The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make by Hans Finzel Continued

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Leaders of Christian enterprises tend to be spiritually qualified but often organizationally illiterate. The problem is, leadership requires both the heart and the head.

In his 1989 classic entitled Leaders, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus define leadership as influence. That’s it. A one-word definition. Anyone who influences someone else to do something has led that person. Another way to say this might be: A leader takes people where they would never go on their own.

Top-flight leaders really aren’t born; they learn by trial and error.

All the good you do as a leader can be destroyed by the precautions you fail to take. No matter how skilled or gifted we are as leaders, one or two glaring blind spots can ruin our influence. A few bad habits can void the effectiveness of all our talents and accomplishments.

Let’s consider the top ten mistakes leaders make, according to Hans Finzel.

Mistake #1: The Top-Down Attitude

The Number One Leadership Hang-up

The number-one leadership sin is that of top-down autocratic leadership. The top-down attitude comes naturally to most people. Servant leadership is much more rare. Effective leaders see themselves at the bottom of an inverted pyramid.

This top-down attitude problem is like the mother of all leadership hang-ups. If you have it, you will spread it to everything your leadership hands touch. So, it must be addressed first to establish the foundation for how to lead.

Top-down leadership is based on the military model of barking orders to weak underlings. It goes something like this: “I’m in charge here, and the sooner you figure that out the better!”

Leaders can use their power to dominate underlings by keeping them guessing and in the dark.

Where Top-Down Shows Up:

1. Abusive authority
2. Deplorable delegation
3. Lack of listening
4. Dictatorship in decision making
5. Lack of letting go
6. Egocentric manner

Adolf Hitler, who loathed universal education, knew that ignorance goes hand-in-hand with gullibility. He realized that he could best “work his wicked will,” as Winston Churchill put it, when his audience was kept in the dark.

Why do a lot of people fall into the trap of top-down leadership attitudes? For at least five reasons:

1. It’s traditional. Historically, autocratic, top-down leadership has been the most commonly practiced method.
2. It’s the most common.
3. It’s the easiest. It is much easier to simply tell people what to do
4. It comes naturally.
5. It reflects the dark side of human nature. A naturally sinful nature moves us toward dominating others and lording over them whenever possible.

Understanding Young Workers by Lawrence J. Bradford & Claire Raines in Twenty-Something

With more and more emerging-generation workers on the scene, managers need to understand what turns them on and off.

Turn-Ons

• Recognition and praise
• Time spent with managers
• Learning how their current work is making them more marketable
• Opportunities to learn new things
• Fun at work—structured play, harmless practical jokes, cartoons, light competition, and surprises
• Small, unexpected rewards for jobs well done

Turn-Offs

• Hearing about the past—especially yours
• Inflexibility about time
• Workaholism
• Being watched and scrutinized
• Feeling pressured to convert to traditionalist behavior
• Disparaging comments about their generation’s tastes and styles
• Feeling disrespected

Work can be enjoyable, and workers can do their best when trusted to motivate themselves in their work. Workers should be allowed to self-direct and self-control their tasks out of the respect and trust coming from management.

A servant leader must be willing to get down and dirty with his troops in the implementation of his objectives. The top-down attitude is defined by people who believe that everyone should serve them, as opposed to believing they should be serving others within the institution.

Servant leadership is about caring for others more than for ourselves. It is about compassion for everyone who serves the group. It enriches everyone, not just those at the top. Servant leadership requires us to sit and weep with those who weep within our organizations. It requires getting down and dirty when hard work has to be done. There is nothing in my organization that anyone does that I should not be willing to do myself if it promotes the good of us all.

A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position of leadership by the inward pressure of the Holy Spirit and the press of the external situation. Such were Moses and David and the Old Testament prophets. —A. W. Tozer

When it comes to servant leadership, there is no better model than Jesus Christ. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus showed his followers just how much he loved them. We read in John 13:1 that He “knew that the time had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.” At that moment Jesus gave us the ultimate demonstration of servant leadership: he washed his disciples’ feet!

