Month: April 2019

Fingerprints: 5 Steps to Creating Collective Vision

Posted on April 22, 2019 by - Articles, Leading Organizations, Servant Leadership, Supervising People, Vision

Person unlocking with fingerprint scan using biometrics.

Being the husband of an awesome wife, who happens to be a forensic scientist and a former crime scene investigator, comes with advantages and disadvantages.

THE ADVANTAGE: Her research, work and stories are fascinating! To hear about the role forensic science plays in solving everyday crimes keep me on the edge of my seat.

THE DISADVANTAGE: Being married to an actual crime scene investigator means I can’t get away with ANYTHING.

I love cookie butter, probably too much, but that is beside the point. One evening, I tried to sneak an extra helping of cookie batter. The next day, my wife asked me, “Did you eat cookie batter?“ When I hesitated, she said, ‘You don’t have to answer because I already know. I see your cookie batter fingerprint on the refrigerator!” See, I can’t get away with ANYTHING!

The Fingerprint

Following this event, we had an interesting discussion about the nature of a fingerprint. There are two attributes of a fingerprint I learned from our conversation:

1. A fingerprint pattern NEVER CHANGES: Although they grow as your hand becomes larger, the basic pattern never changes.

2. No two patterns are the same: Even with identical twins, although they share the same parents, and sometimes the same face, their fingerprints identify their individuality.

Fingerprints are special. They can identify a person’s unique contribution to an event. In the world of crime scenes, a fingerprint can identify a perpetrator. But what about in the world of team building, vision and execution?

If people can see their fingerprints in the process, they can move from doers of the vision to OWNERS of the vision.

Create Collective Vision: The 5 Steps

If people can see their fingerprints in the process, they can move from doers of the vision to OWNERS the Vision.

While you may not go faster with Collective Vision, you will go further, and ultimately accomplish more because there are more people working through it. Here are 5 steps when considering creating a culture where collective vision can thrive.

Step 1: Make “who lists”
Who are the culture and vision carriers on your team? Who on your team has influence (even if they don’t have formal authority)? Whose perspective is different from yours? Who challenges you? Think about these questions and choose a few people to expand what you created. Whether you are leading staff or volunteers, you can create this type of process.

Step 2: Create space
Cast a big vision and allow it to be expanded. Create a forum to receive feedback. From your “Who list,” determine which team members gain energy around certain aspects of the vision. They could be key carriers.

Step 3: Add the fingerprint
This is a crucial step. What you learned in step 2, put into action. Stretch the vision so that your key team member’s fingerprints are on it even if it means removing some of your own. This is how your team will see their unique contribution. Don’t just throw ideas on the board and not take them into consideration. If there are ideas that don’t make it, be prepared to explain why.

Step 4: Delegate responsibility over assignments
Give your team ownership of the strategy not just the task. Let them know that part of being a vision creator is to think through how to bring the idea to fruition. Give ownership of the process and the problems. Remember, owners figure it out.

Step 5: Develop a cadence of accountability
Figure out a rhythm to keep the project on track. Be encouraging and hold the team to what they promised. Remember, they are owners.

Collective Vision is a pathway to vision ownership. Having the opportunity to speak into the process and see their unique contribution will give your team a new fire when problems come. When you own the vision, you don’t fold in tough times, you fight.

When you own the vision, you don’t fold in tough times, you fight.

Collective Vision allows the vision to go beyond its original leader because the vision is never just about that leader. It is about the people who take the time to create something significant. Their fingerprints will be the evidence that they played a part in it.

Create the vision, add the fingerprints, let your team fly and be surprised by the results.

The Summit Unites Our City

Posted on April 22, 2019 by - Because of the GLS, Business, Church, City Movement, Conflict Management, Diversity, Government, Healthcare, Leading Others, North America, Stories, The Global Leadership Summit

Unity hands

I started attending The Global Leadership Summit in Sumter, South Carolina back in 2016, after receiving an invitation from the chief operating officer at the hospital where I work. As a result, I’ve gained valuable insight on the steps I need to take to be a better leader.

Dr. Smith awakened the wonder in the hearts and minds of our community

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s making our organization better too. Prisma Health is the largest not-for-profit health organization in South Carolina, serving more than 1.2 million patients annually, with more than 30,000 team members. The impact the Summit has had on our local hospital leadership team is changing the way we serve our patients in Sumter.

