Leadership Gold: Book Review

I have a backlog of books that I've read, but haven't reviewed, so I figured I'd jump into Leadership Gold. John Maxwell is a writing machine. He puts himself on a schedule to pump out a new book every 18 months, so there's never a lack to read from him.

Leadership Gold is one of his latest on the topic of leadership, as are many of his books. This book reminded me of another that I read from him several years ago called The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. In this one, though, he brings together his best leadership lessons and maxims from his past books and puts them into one. If he were a musician, you could call this one of his "greatest hits" albums.

As with all of his books, he has tons of stories, illustrations, and subpoints. And that is what gets a little tiresome for me: all his subpoints. There are a billion of them. You get lost in them. Let me give you an example.

Chapter three is called "Defining Moments Define Your Leadership." Sounds pretty good, and yet general enough for him to be able to talk about anything. Here's why defining moments are important according to him:

1. Defining moments shows us who we really are

2. Defining moments declare to others who we are

3. Defining moments determine who we will become

So that's one section within one chapter. He then gets into another section called "Moments That Defined Me." Under this section he has further points:

1. Some defining moments were ground breakers

2. Some defining moments were heartbreakers

3. Some defining moments were cloud breakers

4. Some defining moments were chart breakers

You would think that that would be enough for one chapter. But you'd be wrong. He then goes into another section called "Defining Your Moments." Here are his points:

1. Reflect on defining moments from the past

2. Prepare for defining moments in the future

3. Make the most of defining moments in the present

Are you seeing my point? What's the point in all these points? I really don't know. I feel like most of them are just fillers: empty space to fill up a chapter. So this kind of writing is just beginning to tire me out. All you super left-brain thinkers out there must erupt in the hallelujah chorus when you read stuff like this and see all these outlines. For me, it just tires me out. You get to the end of a chapter and have had so much information that you don't even know what you just read.

So I know it sounds like I'm resoundingly bashing this book. I'm not. There was some good stuff that made it worth the price of admission.

Here are two profound chapters that were worth it for me:

Chapter 16: People Quit People, Not Companies

This paragraph neatly summarizes the chapter:

"As leaders, we'd like to think that when people leave, it has little to do with us. But the reality is that we are often the reason. Some sources estimate that as many as 65 percent of people leave companies do so because of their managers. We may say that people quit their job or their company, but the reality is that they usually quit their leaders. The "company" doesn't do anything negative to them. People do. Sometimes coworkers cause the problems that prompt people to leave. But often the people who alienate employees are their direct supervisors."

This is significant stuff, here. He then gives some tips on how to avoid that from happening.

Chapter 23: Those Who Start the Journey with You Seldom Finish with You

"I have finally come to accept that it's okay for people to leave. People have left my teams for various reasons. I outgrew some. Some outgrew me. A few changed and wanted to go in a new direction. Some refused to change and the train had to leave them behind. This is one of the hard truths of leadership. Times change and people have to learn to move on."

This is a good book, but I think I'm going to explore some other authors more. If you prefer learning by example and through more narrative teaching, you may want to check out some books by Patrick Lencioni. He writes "leadership parables." He simply writes one big story/narrative and by the end of it you end up learning a lot without really trying to learn it.

Overcoming a Personal Reading Plateau

In this post I wrote about how I had set a goal for myself to read a book a week. Some weeks I've been hitting it. Some weeks I haven't. I think I've been averaging about 2 books a month.

As you may have noticed, though, I wrote very little in the month of June. Only about 3 posts. This was also because I wasn't doing as much reading. I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I know that I felt quite bored with the things that I was reading. I always have plenty of church growth, leadership, business-type books to read, and I think part of me was beginning to just loath those topics. I was bored. I was "over" them. It's kind of like the feeling of eating the same food over and over again. Over time you become sick of it. I feel like I could not read another John Maxwell book for a long time and be just fine. My apologies to Maxwell.

So here's what I did. I branched out to a completely different topic. I borrowed the book Freakonomics. It's a book dealing with social and economic issues. The review will be forthcoming.

But when I began to read the book, I felt like I "woke up" again. I enjoyed reading the book. I enjoyed thinking about the different issues and topics.

So I know that for my reading life to stay healthy, I have to start adding a broader variety of books: history, biographies, economics, etc. It worked for me, anyway, and I believe it will help me to keep my reading fresh.

