Catalyst

Archive for the ‘leadership’ Category

I once counseled a couple whose marriage was collapsing. The husband had multiple extra-marital affairs. His wife was hurt, fed-up, and had turned cold.

As we sat there, the husband said, “I’ll do anything–counseling, moving, whatever it takes. I just need her to trust me.” I had to tell him, “That’s the one thing she can’t give you. You have to earn it.”

The problem with people who hurt others is track record. Hurt feelings don’t heal easily. As Mark Twain  observed, “The cat doesn’t walk across a hot stove twice. But neither does he walk across a cold stove.” It’s a matter of trust.

This was brought home to me lately in my home with my air conditioning. We endured an inferno-like summer with triple digits for weeks. My air conditioning was not working right, with the compressor coming on like a Howitzer cannon going off. It was a matter of time before it blew up. I slept with an ear cocked for the sound of disaster.

Finally, it was repaired. The gentle click sounds comforting. But that has yet to soothe my nerves. I still listen carefully when it clicks on. I check the thermostat and hold my hand up to a vent to make sure the air is cold. It will take a while to gain my trust.

When something breaks between people, it takes time to get things back to normal. You can apologize and vow to change (which is exactly what you need to do). But time is the only proof of change. It won’t happen in a few days or even weeks. It may take years before nerves relax and relational scars disappear.

If you mess up, change and prove the change with your life. It’s the price you must pay to regain trust lost.

Friday comes every seven days–and that’s a good thing.

Fridays are the end of the work week for most. (If it not yours, please adjust this post to fit your situation.) It launches us into rest, relaxation, and family time.

But not everyone likes Fridays. The specter of anxiety hangs as a pall over many Fridays. Jobs are not complete. Tasks procrastinated all week smell like dead fish. So some fill a briefcase and see if they can get to it over the weekend.

One of my goals each week is to get to Friday “clean.” It doesn’t always happen as I get last minute things on Thursday night or Friday. But the goal is to “clear the decks” so I can indeed re-create over Saturday.

I have learned that to have a great Friday afternoon experience, I have to do several things.

I have to plan my week. I need a blueprint of what is coming toward me. What’s on my calendar that needs attention? Is my task list reasonable? What tasks do I do on which day? These questions (usually on Sunday night or Monday morning) are my compass and sextant for the week’s journey. In a sense, Friday starts on Monday.

I work diligently to get work done in a timely manner. Procrastination is like a neck massage. It feels better to let it woo you into the sense of “it will get done. Just relax.” Yet tasks postponed muscle themselves into the times I really don’t want to work. My aim is to have it done by Friday morning. I cannot do a week’s worth of work in 4 hours. It takes a week.

I do a quick sweep on Friday. Friday morning is time for last minute checks. If I’ve done my work through the week, Friday becomes a calm day. I make a few last phone calls that have come in, clean up my email inbox, empty my voicemail on my phone. I feel confident that nothing is left hanging.

I enjoy Saturday. While I have plenty of household tasks to do on Saturday, they are enjoyable because my mind doesn’t flit toward the unfinished. I can let things “settle to earth.”

Friday afternoon should feel like Atlas taking your world onto his shoulders. If it’s not like that for you, examine your life and time. Where’s the leak? No one should come to Friday dreading the end of the week.

Enjoy the Friday afternoon experience.

The class of 2010 has now sat through hours of names read listening for their own. Students sweated bullets over finals (and sometimes standardized tests). Textbooks were closed, accounted for, and stored in the sauna of a dust-disturbed storeroom.

The moving of the tassel on the mortarboard signals the completion of school. It says, “you’re through, finished, completed. School (with its accompanying learning) is over.

Perhaps you need to rethink the tassel and just not bother because it’s a false alarm. Learning of a different kind is just beginning.

Mark Twain observed, “If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” It’s a different kind–and longer–education.

The Greeks practices “praxis,” a philosophy that called for taking what you know and putting into action. How do we find the “praxis” of our lives today?

Find mentors. We grow when we have someone bigger, faster, smarter, and wiser than we are. The tragedy of young lives is they surround themselves with friends with the same level of ignorance and disdain the sage counsel of experience. Make sure your circle includes someone who can teach you something new.

