LeadershipConneXtions

When It's Time to Leave

I have a "blog" folder where I keep some ideas for "later on." I am interested in the idea, but at the time, I don't have the time to process them more fully.

I recently pulled out that blog folder and spent some time thinking about the subject of - when is it time to leave a position or role? These ideas are not original with me. I jotted them down from somewhere else, but failed to note the source.

The answer to this question is rarely simple, often it is messy and complicated. But here are some "telltale signs" that are important.

• When you are no longer excited about the mission or vision of the organization.
• When you no longer look forward to coming to work but experience dissatisfaction and tension (even anxiety).
• When you no longer have the strength to deal with the challenges and conflicts in your workplace.
• When your joy and gratitude levels are low and your appreciation and respect are in decline.
• When you have stopped learning.
• When you no longer enjoy and love the people with whom you work and serve.
• When you are no longer praying diligently for your people and about your mission.
• When you find yourself complaining and criticizing more than celebrating and encouraging.
• When integrity issues begin to arise and are not easily resolved.
• When you feel you have hit a ceiling that limits your capacity to contribute.
• When you must compromise your core values to fit in or accomodate to the organization.

All the above signs are RED LIGHT INDICATORS that something is definitely amiss. Still, they may be the occasion for reflection and action. If that does bring some positive resolution for you, then it is quite possible that God is using this to move you on to a new platform in the pursuit of your calling.

On the humorous side, check out this website for funny resignation letters.

Brian Rice

Vocation and Calling

Robert Greenleaf  (pictured to the right) said:  "The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work."

Studs Terkel said:  "Many of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit."

Poet Marge Piercy said:  "The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real."

In their own ways, each reflects the Scriptural truth of vocation and identity.

Perhaps the Apostle Paul summed it up best when he said:

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  Ephesians 2:10

We are made to work and to do work that is meaningful and central to our identity and creational makeup. God has created our work and crafted us for specific work. One of the joys of mentoring is to help leaders move into deeper levels of self-awareness about their identity and design and in light of that move into ongoing exploration of their calling and vocation.

I've designed a comprehensive curriculum that is based on the work of both Peter Drucker and Bobby Clinton (the Focused Life) and added some more of my own stuff into that mix. This is one of core methodologies I use in developing leaders.It is also one of the core modules of Leadership ConneXtions International as we do graduate education in Latin America.

All mentors should have their own methodology for doing this, whether you are doing life coaching or leadership coaching.

Brian Rice

Discipline and Freedom

I've been thinking a lot about discipline in recent months. I've been thinking about it from a developmental viewpoint and from a spiritual formation viewpoint.

I presented a model of the practice of discipline (concerning the spiritual disciplines) in the Spiritual Leadership Course in Puebla. One of these days I'll put that model in a chart form and post it.

Plantinga (pictured to the right) says that discipline is the basis and presupposition of both freedom and power.  For example, musicians who spend years working on scales and arpeggios one day have the freedom and power to play beautiful music. If you don't spend the time in disciplined practice, you will not be free to play complex music.

Freedom is not only the absence of restraints that keep you from doing something you want. Freedom is also the presence of attributes that enable you to do what you want.

I am free to run a marathon (in terms of absence of restraints) but not free in terms of the presence of the necessary attributes of stamina, cardiovascular fitness, and muscularity. The only way to gain those attributes is through disciplined practice.

The spiritual life is the same. It must be carefully cultivated through consistent and incremental practice.

So - in what areas are you not free to do what you really want to do?

What do you want to do that will require careful cultivation of necessary attributes?

And when are you going to get started in the cultivation work?

Brian Rice

When It's Too Late...

Here was a profound thought, near the end of McLaren's book, Finding Our Way Again.

He talks about when it is too late. When we experience a crisis event of some sort, at that moment it is too late to develop what you need to go through the crisis.

When the doctor says the tests indicate you have cancer, it's too late to learn how to trust.

When a family member dies unexpectedly, it's too late to learn how to have peace in the storm.

