leading volunteers Archives - SALT Community

5 Tips To Lead Your Team Through Easter

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:59:26 +0000

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With the Easter season upon us, there is a tendency for the stress, timetables, and busyness of the season to get in the way of truly leading your team. Too much effort is put into getting tasks done, that we lose sight of the role we play as leaders to those we interact with on a daily and weekly basis. So, how do we ensure we are able to lead our teams well through Easter? While there are many traits and qualities of a great leader, I believe paying special attention to these five traits will help you lead your team well through Easter weekend.

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Communication. Communicate with your team early and often. A lack of communication showcases a lack of leadership. If you want lead your team well and get the best from them and ensure they are bought into the overall mission and vision, then you need to be sure you are communicating effectively with your team. From the senior pastor to the new volunteer, sharing the information that will affect each person on your team will help bring efficiency to your processes and operations. Take the time to listen to your team and hear their feedback. Communication is a two way street…it doesn’t just mean telling folks what to do but actively engaging your team in a conversation.

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Collaborate. One of my biggest weaknesses is being a “I’ll just do it myself” guy. I know how to do something and I know (usually) how to do it well. I know in the tech world there are so many leaders that fall into this category. You have a “team” but they’re really just button pushers and cable cleaners. Trust me, they’re longing for more than that. Your team wants to understand what you’re doing. They want the opportunity to do what you do. Don’t be threatened by this. Lead people to where they want to end up. You should always be trying to lead yourself out of a job. It will make your position stronger to the organization and give you more opportunities than you could ever dream of when you hold onto things too tightly.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”middle” css=”.vc_custom_1554999285203{border-top-width: 2px !important;border-bottom-width: 2px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;background-color: #ffffff !important;border-top-color: #ff6902 !important;border-top-style: solid !important;border-bottom-color: #ff6902 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8747″ img_size=”medium”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1555445797191{padding-right: 10px !important;}”]EXCLUSIVE BONUS:
Get a FREE download of Dr. J’s Leadership Class, Creative Leadership & the Art of Building Buy-in, from SALT Community. Click here to download[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”custom-color” letter=”3″ color=”#ffffff” background=”#ff6902″][vc_column_text]

Delegate. Do you feel overwhelmed with your to-do list before Easter? It can be a daunting task to be responsible for a team expected to perform at such a high level for one weekend. This is where you as a leader need to communicate and delegate tasks and responsibilities to those on your team. Take the effort develop new leaders on your team. This time will help ensure that excellence is the goal and outcome for Easter and beyond. People want to lead and be lead, not simply told what to do.

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Positivity. So much of leadership is rooted in attitude. Mistakes happen, things go wrong, equipment and people can miss the mark. How you handle it in the moment and beyond speaks directly to the type of leader that you are. Be sure your attitude reflects your character. Don’t pass over blame, but use mistakes as ways to learn and grow. If someone missed a cue, it’s a great opportunity to practice that cue during your next rehearsal. A positive attitude will go a long way towards seeing mistakes as growth opportunities rather than simply a problem to deal with. If you can work through mistakes and build people up, than your team will grow and thrive. No one wants to work for (or volunteer under) a leader who is always negative in how they lead.

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Decisive. The last trait in leadership is being decisive. Decision making skills are so important to leading a team and taking them through the process of Easter or anything else. As a leader it is your job to not only know what your ultimate goals are, but what choices you need to make to bring your team to those goals. Spend the time to think through the decisions that need to be made and be prepared to think on the fly.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]With these 5 leadership traits you will be able to execute a successful run of Easter services and ensure your team is working well together the entire time. Leading well makes everything run smoothly and allows you to focus on the overall goals and focus of the weekend rather than dealing with issues and frustrations.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post 5 Tips To Lead Your Team Through Easter appeared first on SALT Community.

Encourage Your Team and Elevate Accountability – Part Four

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 11:59:12 +0000

For the past few weeks we have been doing a series on the Five Foundations of Accountability. This week Dr. Johnston is focused on the foundation of Relationship. Whether you are leading a creative or volunteer team if you want to encourage your team you need to build a rapport.

You’ve probably heard the old adage “It’s not personal, it’s just business”, but when it comes to building buy-in and elevating the accountability of your team, it’s always personal because at the heart of any good working relationship lies an actual relationship.

I’m surprised how often I meet leaders who miss this. It’s not like they’re ogres or misanthropes. They just fall into the groove of their work environment and the functional transactions that happen with team members and colleagues and they lose sight of the genuine personal relationships at the core. That’s a problem because it turns out that your ability to call people to greater accountability and commitment is directly connected to the strength of your relationship with them. Where relationships are shallow or perfunctory, accountability usually is too.