1 Peter 5:1-7 speaks eloquently about servant leadership:

Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Here are some recommended guiding principles for servant leaders:

• Not abusive authority, but servitude (John 13).
• Not deplorable delegation, but freedom for people to be themselves (Ephesians 4).
• Not lack of listening, but focus on the needs of others (Philippians 2).
• Not dictatorship, but partners in the process (1 Peter 5:1–4).
• Not holding on, but letting go with affirmation (1 Thessalonians 5:11–14).
• Not egocentrism, but power for others (Colossians 3:12-13).

The Five Levels of Leadership

Consider John Maxwell’s words on “Why People Follow Other People” from Developing the Leader Within You:

1. Position (Title) “Rights”: People follow because they have to.
2. Permission “Relationships”: People follow because they want to.  Staying too long on this level without rising will cause highly motivated people to become restless.
3. Production “Results”: People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development “Reproduction”: People follow because of what you have done for them personally.  Your commitment to developing leaders will ensure ongoing growth to the organization and to people. Do whatever you can to achieve and stay on this level.
5. Personhood “Respect”: People follow you because of who you are and what you represent. This step is reserved for leaders who have spent years growing people and organizations. Few make it. Those who do are bigger than life!

Effective leaders see themselves at the bottom of an inverted pyramid. There are many ways to draw organizational charts. The servant leader carries the organization on his or her shoulders as makes it a goal to make everyone else a winner.

Mistake #2: Putting Paperwork Before Peoplework

Confessions of a Type A Personality

The greater the leadership role, the less time there seems to be for people. The greater the leadership role, the more important “peoplework” is. People are opportunities, not interruptions. Only through association is there transformation.

Signs of a Paper Pusher

• “People bother me; they are interruptions.”
• “I prefer to be alone … to get my work done.”
• “This job would be great … except for the people!”
• “I’m out of touch with the networks and currents in the workplace.”
• “I’m insensitive; I tend to run over people.”
• “I listen poorly … if at all.”
• “I’m impatient.”
• “My self-worth is based on accomplishment.”

Why do we put paperwork before people-work?

• Observed results take priority over unseen relationships.
• Task work pushes aside “idle” talk.
• The material world dominates the immaterial world.
• We feel we are judged by what we do, not by who we are.
• Task-oriented type A characteristics.
• Relationships don’t fit our deadline mentality.

Here’s a simple test to discover whether a person is task oriented or people oriented. It’s unscientific, but completely reliable. When someone walks into your office, or wherever you happen to work, and interrupts your task at hand for the sake of conversation, how do you react? Do you view that person as an interruption or an opportunity? Does your face brighten as your people antenna powers up, or do you grimace inside at this “interruption”?

Leaders are expected to produce. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, once said that “leaders ship.”

As John Maxwell says, “People will never care how much you know (paperwork) until they know how much you care (peoplework).” Leadership is essentially a people business. Experts confirm that the most effective leaders spend most of their time being with people and solving people problems.

In their book Leaders, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus wrote, “What we have found is that the higher the rank, the more interpersonal and human the undertaking. Our top executives spend roughly 90 percent of their time concerned with the messiness of people problems.”

Some pastors love the inside joke, “I love the ministry; it’s the people I can’t stand!”

Jesus was a master of peoplework. Consider these examples of Jesus’ shepherding touch:

• He knew them (John 10:14–15).
• He touched them (Luke 4:40).
• He healed them (Matthew 15:30).
• He changed them (Luke 6:40).
• He mentored them (John 13:15–17).

Jesus spent more time touching people and talking to them than doing any other action. His focus was not on words, it was on compassion.

When asked to define leadership, Lorne Sanny, who was President of the Navigators for thirty years, responded, “Psalm 78:72 answers the question like a glittering diamond: ‘And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.’ The function of a leader is to feed and guide.”

In the calling of leadership, people must take priority over paper and production.

Finzel’s predecessor at WorldVenture, Dr. Warren Webster, had a slogan on his desk that he lived out: “People Count.” He was right, and he left Finzel a hard act to follow.

