Do You Make this Critical Leadership Mistake?

“I don’t care if people like me, as long as they respect me!”

This quote has bounced around the workforce to the point of cliché.  On the surface, the idea seems solid: If you spend all your time worrying about whether or not your followers like you, you will be paralyzed for fear of making an unpopular decision.  No one respects an indecisive leader.

Photo credit: thedailyman.org

Have you ever said those words?  If so, I challenge you to take a quick look inside your own heart.  Are you using that phrase merely as an excuse to disregard the ideas, opinions and feelings of those you lead?

Sometimes a leader has to make the tough decisions and forsake temporarily being liked for the overall good of the mission... still, there is a line between leading with authority and being authoritarian.

Hopefully, you are lucky enough to have someone on your team who is willing to call you out, in private, on your mistakes.  A leader held accountable for their leadership style is truly blessed.  Whether or not you have that, take time for personal reflection and hold yourself accountable for your actions and decisions.

Have you ever had to make a leadership decision that rubbed people the wrong way and cost you some friends?  Looking back, was it in the interest of the mission, or in the interest of your own personal agenda?  In retrospect, could you have approached your decision differently?

Are You Truly a “Practicing Christian”?

Photo credit: DougHammack.com

“I’m a practicing Christian.”

I’ve heard this particular phrase tossed around more than I care to remember.  It usually comes with a hefty dose of superiority, as in, “I’m not just a Christian-in-name… no, I’m a practicing Christian!”

BARF!

Honestly, that is about as off-putting as what Jon Acuff calls the ‘Jesus Juke.’  They may as well say, “Yes, you are Christian… but I’m Christianier!”  How truly Pharisee of them.

If someone wants to practice Christianity, they need only practice letting their faith, love, and works all naturally shine before the world.

Live, love, and pray in such a way that someone else would say, “Oh, yeah… they’re a practicing Christian!”

Quit Taking Notes! (or, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog”)

Photo credit: keep3.sjfc.edu

I love to read!  Presumably, since you’re here, you and I have that in common, so maybe you've had this experience: About a month ago, my venture into the world of blogs led me to a shocking conclusion.  As it turns out, there are people out there who know things that I don't… a lot of people and a lot of things!  Through their blogs, however, they make their wisdom available and free for the taking.

All you have to do is search them out.

Disclaimer: Between my wife, my friends, and my coworkers, there are plenty of people in my day-to-day life who know a lot of things which I don’t.  I’ll save that topic for another blog.

I'd say about a minute after discovering my first blog-based mentor, Chris LoCurto, I discovered my second (Jon Acuff)… and then my third, and fourth, and so on.  Before I knew it, my Read it Later queue was 150 articles long and growing!  As I began reading these blog entries, I was struck by their wisdom and I wanted to make sure that these secrets weren’t lost on me.  I wrote stuff down, printed things out, saved items in my queue instead of deleting them, created bookmarks… anything to keep from missing out on these brilliant tidbits.

Photo credit: theboard.byu.edu

Do you know what that accomplished?  I became one hot mess of disorganization!  I tried to tighten my grip on every little bit of wisdom I could, to the point where nothing was sticking.

I don’t know if anyone has said this before, but I’m saying it now: “Wisdom is like water.  If you try to grab it, it will slip right through your hands.  Just jump in... you’re bound to get some on you!”  The more I kept reading, the more I started to see that the best points of wisdom were, in fact, not secrets held by one evil genius blogger!  Ideas flowed from one blogger to the next like a mystical thread.  Everyone was saying the same thing, but in their own unique voice.

This revelation taught me two things:

1)   I stopped trying to save every little thing that caught my attention, because I knew if I just waited a day or two, it would come back around from another blogger.  Take an idea and repeat it from various sources, and you will internalize the lesson.

2)   I don’t have to worry if I'm saying what has already been said.  My job is to simply put my thoughts out there in my own unique voice.

All the above having been said, there is a precursor to letting wisdom wash over you… you must seek out the source!  If you just wait for the occasional Facebook link from a friend, you will never experience that feeling of wisdom washing over you.  Like anything you want to be good at, the key is daily commitment.

