Leadership lessons, connected with faith and wisdom.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: What Is Your Crisis Response?

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us something about responding to crises.

We had a great lesson in this when a UPS driver delivered a package to our house in the middle of the day. When he left it at the front door, he rang the doorbell. My two-year-old and five-year-old grandchildren were in the house, and when the doorbell rang, three things immediately happened: the dog barked loudly, one grandchild ran to our room and dove on the bed and under the covers, while the other one ran yelling to the front door. My wife jokingly commented that we have one who runs away from danger and one who runs toward it!

I can also remember in my first experience as a head of school (one that was in partnership with a church), when I would meet with the church leaders every week as part of the leadership team. Over time, when we would discuss issues that we would face or items that would require a decision, a pattern began to emerge, which was that one of the pastors would immediately jump to his answer, and then talk it through out loud, and often by the end of his conversation, he was at a different place than he was at the beginning. The other two pastors would jump in after a little bit and start to dialogue back-and-forth. I would be thinking and processing about the issue, and listening to what everyone else was saying, but without speaking, and when they were all done, I would provide my input. One of them was always the first one to speak, I was always the last one to speak, and the others were somewhere in between. Each approach had its benefits, but each also had its shortcomings.

In the same way, we all have different responses to crises and circumstances, and our response is often dependent on our leadership style, our personal characteristics, the current context, and our past experience. The end result is that a crisis comes or a decision needs to be made, and we respond based on that combination of things, which may be different than the way someone else might respond. However you respond, though, you need to make sure it is done on purpose, for a purpose. For that to happen, you need to do two things:

  1. Understand your natural response. You may run away from danger to keep yourself and others safe, or you may run toward danger to try to intervene. You may have an immediate response that happens without thinking, or you may take a little bit of time to analyze and decide the best response. Regardless, understand what your ingrained and learned response is likely to be, so that you will know how you automatically respond when a crisis hits or a decision needs to be made.
  2. Prepare a good response. Now that you understand your own tendency, determine when your natural response is going to be the best action to take so that you are prepared and can feel confident with that response when it is needed. Then determine when a different response might be needed, and decide what you need to do in advance to be ready, which may likely involve a predetermined written plan and the involvement of others who respond differently than you.

That’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from watching two opposite reactions from my grandchildren to a doorbell ring. Know what you are going to do without thinking, and know when that will be the best response. But also know when you will need a different response, and prepare for it. Doing this can help prevent you from “leaping without looking” when you need to slow down, and from paralyzed inaction when you need to speed up. One way of responding isn’t necessarily going to always be the best way, so if you want to be prepared for crises and decisions, know yourself and make a plan.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 25: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (The Gift of Jesus)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the importance of the gift of Jesus.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: The Gift of Jesus

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the importance of the gift of Jesus.

I have talked about traditions that have been a regular part of Christmas for my family, and one of those traditions has been a movie that my wife and I watch every year. Every Christmas season, we love to watch “Christmas with the Kranks,” with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. I don’t remember when we started watching it, but I do remember that the first time we watched it, we connected with the characters. The way that they interacted with each other and how they responded to circumstances reminded us of ourselves, and we enjoyed the movie so much that we made it a tradition.

So, of course, during this most recent Christmas, we watched the movie again. I need to warn you that what I am about to say is a spoiler alert, but the movie came out a little over 20 years ago, so you’ve had plenty of time to watch it. Near the end of the movie, as they finally came to terms with the realization of the value of friends and family during Christmas, and gave up the plans that they had made to be home with her daughter, Luther (played by Tim Allen) made a significant decision. He walked across the road to his neighbor, with whom he had had frequent conflict, and gave him the trip that he and his wife had been planning to take, with all the tickets and reservations information. When the neighbor protested, Luther said, “It’s a sincere gift, no strings attached.”