When a great temptation is upon you and no one will ever know and it is the one you are most bothered by, it's too late to learn holiness.

When you must make a great decision that will have long lasting repercussions for your life and ministry, it's too late to learn how to live and walk by faith.

We don't develop what we need to be faithful and pass the test on the spot.  Those things are learned by the steady practice of the thing needed in the months and years before the crisis. If you don't have what you need in any of the situations mentioned above, then you struggle at that crisis and that is when the disciplined practice begins.

This was an issue we covered in the Spiritual Leadership course at Puebla Biblical Seminary.

I am interested in a lot of things. I am interested in running a marathon, interested in playing a very complicated piece of classical music on my guitar, interested in having a loving marriage, a strong faith and wise leadership.

I am interested in all those things, but as I pursue them, I run into difficulties, challenges and I find it is a struggle to do them. Now I need an act of the will that arises out of great desire for them. If I have that will and join it with the act of disciplined practicing of the thing I want, then it begins to grow in my life. I get better at it.

That is how we develop faith, peace, holiness, and all good things. They do not suddenly spring into existence out of nowhere in the middle of great need.

So, here's the process:  Interest encounters difficulty and struggle. At that point, interest must become desire and the will to achieve the thing desired. Desire then moves into disciplined practice and the eventual fruit of that is competency and capacity.

Don't let yourself be found in a situation where you realize, It's too late . . .

Brian Rice

Practicing Our Beliefs

I have been interested in quite a number of things, all of which required practice. I loved tennis, water-skiing, racquetball, basketball, guitar, bass guitar, chess and more. It was one thing to "play" those things. It was quite another to be good at them. And, in every case, greatness eluded me.

Because . . . I never practiced any of them enough.

You know the saying:  Practice makes perfect.

An acquaintance of mine who is a professional music instructor modifies this a bit and says it this way: The right kind of practice makes perfect.  By this he means that repeatedly practicing wrongly will not lead to good performance. In fact, one of the hardest things to do is to UNLEARN wrong practices so you can learn good ones. Talk to anyone who has had to unlearn a tennis serve or a golf swing!

I don't remember where I read the quote that follows, nor do I remember who David Dark is, but I love what he says:

The world is the place where we get to practice our beliefs. (David Dark)

Christianity is more than a belief system. It is a belief system lived out in the setting of a relationship with Christ and in the context of the world.

We get to practice our Christianity, in the world.

We get to practice our relationship with Jesus, before the world.

We get to practice our leadership in the name of Jesus, as the world watches.

We get to practice . . . integrity, courage, faith, hope, love, grace, trust and so much more, in the midst of a world that needs to see these things.

We get to practice the presence of God, in the world.

We are not naturally good at any of those things. We must practice them all. But we practice them, not in seclusion or in private, but very much "out in the open."

Jesus said, they will know you are my followers by the love you have for one another. Not because of your belief system or theology of love, but because of your love that is practiced before the world.

What are you practicing today?  How consistently are you practicing? And how well are you practicing it?

And - are you helping anyone else practice something before the world?

Brian Rice

On Practicing by Artur Rubinstein

Artur Rubinstein was/is one of the great pianists of the last century. He is renowned for both his artistry and his technical competence. But it was not always that way. Here are Rubinstein's words about practice.

"When I don't practice for a day, I know.

When I don't practice for two days, the orchestra knows.

When I don't practice for three days, the world knows.

I must confess with sorrow that I was not very proud of myself. The dissipated life I was leading . . . never allowed me to concentrate on my work. I prepared my concerts using the large repertoire I had accumulated but without the urge to play better, without referring to the text, relying entirely on my fine memory and my cleverly acquired knowledge of how to use certain encores to arouse the audience to the right pitch of enthusiasm.

To put it in a nutshell, I couldn't boast of one single piece which I played entirely faithful to the text and without some technical shortcomings . . .

I knew I was born a true musician but instead of developing talent I was living off the capital of it."

