leader Archives - SALT Community

Lead Up – How To Lead When You Aren’t The Leader

kamil_hopeware — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 03:00:09 +0000

Leadership isn’t about power or position, it’s about relational equity. And this doesn’t just go from the top down it should also go from the bottom up. It’s about having mutual respect. Working at the church typically means having the pastor as our boss or leader, and many of us would like to have the ear of our pastor when it comes to ideas etc. So how can we help influence that process? Luke McElroy had the opportunity to chat with Phil Bowdle, Creative Arts Pastor at Westridge Church in Atlanta, GA about this subject of Leading Up. Below is the summary of that conversation and the 4 things to remember as you seek to influence your pastor or boss and to Lead Up.

Lead Up By Having Empathy.

Ask the question to your pastor, “How can I help you?” Those 5 words can go a long way in showing your pastor that you understand the position they are in and the great responsibility that has been placed on them to lead a church. By acknowledging their position and having empathy for the burdens they have can go a long way in creating influence with your pastor and garnering their respect.

Lead Up By Asking Questions.

It goes like this, the pastor has an idea and then looks to the team to give suggestions. However, to lead up we need to listen and ask questions and be the voice of clarity and direction. That means we need to be great listeners first. Here are some “clarifying” questions we should have ready to ask.

Who is our target audience? Who are we trying to reach? ie….are we trying to reach the student or the student’s parents?
What is the problem we are trying to solve? Typically when leadership gives us a directive they have a problem they are trying to solve and we need to understand what is in their head.
What is the win? This question should be asked not just the “win” for the church but also for the person we are trying to reach. This is typically something that is overlooked so asking this question is important.

Lead Up By Being Proactive.

This point can be looked at in many different ways but for our community it typically means curation of ideas. One thing pastors don’t have a lot of…..time. So by being ready to pitch your ideas you have taking a big step in leading up. This means make it part of your weekly routine to curate ideas using Instagram, Pinterest, Evernote or whatever note-taking app you have at your disposal. By doing this you will have a plethora of ideas, at your disposal at can be BRILLIANT at a moment’s notice.

Lead Up By Being a Great Follower.

This one can be hard. We all have opinions but learning what your pastor values and following their lead can go a long way in building influence. For example, if authenticity is most important to your pastor then make sure that becomes important to you when creating and making decisions. Additionally, make sure you have a good grasp on how leadership processes ideas. Do they need some time to process the idea or do they immediately like to talk it out. Either way following their lead will go a long way in building influence.

That said, what about the difficult leader? If you have a difficult leader the best way to deal with that is to use the situation as a teaching tool. It can be as simple as showing you how “not to” lead. It can also be an opportunity for you to instill trust in leadership. By following well you may be able to influence leadership and help them shift to a better working relationship.

Lastly, with all this talk of Leading Up there are times when you have a boss or leadership that overlooks your contribution whether intentional or unintentional. You could be applying each of the 4 suggestions above but the results are less than desirable. If this is the case for you then here are a couple of suggestions that can help you move forward.

Find an outlet, something you can build (within your job). This could be an area within your job that may seem small now but you are able to nurture and grow it into something that becomes a necessary asset for your church.
If you can’t get behind the value or mission then prayer can become a powerful force. This will give you the opportunity to have a conversation with God about what is next and sometimes that means just getting out of the way. Obviously there could be a couple of outcomes whether it means other doors being opened for you or it could be a decision for you to align yourself behind the values of the pastor.

Whatever the situation, be ready and willing to listen.

Other Resources:

The old communication playbook no longer works. What worked before isn’t working anymore. It’s time to rethink communication and leverage the greatest opportunities we’ve ever had to communicate in the church.

In Rethink Communication, Phil Bowdle walks through the new reality for what attendance, engagement, and attention look like for the church. Then he offers a practical communication playbook you can use to communicate anything in your church—and actually connect. These practical tips and proven strategies will work regardless of size, staff, or budget.

BUY NOW

The post Lead Up – How To Lead When You Aren’t The Leader appeared first on SALT Community.

Top 5 Idea Labs from SALT Conference

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 23:54:31 +0000

With SALT19 conference just around the corner, our team and speakers have been working hard to create some great content and inspiration for all of you that plan to join us this fall. That said, we decided to pull some of the best Idea Lab videos from our community so that you can check them all out in one place. We hope they give you some great “ideas” and inspiration.

