Video Transcript: Final Reflections on the Leader

Welcome back to learning to lead. This week, I'm going to do something that wasn't really in  the plan originally. But as we've been talking about the leader over these last 10 weeks, or 10 sessions, it's been a growing list in my mind and heart about things that I wanted to share,  but didn't quite fit into the topic. And so you'll notice that the title of this session is simply  final reflections on the leader, and what does it mean for you to be a leader, we've looked a  lot of different things about who you are as a leader, and what you are as a leader, and the  tasks of the leader and those sorts of things. But today, we're just just want to just some  random thoughts. And so nothing really all that organized, but things that are true to me, and  are on my heart as a leader. So just a reminder, leaders engage culture. And they do that, to  engage a vision for the future, a preferred future, and then they give the impetus to the  planning, and the prayer that will lead the organization forward. Now, first thing I want to talk  about is maybe best illustrated in the Johari, window Johari Window was, was developed back  in 1955 by two researchers, sociologists, psychologists, a man named Joe and a man named  named Harrington. And so they named it after their first two names Johari. And it's a process  by which you understand a little bit about who you are and how you present yourself. And so  what happens when you fill out the survey from the Johari Window, is that there's a whole  bunch of adjectives that describe who you are, and you check the ones that you think  describe who you are. And then your friends or peers or co workers are given that same list.  And they say which, which adjectives describe this person. And so you check, they check  those. And then they put all that together in a creative way. And they come out with Johari  Window, and you'll notice there's four segments, on the top is the self. And what you are what you know, these are things you put down, and you know them about yourself. So you've  identified them as yourself. But then on the right hand side, you say there's, there's parts of  you that are blind. In other words, you don't see some parts of yourself and those come out in some cases and what the other people indicate as true of you. For instance, you may not see  a shyness in you, and yet, your co workers your peers, they see that and so they indicate that on their questionnaire or you may, you may present some arrogance, and you don't see that  your mind is blind to it, your self denial, whatever. And so they identify it or you don't see  yourself as as really presenting yourself forcefully to people, and yet they do. And so, that top part is, what do you know about yourself, there's the known, and the open part on the left  hand side on the top. And that's what they know, and you know about yourself. And then  there's those parts that you don't know on the right hand side. Now, you look on the other  side, there are some things you don't let other people know. And that's what's called Secret.  And in order to take those secrets away, there has to be disclosure, but there are certain  things that you know about yourself, but you don't let other people know. And then on the  right hand side is unknown, there are things that you don't know about yourself. And they  don't know because you don't let them know. And those are the hidden parts of yourself. Now, the whole theory behind this is the reason I bring it up is simply this. These two things, what  you know about yourself, and what you present to others can get out of balance. And as a  leader, that can be a tremendously draining time for you, and can be a disastrous time for  you. years ago, I went to a counselor, and I was there for some depression, I'd been working  way too hard. And there were a variety of things in my life that were just not not integrated.  And so I went to try to get some clarity on all of that. And I remember at one point, he had  this big pad of paper in his office, and he drew a kind of a stick man much like the large one  there. And, and he said, You know what, this, this is what you present to people. And then he  drew a littler one inside and he said, and this is who you really are. And he said, one of your  problems is that the outside what you're presenting to people is getting too big for the little  one, the little one to hold up. Now, this can happen to you because you are a leader. People  are going to accord to you or or project on you knowledge that you don't really possess.  They're going to believe that you're wiser than you really are. They're going to believe that  you've got skill that you You don't really have, they're gonna picture you as far more spiritual  than you really are. They're gonna picture as a person of great character when you know,  down deep, you've got character flaws, and you've been keeping those in the hidden part of  the Johari Window. And the bigger you get out of proportion to what people see and present,  compared to the person you really are, the more likely there's going to be a disaster coming 

down the road. Now, what does that look like? Well, it looks like a failure in one way, shape or  form, what it looks like. But it happens. And it happens because we let it happen. Now, people naturally are looking for heroes in our world today. And we we do this with heroes in a variety  of times. You know, movie stars are always thought to be smarter and wiser and more  