This means that leaders looking to strengthen their leadership may need to take stock of their relationships more than their organizational skills. In fact, some of the very things they do to manage time, improve efficiency, and get more done have a way of diluting their relationships, distancing others, and damaging the commitment of their teams.

If you want to build buy-in and elevate the accountability of your team members, loosen your grip on efficiency just a little and cultivate their sense of an ongoing relationship with these two tactics

Create Continuity

In our daily work, we often interact with team members, but an ongoing relationship is more than simply a collection of interactions, and the difference is continuity– the sense that these encounters are part of an ongoing story. An “interaction” happens incidentally and holds your attention only temporarily. You tune in when its pertinent and tune out when it’s not. So, there’s no real connection between these moments over time, no continuity. A relationship, on the other hand, is enduring. It’s a story perpetually “in progress” and a part of your heart, if not your attention, is permanently subscribed to it. You never fully tune out because it’s always pertinent.

That kind of continuity is hard to find in organizations because the rush of activities and expectations compartmentalizes experience and reduces most relationships to utilitarian transactions. But if you want to foster accountability, you need to fight this effect. Here are three tactics that will help you boost the continuity and improve relationships in the rush of everything else.

Get Messy

Let’s face it, real relationships are seldom neat or tidy. They don’t always fit comfortably in a Day Timer and they often sidetrack or slow down To Do Lists. As a result, many leaders cultivate a sort of emotional “buffer zone” between themselves and the people they lead. They figure that some psychological distance will keep them from getting tangled up in the kind of interpersonal drama that complicates things and slows their roll.

They’re probably right– when you’re aloof, you don’t get bogged down with as many relational issues. But you also don’t create the personal connection it takes to move your team members when it matters most. That kind of self-preservation and control comes at a price, and the price is paid in influence. You can’t stay above-the-fray or emotionally removed from your people and still be the kind of leader that inspires or influences them in profound ways. There is an unbreakable reciprocity to influence that requires you to get closer, get messy, and get real if you want to make a big difference. Think of it this way: If you want to be close enough to impact your team members in meaningful ways, you’ll need to get close enough to be influenced meaningfully in return.

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

6 Obsessions of a Great Event Producer

kamil_hopeware — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 22:05:26 +0000

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Your creativity as an event producer can be classic or it can be a twist of the classic. For example, you know the old saying, “give a man a fish, he eats for today. Teach a man how to order a fish taco and he eats forever!” Wait that is not how it goes! And you would be correct. A couple of marketing gurus in Rome, New York have taking the classic proverb and changed it to their style; a recognizable creed that helps sell more fish tacos.

It is creativity that will help someone engage with your Sunday morning, a campaign launch, or the opening night of a women’s retreat. But don’t blow it with catchy new proverbs or strobe lights, stark transitions or selfish programing. Don’t miss that creativity takes time.

Producers take special care in programming a live event. Here are the 6 obsessions of a great event producer:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps style=”luv-dropcaps-square” font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”default” letter=”1″][vc_column_text]

It’s About People.

It’s about the people in the seats. Plan all you want, but you must think like an audience. When people leave the event, what emotion or feeling do you want them to leave with? It’s likely that you want them informed, entertained, moved, relieved, convicted, or better than they were. They didn’t show up to leave distraught, confused or angry.

Whether it’s a ticketed event or a Sunday morning service, people have taken the time and have a certain expectation about your event. In many ways, they are the boss.

As I left the Penn & Teller show in Las Vegas, Penn Jillett was out front, he shook my hand and thanked me for coming. He said “thanks boss!” Its true. I am his boss. If the audience doesn’t show up, he doesn’t have a job. Any show without an audience is a rehearsal. Remember its not about you, its about the people in the seats.

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Find A Connection

The next obsession of a great event producer is to find a way to connect with those people I just wrote about. Without forgetting about the big picture, find a way to grab people emotionally and connect with them on a deeper level. This starts with having a good feel of the room. To feel the room is to know the audience and the shared vision of the entire production.

As a producer, you guide the creative process to achieve that shared vision. To feel the room is art. And just like art, it takes time to master. Should you cut or dissolve your lyrics? Depends on the mood. This affects your ability to connect to emotions and find a connection.

Walk-in music sets the tone before your very first cue. Another way to create or ruin a connection is the space between your cues. Too fast of a breath between cues and you have may have stepped on audience reaction or a soft mental settling.

Lastly, find a connection through lighting as well. As producer, you can help guide your lighting director to create clean looks, even distribution and a subtle blue color during a video play. In the end, to find a connection, feel it before you cue it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps style=”luv-dropcaps-square” font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”default” letter=”3″][vc_column_text]

Visual Synergy.