What about you? Have you reached a similar plateau in your reading or life? What helped you break out of it?

Having a Church Service at the Mall

On my last day in Colombia, last week, we were walking through the mall and decided to grab a bite to eat. As we headed over to the food court this is what we saw.

There was a contemporary Catholic worship service going on. I happened to be walking by and snapped this picture on my iPhone. Right next to them people were busily going about their lives: chewing on hamburgers, fries, shopping for clothes. Does this seem surprising to anyone out there? To me it did.

On my return flight to Florida I happened to bring up the topic to the person sitting next to me. Apparently this is quite common down there and happens in lots of mall.

I could never imagine anything like this ever taking place in any mall in America.

Have you ever seen anything like this? What do you think it says about our culture and theirs? What are some ways that we can be as incarnational in our ministry approaches?

Developing a Corporate (or National) Culture

I recently came back from a trip to Medellin, Colombia (my wife is from there) and had the opportunity to meet lots of her old friends and family. I ate really well and generally had a good time, but one of the things I was most impressed with was the courtesy of the people.

These people are courteous. Seriously courteous.

In fact, I've never been in a place where people are more nice and courteous. Let me give you some examples. If you've ever had the opportunity to go in a taxi, whether in the US or overseas, you know the drill. You tell them where you want to go, they acknowledge with a nod and drive off, or say something like "sure" or "ok". Perhaps you've been in a place where they were nicer and greeted you in a more surprisingly nice way. But generally, I'm not surprised by the courteousness of taxi drivers.

That is until I went to Colombia. You hop inside the taxi, tell them where you want to go, and they'll usually respond with si señor, con mucho gusto, which means yes sir, it would be my pleasure. Or they'll say some derivative of that. At first I thought it was a fluke. Just one or two. But all of them are like that there. And when you arrive at your destination they are equally nice.

And it wasn't just the taxi drivers. In different restaurants that we went to, whether fast-food type or more formal sit-down type restaurants, the people exhibited such white glove courtesy that I began to feel kind of important. I thought, maybe they know that I'm not from there and so they want to impress me? Maybe the suspect that I have some money? But no, our friends there told us they treat everyone like that. And our friends there treat everyone that they come into contact the same way.

Very impressive.

But all this stuff about courtesy got me to wondering how such levels of courtesy ever got into their national system and culture to begin with? More specifically, I was wondering if the people were being conscious and purposeful in their courtesy, or if these were just idioms and phrases that have become a part of their culture and vocabulary and that, therefore, make them sound really courteous? I don't think I'd have any way of knowing, but the net result is the same: people leave with a "wow" factor.

I'm no expert in developing a corporate culture, but I've seen firsthand the difference how simply replacing vocabulary changes the entire tone of the conversation and your experience. You can add in the behavior associated with the vocabulary, but just this part by itself makes a huge difference.

On my way home this evening from a meeting I stopped by a Publix grocery store. Their motto in Publix is "Where Shopping is a Pleasure." Guess what? It is a pleasure to shop there. It's not crowded, and the employees are exceptionally friendly and helpful. I asked for where something was, and the employee personally walked me over to help me find it. After they bagged my groceries, the young man asked if he could walk the grocery cart to my car and help me load the groceries. He may not have sincerely wanted to walk the groceries out for me, but him asking if he could made me feel good and I believed that he was willing to do it.

So here's the bottom line.

In your organization or churches how do employees/volunteers interact with clients or customers? What kind of words do they use? I believe we could all do a big service by learning to replace simple words with more expressive and helpful words. Below are some examples.

Instead of answering something with just "yes," how about saying "absolutely"?

Instead of saying "no," how about adding in "no, i'm sorry we can't/are not able to"

You may not be able to help me, and the honest answer might be no, but I just feel so much better about your "no" if you at least seem sympathetic about my condition.

In every organization there are probably hundreds of phrases that should be changed or adapted to more readily meet the needs of the people you're trying to reach.

So how can you actually enforce this and make a dent towards making this part of your organizational culture? How about instituting a "naughty" jar at your leader's meetings? When someone uses one of the wrong words, they put some money in the jar. One of my own leaders gave me this idea.

So when referring to small groups, the naughty word would be dividing the group whereas the good word is multiplying. When referring to the paper you hand out at the door, the naughty word would be bulletin (as the word has generally lost its meaning and is not used outside of a church context) where as the good word would be program.