This line in the movie is so appropriate for the true meaning of Christmas. God came to earth in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ, born as a baby in a manger. The whole plan and purpose that God had for this was for Jesus to become the only possible sacrifice that could pay for our sins, so that our relationship with God could be restored by placing our faith in the work of Jesus for our salvation. And this salvation that is offered by God, through Jesus, is “a sincere gift, no strings attached.”

Now that Christmas is over, and you think about the time that you had with your friends and family, or the Christmas presents you gave or received, or the celebrations you enjoyed, I hope and pray that you also take time to think about this. Jesus offers the gift of salvation, and it’s yours to accept with no strings attached. There is nothing that you need to do – or even that you can do – to earn your way into God‘s presence. Jesus paid that price, and therefore, all that is necessary for you to do is to accept the gift of salvation that Jesus offers. If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, I pray that you would take that step today.

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Assess Yourself First, THEN Determine Your New Year’s Resolutions

When I started my doctoral program years ago, I first had to attend an orientation program with the other students who had been accepted as part of that year’s cohort. During those two weeks, we read books, listened to lectures, interacted in discussions and activities, and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

Several of the writing assignments were specifically aimed at helping us to formulate our own personal IDP (Individual Development Plan) for the program, or, what we intended to accomplish and get out of our graduate school experience. One assignment in particular required us to take a variety of personality and ability inventories, outline our life experiences, and think through the things that most drew our interest and brought joy and fulfillment in order to identify our passion and calling.

It was this exercise that really helped me to clarify what it was that my experiences, abilities, and passions had prepared me to do during the next season of my life, and why those things were driving me. Through this process of reflection and writing, I realized what I loved doing, why I loved doing it, and how I was making a difference, and it confirmed and affirmed in me what I was doing with my life. (For me personally, it was also an affirmation of how God had gifted and prepared me, and what He had called me to do for His Kingdom.) It was a very valuable thought process, one that became a touch point in later years for keeping myself in the place where I best fit.

In the years since, I have incorporated a variety of other tools and activities to help me refine my own skill set and passions, and to help me continually improve at what I do. One of those activities is a yearly practice in December of listing my major goals for the coming year and maintaining a list of 5-year goals. The categories that work for me include personal/family goals, spiritual goals, financial goals, intellectual goals, and physical goals. This annual practice is one of the things that helps me regularly self-assess, thinking about what I’m doing, how I’m doing, and what I need to do in the near future in order to grow. As I am entering a new and different season in my life, this is just as valuable (if not more so!).

And now it’s the end of December, and the new year is ready to begin, and it’s that time when many of us have done or are doing some kind of self-assessment. We remember what we did (and didn’t) accomplish in the last year. We determine what we might want to accomplish in this next year. We try to make a fresh start. We make New Year’s resolutions.

So, as you make your resolutions this year, I would encourage you to be very intentional about this process. Identify your own specific interests, abilities, and opportunities. List your own one-year and five-year goals (and put them in a place where you can refer to them regularly). Take advantage of self-assessment tools, such as the (free) Myers-Briggs Personality Test; the One Page Personal Plan (OPPP) from Verne Harnish’s book Scaling Up;  the Rockefeller Habits, which incorporates the 5F’s (Family, Faith, Friends, Fitness, Finance); One Word that will Change Your Life, which walks you through the process of identifying the one word that will be your focus for the year; or use any other tool – or combination of tools – that works for you. Regardless of what you use, be purposeful about assessing yourself – reflect on your past experience, identify your current abilities and passions, and decide on your direction for the next year.

It’s a new year, a natural time for this kind of review. Do it, do it purposefully, and do it to grow. Happy New Year!

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 22: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (Use Your Imagination)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the value of using your imagination.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Use Your Imagination

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the value of using your imagination.

My toddler granddaughter loves to play doctor. She has a toy medical bag with all the necessary equipment that a doctor might use, and often likes to pretend that one of her dolls (or one of her family members) is sick or injured, and she needs to help them get better. She will pull different tools out of the bag so that she can check everything and provide the right treatment, then pronounce that the injured toy, or person, is all better.

