Video Transcript: Growing as a Leader

Lesson 3 - Growing as a Leader

Welcome back to considering leadership's that process of leadership. Now just a reminder,  we're in this process talking about a leader who interacts with the culture or the way things  are done in a particular place a situation that exists in a particular place at a particular time,  and works with that people in that culture to develop a vision of a preferred future. And then  provide the impetus for planning and prayer that will make that future a reality. That's what  we're looking at. And we're looking particularly at the leader in these sessions here, as we  transition from the previous class into this one. Today, what I want to talk about is the fact  that if you are a leader, you are likely going to have to grow as a leader, you're going to have  to grow in your capacity, even people who are strong natural leaders and we talked about  that in that first session in the intro class. previous session here in CLI, the fact that there are  some people who are strong natural leaders, they just naturally have people looking to them  for leadership, they're just naturally seem to be able to make decisions Well, etc, etc, etc. But  for most of us, we're going to have to grow in our capacity to lead. As we encounter new  situations, it's one thing to be called into a situation where you are, but if you're a leader, that situation will change, and your leadership capacity is going to have to grow. And so I'm going  to in this session, in the next one, just talk about some ways that you can grow. So things you  can focus on that will make your impact as a leader greater, make your capacity as a leader  grow. And one of those is simply learning to prioritize. Now if you're like any pastor, I know,  you've got a to do list that is incredibly long, and complex. I had the privilege of working with  a great partner of ministry, the last 11 years of my time in active pastoral ministry, and he  was a good leader, but he was a managing leader, I don't want to say but there he was a  managing leader. Sometimes people are stronger on the visionary and some are stronger on  the management side of the leadership spectrum. While he was really good on the  management side, which meant he likes to keep things in order, and I depended on him a  great deal for that purpose. One day he came in, he said, I'm so frustrated that I start my day. And he did this is recommended by some leadership gurus started a day by looking at his list  of to do's and says, but by the end of the day, You know after I check off a few of them, I've  got added so many that I've got more things to do at the end of the day than I did at the  beginning of the day, that's probably your experience, if you're a leader in some way, shape,  or form. And so one thing that's going to help you is learning how to prioritize those things on  your to do list. Now, for many leaders, this doesn't come naturally. There are some people  who are given spiritual gifts in leadership and administration. My experience has been that  very few leaders that one estimate is like 17% of leaders have the mixture of those two gifts.  Most leaders then are strongly gifted in leadership. In other words, they're able people are  able to help define a vision and help people more move toward the vision, but they tend not  to be the best organized people in the world. But I'll tell you today that it is going to help you  immensely if you learn not just to get your life organized, but learn how to prioritize among  the many things that show up on your to do list. There are just a couple of questions that will  help you do this, asking what's most important today? And what will give me the greatest  return on the time I spend on this particular issue. Those are great questions. What's most  important? Now other people might have an idea about what's most important for you to be  doing. But what's most important for you to fulfill the calling that God has given you? In those  first 10 sessions in the introductory course, we talked about, you know, creating a mission  statement for your mission in life, what's the most important investment of your time, as  reflected in your to do list and what's going to give you the greatest return for the time that  you spend on it. One of the people who has put this very well is a man named Stephen Covey  wrote a book years ago now, which continues to be reprinted because it's been so influential.  And it's simply this The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He did a research project on  people that were deemed to be very effective in leadership, or they were people that were  looked to for wisdom. They were people were looking for guidance. They were people who had led organizations of a variety of kinds in effective ways in fulfilling visions and expanding  dreams and creating companies etc. And he was able to boil it down to here's the seven  habits that these people have. And one of the habits had to do with how they dealt with their  time, how they prioritize the stuff on their to do list. In fact, here's the quadrants that he  created and gave to us and I want to give them to you today, you'll note these are quadrants, 