The greater the leadership role, the less time there seems to be for people.  However, the greater the leadership role, the more important peoplework is. Only through association is there transformation—we cannot change people if we do not spend time with them.

Mistake #3: The Absence of Affirmation

What Could Be Better Than a Pay Raise?

Everyone thrives on affirmation and praise. We wildly underestimate the power of the tiniest personal touch of kindness. Learn to read the varying levels of affirmation your people need. (Consider my summary of the book The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace here.)

Organizational researchers have been telling us for years that affirmation motivates people much more than financial incentives, but we still don’t get it. People thrive on praise. It does more to keep people fulfilled than fortune or fame could do.

Christian organizations are sometimes the worst, because there is the attitude that “they are working for God, and he will reward them for their labors.”

Consider the Affirmation Continuum

• Desperados
• Little confidence
• Lap up affirmation
• “The more the better”
• Fragile
• Autopilots
• Self-reliant
• Skeptical of affirmation
• “Leave me alone”
• Tough as nails

Thank-You Notes: A Tiny Human Touch Goes a Long Way

We wildly underestimate the power of the tiniest personal touch. And of all personal touches, the short, handwritten “nice job” note has the highest impact. (It even seems to beat a call—something about the tangibility.)

In his article “Management Excellence” published in The Business Journal, Tom Peters recalled a former boss (who’s gone on to a highly successful career) who religiously took about 15 minutes (max) at the end of each day, at 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m., whenever, to jot a half-dozen paragraph-long notes to people who’d given him time during the day or who’d made a provocative remark at some meeting. Then, he was dumbfounded by the number of recipients who subsequently thanked him for thanking them.

“Listen” is the most important word in a leader’s language.  It could be said that the L in leader stands for listening (James 1:19). Empathizing is important. If others are happy, share their joy. If there is deep tragedy in their lives, stop everything and weep with them (Romans 12:15).

Leaders need to be encouraging. Let people know often they are doing a good job. 

Former IBM vice president Buck Rodgers advised in Getting the Best out of Yourself and Others:

1. Get out of your office. When someone does a good job, pay him or her a visit to say thanks. It’ll make a bigger impact than a memo, a phone call, or an invitation to your office.
2. Don’t let good work be secret.
3. Thank people publicly. Formalize thanks whenever possible, in house organs, memos, at meetings, and at conferences.

A huge leadership mistake is to neglect the emotional support that our followers so desperately need. It is the source of high turnover in many organizations and companies, as people leave to find more empowering leadership cultures.

Everyone thrives on affirmation and praise. We wildly underestimate the power of the tiniest personal touch of kindness.

Learn to read the varying levels of affirmation your people need—different people who work for you need different degrees and amounts of affirmation. Learn how to read your followers and dish out the encouragement accordingly.

And remember, people will never care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Mistake #4: No Room for Mavericks

They Bring Us the Future!

Mavericks can save us from the slide toward institutionalism. Large organizations usually kill off mavericks before they can take root. Mavericks make messes by their very nature—the good messes institutions need. Learn to recognize truly useful mavericks.

Henry Ford once said, “I’m looking for a lot of men with an infinite capacity for not knowing what can’t be done.”

Don’t be afraid to ask yourself, “Have we made it impossible for bright rising stars and maverick go-getters to live within our organization?” When we become too preoccupied with policy, procedure, and the fine-tuning of conformity to organizational standards, in effect, we squeeze out some of our most gifted people. Organizations have this nasty habit of becoming institutions. And institutions have this great tendency to fade into irrelevance.

Consider the life cycle of organizations:

• Birth.
• Infancy.
• Childhood.
• Adolescence. The identity crisis comes once the organization is up and running, usually between five and ten years out.
• Adulthood. The organization is now in its prime, fully staffed, and functioning the way it was intended to from the beginning.
• Middle age. As in human midlife, things begin to slow down.
• Graying years. In these years, institutionalization, or even fossilization, is taking place.
• Old age.
• Death. More organizations should take this bold step and declare themselves finished when they have fulfilled their usefulness. Every organization sooner or later must cease to have life—at least life as they once understood it.
• Birth, life, aging, and death: the natural order of creation.