These words seem inconsequential at first, especially by themselves. But together, as a whole, when all your people are using them, they give a guest a picture of what your organization is really all about. Hopefully a picture and experience that makes them go "wow."

So what do you think? What are some ideas that you've heard about, seen, or experienced that you feel go a long way towards shaping organizational culture? What are some words that you're trying to replace towards shaping a particular culture?

The Illusion of Immediate Results

I enjoy studying behavior. That is, I enjoy understanding and learning about why people do or don't do certain things. The NYTimes just came out with an article dealing with behavior and why people start and stop blogging. So why do they start? Here's a quote from the article:

"Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door."

“I was always hoping more people would read it, and it would get a lot of comments,” Mrs. Nichols said recently by telephone, sounding a little betrayed. “Every once in a while I would see this thing on TV about some mommy blogger making $4,000 a month, and thought, ‘I would like that.’ ”

So here's the deal. I think many people stop things in their life for two main reasons. One, because the results don't line up with their expectations. And secondly, because they're under the illusion of immediate results. This is the lie that says that if you just make a really small tweak in your behavior or anything else, you'll experience exponential growth. The people cited in this article thought that once they started blogging they'd see immediate results and would be flooded with people seeing their blog and making comments. When they didn't see the readers or comments they were hoping for, the wind was taken from their sails.

I think this principle applies to just about everything in life, though: how long you'll be at that job, how long you'll keep that gym membership, how long you'll be blogging or writing, or for how long you may explore a life of spirituality.

So what can you do about it?

• Clarify your purpose in what you're doing.

I first started a blog about two years ago, but didn't have a clear purpose for the blog. Was it going to be a personal-journal type blog? Why did I want to have one? I realized that I didn't have any kind of clear purpose or direction, so I never went past one post on it. It's since been deleted.

When I began this blog, I sought to clarify why I wanted it. I sought to have really clear expectations about what I wanted to get out of it. After much thinking and processing, I realized that I needed and wanted to start a blog for one main reason: to learn. I needed a vehicle to help me process and better understand things that I'm reading and learning about. And there's the principle, of course, that if you want to learn something, you teach it to someone else. I wanted to make sure that significant ideas and principles I learn about are not lost because I couldn't find a venue to teach and process the ideas. So I decided to blog about them. It helps me to learn.

And I've never had any kind of metric for how many people I wanted to have reading the blog. I decided from the first day that if no more than a few people read the blog, I was going to be ok with that because my purpose in starting it was not to share my thoughts with the world, but to help me better process my own thoughts. It's always more fun, though, when you can dialogue and learn together with other people who leave comments. Which brings me to my second point...

• Persevere in what you're doing

I go to the gym about 2-3 times per week. And trust me, I'm not a workout fiend at all. I started in the beginning of the year (January) and I've noticed just a little big of change ( I don't workout that hard). But I have noticed enough change and growth that it excites me and challenges me to continue moving forward.

It's now been about six months since I've been blogging consistently. Are there comments on every post? Nope. But I have seen an uptick in the amount of comments that people are leaving, and I'm getting the sense that there are some regulars who do jump in and make comments and are involved in the community and learning.

But even if nobody commented at all, would I stop? Well, that would depend on the purpose of the blog. If the purpose is to create revenue through advertising, or to try to get a book deal, or to try to use it as a marketing tool, then yes, I would close it down, because it would be deemed a failure. But since my purpose is very clear that it's a tool to learn, I'm not discouraged by numbers.

So keep pushing through, and don't fall for the trap and illusion of immediate results.

What about you? Have you tried something and stopped quickly because you didn't see it working? Did you eventually see the results you were looking for?

The Reason Your Church Must Twitter: Review

Everyone has been talking about Twitter. It's everywhere. So much so that I'm starting to get a little sick of it myself, and when I hear people talk about Twitter too much, I kind of wince a little bit and want to roll my eyes. That being said, I'm going to talk about Twitter.

Allow me to give a little disclaimer as I begin, though: I am no expert. I've been using it now for about three months. I've been more into Facebook, but since everyone talked about it so much, I decided I had to jump in and see what the fuss was about.

In my research into Twitter, I came across an ebook called The Reason Your Church Must Twitter. Not wanting to get left behind, I decided to see if the book could give me some really good reasons of why I should Twitter. It gave a few.

I'll give a blow-by-blow on some of the chapters.