knowledgeable than what they really are. In fact, several years ago, there was a hearing on  Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives, because our government here in the States was  concerned about the fact that family farms were disappearing, big, big corporations were  taking over farms and melding them in the family farm is dying out. And so should they create some laws about that? Should they protect the family farm in some way, shape or form, well  two of the people they asked to testify, were Jane Fonda. And Jodie Foster, two a well known  actresses here in the United States, now what possible contribution could they make to a  discussion about the family farm, well they were asked to testify because they had played the wives of farmers in movies. Our culture creates heroes. And we believe those heroes are  bigger than they really are wiser than they really are. And people are going to do that to you  if you're a leader. And the only way you can fight that is to be revealing of yourself.  Transparency, to a degree. Now, I don't mean that. This means you should every ache and  pain you've got you should share with people and come on Sunday morning and worship  services, and I got such a headache this morning. I don't. And that's not what I'm talking  about. But that you don't allow people to put you up on that pedestal. And you identify more  with the broken people, a broken person that you really are. And so you can be honest about  the fact that times may be difficult for some people, because they want you to be a hero. But  to be honest, and be able to say that sometimes, you pray and you're just not sure how God is answering that sometimes you really don't understand this part of Scripture, as you read it.  And parts of Scripture that come to mind. To be transparent is going to be very important in  your world as a leader. And so just want to encourage you, that's just one thought that came  to me as I was thinking about things I hadn't yet covered. So take that for what, what it  means for you. Second little lesson is to focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses that  put up a quote there by Peter Drucker, who is a management expert here in the United  States. When you focus on your strengths, you make your weaknesses irrelevant. Now, not  too long ago, when I started studying studying leadership, they talked about the fact that if  there are staff within your company, or your business or your church, you should do an  evaluation with them that will help them perform more effectively. And usually, part of that  evaluation had two questions, what are your strengths? And what are you doing to live out  those strengths? And number two, what are your weaknesses? Or what are you doing to grow  out of your weaknesses, and so you would identify things there like I'm not very organized. So you know, this year, I'm going to take a class on organization and management and hopefully  that will help me do that better. Or I'm not a very good communicator. And so what I'm going  to do is I'm going to just spend a whole lot more time this year practicing my  communications, I want to take a class at the local community college or the local, whatever  it is, and I hope that's going to improve my ability to communicate etc sees you try to grow  your weaknesses. Now, studies have been done over and over again Drucker is referring to  one of those as he puts this on his list, and he says you should focus on your strengths.  Marcus Buckingham is another another researcher from England who beats this drum over  and over again is to focus on your strengths. Now what is the strength, four signs of a  strength success when you do it, you feel effective. People tell you that you have a gift for  this activity, or you earn prizes or recognition for the activity. instinct before you do it, you  actively look forward to it. You find yourself volunteering for this activity. This activity is a  positive gut reaction for you, or growth while you're doing it. You feel inquisitive? In Focus,  you find yourself thinking about this activity, and you can't wait to learn more or needs after  you've done it you feel fulfilled and authentic, it's fun to think back about doing this activity  and doing this activity is one of your greatest satisfactions you notice a source is Marcus  Buckingham in a book Go Put Your Strengths to Work. This isn't to say you ignore your  weaknesses. What it means is that you find people to compensate for your weaknesses,  people who are strong where you were weak, you cannot do it all. And so you're going to need other people in your life. Just share to fundraisers early in ministry, I was asked to do a 

fundraiser for a hospital here in the states that their wonderful thing, they would take children without any proven ability of the parents to pay for their treatments. And especially children  with developmental disabilities or are recovering from accidents, they would take them, they  would treat them to childhood cancer didn't matter how much it costs, they wouldn't charge  beyond what insurance would pay if they have insurance. Hospitals will cover the costs and  good cause. And I agreed to do this fundraiser. And I found myself miserable for the three  months that we're ramping up to this great day when we're going to have this Bike Festival in  a local high school. And I thought I was just overwhelmed. I was busy in ministry. But now I  was trying to long make sure I rented the school for this one, I got to get communication up  local radio station, the newspaper, I've got too long. So I tried to find communication to this  area had to go to stores, and I solicit gifts from them, I had to create entry forms an idea of  who was entered into this and who was not, oh, man, it was the day came and I was  miserable. And in fact, the only thing that redeemed that day for me is that nobody showed  up. I realized I failed. But I failed. Because I was trying to do something outside of my  strengths. I was trying to do something in management and, and details and administration.  