 

Clay Smith Head ShotHonestly, the credit should go to the Rev. Dr. Clay Smith from Alice Drive Baptist Church, who decided to host the GLS and use it as a platform of unity, inviting leaders from all walks of life and industries, including our hospital, re-stating the popular Summit saying, “Everyone wins when a leader gets better.” Dr. Smith awakened the wonder in the hearts and minds of our community to see what could happen if leaders at all levels from all across the community could come together to learn and grow. As a result, the Summit is uniting people and changing our city!

A vision to unite my city

At Bible Fellowship I try to bring our focus toward reaching the community where we live. I have really developed a heart for our community, and a passion for unity.

A few years ago, I served as chairman of our community’s annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast, held in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer.

Prayer BreakfastOne of the things I noticed was that our community is still significantly divided by race and economics. We have two rather large churches in town—one predominantly white, one predominantly black—that have hosted the prayer breakfast every other year. If the breakfast was held at the African-American church, the event was attended mostly by African Americans. When the event was held at the “white” church, the participants were mostly whites. Don’t get me wrong, there was a mixture of people who attended from across the community regardless of the location, but the venue definitely changed the perception of the event.

The Lord gave me the vision to take the prayer breakfast to neutral ground.

The Lord gave me the vision to take the prayer breakfast to neutral ground. That way it wasn’t one church leading it over the other; it was the community coming together as a whole to pray and encourage our neighbors to continue to seek God. We were able to accomplish that goal. The event was held at our community civic center that year, and it was awesome!

Encouraged not to give up

The GLS helps me to keep fighting through the ups and downs of life and ministry.

Immediately following the 2018 GLS, I hit a low point in my life. I went for a position for a local ministry and did not get it. I had to step back and evaluate a few things, one of which was my career as a whole and what my role in ministry was, if at any.

GLS NotesI waited for God’s leading. And then God opened a door for me to preach again! My family and I took next steps to love and serve those at Bible Fellowship Church during a season of pain and grief at the loss of their former pastor. Almost 10 months later, we are still there!

It is my dream to be a part of a church body that reaches its community, not just one that gives money or resources, but actually comes alongside its neighbors and really invests in their lives. I want us to live out the words of Jesus on a daily basis. As I tell people, #LoveWell and #LeadWell—whether that’s at work or home. I have not mastered those skills, but I’m praying the Lord will connect me with like-minded people who have a servant’s heart. We can accomplish this together, with His help, and bring unity in our city.

It is my dream to be a part of a church body that reaches its community

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a very good leader. I question myself, asking, “What difference am I making?” In those moments I have to step back. I have to continue to listen. I have to push on. I have learned to celebrate the next steps people around me are taking and the questions they are asking.

Through the Summit, things are clicking. Seeds are being planted. It’s in those observations where I’ve learned that maybe God is indeed using me to make a difference for His Kingdom.

Learning together unites us

I continue to attend the GLS because I’m hearing great teaching together with my other friends who are in leadership in my community.

Make the investment to attend the Summit!

Through the Summit, things are clicking. Seeds are being planted.

If you can find a local host site nearby, you don’t have to travel, pay for a hotel, be away from your family. And why not come and learn with other leaders in your community? If you aren’t on a team that is going, go anyway! Form a team and learn together, unpack the event together and see your community changed when you are all on the same page, fighting the same battles and trying to make a difference for God and for the posterity of your community and your children’s sake.

Go. Be creative. Wonder. Step out. You never know what relationship you might make and the change(s) that may come from investing in yourself and others.

Why Company Culture is Overrated

Posted on April 18, 2019 by - Articles, Culture, Leading Others, Team Building

Group of young multiethnic creative team engaged brainstorm in small meeting while standing, sitting and talking together in modern office.

Culture matters, according to the voluminous literature on the topic, because it has three powerful contributions to make.

First, it tells you who you are at work. If you’re in Patagonia, you’d rather be surfing. You work in beautiful Oxnard, California, and your on-boarding consists of a day-long beach party where you’re gifted the CEO’s autobiography—Let y People go Surfing—and where your first meeting takes place around a campfire. It means something to say that you work for Deloitte, or for Apple or for Chick-fil-A—and this meaning says something about you, something that locates you and differentiates you—something that defines your tribe.

Second, culture has come to be how we choose to explain success. When Tesla’s stock was on the rise in the early part of 2017, it wasn’t because people were finally getting the electric cars they’d paid deposits for the year earlier—they weren’t. Rather, it was because Elon Musk had created a culture of cool, a place where you couldn’t even see the cutting edge because it was so far behind you.