The Ten Commandments of Organizational Paralysis

How to Put Mavericks in Their Place:

1. “That’s impossible.”
2. “We don’t do it that way.”
3. “We tried something like that before and it didn’t work.”
4. “I wish it were that easy.”
5. “It’s against policy to do it that way.”
6. “When you’ve been around a little longer, you’ll understand.”
7. “Who gave you permission to change the rules?”
8. “How dare you suggest that what we are doing is wrong!”
9. “If you had been in this field as long as I have, you would understand that what you are suggesting is absolutely absurd!”
10. “That’s too radical a change for us.”

Make Room for Mavericks

Webster’s Dictionary defines a maverick as, “a pioneer, an independent individual who does not go along with a group.” Synonyms for maverick include “nonconformist,” “heretic,” “dissident,” “dissenter,” and “separatist.” If you think about it, Jesus was a maverick and was eventually destroyed by the institutional religious body he came to redeem. And you thought you had it tough getting your ideas through!

Some Mavericks Who Made a Difference

• The apostle Paul. What a turnaround! He went from being an outside destroyer to an inside promoter.
• Martin Luther. He nailed his convictions on a door, so the establishment couldn’t miss it.
• William Carey. When his superiors told him to sit down and shut up, he ignored them and became a mission hero and father of the modern missionary movement.
• Lee Iacocca. He came from outside to reinvent Chrysler from the top down.
• Chuck Colson. From Nixon hatchet man, then a prison cell, he’s now a modern-day prophetic voice for evangelical Christians.
• Martin Luther King, Jr.  He had a dream he was willing to die for, and he changed the very fabric of American life. (Consider the Ten Leadership Lessons from Martin Luther King, Jr. here – https://www.outofthisworldleadership.com/blog-posts/ten-leadership-lessons-from-martin-luther-king-jr-continued/.)
• Steve Jobs.  Beginning in his garage with nothing but radical new ideas, he brought IBM to its knees.  Then years later he did it again—reinventing the music industry.

From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya by Ruth Tucker records the simple truth that the greatest strides in the advancement of Christianity have come from the radical fringe, not the institutional core of the church.

Consider these quotes from Joel Barker’s Future Edge:

• “The photograph is of no commercial value.” —Thomas Edison, remarking on his own invention in 1880
• “There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” —Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1920
• “It is an idle dream to imagine that automobiles will take the place of railways in the long-distance movement of passengers.”—American Road Congress, 1913
• “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” —Thomas J. Watson Sr., chairman of IBM, 1943
• “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” —Ken Olsen, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Jack Welch established the “new way” at GE with the goal to transcend the old concepts of management itself.  (Check out my summary of Winning with Jack Welch here.) He explained, “The old organization was built on control, but the world has changed. The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down. You’ve got to balance freedom with some control, but you’ve got to have more freedom than you ever dreamed of.”

In the absence of great dreams, pettiness prevails. Don’t allow your policies and procedures to stifle your brightest stars. Be flexible. Bend the rules if you believe that someone needs more space.  Never be in bondage to your policy manual.

Take this advice seriously: Goals should never arise out of corporate policy, company loyalty, or religious tradition alone.

Legitimate mavericks who can bring you into the future:

• Care not just for their own ideas but for the goals of the organization;
• Are making a difference in their present position;
• Are willing to earn the right to be heard; and
• Are influencing others and producing good results.

As John Kotter put it in What Leaders Really Do, “The single biggest impetus for change in an organization tends to be a new leader in a key job…someone with a fresh perspective who sees that the status quo is unacceptable.”

Mistake #5: Dictatorship in Decision Making

Getting beyond “I Know All the Answers”

Dictators deny the value of individuals. The major players in any organization are like its stockholders: They should have a say in its direction. The one who does the job should decide how it is done. “Flat” organizations are the model of the future.