And so after that, I began to find people whenever I agreed to do something, or saw that as  part of the vision. And so fundraiser number two happened many years later. And we had a  desire to increase our missions giving, we had had a very generous person who gave a  significant amount of money to our church. And we were to distribute that over 10 years and  supporting these kinds of missionaries. So that there was a mission, emphasis of some sort to  the church, even though the church didn't cost them a dime. Well, that gift was coming to its  end. And so we set out a goal and vision of let's double the amount that we pay over this next year, out to various missions and missionary agencies. And so we created a process of  service, and that we did all of this wonderful stuff. And in planning to double the amount that  we were giving, which was already significant, though, it wasn't a church thing. I remember  the day when we were setting this whole thing up. And the woman that I chose, as the Key  Administrator looked at me and said, Oh, don't you just love it when things come together like this? I have to laugh because I said, no I don't. That's not where that's not where jazzes me.  What jazzes me is getting the idea. And laying out the vision and communicating the vision.  See, we're not meant to be on our own. We need other people around us. And so the more  you can focus on your strengths, and you will be better for it as a leader. Check your motives.  Why did you do what you do now nobody is perfect in their motives. Nobody is perfectly clean and say I'm doing this all for the glory of Jesus that you may want to say that but down deep,  you know that some of it's for you. But sometimes there's a question, speaking with a  seasoned leader last week. And this person has been a leader for generations. He's now in his 70s. And he's just taken on leadership for a new task. And he was just reflecting says, you  know, I wonder sometimes, if I'm doing this just so that I can feel good as a leader, because  he had retired from the position he had that caused him to be a leader in a variety of ways,  raising funds giving vision. And now he's retired. He says, I wonder if I'm doing this because I  love Jesus and great, great opportunities, working with a homeless situation of homeless  people and getting them into housing and getting them educated and getting them locked  launched into new jobs and professions and training that comes with that. He's doing  wonderful work. He said, I wonder am I really doing this for God. Am I doing this because I  need this. Every once in a while it's a good thing to check your motives. So what what is the  driving force here? By doing this because I get to be in front I get to be on stage I get to be I  get to have people clap when they see me be happy when they see me. Or am I doing this?  Because I want to serve Jesus talked about that a little bit. That's fine. But I want to just  reflect on is it about you? Is it about you or is it about Jesus? That was what my friend was?  Wondering just another reflection as to allow for margin in your life. Richard Swenson is a  medical doctor and wrote a book several years ago now called Margin, which he defines this  way restoring emotional, physical, financial and time reserves to overloaded lives. That's the  subtitle of the book, he defines a margin as having breath left at the top of the staircase,  money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence. Now, what he  means by this is the fact that if you take a page, and you start writing on the page, you  always leave margins, right. In other words, if you got to come back, and you're going to use 

this speech to can write something in the margin and and add that into the speech, and if you use a computer, you've automatically got a margin set at one inch, and so that one inch is  reserved, little, little more at the top or the bottom than the sides, but you've got margin  there. Well, one of the things he noted as he looks at life now in this 21st century, is that we  tend to fill in the margins until there is no margin left. And as a result, we're exhausted, we  are just always working behind behind the eight ball as far as being people who are energetic  and moving forward. And so he says margin is making room for what really matters. Now,  we've all done this, there are times of crisis in life and in your leadership, when you you're  just gonna have to buckle down, you've got to do some things. One of the leaders I speak  with regularly as a young man who has had 22 funerals in his church in the last six months.  Now imagine that's two a week. And funerals takes so much extra energy, there's meeting  with a family, there's planning, the funeral, there's gathering the instrumentalists or  musicians that are needed, there's putting together whatever you can to help the family and  get through that situation. And then there's the emotional baggage when, when somebody,  you've got to walk with people through that death, when somebody has died, you've got to  walk through that loss with him. And he's done that 22 times. And as a result, his margin  started to get fuller and fuller and fuller and fuller, he didn't have time to enjoy his family and  kids. And yet, when we were talking so well, okay, what can you give up during this time to  create more margin in your life, he couldn't think of a thing. He could have given up preaching as pastor in the church, but do that. Or if you get a please give up leading this group. No, I  can't do that. That means direction right now. The point is, is that you're going to remain  healthy. You've got to find ways to have margin in your life so that when the crises come, they don't just overwhelm you, and put you in a depression. And man I'm talking about, I'm ready  to quit. At the end of that six months, didn't have to be that way. Create margin in your life.  Prayer is essential. Now, I've mentioned prayer before. But now I want to talk about your own  personal prayer life as a leader. I led into this when I was working on a doctoral program at  Fuller Theological Seminary in in California, Pasadena. And at that time, the Korean churches  in Southern California were growing by leaps and bounds. In fact, it seemed like you could put 10 Koreans down on a corner and you'd have a thriving church in a matter of days or weeks.  