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I’m a big leadership nut. I love reading about it, hearing about it, studying Scripture on it and learning from everyone and anyone about it. Today our Compassion Canada exposure team had the privilege to tour the head office of Compassion in Peru. What Compassion is doing in Peru is phenomenal to say the least, but more on that in a future post.

What struck me this mroning was the testimony I heard over and over about how much pepople appreciated their supervisor and country directory, Christina.  So, when I had the opportunity to meet her, I asked her.

“Chrisina, your team loves you, the Holy Spirit is blessing you, what can you teach me about how you lead so well?

Here are three leadership learning’s from Peru:

• Teamwork – Work with people smarter than yourself and learn from them. “You cannot do enough things together”
• Love Scripture – “Ensure your team reads, studies and memorizes Scripture.
• Serve - “My role is to serve the pastors in our country and my team who serve the children”
• Yes I know I said three. I added this one for her. Live humbly and with much thankfulness
• Christina epitomizes a humble and thankful life. She is so grateful to others and her Lord Jesus Christ.

So thankful for the consistent, sanctifying, work of the Holy Spirit in my life. He never stops convicting, teaching and extending me grace.

Loving life!

Creating a healthy staff culture is something that over the past couple years has been written extensively about. Leadership, Teamwork, all play a role. Even just saying or thinking those words bring John Maxwell to mind.

The Question. – How do you effectively assess the health of your staff team?

Now, I’m a big fan of systems, and efficiency. One of my frustrations in leading teams, staff and peers has been in determining where/how I should be spending my time so that it has the biggest positive impact on the team. To add to that questions is to also determine the impact my action has on the overall staff health of the organization. I have found it much easier to determine a staff need, versus evaluating the effect addressing that need will have on my organization.

For example let’s assume an organization scored low on both these two example questions below.

Staff are satisfied with their salary and benefit packages?

AND

Staff recommend this organizations programs and services to friends and family?

If you only had time to address one issue, and yet both concerns seemed pressing, which one should become your priority.

Possible Solution

Over the past four years our church has been partnering with Best Christian Workplace Institute in helping us assess our staff health and culture. In addition to providing a great assessment tool, their biggest help to us has been in showing us which staffing questions/concerns have the biggest impact on overall staff health.

We’re still making mistakes, still learning, but are also having a lot more fun along way.

Feedback?

So, how do you do this at your organization. I’d love to hear and learn from your experience.

Loving the journey.

Judah and I had the opportunity to spend an evening together recently and all we did was talk about Star Wars, play Star Wars and watch Star Wars. The only time we didn’t do something related to Star Wars was when I wanted to watch my hockey team play out the remaining 10 minutes of the third period. (they lost)

Judah decided this was boring and declared, “I’m going to go make some fun.”

Here he is “making some fun”

I love watching my son play with his Star Wars toys. Everything is so real for him. He literally does create a preferred reality to his current one. (He didn’t like watching the Oilers lose) Like most children, he goes and “makes some fun” when there is none for him. He creates this world where he gets to live out being a hero and save the princess. Simply put he decides to choose change and then acts on it.

Why does our willingness to create a better narrative, create a better story for our lives seem so much more difficult as we get older? I know we can, I know I can, but the willingness to do so….Are you willing to go and make the change you are thinking about?

“A powerful truth is…if you know you’re not living a good story, do what a writer would do. Grab a blank piece of paper and start writing. Amazingly God has given us blank pages, our lives are blank pages that we get to write our story on. Start writing a better story.”

~Donald Miller~

There’s no better time than right now to “go make some fun”.  I love how God uses our kids to remind and teach us each and everyday.

I love being a Dad!

Do you ever have times when you get pretty down on yourself? You doubt your ability, you start to believe lies about yourself. I know I do every once in awhile. Below is what I remind myself of when it happens, and thankfully, the more I remind myself and stay in Scripture, the less it happens.

Almost a year ago I read Vicki Kuyper”s book Wonderlust. One of the chapters talked about her taking the epic hike to Machu Picchu. She felt very self conscious about her ability to keep pace with the team, she ended up always being the last one. In her effort to try and keep pace with the others, she was starting to lose strength, courage to keep going and confidence in her ability to accomplish the task.

I can’t help but compare myself to others. One of my main strength’s is competition and significance. It’s part of who I am, it helps me be great at certain things, but it also haunts me on many occasions. My focus can easily change to trying to be someone else, striving hard to do what they do. I end up doing things that don’t come naturally to me, which then of course don’t have the results I was hoping for which then cause me to doubt who I am, and ultimately & indirectly doubt who God made me.

Ouch! Did you catch that? I end up telling God, indirectly, but He hears it loud and clear, “You messed up God, I’m missing something, I’m not that good, I can’t accomplish the passions you’ve given me, so somehow you screwed up.”

I’ve come to realize there are 2 truths that I need to remind myself of when I start to believe this lie.

1. Be Patient.

If there is one thing I consistently struggle at it is patience. When it comes to my life direction and goals, my lack of patience is almost always a direct result of me comparing myself to others. My impatience, and lack of thankfulness, almost always comes when I start to compare finances, ministry reach, fame, authors who write so incredibly well, dads who are super creative, etc, etc. (whatever it may be for you)

Vicky, in her book Wonderlust finishes her Machu Picchu story by sharing that when she was about to quit the trek her guide, Manolo, walked back down to her and said, ” You have been working so hard trying to keep up with everyone else. You’ve pushed yourself to walk at their pace and not your own. Right now you need to learn the walk of the patient one. It isn’t called this because others have to be patient with you. It’s because you have to learn to be patient with yourself. It’s not about being first, it’s about enjoying the journey. It will feel slow at first, but you will keep moving forward and you will regain your strength.” I appreciate the advice Manolo.

2. You Really Can’t & Believe and have Faith That God Can Through You

Most of us know the truth that we really can’t accomplish the God given passions without God. Yet, at least for me, we still try and do it on our own. We get impatient, forge ahead and then complain when it doesn’t work out. Beth Moore (yup, I’m an interim womens Pastor too) reminded me of an interesting truth the other day. She said,(with my paraphrase) “the Israelites “sin” when they wandered in the dessert wasn’t that they didn’t believe God could do miracles. They saw Him do it every day. Mana in the morning, quail at night, water gushing out of a rock, walking across the bottom of a great sea, pillar of smoke and fire, etc, etc. Their sin was that they didn’t believe God could work through them as they entered the promised land.” They were afraid of the giants that God said they were suppose to conquer, because they didn’t believe He would and could through them.

So after I calm down, after I stop sending indirect and subtle outbursts to God, after I stop questioning His plan and purpose I’m thankfully still  left with a small voice in my head reminding me yet again of the plans and purposes He has for me. I’m also convicted and realize yet again, my need for forgiveness. So, I’m still learning to believe, have faith the He can, will and, incredibly, even wants to accomplish His plan through me. So here I sit, still working on patience, and believing in His promise to accomplish through me….how humbling

Malcolm Gladwell is by far one of my favorite authors. He recently released his new book, What the Dog Saw.

Besides being a very insightful researcher and author, he is also one of the few authors to have all four of his books on the Best Seller list. Incredible considering his first book came out over 9 years ago.

As a speaker he is just as insightful. C-Span recently did an hour long interview with him. So, if you have some time and like Gladwell, you will enjoy the interview.