Leaders need to discover the gifts,
passions, and wavelengths of the
people who are their direct reports—
that’s where culture is created and
that’s where it’s sustained. But these
leaders also need to interact in
meaningful ways with people beyond
their teams. GE CEO Jack Welsh
described this as “management by
walking around.” It’s important to get
out of our offices and conference
rooms to rub shoulders with people
down the chain of command, to
notice, at least to some degree,
what they do exceptionally well,
what they’re excited about, and what
station they’re tuned to. Pastors can
take time to talk to greeters, childcare
workers, sound and light technicians,
and choir members. Business leaders
can talk to the people in the call center,
sales, marketing, and production. Just
showing up to be seen and to listen is
half the battle—maybe more. People
want to work in a place where they
feel valued and the attentive presence
of a leader communicates value.
Churches and businesses motivate
people in very similar ways. The only
real difference is how they measure
success. In business, success is
usually monetized in revenues, profits,
and share price. Every new business
starts with the question: how do we
make money from this idea? The
church measures things like souls
saved, people in groups, and the
number of missionaries. Budgets and
buildings are means to those ends.
Businesses and churches have more
in common than many people think:
they both make financial, staffing,
facility, liability, and legal decisions;
they both have stakeholders and some
form of organizational hierarchy; both
can grow and thrive; and both can be
split by disgruntled people who take
other disgruntled people with them.
Become a Transformational Leader
My friend Stephen Fogarty earned
his Ph.D. by doing research on how
pastors can become transformational
leaders. The principles in his book,
Light a Fire, apply beyond the church
to nonprofits and businesses, too. He
identifies four primary characteristics
of transformational leadership:
Idealized Influence
To have an impact on those who
follow, leaders must be attractive.
Their characters must have a blend
of boldness and humility, kindness
and tenacity. When leaders lose the
respect of those around them, people
spend most of their time protecting
themselves, promoting themselves,
or looking for an escape hatch to bail
out.
Inspirational Motivation
Great leaders have the innate gifts,
or perhaps the acquired skill, to
craft a message to capture hearts
and redirect lives. To them, words
aren’t stale and lifeless; they have
enormous power to inspire, correct,
and transform individuals, groups,
and communities. Ronald Reagan,
Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela,
and Martin Luther King, Jr. are stirring
examples of people who understood
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