And in the class I was taking at that particular time, there was about four or five of these  young Korean men who were in that class. And so during one of the breaks, I went up to  them, and I said, Tell me the secret. Would you tell me the secret about your how do you grow the church? How is it thriving the way? You we all see these Korean churches thriving? The  man looked at me instead of answering because I'd hoped he was going to give me a program or a process to follow. And instead, he said, What's your prayer life like? Well, my prayer life  was pretty typical for an American pastor, which is about seven minutes a day at that time. I  prayed in the morning, I prayed over meals, I prayed with my wife quite regularly. But I didn't  have any sustained time of prayer, though. It's just me communicating with my father. And  they said, Well, let me tell you what my prayer life was like. And he described getting up  being in his per closet in his office at 5am. And then at 6am he met with other people of the  church leaders in the church to be praying, a Friday night they would ever prayer vigil that  would go all night from 9pm to 9am. And they would pray all night and at least one time  during the year. It was a requirement on his part. It was an expectation within that culture.  That he would go away and spend time on prayer mountain. Now in Korea, there is such a  place that is called prayer mountain, and it's a place where all booths where you can spend  time and concentrated prayer. And that's his prayer life isn't that's why we're growing so go  home and read the book of Acts. So I did. It ended up being part of my doctoral dissertation  was a study of the book of Acts and the fingerprints of God, where we saw you see God at  work in the book of Acts. But since then I've come to realize how important prayer is. Now I  put down there Acts 17. That's the story of Moses up on the mountain, you remember, they're going through the wilderness, and the Amalekites attack the Israelites. In fact, they're  attacking the stragglers at the back of this, this train of people, that's a couple of million  people along. And so instead of God, just taking care of the problem as he has before this,  God has fought for them before this all the time, right? The plagues in Egypt, the Red Sea,  being parted, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, God has always fought for them. But now, 

God takes a different tact. He says, Tell, tell Joshua to get some men and go out and fight  them. So Moses tells Joshua to do that. And Moses goes up on the hill to pray Joshua picks,  probably the best fighters he knew, even though they had no fighting experience up until this  point, and they go out to battle the Amalekites. Moses is up on the hill. We don't know why  he's up there, whether he's there so that the people of Israel can see him and be encouraged, or so that he can direct his prayers and all like saying, Oh, God, they're they're about to break through over on the right side, please protect them, protect jobs, make Joshua brave, make  those men down there brave or we don't know what why he was on the Hill, but he was on the Hill. And he was praying, he was lifting up the rod of God. Now this was a rod he had as a  shepherd when he was in Midian. And it's a rod that when he threw it down as a sign of God's  power and presence, it turned into a snake. It's a rod that he held out to invite many of the  plagues that demonstrated the power of God over all of Egypt. It's the rod that he used to  stretch out over the Red Sea and the power of God came down and parted the Red Sea. It's  that rod, the symbol of the presence of God and so he's holding it up and praying. But he gets tired and his arm start coming down. And so Aaron and Hur come and they hold up his arms.  And of course, the Israelites are victorious. And then God speaks to Abraham or Moses,  excuse me. And he says, Now, this is a good lesson time. He says, Write this down what  happened here and make sure Joshua knows. Make sure Joshua knows. Because he might  think it was him. He might think he had such a great battle plan. And amazing thing  happened that he won. Now, that's been instructive to me, because I had to realize that I've  got to be active in prayer. But not only just myself, I've got to have others enacting active in  prayer. Peter Wagner, who was a church growth expert, from years past, is to talk about  having three levels of intercession assessors that we recruit for ourselves as leaders. First  level is somebody that is intimate one or two people that you can share almost everything  with. They pray for you personally and present. And then I too, are intercessors. The second  level of intercessors are those that are close to you and willing to pray for you on a regular  basis. I sent out an email every single week, which listed my prayer concerns my  Thanksgivings things that they can praise God for where we've seen answers to prayer, but  then requests for this coming week, and then listening to my schedule for the coming week.  So that they would know when I was meeting, when I was what I was doing when I was  leading a service somewhere. And these people committed to pray for me every day. There  are like 30, some of them, those are my two and maybe I have three intercessors are just the  people who say, Would you pray for me? And they agree to do that, and they put you on their  prayer list. Prayer is essential. And the more you can recruit people praying for you, even the  Apostle Paul says, I often pray for me. It's your prayers, I'm going to be delivered because of  your prayers. What a thing for him to say that. So prayer is essential. And I could have made  that a whole lesson on its own but I tacked it in here. Anyway. So today, the lessons are to be  as transparent as you can with your people and not let them be put you on a pedestal focus  on your strengths. And not your weaknesses. Don't try to improve your weaknesses as much  as focus on your strengths and become stronger. Check your motives. Allow for margin in your life and pray and have other people praying for you. And you'll be a more effective leader.