Seek out people who are where you want to be… they are often giving away their “secrets” for free!

Have you sought out the wisdom of those with more experience than you?  What did you learn and how did you learn it?

1 Sure-Fire Organizational Tool for the Internet Generation

Read it Later

Yes, it’s true.  I used one of the cheapest tricks in the blogging world to entice you.  Start with a number, make a promise, mention something that people need, and then declare your audience.  I’m guilty, I admit it… but I did it for a good reason.  If the headline was: “Read it Later – Internet Articles when You Have the Time,” would you have bothered?  I believe this free app is so useful that it deserved a little shameless headline tweaking.  Moving on…

You probably have been in one of the following two situations:

1)   You have given yourself 15 minutes to check your Facebook/Twitter/RSS feed, and you come across a link to an article.  You click it, begin reading, and see a link to another interesting article.  You right-click that, open it in a new tab, go back to the first article, and perhaps repeat that last bit a few more times.  Suddenly, your 15-minute session has snowballed into two hours of articles and YouTube videos!  Death to productivity!

2)   You have given yourself 15 minutes to check your Facebook/Twitter/RSS feed, and you come across a link to an article.  While it seems like something interesting, That Little Voice™ chimes in and says, “Not now.  You don’t have time.  You’ll remember it.  Come back to it later.”  Maybe you write yourself a sticky note.  Perhaps you copy the URL and e-mail it to your account.  Effective, but very inefficient.

And then you think, “Gee, someone should come up with a button to click that would instantly put this in a list.  Then I could read whenever I have time.”

Read it Later does just that.  Through a little JavaScript link you put on your web browser’s bookmark bar, you can save any webpage into your Read it Later queue.  Log into Read it Later -- well, later -- and you’ll see a list of all the pages you have queued up to read.

Even better, it syncs up across devices.  If you have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or any of several other smartphones, just install the Read it Later app.  Open up and there are all your articles, downloaded for offline reading (you can even set your phone to airplane mode and read your queued articles on a long flight).

Each day as I browse through my twitter feed, I queue up several articles that catch my interest and then check them out when I have time in the evening.  Not only does it save time, but I absorb more information because I get to read when I am not distracted.

Once you get used to using Read it Later, I truly believe you’ll find it an invaluable timesaver.

Have you used Read it Later?  How did it change the way you surf the internet?

Friday: Something for the Musician - Old Love

Today, a couple friends told me about a concert video with Brad Paisley and John Mayer.  I was more than a little excited to get home and search for some videos of this.  Out of them all, this one blew me away... I hope it does the same for you.




Thanks to Joel and Josh for hipping me to this.

What are Your Pillars?

The Parthenon
Photo Credit: www.funonthenet.in

Imagine the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena, or any big city courthouse.  Now, imagine it without pillars.  What’s left?  Before you wax too philosophical, I'll give you the answer: “A pile of rubble.”

Pillars are crucial, but they are also very easy to take for granted.  Their support is expected.  When you were building from the ground up, you had a great appreciation for those pillars, because they were the only things there.  Once you started building on top of them, however, you paid them less and less attention… they were supposed to be there and their job was to provide support.

Before I go on, I’m going to acknowledge something: This is not a new idea.  I will not win any awards for, “James' Original Pillar Theory.”  You’ve heard this before, told in such ways as, “Put in the big rocks first,” and, “Don’t forget the most important things in life.” (Cat Stevens even touched on it in his song, "Cat's in the Cradle")  I am revisiting this age-old topic for one reason… it deserves revisiting!  This is one of those famous moments of, “If you miss everything else, catch this!”

Take a quick inventory of the people, things, and entities in your life.  What is it that, if taken away, would cause you to crumble?  Now, look at that same list and honestly ask yourself how often you really devote quality, focused attention to those things.  If you are normal, you probably don't spend as much time with your pillars as you should. (keep in mind that "normal" is not a good thing... look at your neighbors, look at the news, look at our media, and you'll quickly find that "normal" is something to avoid)  After all, your pillars are there, supporting you… you can see to them another time and, besides, there are more pressing matters at hand.