A dictator says, “I know the answers, because I have been given special insight, knowledge, and position. Therefore, I will determine our direction, for I am the leader and I know best.”

Finzel points out that one of his fundamental beliefs about leadership is that the greatest ideas bubble up from the workers.

Sydney J. Harris describes dictatorial bosses this way: “It is impossible to learn anything important about anyone until we get him or her to disagree with us; it is only in contradiction that character is disclosed. That is why autocratic employers usually remain so ignorant about the true nature of their subordinates.”

Thomas J. Watson Jr., the famous chairman of the board of IBM for many years, believed passionately that the best ideas would come from the fringes. He said, “Strangely, the expounders of many of the great new ideas of history were frequently considered on the lunatic fringe for some or all of their lives. If one stands up and is counted, from time to time one may get knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.”

One big mistake dictators make is believing their own press reports.

The servant-style leadership demonstrated by Jesus Christ is the contradiction to a dictatorship. In the inverted pyramid, everything rests on the shoulders of the leader. It’s more of an attitude than anything else, where leaders realize that they are carrying the organization on their shoulders and that they need to make everyone else become successful.

In the movie Saving Private Ryan, when Tom Hanks’s character’s unit asks him why they never hear him complaining about the lousy mission they are on to save Private Ryan. He responds, “I’m a captain, I don’t gripe to my men. Gripes go up. Not down.”

Here’s the profile of an ideal supervisor developed by a group of supervisors participating in a training workshop on discipline at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center. Supervisors were asked to identify what they felt were ten major functions of an effective supervisor and to rank the functions in order of importance. Effective supervisors:

1. Delegate authority in areas affecting their work;
2. Consult with subordinates before making decisions pertaining to their job responsibilities;
3. Give employees the reasons for implementing decisions;
4. Don’t play favorites;
5. Praise excellent work;
6. Reprimand subordinates who fail to observe the proper chain-of-command relationships;
7. Never reprimand or discipline in front of coworkers;
8. Encourage employees to offer their opinions and criticisms of supervisory policies;
9. Listen to employees’ explanations before placing blame in disciplinary situations;
10. Accept reasonable explanations, not excuses; and
11. Obey all the rules that subordinates are expected to obey.

The desire to work in a team environment goes hand-in-glove with the trend away from hierarchical, top-down organizational styles. Webster’s defines team as “a number of persons associated together in work or activity; a number of persons selected to contend on one side in a match; a group of workmen each completing one of a set of operations.”

“What makes a good manager?” someone asked Yogi Berra. “A good ball club,” Yogi replied.

In his book Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices, Peter Drucker wrote, “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I.’ They don’t think ‘I.’ They think ‘we.’ They think ‘team.’ They understand their job to be making the team function. They accept the responsibility and don’t sidestep, but ‘we’ gets the credit. There is an identification (very often, quite unconscious) with the task and with the group. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Finzel reflects, “In our organization, which we like to think is run as a Christian organization should be run, we rely on the guidance of God. We schedule times of prayer with our leadership team. I think we need to get serious with God if we expect him to get serious with us. We as leaders pray together, play together, and do a lot of talking about the best course of action on any given decision.”

J. Oswald Sanders wrote in Spiritual Leadership, “Leadership is the ability to recognize the special abilities and limitations of others, combined with the capacity to fit each one into the job where he will do his best.”

Harry Truman, in his typical straightforward style, once said, “A leader is a person who has the ability to get others to do what they don’t want to do, and like it.”

Final Thoughts

How dictators operate:

1. They hoard decisions.
2. They view truth and wisdom as primarily their domain.
3. They restrict decisions to an elite group.
4. They surprise their workers with edicts from above.

How facilitators lead:

1. They delegate decisions.
2. They involve others as much as possible.
3. They view truth and wisdom as being distributed throughout the organization.
4. They are developers.
5. They see people as their greatest resources for ideas that will bring success.
6. They give their people space to make decisions.
7. They let those who are responsible decide how jobs will be done. When the best leader’s work is done, the people will say, “We did it ourselves!”