At the time of this realization, Rubinstein then devoted himself to excellence through practice. Afterwards, he maintained a high level of performance through his 70's and 80's leaving a legacy as one of the greatest pianists of recent times.

Check out this website for a very nice introduction to Rubinstein.

Click here for a video of Rubinstein playing.

I am struck by several things:

ONE: If the secret of success in real estate is location, location, location, the secret of success in life and leadership is practice, practice, practice.

TWO: It requires discipline and devotion if one is to sustain a commitment to practice.

THREE:  Natural, raw talent is not sufficient. I think God gives us gifts/talents and then expects us to multiply/develop/enhance them. Practice is the only way to do this. Without practice, we squander what God has given us.

• If you are called to preach and teach - you need to be constantly developing your skills as a student, a preparer of the message and then as a communicator.
• If you are called to lead - you need to be constantly increasing your strengths to new levels, and when possible, adding new ones to your toolbox.

FOUR:  It is never too late to begin a new devotion to practice.

FIVE:  If you need to - get a mentor. A mentor will know how to help you develop practice routines so you can grow from average to good and from good to great.

Brian Rice

Experience: The Best Teacher?

How many times have you heard it said that "experience is the best teacher"?

I don't think this is true. It is a naive view about learning, growth and transformation and how all that takes place. It assumes that to simply have an experience is to grow! And that is no more true than the old adage, "Time heals all wounds." Both the statement on experience and time reduce the human person to a passive subject and assume that the power resides in either experience or in time.

How many times have you met someone with about 10 (or 20) years of experience but about 2 years of growth or wisdom?

(What I say next is directly tied to yesterday's post).

Experience by itself does not teach us anything. Experience is simply the situation or the occasion that may (or may not) become the LAUNCHING PAD for growth.

Experience needs a response, a reaction, an engagement of the person with the experience. Experience needs an active response, not a passive one.

The active response is one of reflection upon the experience. You ponder, consider, reflect, meditate, assess, analyze, probe the experience itself. You seek to find meaning in the experience. You look for purpose that is latent within the experience. You search for the presence, the work and the Word of God that is contained within an experience.

And you do the same for your reaction to the experience. You ponder (etc.) what is going on inside you in the same way that you consider the external situation.

Then, when there is personal discovery about the MEANING of the experience and the MEANING of your reaction, learning is taking place.

But for growth to occur, one more step is needed. You must now do something with the meaning that you have discovered. That meaning must be acted upon. That meaning must be integrated into your life. Implementation of insight must be the follow-through outcome. When that happens, growth begins to take place.

I think the work of mentors is deeply centered on helping the mentorees discover the meaning within the experience and their reaction to the experience. That means the mentor must first guide the mentoree in gaining reflective, meditative and assessment skills.  Then the mentor must help the mentoree find the "take away" value of the experience. Finally, the mentor helps the mentoree integrate the meaning/value into their life.

I think this is the pathway to growth.

Brian Rice

Margins (and Lacking Them)

Life for me is very full. Mostly it is full of very good stuff, but the point is - it is VERY full. Too full. I guess it is my Type-A personality, fueled by my ENTJ personality, boosted by my dark side drivenness.

It is also complicated by the fact that my full time work is at Living Word Community Church and then I spend quite a bit of my "free time" (especially on my days off) doing LCI work.  And I like what I do. I like it a lot.

The downside result of this is that margins diminish and even disappear. 

If you want to do a little visual exercise to drive this home - do this.

Pull up a Microsoft Word document.  Reformat it with a two inch margin on every side. It has lots of room and space. Now reformat it with a one inch margin . . . now do it with a quarter inch margin.  Your document is looking busier and busier and less attractive.

However, when margins are shrinking due to work, for many leaders, they drop off their hobbies, their exercise routines, their personal developmental time and their friendship/relational times. These are the first things that go.

I have seen each of these things diminish over the last year.

