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Who or what are your decision-making canaries — those small indications that something may not be right?
How do you identify within yourself when you are making decisions or plans that are not from God? And who are people God has placed in your life who love you enough to tell you when the danger level is rising and you may be at risk of an explosive event in your planning and decision making? If you don’t have anyone right now, ask God to give you one or two people. And prepare to experience a newfound joy and deep contentment as you add “emotionally healthy” to your planning and decision-making process.
The leaders in the Friendly Forest also needed to define the values of their culture, limiting the tiger’s power lest he emerge as the unofficial leader of the community. In minimizing the severity of the threat (“probably just some misunderstanding”) and refusing to deal with the issue directly (under the guise of being reasonable), they not only left their community open to dreadful harm but also missed an opportunity to clearly define the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
What Is Culture and Team Building?
Creating an emotionally healthy culture and building a healthy team are among the primary tasks for every leader, whether that leader is a senior pastor, a para-church ministry department head, a nonprofit or a marketplace executive, a church board member, or a small group leader.
Culture is that imprecise something, the invisible presence or personality of a place that can be difficult to describe without actually experiencing it. It is often more readily felt than articulated. Perhaps the simplest and best definitions I’ve come across describe culture as “the sum-total of the learned patterns of thought and behavior” of any given group;3 and “culture is what human beings make of the world.”
How we exercise authority, conduct relationships, handle conflict, position ourselves in the community (or marketplace), and define personal and/or spiritual growth are all expressions of the culture in which we lead.
Characteristics of Emotionally Healthy Culture and Team Building
Over the years, I’ve identified four core characteristics for emotionally healthy culture and team building. When an organizational culture and team are healthy, these things are true: • Work performance and personal spiritual formation are inseparable. • The elephants in the room are acknowledged and confronted. • Time and energy are invested in the team’s personal spiritual development. • The quality of people’s marriages and singleness is foundational.
Each of the four characteristics were birthed out of many painful mistakes and years of trial and error at New Life. Each required that I move from indifference to intentionality and thoughtfulness. In the process, I felt compelled to regularly ask God for the courage to reshape our culture in specific ways and to have difficult conversations that I preferred to avoid.
Work Performance and Personal Spiritual Formation Are Inseparable
the health and growth of a person’s inner life is inseparable from work performance.
How can we expect to change the world for Christ if we ourselves are not being changed by him? In order to have any hope of dealing with immature or problematic team members, we have to focus first on our own spiritual transformation.
Personal Spiritual Development
At New Life, I always recommend that the first category listed for every leadership job description read, “Personal ...
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When we make our transformation in Christ the first priority of our leadership, we instill that value in our culture and in our teams.
disciplining ourselves to invest time, energy, and money in personal development is not a selfish indulgence, but one of the most loving things we offer to those we serve.
Team Member Spiritual Development
Once we invest in and model the integration of work performance and personal spiritual formation, then we can intentionally and prayerfully dedicate ourselves to add...
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The purpose of the Ladder of Integrity is to help people discover what is going on inside them — to discern their values and assert themselves — in a respectful, non-blaming way.
Over the next six weeks, Phil spent a great deal of time reflecting on and then writing out his answers to the sentence starters on each rung of the ladder. He then practiced his responses in several meetings with Geri and me. Slowly, he developed confidence in his ability to clearly and honestly assert himself with Myrna. At our conference, in front of three hundred pastors and leaders, we invited Myrna to join us on the platform. Phil then summarized his ladder statements with her in about five minutes. Here is what he said: Myrna, thank you for being willing to let me share something
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The key factor here is that you are thoughtful and prayerful about each member of your team. Like us, they lead out of their unique personhood, out of who they are. Just as we cannot give what we do not possess — regardless of gifts and experience — neither can they.
The Elephants in the Room Are Acknowledged and Confronted
Out of our commitment to rid New Life of unwanted elephants and create a new culture, Geri and I developed practical skills for our leadership and church over a sixteen-year period. The formula was simple: New skills + new language + intentional follow-up = transformed community.
Time and Energy Are Invested in the Team’s Personal Spiritual Development
Like Jesus, we need a two-level focus — the overall leadership of the masses and the maturing of our team. If we are the senior leader of a church, ministry, or other large organization, we must identify our “core thirty” team. If we lead a smaller team within an organization or ministry, we must identify the key persons on our team and devote ourselves to investing in them.
Although we have not formally done the Natural Church Development process at New Life, we do intentionally focus on our core thirty to forty staff, elders, ministry, and key small group leaders to integrate the principles you are reading in this book. In this way, the culture we seek to create spills out to the entire church.
The Quality of People’s Marriages and Singleness Is Foundational
EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CULTURE AND TEAM BUILDING 1. Work and personal formation are inseparable. 2. Elephants in the room are acknowledged and confronted. 3. Time and energy are invested. 4. The quality of people’s marriages and singleness is foundational.