Dictators deny the value of individuals. Instead, the major players in any organization are like its stockholders—they should have a say in its direction.

The one who does the job should decide how it is done. The best management practice is to push decisions down to the people on the front lines. Let the people who are responsible for the outcome have as much ownership as possible in decision-making. “Flat” organizations are the model of the future.

Mistake #6: Dirty Delegation

Refusing to Relax and Let Go

Overmanaging is one of the great cardinal sins of poor leadership. Nothing frustrates those who work for you more than sloppy delegation with too many strings attached. Delegation should match each worker’s follow-through ability.

No leadership problem is a greater challenge than learning the fine art of clean delegation.

Why Leaders Don’t Delegate

• Fear of losing authority
• Fear of work being done poorly
• Fear of work being done better
• Unwillingness to take the necessary time
• Fear of depending on others
• Lack of leadership training and positive delegation experience
• Fear of losing value in the organization

A leader’s goal is to develop new leaders who will eventually replace them, so they shouldn’t worry about others having skills better than their own. If you honestly believe that the best ideas flow up from below, then you must believe that some of the rank-and-file workers will do some work better than you. A leader should surround himself or herself with specialists who can each do their particular job better than their supervisor.

Consider the four stages of delegation:

1. Assignment
2. Authority
3. Accountability
4. Affirmation

Overmanaging is one of the greatest sins of leadership. We must be careful not to micromanage people to death. Delegation means giving people the freedom to decide how jobs will be done. Dirty delegation constantly looks over the shoulders of those asked to do the work.

Consider the four questions every follower asks (courtesy of Dr. Lorne Sonny, The Business Ministry Journal):

1. What am I supposed to do?
2. Will you let me do it?
3. Will you help me when I need it?
4. Will you let me know how I’m doing?  

The longer you lead, the less you remember what it was like to follow and you have a lack of empathy for the enlisted folks.

Delegation is seen throughout the Bible. Finzel notes, “When I think of delegation in the Bible, I think of the great leader Nehemiah and the thousands of workers to whom he delegated responsibilities as they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.”

Jesus delegated to his disciples the fulfillment of the Great Commission—spreading the word about God’s love. He prepared them well and then turned them loose.

An important principle that many leaders stumble on is the need to recognize that different kinds of followers need different styles of supervision.

This practice of varying your style of supervision according to your followers’ follow-through style could be called situational leadership. One of the best books on the fine art of delegating and supervising is Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson’s Management of Organizational Behavior. They introduce the concept of situational leadership and show that there are four ways of delegating and keeping up with those to whom work has been assigned, based on their maturity and motivation.  These four leadership alternatives are delegating, participating, selling, and telling.

• Delegating. This is the best kind of supervision for the person who is self-directed and highly skilled at his or her work.
• Participating. This is the kind of situation in which the leader is working with the follower. The leader literally shows the follower how to get the job done.
• Selling. Here the people have high skill but low motivation. They will do the job best if you can sell them on doing it.
• Telling. This is the approach to take with children, since they have low interest, low motivation, and low skill. This is the lowest form of delegation and should be used as little as possible.

Mario Andretti said, “If everything seems under control, you are not going fast enough.”

Don’t do other people’s work for them.

We can check our workers’ progress, but we should not (a) constantly look over their shoulders, (b) tell them how to do their work, (c) reject their work in favor of our “expert” approach, or (d) reverse their strategy decisions simply for ones we might favor as leaders.

Here are the key ingredients for clean delegation:

• Have faith in the one to whom you delegate.
• Release the desire to do it “better” yourself.
• Relax from the obsession that it has to be done your way.
• Practice patience in the desire to do it faster yourself.
• Vision to develop others by delegating.

Here are some guidelines for clean delegation:

1. Choose qualified people.
2. Exhibit confidence.
3. Make their duties clear.
4. Delegate the proper authority.
5. Do not tell them how to do the work. 
6. Set up accountability points along the way.
7. Supervise according to their follow-through style.
8. Give them room to fail occasionally.
9. Give praise and credit for work well done.