Dr. Richard Swenson has written extensively on Margins.  Swenson's concern is that many of us can live for long times without much margin in our lives. We find ways to live without rest, hobby, exercise, relationship and so on.  And AS LONG AS NOTHING UNEXPECTED HAPPENS, then we are think we are okay. But it is the unexpected, the crisis, the emergency that is never planned for, that reveals the problem in living without margins.

Recently, I've had some unexpected emergencies, and boy - does it reveal the problem with minimal margin in life!

I've read several of Swenson's books and found them all good. I especially like his devotional, A Minute of Margin. I think I need to revisit some of his ideas and kick them around a bit.

Theologically, I believe that together with God we are writing our story. Spiritually, let's make sure the margins aren't too crowded out in that story.

Brian Rice

Leaders Need A Theology of Spirituality

Here is a paragraph by Bobby Clinton that, when I first read it, I had an "AHA" moment. Here are his words, which I've broken up into several paragraphs for easier reading.

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Plateaued leadership and leadership which is set aside (disciplined by God) usually can be traced back to problems in spirituality. While there are, of course, some leaders who fail in leadership due to lack of ministry skills, it is probably more true that the majority of failures in leadership come due to failure in the area of spirituality.

Every leader should have an explicit theology of spirituality (emphasis mine) which guides him/her as development proceeds along the three major goals of spiritual formation, ministerial formation, and strategic formation.

As Dallas Willard (pictured to the right) has so aptly pointed out, your thoughtless and heretofore unorganized theology of spirituality guides your life with just as much force as a thoughtful and informed one. (Again, the emphasis is mine.) Kingdom leadership demands spiritual leadership. An informed theology of spirituality is vital to this kind of leadership . . .

Ministry essentially flows out of beingness. You must continually assess your spirituality and maintain it if you are to give spiritual leadership in the kingdom.

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Okay, in those few short thoughts is a world worth exploring at length and in depth.

When I came face to face with this paragraph, my AHA moment was realizing that I had a deficient theology of spirituality which inevitably led to an inadequate practice of spirituality. The last 10 years have been, in part, the exploring of and developing of a thoughful, informed, robust, holistic, biblically based and church history informed theology of spirituality.

To say it another way, I have been pursuing a spirituality that is characterized by relationship, intimacy and transformation. My previoius spirituality, which was unknown to me at the time (i.e. thoughtless and unorganized), was mainly rationalistic, pragmatic and behavioristic. (By the way, two of the categories in my theology of spirituality are that of mystery and messiness. But I am thoughtful about the messy side of the spiritual life!)

My week in India, working with the graduates of ACCS is developed around this theme. With 30 sessions and 30 different themes, I want to help them develop a theology of spirituality that will sustain them for a lifetime of fruitful ministry, the platform to finish well, and to have a legacy worth leaving.

Brian Rice

The Focused Life

Both Robert Clinton and Peter Drucker (pictured to the right) have mapped out the "focused life" for leaders. Each author has described the components needed for fruitful leadership development that ultimately finishes well.

Here is a PDF file that gives the overview of the Focused Life.

Download focused_life.pdf

If you want to read one of Clinton's books (by the way, it is a bit dense to work through if you are new to Clinton) click here.  This book is the core book that will help you understand the main issues in the Focused Life model.

This approach to leadership development is a core methodology that Brian and I use when we work with leaders.

In the last two weeks, I've had six different sessions with leaders where I have walked them through this model. It is gratifying to see how these leaders, intuitively "get it," when they have language that describes what they have sensed.

Brian Rice

The Disciplined Pursuit of Excellence

I spoke this past Sunday and the theme was the disciplined pursuit of excellence. This has become a topic that is of great interest to me personally and then professionally as well, as we/LCI seek to empower leaders to become the very best they can be.

I had a number of really inspirational video clips as well as an interview/dialogue with a friend, Chris Whitaker (pictured), who is a very talented composer/pianist who is currently studying at Peabody Conservatory. At age 21, he is already well on his way to excellence.

Here are the four main ideas in the pursuit of excellence:

(1) You need the mindsets that are conducive to excellence. Things like dedication, enthusiasm, love of the thing you are engaged with, commitment and so on.