Sometimes we produce media elements to support the live event. Need a fly-over of a lake for a background? Easy, grab a drone and shoot it. Don’t have a drone? Grab one online and download it. We are at a point where our pre-produced videos can have a stunning, film quality look without a massive budget. Films have synergy across all their elements. The camera shot, the music, the dialogue and the characters within those sets.

As producers, we need to find the same synergy when elements are live. Avoid shaky tripods, putting too many visual effects on your motion backgrounds, bad audio mixes, or stage that has a bunch of extra elements on it. Remove the clutter and make sure your message, across all your elements have synergy.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps style=”luv-dropcaps-square” font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”default” letter=”4″][vc_column_text]

Eliminate Distractions.

Distractions in the room will kill your connections and your mood. To be a great event producer, you need to be obsessed with eliminating distractions.

Ever noticed in Hollywood movies when a person walks up to a podium mic there’s always feedback? Why? I always hate that. I hate it for all FOH engineers in the world that aim for zero feedback. People won’t remember all the times it doesn’t feedback, they’ll only remember that one short moment that audio does feedback.

Do both screens match by color? Is there a 6-frame audio latency delay with video? How many times has someone asked you to turn down the subs? Right, I know it’s a little thing but people notice. Distractions are amplified within your environments. My biggest pet peeve is in lyrics; if a chorus repeats and the second graphic jumps slightly…somebody help me. I find so many distractions these days when I go to events, because a great producer is obsessed with eliminating them.

I produced an event in an arena last October where the tunnel to the dock was open to the arena. Some of the hired security guards were doing their job but also smoking and that smell made its way into the event. Talk about a distraction! I was distracted, so we put up some Pipe & Drape to help hold the foul odor from getting in the building. Distractions can interrupt your production and you may never recover. You can tell why this is another obsession of a great event producer.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps style=”luv-dropcaps-square” font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”default” letter=”5″][vc_column_text]

Transitions, Transitions, Transitions!

This is a very important obsession in becoming a great event producer. Examine closely how each element supports the other and intertwine each for the sake of the message. A musical number followed by a video, a video in front of a keynote speaker, a prayer that is followed by a skit. Everything was great until the prayer and skit right?

You can damage a well produced moment by not doing a proper transition. The audience won’t have it. A comedy skit after a prayer better have a smooth transition for it to work and for us to not forget the solemn prayer. Transitions are key, so obsess over them as a producer!

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I attended a New Artist Showcase at the Gospel Music Association’s annual event in 1991 and one of the bands was late. The emcee introduced the next act and no one came out. He paused and said they must be out getting a Diet Coke. Seconds later five very large, female southern gospel singers came on to stage.

Ouch! Two things to notice here. First, the group wasn’t prepared and second, the emcee embarrassed himself in front of the audience and had to apologize to the group. I can’t even remember what they sang or if they were any good. I only remember the Diet Coke comment and that was an unfortunate transition. Think before you transition, because bad transitions are engrained in people’s mind and can ruin your opportunity to hit a homerun.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][luv_dropcaps style=”luv-dropcaps-square” font_family=”Poppins” color_scheme=”default” letter=”6″][vc_column_text]

A Leader Worth Being Followed.

You are the producer-leader. Lead your crew and give leadership for your client. For some of you, that client is your pastor or your worship leader. You are there because you have a clear way of directing the crew through the creative process of the shared vision. Be confident, and be obsessed with being worth of the follow of your team. Your crew needs you to lead. Your client has hired you to lead. So lead.

A leader worth following is one who is an exceptional communicator. They don’t allow for second-guessing. They are calm during chaos. They cover and protect their crew. A leader worth following also knows how to make in-game corrections.

A great event producer needs to be the star quarterback. If the star QB sees something in the defense they don’t like, then you call an audible. Typically, you’ll have three seconds to make that audible. Call the play on headset with confidence and a calming voice, and you’ll be that QB your team is waiting to follow. You have the plan; it’s now time for you to execute that plan and have enough control over the program should you need to make an audible. Be obsessed with becoming a leader worth being followed.

[bctt tweet=”Be obsessed with becoming a leader worth being followed” username=”saltcommunity”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Every good producer has an innate set of skills that develop naturally. You could have excellent camaraderie. Communicating could be your strength. Visually seeing the end results first and guiding the creative process is a gift. You could make excellent fish tacos and what crew doesn’t like great food! A weakness is just something people admit that they are working on.

Ultimately we serve a group of people and it is embodied inside us to produce with passion for the message to be profoundly received. With these natural set of skills and the above obsessions of a great event producer, you’ll quickly become among the best in the industry.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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