Chapter 1: Twitter as a Megaphone

In this chapter he describes the utility of the text messaging feature. I can create a Twitter account for my church, and send all those that are "following" a message (tweet) that they can receive via text message on their phones. So this becomes a quick and easy way to send out announcements or really important messages since most people have cell phones. He takes it a step further, though, to say that different ministries in the church can create their own accounts, and have people sign up specifically for the ministry that they're interested in hearing from.

Here are some examples of tweets you might send to those following your particular ministry or team:

Is a home group meeting in another person's house this weekend? send an update to the small group members.

Is there a leadership meeting this weekend? Send a reminder and asked people to @reply with a confirmation.

Do you need a few more volunteers for the Habitat for Humanity project? Ask for volunteers and link to an online signup form.

This does seem like a good feature to use and I could imagine using this.

Chapter 2: Twitter as a Conversation

In this chapter the author gets into how Twitter can help to build community and conversations through answering the "what are you doing?" line. If you're familiar with Facebook at all, it's the same as the status update. So through seeing what other people are doing, you can engage each other in conversation and dialogue. From my perspective, though, Facebook is much better at this than Twitter. In Facebook, someone can talk about what they're doing or share a link, and people can easily makes comments and it's easy to track the conversation on the given topic. For example, I recently posted a question I had on Facebook, and had over 30 people respond. And because all of the responses are listed, people could engage each other on their responses. On Twitter I find this to be very difficult, if not impossible. If you just want to get an answer from someone, sure, it's easy....but to actually dialogue on Twitter-much more difficult.

What is easier to do on Twitter, as noted in the chapter, is sharing information, links, and pictures. He says, "My personal favorite is Twitpic. This free service lets you share pictures directly from your cell phone camera by automatically creating a link when you upload the picture to Twitpic." This is a nice feature and I use it quite often.

Chapter 3: Twitter for Pastors

Here he makes the case that it's good for pastors to be on Twitter for the sake of transparency, which helps your people to get to know you better and to build trust. Through sharing little glimpses of your life, you help people get to know you and to relate to you better. He also states that it's good to follow people that you want to learn from and get to know better.

I definitely agree with this. I feel like Facebook and Twitter (I have my accounts synced so that I only have to update my Twitter and it automatically updates my Facebook at the same time) have helped me to connect better with my own congregations. I also follow quite a few different pastors and leaders to learn from them and get to know them better. And it's worked. Often they'll share great insights on things, or great links to websites that could be of help to other people.

Chapter 4: Setting Up Twitter In Once Minute Or Less

This is a basic walk though of how to sign up. If you're already on Twitter, you can skip this section. If you've never been on it, you may be able to find some use in this chapter.

Chapter 5: How to Tweet

Here he gets into the basics of how to send a tweet, reply, and direct message someone. Twitter does not have the most intuitive interface or commands, so this may be of good use. So he introduces some of the basic commands on how to do these things. He also gives a primer on some of the other good 4rd party apps out there for using Twitter such as TweetDeck (on your computer) or Tweetie (on your iPhone).

Chapter 6: To Follow and be Followed

Chapter 7: Making Twitter Easier

Chapter 8: Churches Using Twitter

Chapter 9: Cautions and Unexpected Bonuses

Chapter 10: Deciding on a Twitter Strategy

Chapter 11: Learning From Each Other

The rest of the chapters (6-11) were also quite basic, walking you through simple explanations of how to do things. Chapter 8 gives a listing of various pastors and churches that you might consider following, for example.

So do I think it was worth $5? Sure. The first few chapters are the most useful and giving some interesting strategies and ways of using it. But if you've been using Twitter for awhile, you probably wouldn't have read anything new at all.

Here are some other recent and good posts about why you should and shouldn't use Twitter:

www.churchcrunch.com

www.michaelhyatt.com

www.thomrainer.com

So what do you think? Are you on Twitter? Have you used it? What uses are you finding for it in your ministry or organization? In case you're wondering, you can find me on www.twitter.com/rodlie

And in case you haven't seen this video on Twitter, check it out. It's a funny and sarcastic look at Twitter:

Twouble with Twitters from Stephan Wetzl on Vimeo.

Ever Wanted to Have A Discreet and Portable Bible? Now There's One!

Thanks to the guys at ChurchCrunch for posting this. I wanted to share it here so you could see it as well. You will laugh.

Enjoy!