Nothing frustrates those who work for you more than sloppy delegation with too many strings attached. Giving an employee a job without space to complete it is demeaning.

Delegation should match each worker’s follow-through ability.

Mistake #7: Communication Chaos

Singing from the Same Page in the Hymnal

Never assume that anyone knows anything. This is a core leadership principle. We can never communicate enough in our organizations.

The bigger the group, the more attention must be given to communication. When left in the dark, people tend to dream up wild rumors.

Communication must be the passionate obsession of effective leadership.

The folks at the furthest extremities desperately need to know what is going on in the minds of those at the leadership center, if they are to feel comfortable, safe, and knowledgeable about their work. In his excellent book, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (check out my summary here), Patrick Lencioni states that two of the four obsessions have to do with communication: organizational clarity and overcommunication of that clarity. Organizational clarity is “the basic definition of what the company does. As simple as this seems, it is common to encounter employees in most companies who are not sure how to describe or define the organization’s basic mission.”

The very passion that surrounds a young upstart can kill it in adolescence. As organizations grow, the original group of founders can become an inside elite. Since they were there from the beginning, they have the most information and power.  Newcomers feel left out and in the dark.

Patrick Lencioni goes on to state in Four Obsessions, “Within companies that effectively overcommunicate, employees at all levels and in all departments understand what the organization is about and how they contribute to its success. They don’t spend time speculating on what executives are really thinking, and they don’t look for hidden messages among the information they receive. As a result, there is a strong sense of common purpose and direction, which supersedes any departmental or ideological allegiances they may have.”

Sydney Harris wrote, “The words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”

Sooner or later, you must put your plans down in writing and spell out your direction clearly. That doesn’t mean that the plans won’t change, but it does mean that everyone knows the rules of the game. It means that you’re all trying to conquer the same mountain.

Picture it like ripples in a pond after you cast in a stone. The stone is the decision; the ripples are the cascades of information that move out quickly.

In his book, Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni challenges leaders to make sure that within twenty-four hours of a meeting every person affected by the outcome be informed.

The Communication Life Blood

In his book Leadership Is an Art (check out my summary here), Max DePree wrote, “A corporation’s values are its life’s blood. Without effective communication, actively practiced, without the art of scrutiny, those values will disappear in a sea of trivial memos and impertinent reports. There may be no single thing more important in our efforts to achieve meaningful work and fulfilling relationships than to learn and practice the art of communication.”

The more people you lead, the more you must listen. Effective leadership has more to do with listening than with talking. Leaders, by their very nature, tend to be removed from the front lines of battle in the organization. Therefore, they must listen to those who are in the trenches and rely on that information to make wise decisions.

Some of the reasons why it is hard for leaders to listen to everyone in the organization:

1. Too little time. The more people you lead, the less time you have for each person.
2. Too many people.
3. Pressure. Leaders usually find themselves under a constant sense of pressure from more deadlines and responsibilities than they can handle well.
4. Distance.
5. Too much knowledge. Leaders sometimes know so much that they find it hard to listen to someone rehearsing stories, facts, or anecdotes that the leader has already heard dozens of times.
6. Pride. The admonition of Scripture should be clear enough: “Be quick to listen [but] slow to speak” (James 1:19).
7. Communication overload.

Nothing stops the progress of an organization more quickly than leaders failing to listen.

Certainly, if followers have a bill of rights, the right to be heard by their leader must be article one.

Here are four basic areas where your followers need to be clear:

1. The vision and values of the group. Every group needs a clear mission statement indicating the strategic purpose of the organization. This mission statement is a clear declaration of vision.
2. The chain of command. Simply being clear on who is responsible for what.  If everyone is in charge, no one is in charge. Chain of command clarifies the questions of who reports to whom, who supervises whom, and who is in charge of what. 
3. Organizational charts.  The “org chart” is a people map, outlining the relationships within the organization. It shows the lines of authority and responsibility. It enables everyone to visualize the chain of command.
4. Job descriptions/position descriptions. Lean toward simplicity.  They need to be flexible and should outline three basic ingredients of any position: (1) primary responsibilities in the organization, (2) key activities and tasks performed to fulfill those responsibilities, and (3) reporting structure.