If you ignore your pillars for more pressing matters, thinking that you can pay attention to them when you have more time, I will make you a 100%, certifiable, put-it-in-writing and take-it-to-the-bank guarantee: There will always be more pressing matters!!!  So, now that you know the guarantee, are you ready for the remedy?

First, you have to actively budget your focused attention.  Then, when you are budgeting your focused attention, budget for your pillars first and make that base amount of attention non-negotiable.  If there are more pressing matters, they will have to wait, because they are not allowed into that part of your life!

Non-negotiable.  No way.  No how.  No sir, YOU MAY NOT have this bit of my attention… it is spoken for!

My personal pillars are as follows:  God, my wife, and music.  Truth be told, I have been guilty of neglecting all three of these pillars.  They deserve better, and I will give it to them.  Without them, I would crumble.

What are your pillars?  Have you been giving them the focused attention they deserve?  If not, what are you going to do to remedy your situation?

Goal-Oriented Everything (and the GOPP)

I will begin this post with an assumption about you: You haven’t yet achieved everything you desire.  If I am wrong about you, please accept my humble apology and save yourself the trouble of reading further… this particular post is not for you.  For those who still have a few yearnings to fulfill, onward we venture!

I am a musician.  This is not my hobby after I get home from the J-O-B… playing music is my main source of income.  I am truly blessed to do what I love and make a living from it, and as part of my quirky musician nature, I’m never satisfied with my playing ability.  Mind you, I have quite a few days where I bump knuckles with my bandmates and share the pride of a well-played gig, but I’m always striving to improve.

Ask any musician how to get better and they will say one word: “Practice” (of course, some will also push the latest method books or instructional DVD, but the idea is to include those in a practice routine).  One could practice for three hours each day and, without specific direction, overall improvement would be minimal. In fact, practicing without direction is typically referred to by phrases such as, “noodling,” “messing around,” or, “playing what you're already good at.”  At some point, you must identify where you are, where you want to be, and how to get from point-A to point-B.

Photo Credit: www.shoutmeloud.com

Enter the Goal-Oriented Practice Program (GOPP).  Before I go any further, let me say that GOPP is not my original idea.  I learned it from a phenomenal saxophone player, and it wasn’t his original idea, either.  I’m offering wisdom you would probably pick up listening to your grandfather!  The short version goes like this:

            1)   Something inspires you to improve.

            2)   You identify something specific that you want to improve.  “I want to play jazz better,” doesn’t cut it.  You must quantify what improvement you want to make.

            3)   Figure out where you are.  Be brutally honest with yourself.  Quantify the skill level where you feel comfortable performing.

            4)   Set a timeline to get yourself from where you are to where you want to be.  As an example, I'll use an arbitrary time of 6 months.

            5)  Plot your daily path to get there:

a.     “Where you want to be” minus “Where you are” = “The ground you have to cover” (mathematically known as, “the difference”)

b.     "The Difference" divided by 6 months = How much ground you need to cover per month (we’ll call this the, “monthly difference”)

c.      Rest is important when practicing.  Budget two days per week to step back from what you are learning.  This leaves an average of 21 days practice days per month.  If you don’t rest, your brain won’t properly process and organize new information and skills.

d.     "Monthly Difference" divided by 21 days = Your daily required progress.  

e.   Create a task that will challenge you to achieve this each day.

f.     Set a time limit for how long you will practice (perform the task) each day.  Anything more than 15 minutes at a time on one specific item is too much.

Photo Credit: www.goal-setting-guide.com

This works wonders for music, but it applies to everything!  The principle is always the same: Set a large, specific, time-constrained goal; break it down into small, bite-sized goals; accomplish those mini-goals through daily tasks.

Write your regimen down on to-do lists.  Chart your progress.  Hold yourself accountable, and ask your spouse, a close friend, or a mentor to check on you and hold you accountable.

Now it is your turn.  Where do you want to be?  How are you going to get there?  Can you think of a time in your life when you've applied these principles and succeeded?