In one particular instance, she saw that I had a scrape on one of my knuckles and exclaimed, “Oh no, it hurts!” So, she had me lie down on the floor so she could treat me, and this treatment included a full physical. She checked my blood pressure, tapped my knees with a hammer to check my reflexes, looked in my ears and nose and throat, put a Band-Aid on my knuckle, and listened to my heart with her toy stethoscope. As she was “listening” to my heart, she started, saying, “thump, thump, thump,” but then that changed to “squeak, squeak, squeak.” She told me I had a mouse in my heart, and she had to chase the mouse out of me, so she got some cheese for the mouse to follow.

I am grateful that she is developing the character trait of empathy, but that’s not the primary thing I want to point out with this illustration. What I want to emphasize is the imagination that was at work, on two different levels. First was the role-play as she was pretending to be a doctor. She was doing the things that she imagined a doctor would do, and trying to put herself into that role. And she was doing it with sincerity and enthusiasm. Beyond that, she was also thinking outside of the normal by bringing a mouse problem into the checkup.

Those are two things that we ought to be doing in the leadership of our organizations. First, is that we ought to role-play. I don’t mean by that that we need to pretend to be someone we are not, but rather that we put ourselves in other people’s shoes and try to see things from their perspective. People have different experiences and perspectives, and it is beneficial for us to understand that because that will help us have a better picture of the circumstances, issues, and needs. Second, we ought to explore different ways of thinking about things. It’s easy for us, without realizing it, to see things the way that we always have, through the lens that we have always used. But removing that lens and looking at things from a different angle, even one that might not make sense, can change our perspective and our options.

And that’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from this story of my granddaughter, checking my heart with her toy stethoscope, and hearing a mouse. Too often, our vision is limited because we’re not seeing things from another perspective, and we do what we’ve always done without thinking differently. Sometimes, we need to set aside our normal thought process, see from someone else’s point of view, and be willing to use some imagination and think creatively. In order to grow both personally and organizationally (and, in some cases, find your way past a difficult challenge), you need to be ready and willing to use your imagination.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 21: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (The Joy of Serving Quietly)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the value of serving quietly.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: The Joy of Serving Quietly

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about the value of serving quietly.

In my first school leadership role, we had built a new school building that also had shared use with the church that owned the school. Within a few months, teachers were communicating a frustration with me about having to clean up their classrooms every Monday morning, needing to put all the desks back in order, which was taking away from their time to prepare for the start of the week. I encouraged the teachers to have a servant’s heart in response to this situation, but I also passed on their frustration to the church leadership, and asked if we could give the Sunday school teachers some instruction on how to put the rooms back in order when they were done with the children’s classes on Sunday. It seemed like a simple request to me, so the reply I received was unexpected. I was informed that the building was owned by the church, that many of the church members had funded it, and that they were volunteers, so they needed to be able to use the room how they wanted to on Sundays without being obligated to extra work, and the teachers could straighten the rooms up on Monday mornings.

This put me in the middle of a dilemma (which I eventually learned was not an uncommon occurrence in school leadership). The church leadership, and by extension, the Sunday school teaching volunteers, did not see the opportunity they had to be able to serve the school teachers, and the teachers did not see the opportunity to serve children coming to church. Instead, each was focused on their own needs. I was in the middle, with the responsibility of resolving this conflict well.

So, my wife and I started taking the kids to the grocery store after church on Sunday to get a loaf of French bread, some deli meat and cheese, and chips, and then head back to the church. By the time we got there, everyone would be gone, and we would sit in the school cafeteria and have lunch together. Then, along with our two kids who were in elementary school at the time, we would set up all the classes for school the next day. Neither side knew we were the ones going through the building every Sunday afternoon to make sure all the desks were arranged, and that everything was in order.

