Video Transcript: What is an Effective Leader? Part 1

Well, welcome back to Learning to Lead. This is session two. In the last session we tried to do some, some definitions as well as introduction on myself as the one who's going to lead you in this class on leadership. You'll notice the title of this session, it's What is an effective leader? Leaders can be negative, and they can be positive. But what are some of the characteristics that make a leader effective? Not necessarily efficient, but effective in that process that we talked about. Now just to refresh our minds, we talked last week about—in our last session—about the process. That a leader interacts with the culture, the way things we do, the way things are done here, to create a vision, in other words, some idea of what is  the preferable future for this organization, and these people as well as yourself. And then they work together to define the plans and strategies that are necessary in order to see that preferable future become a reality. 

Now, you may have experienced some leadership in your life, which was not all that effective. There are many leaders who aren't. And nowadays, there's a cry for leadership. Now I reflect the culture of my life, and that's been lived in the United States for the most part. And so I know, in my country, there is just a cry for leadership. In fact, some say at the beginning of this country, we had  world class leaders, you know, people like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and on and on and on, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. And those people that were great minds,  who were so effective in creating a system here that continues to work fairly well, depending on your, your particular political viewpoint these days, in creating a place for people. Where are those leaders now? Where are those people of huge mind and, and great efficiency, who's effective. That's what we're going to look at today. 

Now, when you start talking about who's an effective leader, there, there is a spectrum of leadership that you should be aware of, it's one that I had some difficulty becoming aware of at one point in my life. And that spectrum goes from leadership to manager. Now, a good manager can be a good leader, and the leader can be a good manager. But those two aren't necessarily the same thing. For instance, a leader is identifying the purposes for the organization to exist. In other words, he's looking deeply into that idea of culture, and what makes a culture work in this place. And what are  those things that are not negotiable as far as change goes, because change is a scary prospect in a church or Christian ministry. And certainly in other areas, in business and politics, and in whatever area you put it. Change is scary for people. And so a leader identified one of the purposes for the change. A manager, on the other hand, likes to do the planning. You know, the, one of the great examples for me, since I think I have the spiritual gift of leadership, as I've had to discover it and develop it. 

But I don't have the gift of  administration, which has that ability to look at details. Some people have both, I don't. And that means I have to find those people who are going to be planning. And one of the great examples was at the church I served in California, we decided that one of our goals was that we were going to triple what we had been giving to missions in the world, both in the United States and throughout the world. And, and that was, that was a pretty big calling. So we created a program for that in which we, we had special speakers and we had this dinner that was planned and, and I remember I got a woman who had gifts in administration and was a great manager to lead up the details of this whole thing. And we were setting it all up, right. We were carrying a table for a Sunday afternoon, dinner and speaker and she turned to me  and she said, Don't you just love it when all the details come together? And my first response was, No, I don’t, because she was putting all these details together and I was wondering if I had taken care of the one that I was responsible for and that was inviting the speaker. So a leader is looking at what's the purpose, but the leader needs managers and managers who can work on planning, and so the leader, as you'll notice identified goals. This is what a leader does. Here's where we're going, here are the short term and long term goals and how we, how we get there. Whereas a manager is working on organizing. In other words, how do we get those goals reach those goals that have been identified? A leader is focused on the big picture. A manager is focused on reaching the goals. In other words, he doesn't see where are we now going to be in three years or five years? But where are we going to get this year? How are we going to create a plan that has goals and it's this year. And I see that in the church that I just completed serving, I just retired just a few months ago. But I had the privilege of partnering with a guy who had a mixture of gifts of leadership and administration. So he was both a leader and a manager, but it was tilted toward the management side of things. And so I would be looking at the big picture and saying, what are going to be the growth generators for this church over the next five years? And I would have groups getting together and talk about, you know, what is true today? What's five, quantitative and qualitative descriptors, adjectives, about our church today? And what are five qualitative and quantitative statements about what our church is going to be in five years? And so encouraging people always to look ahead, the five year mark, and what are we going to do to get there in that five year mark, and my partner was saying, Well, you know, we got to get this done. And this done, and this done, and this done. But the big picture was something I would provide for him to be working with his team, in order to make those things become reality. Leader works on concepts. The manager works on allocation of resources.  In other words, there's a budget, and every year, we had to do a budget. And I depended on my partner to be the one who would work for the people, the staff, people were developing the budgets in their  areas, because he was able to talk about, okay, what are the priorities, whereas I was working on concept, saying, you know, in this next chapter of our life, we have to be about youth ministry. And so he would know, going into the budget planning, that youth ministry was going to have a priority in our spending of funds. 

