the green room:

what is a leaders job?

Napolean once said, "the role of a leader is to define reality and give hope."  I think this is crucial to being a great leader.  you must be able to look with brutal honesty at where your organization currently is.  Not where it wants to be, not where it should or could be; but where it is.  Max Dupree, the former ceo of herman miller calls this the "is-model."  

Napoleon's statement is a great way to frame leadership.  this simple definition gives you two mandates to hold in balance: reality (the way things are) and hope (the way things can be).  Bill Hybels talks from time to time about the different hats one must wear as a leader.  what hat is easier for you to where?  Are you the reality king/queen or are you always chasing the next big idea?

remember when all you focus on is the big idea; you will have an overflow of idealism and no results.  also, when there is no hope, there is a pretty good chance that your employees will feel change fatigue, burn out and possibly even revolt.  great leaders can live between the two worlds and know when it is appropriate to define reality and give hope.

medieval times.

every year since i've been working with mhs we have had a staff retreat.  traditionally this starts by our team gathering at the door at 9am, loading up the rental van and then heading to barnes and noble to pick out a book.  from barnes and noble we then head to some place where we can rest, relax and reflect on the past year.  this year we found a castle on lake michigan, seriously a castle that reminded us all of the joys of medieval times to stay at.

we spent thursday afternoon working through a little team exercise called praise and prayer.  every team member had a journal with their name on it and we each spent 20 minutes with each person's journal looking back at the past year and praising them for something specific that they bring to this team.  each person also spent some time praying for each person and writing one way they thought they could grow in the next year as a leader.  it was pretty powerful and very helpful to read the following week some of the things my team wrote. 

then we took a break for a few hours and came back for another team excercise.  we spent the next few hours evaluating the past school year through an excercise where we asked 4 specific questions regarding five topics.  now before i give you the 4 questions, let me tell you the groundrules that were enforced for this excercise.  this excercise is a tool that is meant to be a poloroid, meaning, this is not about the past or future.  it is only a snapshot of the past school year.  so if we were to take a picture of mhs this year what would it look like?  secondly, this exercise is not about coming up with solutions but about becoming aware of what is happening presently.  lastly, people can not be afraid of saying anything dumb or hurting someone else's feelings.  they need for the sake of the ministry express what they see in the snapshot.

so we all agreed and then proceeded to ask these four questions on issues regarding volunteer leaders, events, mission, integration between 3 ministries, and staff care. 

what is right?

what is wrong?

what is missing?

what is confusing?

the results were pretty powerful and i've spent the past couple of days walking through the results and shortening the list to discover what are some real practical things that we can do to better serve students, leaders, staff and parents.