At New Life, one of the first questions we encourage leaders to ask their team members in one-on-one supervisory meetings is about their marriage or singleness. It offers an X-ray into the health and quality of their lives and leadership.
Ask the Four Questions
Use the following questions (based on the four inner life foundations from part 1) to reflect on your experiences and the state of your leadership when it comes to emotionally healthy culture and team building. You may also adapt or develop these questions as a starting place to begin discussing culture and team building with your team. • Face Your Shadow. How am I growing in my awareness of my shadow so that it does not adversely affect the culture I am seeking to build with my team? When a recent situation with my team triggered an old automatic response, what might have calmed me down to
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CHAPTER 8 POWER AND WISE BOUNDARIES
The good news is that no matter where we are in our leadership journey, we can learn to steward power well and to set wise boundaries.
What Is “Christian” Power? The most elegantly simple description of power I know is this: power is the capacity to influence. As author Richard Gula writes: [Power] is what enables us to make things happen or not. In this sense, everyone has power, but we do not all have it to the same degree. Power as influence is always relative to our resources. One of the most important self-examinations we can do is to name our sources of power, for we are most at risk of ethical misconduct when we minimize or ignore our power.1
So let me say it again. We all have power. Pastors, staff leaders, ministry directors, board members, small group leaders, long-term members, donors, parents, musicians in the worship band — we all have power. The problem is that we do not understand where that power comes from, nor do we understand how to exercise it responsibly. Our understanding of power is incomplete and narrow. This is true for leaders who are power hungry and for those who avoid exercising power.
In order to really understand how we exercise power and influence others, we need to be clear about where that power comes from. Every leader needs to be aware of the six primary sources of power.3 Positional power. This is the easiest type of power to recognize because it’s the power that comes with a position or a title. We are chosen for a specific role, such as pastor, director, board member, small group leader, chief financial officer, or worship pastor. This position provides a platform for influencing others. Personal power. Personal power is anchored in what we do with the unique
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We must learn what it means to use our power and then how to establish wise and healthy boundaries in our relationships with others.
Characteristics of Emotionally Healthy Power and Wise Boundaries A good test of a person’s character is how they deal with adversity. But the best test of a leader’s character is how they deal with power. If we want to use our power well as Christ-followers, there are three things we must do: • Identify and inventory our power • Carefully steward our power so it comes under others • Acknowledge and monitor dual relationships
We Identify and Inventory Our Power
by “inventory,” I mean we not only think about our power, we ponder it and own
Positional power. What formal positions of influence has God entrusted to you? For example, small group leader, pastor, spouse of a leader, executive director, community organizer, CEO or CFO, greeter, teacher, board member, team leader, parent, etc. What privileges and opportunities does this position open up for you? Personal power. What unique gifts, skills, and assets has God given you? Consider your experiences, education, competencies, natural talents, or other abilities. How has God uniquely crafted your personality in a way that contributes to your ability to influence people? Think of
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Before continuing, take a few moments to read back over your responses. What stands out to you about the nature of your power and the people with whom you have influence? For a few minutes, invite God to speak to you about your inventory. Thank him for giving you the opportunity to influence others in his name. Ask for grace to steward your power well so that your life and leadership might be a gift to those you serve, enabling them “to come more fully alive and flourish.”7
We Carefully Steward Our Power so It Comes under Others
Entitled leaders act as if the world revolves around them. Their thinking goes something like this: I’ve been blessed. I have gifts and influence. I have worked hard and deserve to be treated well. This is what I refer to as “power over” others leadership.
While the world practices a “power over” strategy characterized by dominance and win-lose competitiveness, Jesus taught a “power under” strategy characterized by humility and sacrificial service. In the world, says Jesus, leaders throw their weight around, “[but it is] not so with you. . . . Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42 – 43).
The church belongs to God, not to us. We must never forget that the power we exercise belongs to him. Our power is given to us to come under people for their good, for them to flourish, not so we will look good.
One of the ways we know we are intentionally using our power to come under people is when we do something difficult and hard for us because it will benefit someone.
Perhaps the best test I know for alerting me that I have strayed from a healthy use of power is when I resent people treating me like the servant I claim to be.
Ten Principles for Exercising Power and Wise Boundaries 1. Do an honest inventory of the power God has granted you. To be faithful, we need to be profoundly aware of the sources of power God has granted us. We are at risk of using power poorly if we ignore or minimize the extent of our power. 2. Meet with a mature spiritual companion when you find yourself triggered. You can expect unresolved family-of-origin dynamics to reassert themselves anytime you have responsibility and power. The workplace and church are key places where our triggers and hot buttons will emerge. 3. Enlist wise counsel
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