Releasing people for ministry or controlling them. Now, I tend to be somebody who gives people a picture of what the future can be, and then says, Go to it. And sometimes that works really well. And sometimes it doesn't, sometimes my partner had to step in and help them because they couldn't quite get it together. But so many ministries were developed. I've only got so much time and energy and the staff in the church only has so much time and energy. And so my job would  be to give a picture to some people who are leaders and say, Let's look at what this can be like. And so one of the things we found in our community, as we looked at the culture of our community, was that there were a group of people in our community who had children with special needs, they have developmental disabilities. And we found that only 8% of them ever went to church, because they couldn't. They had this child that I couldn't arrange care for. It was difficult. And so we created—a woman, a couple of women in our church got a real vision for this thing. And I released them to ministry for that. And as a result, we ended up with a ministry that has just blessed dozens and dozens and dozens of families and have has had other things cropping out of it. Releasing for ministry is leadership. Sometimes the manager can tend to positively or negatively control people. In other words, oh, you can't do that unless you get permission. So understand the difference there. And ranching maybe as an example, the leader is a rancher. When there are cattle on a ranch, they have to be fed. The  rancher is not usually the one who does that. He's got people— we call him shepherds in this regard—who are out there doing the job, but the ranch is too big for him to do everything. And so he gives that job of feeding to others. The leader is a rancher, the manager tends to be a shepherd, tends to be looking at this group, this flock. Now those are just some contrasts that I can give to you this remind you again, that we're talking about leadership and there's this spectrum and and your spiritual giftedness may lie somewhere on that spectrum between leader and manager. But know that as you gain skills, hopefully through this class, as well as other situations that you are involved in, that you begin to drift more toward the leadership side of things. And you'll begin to identify with the leadership side of the slide. 

So having said all that, just a reminder, John Maxwell is a church leader and business leader, and he's said it, Everything rises and falls on leadership. In other words, nothing of great good, great building of the kingdom is going to happen unless there's a leader or a group of leaders to do it. Everything rises and falls on leadership. 

Now, having said that, who, is an effective leader? Sometimes it's helpful just to look at who, who are those people? You can be thinking about that in your own life and your own particular culture and place. Who are the effective leaders there, given our definition of a  leader with all of his pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses, leading the group of people, connect culture, how we do things here to a preferable future? Who does that well? I've given just some names. Again, you know, I live in work in an Anglo culture. And so some of that you just have to live with. And please, interpret that into your own culture. 

Here's just some people: Abraham Lincoln, he had a clear vision, and that was that we were going to remain one country. And this was during the Civil War. And so he led toward that effect. Winston Churchill, great leader in England, during World War II, and great vision, and that was to defeat the Nazis. And he was able to gather all sorts of resources and energies of the people of England, and in many cases America. Franklin Roosevelt president during that same time. Before that, saying, We've got to take care of the poor country, we've got to create a freedom from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jack Welch, who is one General Electric great leader, recently retired. Steve Jobs, developed Apple. Now what a vision he had, he had a vision for a computer, that wouldn't just be a computer. A lot of people make computers, but people buy Apple. Why? Because he said, they're there, they're a bit more, they are going to do things intuitively. And they're going to do things better, and they're going to be stylish. And this is going to be the best computer you'd ever buy. They're not just computers, they are a way of life. And as a result, he created a vision. And people are Apple users today. Bill Gates for the other side of the equation from Microsoft. You know, his vision was to get his system running almost all the systems in the world. And he's done well with that. Bill Hybels as a church leader. He wanted to create a church that was going to be for the unchurched. And he defined his vision and mission as creating a place where people could come in, come to Christ, and become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. And so their entire church was designed with that vision in mind. Rick Warren, another one in Southern California, developed Saddleback Community Church, they built a great church on that. Some others, John Wooden in basketball, you know, just a very clear vision of what it  meant to be a champion. And he's won more championships in the college basketball area here than any other person in history. Pete Carroll as a football coach. Mother Teresa, what an incredible vision she had. And we'll talk more about that later. Michelle Rhee is an educator and she had a great vision for  improving the education in this country and has worked well toward that. Mary Barra is now in charge of General Motors. And we could go on and on about Martin Luther King, oh, my goodness, what an incredible leader and that he took a group of people who have been oppressed, who have been marginalized in his community, and he was able to enter that culture and define a preferable future. And at some point, I'm hoping to show you that speech that he did on I have a Dream, as a as an example of vision. He was somebody who created a vision and people got behind it, and energy came and money came and resources came towards the realization of that vision. And we could go on and on and on. But these are just some examples of people who have done this well in the church setting and the business setting and the area of politics, etc.