Third, culture is now a watchword for where we want our company to go. Almost overnight, a big part of the job description of senior corporate leader has become to create a specific sort of culture—a culture of “performance,” or a culture of “feedback,” or a culture of “inclusion” or a culture of “innovation” to shape the direction of the company they lead by infusing it with particular traits that govern how people behave.

As a team leader, you are going to be told, repeatedly, that you must take stock of all this because you are responsible for embodying your company’s culture, and for building a team that adheres to these cultural norms.

All of which is fine, right up to the point where you start to wonder, what, precisely you are being held responsible for. Read Fortune’s list of the “Best Companies to Work For” and you’ll be struck by the fact that a very small percentage of what’s written about your company is in your job description. Having an on-site daycare facility, giving employees 20% of their time to pursue their own interests, offering large rewards for referring a new hire and building solar panels on the roof are all admirable initiatives, yet none of them are within your control. They are commitments made by others. They are off in some other place, far from the day-to-day projects and deadlines, the ongoing actions and interactions, that actually comprise your world of work.

Our overemphasis on culture leads companies to remove responsibility from where it resides–with team leaders—and instead to focus on generalities.

This is the first LIE we’ll need to expose: people care which company they work for.

Recently the ADP Research Institute conducted a 19-country study on the nature of engagement at work—what drives it, and what it drives.

1) Virtually all work is, in fact, teamwork. In companies with over 150 employees, 82% of people work on teams, and 72% work on more than one team. Even in small companies, 68% of those in small companies report working on a team and 49% say they work on more than one team.

2) We know that if you do happen to work on a team, you are twice as likely to score high on key engagement items, and this trend linking engagement to teams extends to multiple teams. In fact, the most engaged group of workers across the working world are those who work on five distinct teams.

3) Those team members who said they trusted their team leader were 12 times more likely to engage fully at work.

The good news in all of this for you, the team leader, is that what people care most about at work is within your control. You might not be able to weigh in on your company’s parental-leave policy, or of the quality of its cafeteria, but you can build a healthy team—you can set clear expectations for people, or not; you can position each person to plat to his or her strengths, or not; you can praise the team for excellent work, or not; you can help people grow their careers, or not. And you can, over time, build trust with your people, or not. Of course, the “always-on” nature of your daily work, attending to each of these is challenging, but at least they are indeed part of your daily work.

The bad news for you is that your company, most likely, looks past this. So, while you’re doing your best to create these experiences for your people, your company may not be holding your fellow team leaders accountable for doing the same on their teams. Companies almost universally miss the importance of teams.

Your role as a team leader is the most important role in any company.

Our overemphasis on culture leads companies to remove responsibility from where it resides–with team leaders—and instead to focus on generalities.

You know your company does not have a uniform culture. If there is something distinct about your company’s culture then it is immeasurable, that the total score of your company’s employee engagement survey is simply the clumping together of lots of highly varied team-level surveys, and those clumps mask what really matters. You know that when a CEO sets out to build a great company, all she can do—and it’s a lot—is to strive to build more and more teams like her company’s best teams.

Your role as a team leader is the most important role in any company.

And who your company chooses to make the team leader is the most important decision it ever makes.

You have, by far, the greatest influence on the distinctive local experience of your team. This is a weighty responsibility, but at least it’s yours.

And when you’re next looking to join a company, don’t bother asking if it has great culture. No one can tell you that in any real way.

Instead, ask what it does to build great teams.

Here is the thumbnail for Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article was excerpted from the excellent new book Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World just released by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.

Summit Attendees Donate Much Needed Medical Equipment For Their Community

Posted on April 17, 2019 by - Africa, Because of the GLS, Healthcare, Leading Others, Nonprofit, Servant Leadership, Stories, The Global Leadership Summit

Every year after The Global Leadership Summit, the host site team at Doxa Deo Church in Bloemfontein, South Africa, led by Nelius Jordan, initiates a project to motivate attendees to take what they learned and apply it in their daily lives or address a need in their community.

QuoteWith inspiration from Nthabiseng Legoete’s session in 2018, attendees were motivated to make a difference for those in need of medical equipment in their community.

The local Summit team decided to partner with an organization called Nchafatsa, which works in the medical profession. Nschafatsa wanted to start a project to link people who have unused medical supplies with those who need them. They would then renew and refurbish the equipment or supplies and make sure they get to people who need them most.

So the local Summit team decided to support and help launch this project by challenging Summit attendees to donate any medical equipment they no longer use. As a result, they donated wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, adult diapers and other devices and supplies and continue to send donations for Nchafatsa to distribute to even more people in need.