(2) You need a progressive approach to learning and development that continually helps you reinforce what you already know as well as introduces you to new things that are a little beyond your current capability.

(3) You need lots of time. Some studies say it takes about 10,000 hours of time to achieve excellence in an area.

(4) You need the right coaches who can guide your progressive development.

If you get these four things in place, you have what is needed to pursue excellence. If you want to watch a movie that illustrates the pursuit of excellence, watch Akeelah and the Bee. It is about a young girl who wants to win the national "Spelling Bee" contest.

Brian Rice

Use It Or Lose It

T o truly learn something, you must use it.

To use something means you must find practical ways to implement the idea or skill into your life.

"To live is not to learn but to apply."  Legouve

I belive this is what Jesus was getting at when he talked about the wise and foolish builders in Luke 6:46-49. The wise builders put the words (ideas) of Jesus into practice.

I also believe this is the meaning of John 8:31-32 (be sure to read this passage). To hold to the teaching means to incarnate that teaching in one's life.

APPLY.  INTEGRATE.  USE.  PRACTICE.  IMPLEMENT.

This is the way that ideas become realities in your life. The best leadership ideas are worthless if you do nothing with them.

What is the one best idea you have picked up recently that you are now pondering, wrestling with, and incorporating into life and minsitry?

Brian Rice

The Focused Life

I constantly dip into Bobby Clinton's Strategic Concepts That Clarify a Focused Life. I recently bought a few copies of this book for some of my leadership team. When they arrived from Fuller's bookstore, I was pleasantly surprised to see them in a much larger edition.

I have had so many conversations in recent months that involved some of Clinton's strategic concepts, that I decided to go through his book again.

The opening words are so good that I wanted to copy them here for you to read. Just click on the PDF file below and you'll have them.

Download FocusedLife.pdf

Brian Rice

The Focused Life: John Stringer

One of my very dear friends and colleagues in ministry at Living Word Community Church is Pastor John Stringer. John is the Director of our Family Life Ministry. John is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever known. He has a voracious appetite for learning, he is deeply engaged with post-modern culture and his passion is integrating theology, psychology and faith into a seamless fabric for the benefit of God's people.

John is in his mid-50's and has felt the promptings of God toward what Bobby Clinton describes as destiny fulfillment. In this last year, John has been coming to greater clarity about what his ultimate contribution will be and the platform necessary to make that contribution.

So this summer, John and his family are moving cross country where John will enter a seminary and university program that will give him the preparation and credentials to create a platform that will enable him to teach and to counsel in a greater and more extended capacity.

I admire John in so many ways, and this recent decision (a decision way outside his Comfort Zone, by the way) is just one more reason for that admiration.

To finish well and strong, John counted the cost, and he and his family were willing to pay the price. I found myself thinking - that is what the best leaders do.

How about you? Are there any new steps that will take you outside the Comfort Zone, yet move you closer to your ultimate contribution?

Brian Rice

Our New Patio and Good Foundations

We are in the process of getting a patio put in. My friend Greg, who own's Milk's Landscaping, is the contractor we hired to do this. I had done some of the prep work in the previous two summers. I dug down 6-8 inches to get rid of soil. I then put in stone and crusher run stone as a base. Then Greg and his team added more crusher run, and finally a layer of sand. They were meticulous in making sure the patio was level with the right amount of slant for water run off. They have been laying the patio stone. Even though it is not yet finished, it already looks really good.

As I thought about all the work that went into the foundations, it hit me once again.

MAKE SURE THE FOUNDATIONS ARE GOOD. If the foundation is good, then you can build well upon that foundation. If the foundation is not adequate, then it doesn't matter how attractive the superstructure is - you will run into problems. Preparing the foundation is a lot of hard work, but it is vital work.

I believe the same is true for leadership development. Take the time to get the foundation in order. Without a good foundation of character, wisdom and Christlikeness, it doesn't matter how attractive you look and sound - eventually the weak foundations will be reveal themselves.

Brian Rice