Pro-Presenter, A Banana, and a Makey Makey.

Creating is all about trying new things even if it seems nonsensical or silly. Sometimes our ideas turn into great “works of art” and other times our creations are just a hot mess. Check out this fun demo that will give you some technical inspiration and possibly amaze your “techie” friends.

Volunteer Recruitment.

I see this topic come up on so many facebook pages. It is a topic that spans all areas of creative ministry….how to get more volunteers, how to keep volunteers, how to appreciate volunteers and the list goes on. One of our favorite speakers has written a book on the topic and has been coming to SALT for the past 3 years to teach on the topic. Here she shares her quick 3 minute version on recruiting volunteers.

Easter Stage Design.

You may not be ready for Easter right now but that doesn’t mean you can’t start “aggregating” ideas….right? Here is a little show and tell from our friend Joe Blair on how he conceptualized the story of Jesus through visual mediums at his church last year. Check out his process, inspiration, and key story elements that made this idea a reality.

Join Us At SALT19 Conference!

We want to help you grow in your creative, technical and musical ability so you can make a kingdom impact on your local community. So, we’re bringing in 50+ speakers and experts for 40+ workshops, sessions and labs so you can be more of who God made you to be.

Tickets are running out, so head over to SALT19.com for all the details and register today.

Doer Vs Leader.

Are you a leader? I would say most of us have to put on a leader hat at some point or another. You could be leading a team of 10 creatives at your church or leading one volunteer during Sunday morning worship. In either case it is good to understand the difference between doer and leader. Here SALT speaker, Dr J (as we like to call him), talks about the dynamics of both roles.

Instagram Inspiration.

Inspiration can come from many places. The easiest place to look can be done in the comfort of your own home as long as you have internet and preferably a phone. In this video SALT Speaker, Nick Rivero, shares some of his favorite Instagram accounts he looks to for inspiration.

The post Top 5 Idea Labs from SALT Conference appeared first on SALT Community.

Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part Five

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 11:59:00 +0000

For the past few weeks we have been doing a series on the Five Foundations of Accountability. This week is the last installment and the conversation is on the foundation of Follow Up. Whether you are leading a creative or volunteer team if you want to encourage your team you need to build a rapport.

Back in the 1920’s, General Electric was trying to improve the productivity of workers at its Hawthorne plant near Chicago. As part of this effort, they brought in researchers to determine if different lighting levels would result in a higher degree of engagement and production. Researchers split the plant into two groups with different lighting and periodically visited the groups to observe the productivity of the workers.

Unfortunately, after many months of observation, the data were deemed inconclusive. They affirmed that worker productivity rose episodically, but with no apparent correlation to a lighting level. It looked like the study was a flop, but then researchers noticed that the increases in productivity correlated with an entirely unexpected variable: the presence of the researchers in the plant. Workers were more productive when they were aware that someone was watching their performance.

This fact wouldn’t be so notable if it was their supervisor who was looking over their shoulder– who wouldn’t step up their game to avoid getting in trouble with their boss? But these observers weren’t anyone’s bosses. They were researchers, with no ability to reward or punish the workers. It was the observation itself that changed the equation and increased the productivity.

Today, this effect is sometimes referred to as the Hawthorne Effect. It has a variety of implications, but fundamentally it affirms that people step up and demonstrate greater accountability when they know their work will be visible to someone else. Conversely, if they feel invisible, they’re less likely to feel very accountable and won’t demonstrate high levels of commitment.

The Hawthorne Effect reminds you that if you want to build buy-in and elevate the accountability of your team, you should pay attention to your team members’ sense of visibility.

The normal routines of collaborating and communicating up and down the org chart in a busy organization often blur or even erase the identity of the people involved. They quickly feel invisible and their accountability drops. To prevent this, you need some strategies that keep people’s contributions from getting lost in the shuffle.