Ask questions of others. Ask them other others. Too many times, we want to appear smart, so we nod in agreement when our mind is nothing more than a fuzzball. Stop and ask, “tell me more about that. I’m not sure I completely understand.”

Reflect on experience. Ask three critical questions to  improve anything.

• What happened?
• Why did it happen? (What did leader, speaker, teacher do to get the result that took place?)
• What would I have done differently?

Keep learning in the right tense. As a minister, I hear people say, “I already learned that in the Bible.” They think learning is a past-tense experience. Once you read it, know it, can feed it back, you don’t need to learn it again. Learning is really a present-tense experience. When you read the Bible, it’s not what you learned but what you are learning.

Let the schoolbooks back in storage. Take your mind out of storage and learn something. The great failure of many lives is that they live by what they learned rather than by what they are learning.

The email read, “We need to meet about…” The issue was neither new nor urgent. Other things are pressing that must rise to the top of the schedule. In fact, the issue had laid on the table for at least 2 years without any action by the leaders in charge.

Would you meet? I chose not to meet…at least not yet.

Meetings are the bane of most people for good reasons.

• Many are unorganized without agenda or purpose.
• Many are too long (usually a function of the first problem).
• Most have people who don’t need to attend.
• Many are nothing but “let’s talk it out” sessions that don’t accomplish anything.

I decided I would not meet with those requesting the meeting until one condition was met. They needed think ahead  and bring solutions to the table, not just the problem. Then, we can refine the proposal.

It has been said that any idiot can find a problem. It takes a real genius to solve one. I’d rather a group start with something to finish than trying to find the starting line.

Before agreeing to meet, ask questions of those requesting a meeting.

• What is this meeting about?
• What do you hope to accomplish?
• Do you have a concrete proposal? (Can I see it ahead of time?)
• How long have you had this problem? (Many times, people are just trying to clear their decks.)
• What do you need from me in this process? (I don’t want to leave the meeting with the monkey on my back.)

Second, ask yourself some questions.

• Does this fit with my responsibilities?
• Does this fit with current priorities? (If we did not meet, would it really make any difference?)
• What will suffer if I meet about this issue?

I go to many meetings, but they must meet one basic criterion–do you have solutions to bring to the table? If not I will not meet until…

People waiting for medical treatment at mobile clinic

What does hot, cold, and rewarding have in common?

They are the ingredients of a recent medical mission trip to Nicaragua. For three days, a team of over 20 doctors, pharmacists, nurses and volunteers associated with Health Talents International brought medical attention to the poverty-ridden people of Managua.

The needs were great. Conditions such as parasites, infections and malnutrition drove almost 1200 people to wait in lines for 8 hours a day.

The weather was hot. The showers were cold. With winds whipping over a barren parcel of land at what seemed like the ends of the earth, dirt coated everything.

Why would anyone spend a week of their life in such conditions? For me, I found three benefits.

It elevates my vision. In a culture the massages the message of “it’s all about you” into the soul, a trip like this forces you to look beyond yourself. You see needs more clearly, blessings more thankfully, and others more compassionately. As a pampered American, I need to become less spiritually nearsighted.

It sharpens my wits. The enemy of mental sharpness is the dullness of routine. I, like most people, follow a mindless regimen. Seldom do I get jarred out of my mental lethargy. I just don’t have to think. Nicaragua forces a different diet, enduring cold showers, and long days of doing something besides working in an office behind a computer. The long days of helping people who are hurting shifts my mind into high gear. I come back able to think expansively and with clarity.

It enlarges my circle. Everyone who goes on the trip is a volunteer. The take vacations to give to others. Eating together, working together, praying together, and talking together provides something most people lose–perspective. When I return from Nicaragua, I have had the pleasure of getting to know people whose heart makes my heart purer.

As the team was breaking up on the trip home, we all expressed a similar thought. The trip was not fun (in the way a vacation is) but it is rewarding. That is what gives purpose to the difficulties.

I am grateful to those who went and for the changes I experience.

Sunday started out as a normal day–until the quiet evaporated with the ringing of the phone. At 6:45 a.m. my day shifted dramatically.

The call informed me that our preacher had fallen ill during the night and I was on tap to preach. I now had three hours to prepare and polish a message for an audience of 1000 listeners.

