators. It always does.

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What Do You See?

What made leadership harder for you in 2021?

And what are you grateful hasn’t disappeared? Scroll down and leave a comment!

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Source: 7 Things That Vanished in 2020 That Make Leadership That Much Harder

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by Ken Adams: All teams succeed when they are unified. That is true of an athletic team, a business team, or a disciple making team. Can you imagine a professional or collegiate football team trying to win a championship if the quarterback is doing his own thing regardless of what everyone else is doing? Can you imagine a store or restaurant manager making business decisions that directly oppose the priorities of the president or CEO of the corporation? No way! Can you imagine a leader in a local church teaching ideas that oppose the overall mission of the local church in which they are teaching? Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen.

Honestly, I’ve seen discipleship leaders at their best and at their worst. I’ve seen discipleship leaders that are fiercely loyal and some that will hijack the movement for their own mission. Even Jesus had a few hijackers on His team. Hijackers are people who want to take over and take the group in a direction the hijacker wants to go rather than the direction everyone else is already going. Just think about it for a moment. Judas went down his own path and as a result he missed the blessing of being part of the greatest movement in history.

Don’t be a a Judas! Protect the mission and movement. Don’t be the one who is responsible for creating division or disunity. A divisive person is actually an abomination in the eyes of God. Proverbs 6:19 tells us that “one who sows discord among brothers” is an abomination to God. Being an abomination in the eyes of the Lord is a bad place to be. Those words speak to just how serious God sees disunity and how important it is to protect the mission.

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Disunity can manifest itself in many different ways. Sometimes it is blatant and easily recognizable. It can also be more subtle and not so easy to recognize. I’ve seen leaders attempt to split churches and ministries with attacks and accusations and I’ve seen leaders simply resist the strategy and the process the organization has chosen.

The phrase “I don’t want to do it that way” can be one of the most devastating steps toward disunity in a movement of disciple making. I’ve seen this attitude wreck many a church that was trying to make disciples. I would encourage any leader who can’t support and protect the mission of the organization he or she is a part of to re-evaluate his or her motives. If you cannot help drive the mission, make sure you are not sabotaging the mission for others.

Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.” What a great statement. When you are pulling your weight along with others and doing the work of making disciples, it is much harder to cause division. Be a rower!

By Ken Adams

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by Carey Nieuwhof: This is probably one of the hardest seasons you’ve ever led through.

One of the things that’s making this season particular challenging is that, regardless of ideology, theology or viewpoint, we are more divided and adamant than ever.

People don’t agree on masks, social distancing, schooling, reopening church, online church politics or whether there’s even a real threat.

As one Lead Pastor told me recently There used to be two options. Now it feels like there are four or five, and no one agrees with anyone anymore.

Truth.

The longer this global disruption goes on, the more entrenched, fractionalized and divided we seem to get.

And, of course, now that this is not just a blip we got through in a few months, the divisions externally are showing up more clearly internally, at the board, staff, congregational and team level.

Want to know why leadership is hard? Because leaders take people to where they wouldn’t ordinarily go if it wasn’t for their leadership.

I’ve got a brand new course on team leadership called Lead a Better Team, that will help you deepen engagement, foster unity and get results.  It’s available at introductory pricing for just a few more days.

So how do you take them to a new place when no one agrees on anything? How do you lead a divided team, staff and church when no one agrees on anything?

Obviously, there is no single, easy answer for this, but I want to share a few approaches that have helped me when things have felt divided.

Want to know why leadership is hard? Because leaders take people to where they wouldn’t ordinarily go if it wasn’t for their leadership.

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1. Bring It All Back To The Mission

On a good day, the mission of your church is your best friend. On a bad day, even more so.

The challenge with division is that the mission gets lost.

Your job as a leader is to remind everyone why you’re doing this in the first place. Sometimes, you need to remind yourself why. I know I do when things get chaotic and challenging.

The good news for the church is we have the best mission in the world.  And chances are somewhere in your mission it mentions love.

Of the three main questions leaders deal with—why, what and how—only why unites. How and what divide (what are we doing and how much will it cost?), while why unites (we’re all here to reach people).

The challenge is that when things are fractious, people always want to talk about what and how.  Hence the endless debates about whether to open/re-open, masks, distancing, online etc.

That’s when the best thing you can do as a leader is pull the conversation back and elevate it to the level of mission.

That sounds something like:

Let’s think for a few minutes about why we started the church. 

Everyone take a minute and pray for someone you know and love that we’re trying to reach. 

One of the best things about this place is your deep commitment to Christ and reaching people.

What’s one of the greatest things you hope God will do over these next few months?

A good general rule is to talk about why twice as much as you do what and how.  In a crisis, you may want to double or triple that ratio.

A good general rule is to talk about why twice as much as you do what and how. In a crisis, you may want to double or triple that ratio.

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2. Highlight what you agree on

When things get really tense, the conversation almost always goes to the one (or five) things you don’t agree on. Just rehearse any argument you’ve had with your spouse if you’re looking for a case study.

When the conversation moves in that direction, redirect it to highlight what you agree on. And by that, I mean be specific.

Some of that will definitely be mission-focused (see point 1 above). But you can get more granular than that.

If you’ve got two team members arguing, shift the focus and remind them they both like volunteering, or are committed to helping the poor, or football, or pizza, or photography or anything that puts them back on the same page.