The GLS really inspires people to make a difference in their world!

GLS Update From Southeast Asia

Posted on April 16, 2019 by - Asia, News & Updates, The Global Leadership Summit

GLS attendees happy in Malaysia

Your support changes lives in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia and Nepal.

You’re making a difference in SE Asia and beyond!

All these countries and areas were represented as Summit team leaders from these 11 SE Asian locations gathered in Singapore last week for encouragement, equipping and training. I was grateful for the opportunity to participate in this experience personally and share our gratitude for these leaders who are expanding the GLS in key parts of Asia.

As the 2018-19 international Summit season moves toward conclusion, our global partners have produced more than 700 Global Leadership Summit events with close to 250,000 people attending. As our Asia leaders reported in, they shared story after story of transformation, growth and impact.

Part of the training is to help each country define clarity on why they engage in the Summit in their country and focus on the expected result. One of the days I sat at the table with the country leaders from Indonesia, Philippines and Myanmar. As we talked through why they do the Summit, these partners expressed their commitments, hopes and dreams:

As we talked through why they do the Summit, these partners expressed their commitments, hopes and dreams.

Indonesia: To raise value-driven leaders to influence society and fight social issues in the nation.

Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world, and the largest Muslim population on the globe. Ronny shared how his team has a passion to help pastors stay focused and value-driven in this kind of environment, where there can be an influence for Jesus Christ, and offer an invitation into understanding God as a father who is personal and intimate.

Philippines: To influence change towards a unified, transformed, and progressive Philippines.

The Philippines is a collection of 7,000 islands divided into 12 regions. The majority of the population resides on 3 major islands. Sohl described how the GLS is helping to bring unity to this country and also positive change – especially in light of much corruption that is part of both the culture and the society.

Myanmar: To transform the younger people into leaders to transform the country.

Myanmar is a country that has lived the last 60 years under military rule. In this context, leadership tells you what to do, and if you step out of line, it can be painful, and even fatal. Giving courage to young people to begin to step up and lead is counter-cultural, and part of the vision that Lian is bringing to many cities and communities. A church planter who catalyzed a network of 50 new churches in Myanmar, Lian finds hope and shares that hope through the content and experience of the Summit in his country.
As we prayed for each other, encouraged one another, and brought clarity to the vision God has for their country, each country leader described the growth they are trusting God for in the GLS by 2020:

  • Indonesia – 12 GLS sites
  • Philippines – 15 GLS sites
  • Myanmar – 7 GLS sites

Each of these goals requires a significant work of the Holy Spirit in each country and through each of these leaders and their teams to see it realized. They also include ongoing resourcing, support, and help that we can provide through our International GLS team, and through you – leaders of influence and faith who see this vision and are willing to be used by God to see it expanded and multiplied.

Thank you for your continued partnership that touches and transforms lives.

As I listened to their accounts of Summits that are growing and reaching more and more people and having greater and greater impact in countries that daily face oppression, economic struggle, and distress, I reflected on so many of you who generously give and pray to support this training, to offer environments of encouragement, and to provide inspiration and hope that is founded on faith. Thank you for your continued partnership that touches and transforms lives.

You’re making a difference in SE Asia and beyond! You are blessing to Ronny, Sohl, and Lian, and to thousands of influencers who are experiencing the power of God working through a Global Leadership Summit event, birthing grander visions and building courage in the hearts of emerging and established leaders around the world.

Temptation of Perfection

Posted on April 16, 2019 by - Articles, Leading Yourself, Relationship with God, Resilience

Jo Saxton is a 2019 Global Leadership Summit Speaker.

This article is a part of the GLS19 Faculty Spotlight series where we feature fresh, actionable and inspiring leadership content from this year’s Summit speakers.

 

What a privilege it is to welcome Jo Saxton to the Summit stage. She is the founder of  Ezer Collective, an initiative that equips and invests in women leaders. This interview, originally published by A Sista’s Journey, tells her story and some of the key leadership themes in her work.

Q: Jo, you have quite an interesting story. You speak all over the country and have become known as the “Nigerian Brit,” can you share a little bit about that story, and how your name changed from Modupe to Jo?

Jo Saxton: I call myself a Nigerian Brit because both play a fundamental role in my identity. I’m a Yoruba Nigerian, and my parents moved to England in the 1960’s. Many of my formative years were spent growing up among a wide Nigerian community in London. Nigerian food, Nigerian sounds, Nigerian cultural practices. That was my norm.