these are things you can spend your time on, you'll notice quadrant one are things that are  both urgent, that's the top line. And they're important. And so if you've got something that is  urgent and important, it's a quadrant one thing and as you're making your to do list, and  there's something that you say, Well, I gotta get to this now, that goes there. Quadrant Two  are those things that are important, you'll notice there on that that level, but they are not  urgent. And we're going to talk a moment about how you interpret what those are. Quadrant  three, how those things that are not important, but they're urgent. In other words, they're  things that you feel like, I've got to do these, but they're not really important in helping you  fulfill your mission, they're not helpful in helping you move your organization forward or into a vision. They're urgent, or they feel urgent, but they're not important in quadrant four are  those things that are not urgent, and not important, Here's a little deeper explanation. You'll  notice that the urgent things, these are time sensitive things, they must be done and done  now. They are necessary if you're going to do them. If you're in a church, and you get a  telephone call, and somebody on your staff has been in an accident, or that somebody died,  all of a sudden, that becomes urgent and important. It may not have been on your list, but it's on there now. And it's something you can't put off. There are certain meetings that become  urgent and important. Unfortunately, we can sometimes be driven by the tyranny there isn't.  But you've got a major meeting, Vision meeting for your elders, or for people who are in  leadership in your company, and you've got to be ready for it. It's in two hours, you can't put  that off, it's urgent, it's important, it's necessary that you do that right now, quadrant two is  where Covey says we should be spending more time than we do. In fact, it's the quadrant of  time that we usually ignore, much to our much to our sadness, and failure. Those things are  planning, doing planning for the future. Now, oftentimes, we are so struck by the tyranny of  the urgent that we don't spend time sitting down and planning, we don't spend time in  reflection, I was part of reading last week, I'm part of a group that's beginning, a new program in our area, where we connect a retired pastor who's got a lot of experience in ministry, and  reconnect that Pastor with a solo pastor in a church that is stuck. In other words, they, they've been doing the same thing, and the solo pastor is there as to just scrambled to just keep  things going. And so we're trying to partner those, but I was with the people who have done  it. And they were kind of the alpha test. And we're moving on to the beta testing of this now.  But the pastor in the church, the retired pastor, where both of us start the small meeting of  people. And the pastor said, you know, when Bill came on, the retired guy said, that's the first time I've had time to go away and pray, I've had time to go away and plan I've had time to go away and think about where I want this church to go. That's a quadrant two activity. Training  is a quadrant two activity that you identify some people who are going to help you fulfill your,  your, your vision of the vision of the company, the vision of the church, the vision of the  organization, and they need training. And that's a quadrant two activity, or relationships,  fascinating. Those are quadrant two, they are extremely important. But they're not urgent. In  the United States, it's a sad thing. And I know from working in Haiti and Honduras, that it's  pretty common in those cultures as well. Pastors can get so busy with the kings of the  kingdom, that they begin to ignore their families. And so Quadrant Two is an important  quadrant. Quadrant three are I've labeled it distraction, these these are things that feel  urgent. They are things like updating the social media for the company, feels like you should  do this. But you know, it's not going to make a great big difference in whether you fulfill your  vision or not. A lot of people things come into this quadrant. We're going to talk about more of that in the next session. But that can feel so important that it becomes urgent but the reality  is, it may be urgent to somebody else. But it is a distraction from what you should be doing.  Some people can get really caught up in quadrant three, in that, you know, they love to study and they sit in their study, and they study all sorts of things, and that keeps them from  moving on with the vision. And then in quadrant four, I've labeled waste. These are most mail  that you get. You know, I really believe that the kingdom of God, at least in the United States,  should quit mailing. If we stopped all mailings in the kingdom, every Christian organization in  the United States stopped the mail for a week, about two weeks, we'd be able to fund  missions to the entire world. And you can spend a whole bunch of time opening envelopes  and reading mail that really has nothing to do with what God has called you to do. It can be a 

waste, most television is a waste. Facebook can be a waste. All I have friends on Facebook  that one woman said, you know you sit down, I'm just going to look through what people have said in their film. Next thing I know it's an hour later. All kinds of other things. Now, the  interesting thing about this is that people who have experienced this, in their lives, will say  that when they get really busy, they start getting burned out. And as a result, it feels so good  to just spend some quadrant four time to just do the little stuff to do stuff that doesn't require  something of you. So they're the quadrants when you are looking at your time expenditure.  Where do you put it? Now it's very easy to develop a tool that will help you, all you got to do  is make four boxes, and say, Okay, here's my to do list. Which of them are quadrant one  issues, which of them are quadrant two issues, which of them are quadrant three issues?  Which of them are quadrant four issues, and write them appropriately. And then put down  number one, what's your priority? There's an old story about a consultant, company. In fact,  that was a well known company here in the United States, a guy called in a consultant to help him and he says, You know, I just seem to be scrambling, what can you do for me? He says,  Well, he says, Here it is. He said, he said, What's your priority today? What do you need to get done in order to move this company forward? And the man said well this. This is what I am.  