So what makes an effective leader? Here are some things: Sight. I don't mean the ability to see, I mean, the ability to see beyond what's there. The ability to see maybe with the eyes of God, maybe with the eyes of Jesus Christ, to be able to sense the opportunities that exist in a certain situation. There's a great old story about a shoe company that, you know, I had heard that Africa was just a great market. And so they sent somebody there to check it out. And this guy  traveled from country to country, village to village throughout Africa. And he came back saying, there's no market for shoes there. They don't wear shoes, hardly anybody wears shoes, they go barefoot. And the Shoe Company was amazed because they knew of all the people who were there. So they sent another guy there. And he sent a message back, he says, Send all the shoes you've got! Nobody wear shoes here. So he was seeing opportunity where the other guy saw only problems, he was able to see opportunities. The effective leader is somebody who sees opportunities. 

The effective leader is somebody who has certain skills. Now there are a variety of skills that you have. Knowledge is a contributor to skill, but skill is more than that. A leader has skills in reading a culture. And we're going to talk about that when we get to culture, that if you misread culture, you're going to set back the process a long way. You've got to have the capacity to look and see God's call in that culture, whatever your  setting. And so you've got to have that skill. But you've got to have people skills as well. You know, it's a great thing to have knowledge and you can pass a test. But you've got to have some skills to deal with people. It's it's called Emotional Intelligence these days, thanks to a famous book in the business world here. But how do you relate to people? You've got to have some skill in dealing with people, in dealing with criticism, because criticism is going to come. In dealing with conflict skills are things you can develop. They're not always innate. Some people have innate skills in those areas. And they, they tend to be more outgoing, but others can develop them. My best friend in the world is somebody with whom I've shared life for over 50 years now. He was also a pastor. He's also retired now. And I hope to get him for an interview as part of this process and let him share with you about his  journey into leadership. But I remember him talking once about his calling. And he said, you know, his calling was unusual, in that he was a severe introvert. In other words, if he had his way, he said, I'd be in a greenhouse and I'd been digging tulip bulbs, or flower bulbs and replanting them and making  things beautiful that way. He said, But I have a master. And my master told me to go into ministry. And I was leading a very, very large church at that point. And he said, and I’ve obeyed. And in that process, he learned skills. So as an introvert, he learned how to deal with people and to deal with people effectively, and he changed the life of that church. And God used him in great growth. 

Now, the attitude one, I'm going to leave for just a moment so we can talk about character. Character, now someone said as a definition, is who you are when nobody's looking. Character is that aspect of ourselves that is consistent with what we believe. In other words, we believe certain things about the Christian life, not that we never fail, we do. But if you're going to lead, people have to know you are a person of character, that you are trustworthy,  that you are committed to doing what you say—that you are going to do what you say—that your lifestyle is going to reflect what you've said you are, who you are. And that sort of thing is all part of character. But one of the most important things I really want to lay on today— because we'll address all of these others at some other time in this period of classes. 

But that idea of attitude. People in the church world and the business world have recognized that your attitude is incredibly crucial to your success as an effective  leader. I went the wrong way again, sorry. Here's Charles Swindoll. Great Christian leader has led a couple of different very large churches here in the United States, was president of Dallas Seminary in  Dallas, Texas, for several years. He wrote this toward the end of his ministry. 

He said, “The longer I live, the more I realized the impact of attitude on life. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, a church or a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past, nor can we change the fact that people act in a certain way. We  also cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. Cos is a business, publication and think tank, and they did a report on American business some years ago, and they had interviewed fortune 500 business leaders, and 94% of those business leaders attributed their success more to attitude than any other basic ingredient. Another group, the Robert Half International Group, did a survey about why people fire people in their companies and what they found: They fire 30% of the people for incompetence. In other words, they couldn't do the job. Inability to get along with others—17% of the fires were for that reason. Dishonesty or lying 12%. A negative attitude, which I interpret as complaining or whatever 10%. Lack of  motivation, 7%. Failure or refusal to follow instructions, 7%. And all other reasons 8%. Now, the thing that they pointed out in a further article when they were reporting this is that, if you get below that first one incompetence, all the rest basically have to do with attitude. How do you approach your life today? How do you approach your work today? Carnegie Institute analyzed the records of 10,000 people and concluded that 15% of success is due to technical training, the other 85% is due to personality and the primary personality trait identified by research is attitude. That's incredible, isn't it? In other words, out surveys  now of business leaders say that when they hire, they are hiring the person first, as they're doing interviews, they're now interviewing more for what is this person like than their particular skills,  because they said, Well, we can teach skills. But teaching attitude is more difficult. 

And so if you're going to be an effective leader, you've got to be somebody who has a positive attitude. Just some examples of that. Attitude can be a game changer. 