Nonetheless, London is my hometown; and it’s a diverse and cosmopolitan city. It’s where I grew up, made friends, had crushes on local boys; I walked its streets and loved it. I feel such a visceral connection to London because it’s shaped me too. Still the London I grew up in is eclectic, much more so than the pictures of England captured in shows like Downton Abbey or The Crown.

As for my names–they never changed. Modupe and Jo (short for Joannah) are both my given names (among others!). In my family it was common to be referred to by both names, and there was never any confusion. Modupe conveys gratitude meaning “I give thanks” and Joannah means “God is Gracious.” (I share this name with one of the women who travelled with Jesus and his disciples in Luke 8 and beyond, so I’ve never considered it an English or European name.) I believe our words are powerful. Names carry weight in Nigerian culture, so I love what both names mean and speak over my life. I’d always thought that Modupe would be the hardest name to pronounce, but when I moved to the US and wrote Joannah, it was often pronounced Jonah! Jonah is a great name–but it’s simply not mine!

Q: In your book The Dream of You, you write about resisting the temptation of perfectionism. At one point you even give a breakup letter to overachievement. At the same time, people will look at your life and say, “Looks like she’s achieving a lot!” How do you reconcile this self-awareness with the purpose or calling God has given you?

Saxton: To me overachievement is not solely about what we do, or even accomplish. It’s about the need to consistently over perform and do way more than needed in order to gain the approval or recognition of others–or to fight being overlooked and disapproved of by others. This is sometimes due to the systems we live under–it’s about more than need, it’s a necessity.

Like every person of color, I know and grew up with “The Talk.” In the early 1980’s where I was growing up, Nigerians and other Africans were sometimes seen as slow, inadequate, incapable–less than. The “Talk” I was given was (in summary): in order to have a chance to succeed in society, I needed to be at least three times as good as my peers because I’m black and a woman. And since discrimination was a consistent reality, the talk became my mantra.

Perfectionism and overachievement can be toxic relationships, addictive when they’ve worked in the past.

I wasn’t trying to compete with anyone else, I was trying, fighting to not get left behind. I was trying to navigate the injustices I experienced in small forms when I got followed around grocery stores, when people talked to me slowly as if I didn’t understand, labelled me lazy because I was poor, and were surprised when I was articulate because they assumed I wouldn’t be.

That said, living in that permanent state of proving by necessity for decades takes its toll on you. On your body, on your psyche. We’re not designed to live that way. And besides, God says I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Whose report shall I believe, and what does it mean to live freely when 40 years later, damaging and frankly bigoted statements are still being said about Africans?

To be honest, I am still finding my way through and learning as I go. Perfectionism and overachievement can be toxic relationships, addictive when they’ve worked in the past. But whilst I have to admit they’ve helped me come so far, I know they can’t take me where I feel led to go.

So far, I’ve determined that I need to be unafraid and unapologetic about my worth, my value and my gifts. I’ve realized that God has more for me than proving that I’m worthy to visit someone’s else table. I don’t need to exhaust myself in pursuit of that goal, in Him I can build my own tables. And ultimately, I’m reminded that I belong to Him, so faithfulness to His call on my life is my primary definition of success. In some seasons that has looked like a lot of roles and achievements, in other seasons it has been completely hidden. I think I’ll be working out what this break up means for years to come.

Q: In your book you encourage readers with the Matthew 11:28-30 passage about taking Jesus’ yoke that is easy to bear? For many people that concept is hard to grasp, what has this scripture meant to you?

Saxton: That passage has been life giving to me. This is God’s word to me on those days when I’ve felt too much or not enough, those days when perfectionism and striving have run me into the ground. When the cultural ”oughts” and systemic ”shoulds” have worn my patience thin and emptied my hope. I’m reminded Jesus walked amongst a people who were broken by Roman occupation and oppression, stifled by the religious expectations of the day. What pressure to live with on a daily basis! Yet into that context Jesus offers a transformative invitation.

I’ve determined that I need to be unafraid and unapologetic about my worth, my value and my gifts.

I love Eugene Peterson’s reading of this text:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

It’s this line that holds me close:

Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.

I never get tired of these words. In these words, I find peace, security and an invitation to recover the life I was made for, not one the world, my brokenness or the enemy has reduced me into living. And it’s an invitation that greets me every day. And it’s my goal that every day I’ll respond to Jesus with my “Yes” and follow wherever He leads. He’s the most inspiring place to be.

This article originally appeared in A Sista’s Journey.

 

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