Shine the spotlight

When Shakespeare said that all the world is a stage and the men and women in it are merely players I think he was hitting on the same principle as the Hawthorne Studies. The image of a stage is a helpful to consider as a leader because your people will be most accountable when they feel like they’re performing on one. I don’t mean that you should put everyone on a pedestal, but you need to foster the sense that they will personally take the bow or take the heat for the things they contribute or produce. The real prospect of credit and consequences is a powerful lever that elevates the commitment and quality of your team. Your job is to shine the spotlight on them and give them the opportunity to excel.

The post Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part Five appeared first on SALT Community.

Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part Two

kamil_hopeware — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 21:59:20 +0000

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A few weeks ago Dr. Johnston shared Part One in the Five Foundations of Accountability. In this article Dr. Johnston breaks down another foundation to encourage your team…Power.

Doer to Leader

If you’re a “Leader” now, I’ll bet you were a great “Doer” in the past. In fact, it was probably your inclination to take charge and get busy that distinguished you and won you the opportunity to step up into your leadership role. Unfortunately, the same roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-it-yourself attitude that made you a great doer can make you a lousy leader because leaders and doers need to have very different postures toward power.

Great doers are known for their ability to amass and use power personally. They are distinguished by their ability to take the ball and run with it. So, they focus directly on the outcomes, amass their own power, and get busy using it. Great leaders, on the other hand, are known for their ability to share power and empower other people. They are distinguished by their ability to give the ball to someone else and help them run well. So, their impact on the outcome is indirect, and they focus on building others’ power and their inclination to use it in service of the goal.

The distinction between these two mindsets gets a little blurry in practice because most of us are both doers and leaders in the course of our role, but I’ve found that leaders who don’t at least envision their roles as different from doers’, wind up confusing and competing with the men and women they lead.

“The same roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-it-yourself attitude that made you a great Doer can make you a lousy Leader because you need to think of power very differently”

They inadvertently steal power from their team members and create dependencies instead of opportunities or limit their team’s capacity instead of expanding it. Alternatively, leaders who revise their doer dispositions and adjust their posture toward power create potent, independent contributors and teams that transcend the sum of their parts.

Here are three counterintuitive tips to help you make the shift from doer to leader, power-up your people and encourage your team:

1. Stop Doing What Needs to Be Done

When you were a doer, I bet you did some extraordinary things. When desperate times called for desperate measures you were probably the one who stayed late, came in early, or went above and beyond the call of duty. I’m sure it wasn’t all that enjoyable in the moment, but I bet you felt a certain satisfaction in doing it. You were proud to be the hero, to step up and demonstrate your commitment to the cause. Your sacrifice was a personal badge of honor. Now that you’re a leader those heroic opportunities still come around, but now they are your team members’ opportunities, not yours. If you dive in personally to fill the gap, you’re usually taking the chance away from someone else and your team members will quickly feel unnecessary, confused, frustrated or demeaned. I know you mean well– you’re trying to model the kind of initiative you’d like to see in others– but your heroism is counterproductive. The problem isn’t your aspirations; it’s your inability to trust others with the responsibility of achieving them.

To encourage your team you must move from being a doer to a leader, you need to start relying on others more, not less. So, the big challenge isn’t stepping up or stepping out yourself but calling others to make those kinds of sacrifices themselves. You’ll find that directing your team members to do something often takes more courage than doing it yourself, but if you want to empower them and elevate their accountability, you need to ask them to step up before you do. Give them the chance to be heroes; it’s their opportunity to shine.

2. Stop Answering Questions

When you’re a doer, your ability to deliver answers is what gets you noticed and sets you apart. It’s what tells people you came to play and gets you included in bigger things. However, when you’re a leader, your success doesn’t rest on how much you know as much as on how much your people know. If you are going to distinguish yourself and achieve the goals as a leader, you need other people to provide the answers, and they tend not to do this if you’re busily doing it yourself. Your people will adjust their behavior to yours, and if you are too full of answers, you will eventually discover that they are too full of questions. They will grow increasingly dependent on your choices and direction and it won’t be long before you feel like your team moves only when you do.

To maintain and encourage your team’s initiative and build their commitment, keep the power where it belongs. Stop answering questions and start asking them instead. Of course that doesn’t mean you should stop offering feedback or guidance altogether (being clueless and disengaged isn’t a great strategy for leaders or doers) but aim at spurring and shaping other people’s consideration more than articulating your own. When you ask more questions than you answer, you empower your team members to step up and find answers on their own.