Focusing on the common interests people have in the group humanizes each other.

Another approach is to take people back to a moment when everyone was on the same page—at an offsite two years ago where you had that amazing dinner, or when you opened that new location and everyone rallied together.

Starting a conversation with Wow, I’d love to see us find the kind of unity we had in 2018 when we…” can be a great way to get people off whatever they’re upset about and remind them of what’s bonded them together.

Your job as a leader is to focus on what unites your team, not on what divides it.

The mission unites, but so do common interests and shared experiences.

Your job as a leader is to focus on what unites your team, not on what divides it.

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3. Separate the people from the problem

Almost every leader as said or thought that leadership would be so easy if it wasn’t for people. Except of course, leadership is the art of leading people.

One of the best things you can do is, as Roger Fischer, William Ury and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project argue, is to separate the people from the problem.

You’ll be tempted to think people are the problem, but separating people from the problem is a key to making progress.

Almost every leader as said or thought that leadership would be so easy if it wasn’t for people. Except of course, leadership is the art of leading people.

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Rather than saying “I can’t believe you’re opposed to wearing masks” you might say something like “Wow, I can see you have strong views on masks. Here’s our challenge…we want to reach more people and the government (and our sense of what’s best) is to wear them. How can we work through this together?”

In this reframing, the problem isn’t the person, and it isn’t even masks anymore…the problem is how we’re going to work together to reach people.  By focusing on the problem, you’ve made yourself an ally of the person and an opponent of the common problem.

Will that work 100% of the time. Nope. Some people you just can’t reason with. But you can’t build the future of the church on them anyway.

Will the strategy work more than shouting at people and starting sentences with “You always” or “I can’t believe you would..”? Yep. It will.

Astute leaders know the people aren’t the problem. The problem is the problem.

Astute leaders know the people aren’t the problem. The problem is the problem.

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4. Focus on interests, not positions

This is another principle I’ve used again and again from the Harvard Negotiation Project, but it’s so helpful: Focus on interests, not positions.

Here’s an example. In my first five years of ministry, our quick growth at three small churches that shared a pastor (me) pushed the limits of some historic buildings we were in. The buildings dated to the 19th century and let’s just say there was long traditions and opinions associated with them.

The proposal was to sell all three buildings, merge into one church and meet in an elementary school and then build a new facility a few years down the road.

Naturally, not everyone agreed.

The key to making change that deep was refocusing everyone away from their positions (for or against) and toward our shared interests (creating a church their kids and grandkids would want to come to).

The more I focused everyone on the need to reach our community and create the kind of church their kids and grandkids would want to come to, the more progress we made. I also pointed out that the alternative to progress was closing or dying, and nobody wanted that either.

Because we shared the interest of reaching people, we got past the positions of for and against. We sold the buildings, moved to the school and a few years later moved into a new facility we built together.

Notice how all four points in this blog post so far build on each other?

Your job as a leader in divided times is to be the chief unifier.

Leaders who can’t unify their teams eventually have no teams, because division tears apart what unity brought together.

Your job as a leader in divided times is to be the chief unifier. Leaders who can’t unify their teams eventually have no teams, because division tears apart what unity brought together.

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5. Change The Channel

You know that garbage in produces garbage out.

So does division. Division in will ultimately produce division out.

If your definition of Christianity is full of hate and divisiveness, it’s not Christianity.

If your definition of Christianity is full of hate and divisiveness, it’s not Christianity.

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Social media and media as a whole is so inflamed right now that it’s probably not helping you to find any kind of peace, let alone forge unity.

I haven’t watched TV news in years (I read my news instead). I’ve muted and unfollowed more than a few leaders on my social media channels this year, largely because they seemed to enjoy fighting with anyone who came along.

I haven’t created a homogenous universe where everyone agrees with me. I intentionally follow people and discussions that I don’t agree with (as well as some that I do).

But the question I ask is whether the channel I’m watching or leader I’m following are trying to make it better.

Sadly, it seems like many aren’t right now.

Maybe one of the reasons you feel so conflicted and deflated inside as a leader is because the people you follow are trying to divide and deflate people.

And if that’s not where you want to land, I’d encourage you to unfollow them. Mute them.

And fill your feed, not with fully stuff or echo chamber material, but with real people who are trying to make a real difference. I’m guessing that’s what you got into leadership to do. I did.

There are still some good people out there. Follow them.

Making your social media feed a place where the good gathers on the internet will help you create more good with the people you lead.

Making your social media feed a place where the good gathers on the internet will help you create more good with the people you lead.

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Get The Strategy You Need To Unite Your Team Around A Better Future (NEW COURSE)

Uniting your team is one thing, leading them into the future is another.

It’s never been more important for your organization to hit your goals. It’s also never been more difficult.

Lead a Better Team is my brand new, online, on-demand course that gives you a comprehensive, step-by-step strategy to:

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All the while freeing up time for you to do what you do best.

The best part? You’ll learn how you can do this even if you’re leading a virtual team.

Get instant access to Lead a Better Team here and start taking your team into a better future.

What Are Some Keys To Uniting Your Team?

Those are some strategies I’ve found that have helped me keep my team united.

What’s helped you? Scroll down and leave a comment.

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Source: How to Lead a Church That Can’t Agree on Anything Right Now

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