To this day, my children, who are adults, still talk about that time as a great family memory. They remember having French bread sandwiches and serving together as a family, and finding joy in knowing that we were meeting a need, and no one knew that it was us. In their eyes, it was a secret mission that took care of people, and they had the joy of knowing that teachers would walk into their classrooms at the start of the week with everything ready but without knowing my kids had made sure it was so. They also remember the joy that came because we were serving together and making it a valuable time for our family.

These are wonderful lessons on leadership from this little thing in life, from Sunday afternoons with my children quietly putting classrooms back in order. First, they highlight not just the value of serving the needs of others, but the importance of doing it for the right reason. You serve not for your own praise or glory, but for the well-being of others. Second, they highlight the heart and attitude that should be present in you. If you have the right attitude, you get to experience the joy of being a blessing, especially knowing that your honor should come from God and not from others. So I encourage you to pursue this mindset. If you are a leader, you are also a servant. Look for opportunities to serve, but do it quietly, and experience the joy of seeing the blessing it is for those who experience the results of what you have done.

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Podcast Season 3, Episode 20: Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life (I Don’t Understand!)

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about trusting God in our circumstances, even when we don’t understand.

Here is the link to the podcast.

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Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: I Don’t Understand!

Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about trusting God in our circumstances, even when we don’t understand.

One of the things that my wife and I have enjoyed doing together over the years of our marriage has been watching TV series. What kind of series that is will change, depending on the season or what is catching our interest, but we enjoy watching them together. For example, my wife has long been a Trekkie, so at one point in time, we watched through the entire original Star Trek television series, and then all of the Star Trek movies. Sometimes we enjoy watching animé, so Naruto was another show that we watched all the way through. And of course, there were all the Marvel movies in chronological order, and the Star Trek movies and series, including the animated ones, also in chronological order. More recently, we really enjoyed watching a Korean drama called “When Life Gives You Tangerines,” and thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it. Currently, we are watching the Waltons series. I know it’s an older series, but we also enjoy watching through television series from that era, like The Andy Griffith Show or Hogan’s Heroes. A brief scene in the Waltons reminded me of the important lesson I am sharing today.

In the final episode of season 1, Mrs. Walton (Olivia) was stricken with polio. As the family wrestled with her illness and with the potentially crippling effects, the pastor of their church showed up to visit. On the porch, as he was leaving, he asked Grandma Walton how the children were doing, and she said that they were having a hard time understanding how this could happen to their mother. The reverend replied, “Me too.” Grandma said, “You, a man of God?”, to which he answered, “I accept His ways, ma’am, but I don’t always understand them.”

This made me think about the challenges my wife has had over the years with cancer and its related effects. Her health had been deteriorating over many years, with changing diagnoses from different doctors over that time. But then a new doctor was convinced that something else was the source of much of the issue and began pursuing answers until it was discovered that my wife had neuroendocrine cancer, with a primary tumor in her left lung. The result was a thoracotomy to remove her lung and to start treatments for the effects of that cancer. During that experience, especially early on, we had to wrestle with the same truth that the reverend did on the Waltons. We had to decide if we were gonna trust what God was doing even when we didn’t understand.

In retrospect, I can see that God has blessed and used us through that experience for a purpose. We have seen His hand at work using this to minister to others, and He has blessed us abundantly, even in the worst of it. So, even when we didn’t understand, it was the right thing for us to trust Him because He still knew what He was doing. It’s the same as when a parent gives a child boundaries for their good, even when their children don’t understand why at the time.

And that’s the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from this brief scene in the final episode of season 1 of the Waltons. As Steven Curtis Chapman sang, “God is God and I am not.” It is like looking at a woven rug from the backside, where all you see is the tangled mess of carpet fibers, while God is on the other side and sees the completed beautiful picture. I don’t see the whole picture from my perspective, so the only question I have to answer is whether or not I trust what God is doing, even when I don’t see the purpose. I don’t know what challenges you may be experiencing at the moment, but I hope that your relationship with God is such that you can trust His ways even when you don’t understand.

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