He said, What's the next one? Gave him three priorities. This is now here's my advice to you  write down that first priority. He said and work to that. Work on that until you're done with it,  don't let anything else distract you. And then when you're done with that, you move on to  priority two, and then you work on that, until you're done with it, you've completed it, and  don't let anything else distract you. And then go to number three, and work on that. And don't let anything distract you until you're done the that. He said, and then he says you just  proceed accordingly. Said, all the guys said Okay, I'll try that didn't sound all that  revolutionary to him. But the guy said, I'll try it. And what do I owe you? What, what are you  going to charge me for this advice? And the consultant said, well give it a week. And you can  write me a check for whatever you think is appropriate. Well the next week the consultant got a check for $25,000. Because it was revolutionary, and how effective that leader could be.  And so how do you use your time? In that intro class, I shared this Pareto Principle, Pareto  being a mathematician from a previous time, but he noticed that split between 80 and 20,  and how 80% of your time expended will only give you 20% of your results, because you can  spend 80% of your time or many trivial tasks. But if you spent 20%, on a few vital tasks,  that's going to be 80% of your results. And so defining what are the vital tasks, and spending  as much time needed as possible on those so that's, that's the first bit of advice related to it  and how you spend your time is how you relate to people. What kind of people do you relate  to? The person that has been very helpful to me in this is a man named Gordon McDonald  wrote a book called Restoring Your Spiritual Passion. And I read that when a time when my  spiritual passion was at a low, and in one part of the book he defines and gives labels to the  various kind of people you will interact with, if you are in leadership. And some of them are  very good and helpful, and some are not. First of all, he said there's the VRP. The very  resourceful people. These are people that when we interact to them, we find our passion  growing. These people are mentors in our lives, they shape our lives. They are desperately  needed in our lives. These are people that are very important to me, and I I've been  intentional since I began to realize this in making sure that I have interaction with very  resourceful people. My long term mentor, we've been friends, but he's been my mentor. He's  been my VRP. For decades now, we still connect with each other though we live in different  parts of the country. Every month, we spend an hour and a half, we schedule it in for a  telephone conversation, because he's, he's my VRP. I need his input. I need his resourcing.  When I have a problem. He's got ideas, he knows what's been done. I needed more of that.  And so when I lived in Southern California, I created a group of 10 people, leaders that I  respected. And we would get together just to talk about things that we had in common. How  are you? How are you dealing with staff? In your church? How are you selling? Or how are you  promoting the vision of your church? How are you dealing with problems that come up what  problems are coming and we did that when I moved to Michigan that was so rich for me that I  I sought out various people that I heard about in West Michigan where I live, and I got them  together and said, Okay, how about if we get together regularly and so every six weeks, we 

gather just to talk about those things we have in common that will resource us that will  provide us ideas that will provide us passion, because we will see other people and the  Proverbs say iron sharpens iron. That's the VRP. One of the people in history that had VRPs  was William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce is credited with ending slavery. He was a  politician in England who ended ended slavery being practiced by the country of England. And it took years and years and years, it took all kinds of interaction in Parliament. And when it  was finally done, in fact he died at the well it was finally completed and the legislation was  passed. But as people look back at that, they realized that he was resourced by a group called the the Clapham sect, a group of people who are behind him, and resourced him with ideas  and studies and experiences. And if you're a leader, who are those VRPs in your life? Where  are they? Hopefully, some of them are here at Christian Leaders Institute. That's our hope  here, of course, and you'll find here people who are resourcing you, but what about others,  you connect with on a regular basis, you need VRPs in your life. There's also the VIPs. These  are the very important people. They are the people who share our passion, and they are the  people who encourage and enrich us, often within the organization that we are part of. I still  interact with one of the VIPs from the church, I served in Southern California, we went through a time of some changes in vision and resources. And I you know, I didn't understand a great  deal about leadership back then. But I kind of rode hard and I, I have the changes made with  some reluctance on the part of the elders of that church. But boy, we were we wanted to, I  wanted them to get into a planting church planting ministry. And so I kind of rammed it  through that we were going to call this a person who graduated from seminary, he was a  native of California. So we understand the culture. And we were ready to launch him from our  church into a new daughter church, and was able to handle that through and I remember one  man, after that experiencing experience just calling me and saying I think I want to leave  some time. And he was just open with me. Honest with me. He says, you know, he said, You  did it. You did it. You got this piece done. He said, but you'd be far more effective. If you  leaned on some of us who are leaders here too. And he began to name some of the people in  the church, he said, they will help you. You don't have to carry the ball the whole way. They'll  help you. That was just so instructive. As a young leader, growing a church it was it was so  instructive and helpful to me to find who are those