The sermon went well and was well-received. While that may be true, it is difficult to go from 0 to total presentation in three hours. How do stay ready so you prepare effectively when under the gun?

It doesn’t start when the call comes. Someone once asked me how long it took to prepare a sermon. My answer is simple–it took 30 years. All immediate preparation is a reflection of years of training. If you don’t put the hard hours in the cool of the day, you won’t be ready when thrown into the fire.

Yet, you need to do some things regularly to prepare for the last-minute situation. (These are also essential for the routine preparation of sermons.)

Read widely.

Reading is the river that fills the mental reservoir. Reading puts ideas into the mind and into notes. Read novels, self-help books, biographies and books on Bible topics. In addition, find some mind-stimulating blogs and read them daily. All will allow ideas to haunt the mind, reading it for the call when it comes.

Reflect daily.

Sermons take place at the intersection of text and current events. Think daily about what is happening. Analyze the news and think through reading. What do the events mean? What kind of implications are there for living? This kind of thinking is a tumbler turning rock into gemstone.

Write regularly.

One reason I write a blog post is to force me to do focused thinking. I write in a journal, put words into letters and memos, and make presentations. All are the whetstone of thinking. If the knife is not sharp, there’s no time to do it at the last minute. Too many preachers are dull because they don’t sharpen themselves regularly.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t enjoy the pressure of hurry-up preparation. I would never recommend it as a steady habit of life. However, when you take moments to prepare yourself daily, you are ready to prepare a message in a pinch.

King David eulogized his fallen predecessor Saul, with the mournful words, “how have the mighty fallen.” Not all fall of a battlefield wound. Some suffer from the mortal wound of a damaged reputation.

As the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2008, Tiger Woods was a commanding figure. He was the professional golf tour. Tournaments he played gained attention (and money). His endorsement deals were stratospheric. He was the boy next door, the polite and polished young man with a beautiful wife and cute kids.

Then came the wreck, followed by the hushed calls on a cell phone to a woman who turned out to be a mistress. Then came the revelations of more and more women. The image gave way to history and his reputation sank as easily as one of his putts.

The question is always the same. How can someone with so much talent, fame, and money do something like that? Some have said it was arrogance. Some blamed the spotlight. Others mentioned his father’s death. No one really knows the true answer.

Yet, the sad saga of Tiger reminds everyone of one simple truth–your reputation is fragile. It is built over a lifetime and can be crushed in a moment.

How do you protect your reputation?

Know what you really want to be. If you don’t intend to be that, don’t kid yourself. Be genuine and transparent. Too many people want an image. Strive for more than a cardboard cutout of a character. Have character.

Constantly evaluate self. It’s easy to drift off course. Take time to peer into the mirror of your own soul. If you can’t be honest with yourself, find someone who won’t try to preserve your feelings. You need the honest feedback.

Live transparently. Someone has said, “conduct your life in such a way to make any accusation sound ridiculous.” The only way to do that is to be open and honest in actions, thoughts, and dealings.

Confess and change. Confession is not just “sorry.” It’s not a statement of others misunderstanding. It is what you did, admission, specific, facing the music. Don’t gloss over. It requires a bigger person to admit exactly what he did than to hid behind excuses.

Whether Tiger will ever come back is left to be seen. But sometimes the best lessons are learned from bad examples. Take good care of your reputation because you may never get it back.

During high school, I had a job as a delivery boy for a pharmacy. (That was a different time!) When I was not trying to work a paper-thin clutch in a delivery pickup, I typed up prescription labels. Each was filed away in a small manila envelope.

Occasionally, I picked up various envelopes with a handwritten “NF” on the face of the envelope. Finally, my curiosity caught up with me and I just had to ask what the NF meant.

The pharmacist explained that it was an abbreviation for “Nuisance Fee.” Some people were demanding, angry, and nasty. Those who made such behavior a habit paid an extra fee.

On that day, I learned to avoid becoming a Nuisance Fee.

We all have bad days. Irritation is part of the friction of life. Assertiveness is one thing, but meanness is another. When the theme song of your life is, “I forced them to…” you pay for it.

Watch your tongue. Guard your attitude. Sweeten your words. They might keep you off the NF list.