3. Risk More on Other People’s Work

When you’re a doer, your credibility rests on the quality of your own work, but when you’re a leader, your reputation rests on someone else’s. Your own credibility rises or falls on the choices your team members make (or don’t make), and that’s a pretty vulnerable position to be in. It’s tempting to protect yourself and your reputation by limiting the power of your team. You might not think of it this way, but that’s what you’re doing if you delegate only the decisions that don’t matter, or you hedge your bets so that team members’ bad choices can’t really hurt you, or you constrain the options until the team is simply an extension of your own imagination, judgment and preferences. Tactics like these seem to promise some security, but they ultimately sabotage your success because they take power away from the people who need it most. In leadership, control is overrated; it limits as much as it protects. So, take a risk. Ease your insecurity by shaping the values and goals that guide team members’ use of power instead of limiting their access to it altogether.

Ultimately, the shift from doer to leader is difficult because it feels like you’re giving power away. You are, but that doesn’t make you weak. It’s a paradox that confounds all those doer dispositions. As a leader, you are weakest when you lean on your own sufficiency, and you grow stronger only when you give your power away.

The post Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part Two appeared first on SALT Community.

Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part One

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 09:59:00 +0000

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A few weeks ago Dr. Johnston shared an overview of the 5 Foundations of Accountability. In this article Dr. Johnston breaks down the foundation of Courage.

FEAR

Fear is a sneaky but debilitating force in a team. It doesn’t typically announce its presence with fireworks and fanfare; it just settles in quietly and turns people into smaller, less potent versions of themselves. In short order, communication gets warped, vulnerability disappears, negative competition rises, and the vigor and vitality of the team disappears. It’s especially damaging to creative teams because it kills innovation and the creative spirit. These are inherently risky endeavors because they involve exploring new ideas and stepping into uncharted territory. When fear takes root and people worry too much about making wrong choices or missteps, they stop making choices and taking steps altogether and that’s the end of creativity and innovation in your team.

The reason fear is so debilitating is because it doesn’t just dampen creativity and diminish people directly. It enlists them in the devolution themselves and they become the agents of their own demise. Think of it this way: when the culture of a team or the experience in it is threatening, people try to protect themselves by caring about it as little as possible. They dial-back their commitment in the interest of self-preservation and stay in “safe” but unremarkable territory. When vulnerability disappears, vital things like trust, joy, and pride leave with it and the team is doomed.

If you want to protect your team from this and lead your members to invest themselves increasingly in the mission and each other, you need to make fear Public Enemy Number One. You need to drive it out of the mix wherever it shows up and fill your people with courage instead. Courage is a Foundation of Accountability and enables people to step-up their sense of ownership and commitment.

Here are some tips for Encouraging Your Team.

1. Stop Fear at its Source.

Fear is like an infection in your team. So, treating the symptoms is only buying time. It might make the current situation more tolerable, but it won’t remove the threat or improve the long-term prognosis for your team. Instead, you need to eliminate the real cause of the fear and inoculate your team from its effects altogether. Consider these four sources of fear in organizations. Do any of them apply to you and your team?

2. Fill their sails

Fear has a disturbing way of sucking the wind out of people and projects and leaving them stalled. When you encourage and embolden them you put wind in their sails and get them moving again. I worked for a leader once that had the uncanny ability to suck the wind out of his team’s sails. Whenever things were difficult, or we doubted our ability to accomplish the mission, he was the last person in the world we wanted to see. We knew he would suck out whatever breath of hope we had left in us and leave us feeling worse than before. How do your team members see you? Are you known as a “Filler-of-Sails” or just another “Sucker”? Strive to be the kind of person that others seek out when they have doubts or find things daunting. Be the kind of leader they know will fill them up, make them feel bigger, and leave them more confident and capable than when they arrived.

3. Don’t overuse fear as a motivator.

Fear is a pretty powerful motivator. It can cause people to quickly focus their attention and increase their activity. So, it’s tempting to use it liberally in motivating a team but be careful! Fear’s ability to gain compliance and elevate activity in the short-run belies its distancing and desensitizing effect over time. You can easily find yourself trapped in a vicious-cycle where you are crippling the very things you are hoping to advance.

The post Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part One appeared first on SALT Community.