Summit Reflections (Part 10)

10 hours at a calling center.

The Jack Welch interview was one of the best sessions for ideas, humor and Hybels' characteristic spiritual conversations with a marketplace leader regarding his spiritual life. When Hybels asked Welch about communicating vision and energizing people, he illustrated what he meant with a recent trip he took to a call center for an online university he's leading. He flew in and spent ten hours interacting with 40 callers making sure these phone recruiters understood and owned the vision of the university. It's like he wouldn't leave until they really got it.

Declaration: I don't make sure people really get it. The greatest thing that happens to me with our team when I lay out vision is that someone plays dumb and asks a bunch of questions to get me to be clear and then clearer and then really, really clear. When the questions come, I start listing all the things I don't mean, I tell stories, I use analogies. But without questions, I just move on. Dumb. No, really dumb. Can I learn? Let's see. I will make sure people get it and not move on until they do so that we all share and own the vision and are energized by it.

Summit Reflections (Part 9)

What if a great athlete only got feedback on performance only once a year?

That was Daniel Pink on motivation, talking about the yearly performance review. When our staff leadership team completed the Leadership Practices Inventory, with feedback from ten other staff and volunteers for each of us, my lowest scores were in the category of "encouraging the heart." My first thought was, "These people around me are so needy. Why can't they be self-motivated like I am." That was my second and third and fourth thought...until I got over my anger. Then I realized how much I love and seek feedback from others. I love to be encouraged. I'm not nearly as "self-motivated" as I think I am. Besides, I scored myself lowest in that category!

With that realization and admission I set out to be a better encourager of our staff leadership team and others. I set out to let people know how much I appreciated them (to move it from my heart to my mouth) and to do more coaching along the way.

This will probably never be one of my strengths because of the way I'm wired. I'm pretty task-driven and I'm an information hound ("Input" and "Learner" are two of my "signature strengths" in StrengthsFinder). But I've been told more than once that I'm improving. And it is vitally important that I improve because I've got great people on our leadership team. Like great athletes, they're hungry for coaching, encouragement, pastoring and feedback from me. 

Declaration: I will prioritize encouraging, praying for, coaching and pastoring our staff leadership team.

Reward motives not work well for complex tasks
A leader defined by followership...never arrives
Everybody thinks everyone else only cares about money
Our nature is to be active and engaged
Management is a technology from the 1850's designed to get compliance
20% time (gmail, Google News)
What if a great athlete only got feedback once per year