San Francisco principle. In a study that was done a few years ago, a principal in San Francisco School could call three of his teachers in and he said, you know, we decided that you are three of the most effective teachers that we have. And he said, so what we're going to do is we're going to take 90 students, the cream of the crop, the ones we've determined have the highest IQ in this school. And we're going to give them to you over this next year to see what happens as a result of putting you with them. And so over that next year, there was incredible results. That group of 90 students accomplished 20 to 30% more in their learning than those incompetent— the same grade levels within that school and within the districts and in California. And so it was an incredible success. And at the end of the year, that principal called in those three teachers and he said, Wow, what a year as he, as he recounted the great success and how rapidly these people had gone on to this a wonderful experience of success and growth. And then he said, but I have to tell you the truth. He said, You three weren't the cream of the crop, we just chose you kind of by random pulling your names out of a hat. And then they said, what, what. And then he said, And here's the further trick. He said  the 90 students that we gave you weren't the highest IQ students. They were chosen by random too. Anyway, when this study was written up, they said it was just the attitude that had changed about education. And it was their attitude that apparently caught fire with the students toward a preferable future of great accomplishment, and as a result, it happened and attitude made all the difference in those leaders. Now I don't know if that continues. I never read a follow up to that study. But attitude makes a difference. 

I put down a hotdog seller. Another story about a guy who had a hotdog stand in a big city and his business was going great. And so he decided to order another hotdog stand and he  was going to hire somebody to operate a second hotdog stand in that same downtown area, ordered more buns, more hotdogs, all the stuff to go with them and was ready to go. And then his son came home on vacation from college. And his son heard about his dad's plans and Dad, there's a recession on. This is a crazy time to be hiring more stuff and paying it out and starting another whole hotdog stand. It's the  wrong time to do that. And as a result, the man started having second thoughts and he said, You know, maybe you're right he canceled his order for the new stand and he canceled the order for the increased stuff. And after a while, he noticed the slight down tick in business and so he quit going out quite so often, and pretty soon he went bankrupt. Now that's on the negative side. His attitude had been affected by his college student son. And his son said there is no preferable future there. And as a result, failure.

The four minute mile. The four minute mile was considered an impossibility for somebody to run a mile in under four minutes. In fact, the ancient Greeks used to try a variety of techniques. In other words, they had their athletes drinking tiger’s milk thinking maybe that would make them faster. And one group had a group of lions chasing the runners thinking that would make them faster and they'd break a four minute mile. And others tried a variety of things, supplements, as the ages went through for 1000 plus years, it was the considered opinion of mankind that you could not run a four minute mile. The bone structure was just too heavy on human beings, the musculature was just not capable of accomplishing that feat. And then Robert Bannister ran a less than four minute mile. Now, that was incredible.  What was more incredible is that one year later, 37 people had run a mile in less than four minutes. One year after that more than 3300 people had run in the world, a mile in under four minutes. What happened there? What happened was simply an attitude that had changed. Now, think about that in your church setting. You know, where do you function on feelings versus attitude, people with emotional issues are 144% more likely to have automobile accidents. I know that from experience during a stressful time in my life, I had a psychiatrist friend tell me that I had to watch out because I was in danger of falling or being in an accident because you're distracted and you can't think clearly. And sure enough, I had two very close calls during that next month that were my fault, as I barely missed hitting somebody broadside with my car because I was running a red light that I just didn't see. Another time when I turn right out in front of a semi. My attitude had gotten to be a negative. But one out of every five victims of fatal accidents had a quarrel within six hours before the accident. 

See, anyway, the bottom line is this statement by Arnold Palmer, a great golfer:

If you think are beaten, you are . If you think you dare not, you don’t. If you'd like to win, but think you can’t, it’s almost certain you won't. Life’s battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can. 

And so for an exercise for you, What three attitudes are negatively affecting you right now? It might be your own depression, despair. It might be your own attitude toward somebody  who's hurt you and you are nursing bitterness and hatred. It might be that you just can't believe that a future that has been dreamed could be possible. One of the three in this process of changing is identify the problem feelings, identify the problem behavior. In other words, how do the feelings live themselves out in your life, like the hotdog stand owner, that you're doing less because you think less is going to be returned? Identify the problem thinking. Identify right thinking, what's the right thinking? And make a public commitment to right thinking, and then develop a plan for right thinking, including accountability. 

Now a couple of things there, and you'll hear me say this often during this class. This requires you to be in relationship with people. Sometimes in my culture, a good counselor can help you work through some  of these issues. But a close friend can serve that purpose as well for you, somebody who will be honest with you about your attitudes and can hold you accountable to say how are you doing with that attitude?  Is it is it changing? How are you doing with that problem that you identified? What's happening with this thing that was taking all of your focus in life? How can you change that? 

Bottom line, Walt Emerson, great American author: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. 

Yeah, what lies within us is the Holy Spirit, right? And therefore great things can happen. But the effective leader and the one who makes things happen with God's help and His power are the ones who have the right attitude. Thank you. I’ll see you next time.