people who are important, who are going  to share in my living out a dream, defining vision and living out that vision. So then there are  the VIPs The next category says other VTPs the very trainable people, these are the people  who catch our passion, who are people who want to learn how to lead better people that are  going to take significant parts of ministry in the future. And people like Elijah and Elisha, as  Elijah trains Elisha to be the prophet to take over for him, and then passes on the  responsibility, Mordecai and Esther. I just read through Esther in my devotions in the  mornings, and I was astounded again about God's movement in that time, but the reality is,  Esther wouldn't have done what she did. If Mordecai her uncle hadn't been there encouraging  her along the way, hadn't been giving her resources to work with hadn't been telling her what the situation was, and how she was called by God, he felt to make a difference there. Joash  and Jehoiada one of my favorite stories from the Book of Kings, II Kings, you can read it for  yourself where Joash becomes king at a very, very young age. And yet he does incredibly well is King back to you or renews the spiritual vitality of the country. But he's got a VTP Are you  are he is the VTP the trainable person for Jehoiada, the high priest, Jehoiada takes Joash under his wing, and he becomes a greater King than he ever would have if he hadn't had this  person, training him so. And yet, he Joash king would be trainable hearts. So who are the VTPs in your life, in your organization, those people who can take on the ministry and take  responsibility for part of it, then there are the VNPs, the very nice people, you'll notice the  notes I put under that they are nice to us. They take time, but they don't further the vision.  These are people who maybe are on the fringe of the organization. In the church, you'll find  all kinds of very nice people. And they'll be nice to you, if you're working within a church  setting. They'll be really nice to you. They'll maybe take you out to dinner or have you over to  their home. They'll talk with you, they'll they're just nice people, but they're people who aren't engaging in fulfilling the vision. And so they will take a lot of time if you let them take a lot of  time. Now, you've got to watch this because they can become very trainable people. That's 

true of the disciples of Jesus, right? They maybe were nice people, maybe they were following Jesus around for a while. They heard him speak in a variety of settings. And they said I we  want to follow this guy. They became very trainable people, as they were called into ministry.  Now there's probably some of those, like you are just in your organization, who could have  handled part of the vision if they were invited to do so. With staff in the churches I served,  one of the practices we did is we talked about, okay, who's involved in ministry? In other  words, we try to elicit every person in the church, and that ran up to many, many pages. But  where are they involved? Are they involved in children's ministry, youth ministry, adult  ministry? Are they involved in outreach are involved in the community in a significant way in  ministry? Where is everybody involved in this church? And, and then we'd say, Okay, how do  people get in these positions of involvement, and we found over and over and over again,  that most of them get into positions where they become the very trainable people, they move from very nice to very trainable by invitation of the leader. And so, you know, I would send  staff people out with that challenge, go invite somebody to become trained. And in fact, in, in  one church staff meeting, I actually assigned people to a course that they would work through with people, and all of them had two people, at least that they had trained. As people who'd  become important in fulfilling the vision of that particular church and organization, these  people are around you, they're very nice. And they can become so much more if they would  just be trained. And so invite them to be trained. So that's a very VNPs. The very nice people.  And then finally, there's the VDPs, the very draining people. These people are demanding,  they take energy from us, they are needy. Now. A mistake that pastors often make, and I'll  speak as one who has made this mistake, is that we believe we've got to respond equally to  everyone in the church, and particularly to those who are needy. It took me a long time to  realize that God had not called me to take care of everyone. And I remember the day I got a  call from a person, and it was somebody I got a call from at least once a week and they have  family crisis every single week. And this was the latest family crisis. And I remember on the  phone talking to them, I said, Okay, how's everybody safe? Yeah, everybody's safe. You know,  what's going to change if I get to you today or tomorrow? Well, we want you here today. Well,  okay, but is there anything going to change and realize that she was trying to make her crisis, my crisis. Later, we're going to talk about that move from shepherd to rancher. But it's very  important to realize that very demanding people will demand a lot from you. They will not  ease up. Your job as a leader is to make sure they are taken care of, but they don't have to be  taken care of by you. And so you've got to look at these kinds of people that you're going to  interact with. And that is going to impact your leadership powerfully. If you learn how to  interact with these people in ways that make you more effective as a person, and that will  make you more passionate about the ministry God has called you to. So as you think about  being a leader, who are those people and how do you spend your time? Who are those people who are going to help you in achieving the vision? And how do you spend your time with your  to do list? Get those three things, those two things straight, and you will become a more  effective leader with greater capacity for being used by God powerfully.