Francis Schaeffer wrote a significant book titled No Little People. He argued that in God’s view there are no little people and no little places. All have equal value no matter where they are found and what they do. The same principle should be practiced by every Christian leader.

One really cannot overcommunicate. Listen to the advice of Max DePree from Leadership Is an Art: “The right to know is basic. Moreover, it is better to err on the side of sharing too much information than risk leaving someone in the dark. Information is power, but it is pointless power if hoarded.  Power must be shared for an organization or a relationship to work.”

Practice HOT communication: Honest, Open, and Transparent. Nothing happens until people talk.

The bigger the group, the more attention that must be given to communication. When left in the dark, people tend to dream up wild rumors.

Communication must be the passionate obsession of effective leadership.

Mistake #8: Missing the Clues of Corporate Culture

The Unseen Killer of Many Leaders

Corporate culture is “the way we do things around here.” Never underestimate the mighty power of your organization’s culture. Cultivating and changing the culture should be one of leadership’s top priorities. Learn to respect values different from your own.

An organization’s corporate culture is the way insiders behave based on the values and group traditions they hold. Organizational culture is like the glue in plywood—you are not totally aware of it until you try to take it apart!

If you’ve moved from one organization to another, you felt corporate culture as you learned a new set of unwritten rules.

In Beyond the Quick Fix, Ralph Kidman writes, “The organization itself has an invisible quality—a certain style, a character, a way of doing things—that may be more powerful than the dictates of any one person or any formally documented system. To understand the essence or soul of the organization requires that we travel below the charts, rulebooks, machines, and buildings into the underground world of corporate cultures.”

William B. Renner of the Aluminum Company of America highlights the dilemma of defining culture, “Culture is different things to different people. For some, it’s family or religion. It’s opera or Shakespeare, a few clay pots at a Roman dig. Every textbook offers a definition, but I like a simple one: culture is the shared values and behavior that knit a community together. It’s the rules of the game; the unseen meaning between the lines in the rule book that assures unity.  All organizations have a culture of their own.”

Traditionally, culture has been defined simply as the unique customs, values, and artifacts of a people. Today there is a growing consensus that organizations have distinct cultures as well.

In 1982 Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman wrote an immensely popular book, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, in which they showed the benefits and characteristics of the strong corporate cultures of America’s best-run organizations. Peters and Waterman brought to focus a realization that strong cultures contribute to organizational success when the culture supports the mission, goals, and strategy of the organization.

Corporate Value Statements are:

• Like Glue—They help leaders hold an organization together.
• Like a Magnet—They attract newcomers as members, employees, customers, or donors.
• Like a Ruler—By which a leader can measure how his or her group is doing.

Rick Warren, the highly effective pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, and author of The Purpose-Driven Life, spells out to his church and to the public at large the values that guide the church:

The Saddleback Strategy

1. Simple structure: We emphasize relationships.
2. Acceptance: We offer friendliness and openness.
3. Defined purpose: We exist for four distinct reasons—to celebrate God’s presence, communicate His Word, educate His people, and demonstrate His love.
4. Defined target: To respond to the hurts, needs, and interests of our community.
5. Lay ministry: Our church runs by lay ministries.
6. Encouraging preaching: Our preaching emphasizes personal, practical solutions from God’s Word for life’s common problems.
7. Build up before building out: We build people before buildings.
8. Advertising:  We do so to share our church with the community.
9. Contemporary worship: A style that is culturally relevant.
10. Keep on growing: Because everybody need what Christ offers.

Leaders who understand their own values and can articulate them well to their organization have proven to show superior performance in their roles. In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner list six significant payoffs for both managers and their organizations when the leaders were able to articulate a unified, distinct organizational culture. Understanding your organization’s culture:

1. Fosters strong feelings of personal effectiveness;
2. Promotes high levels of company loyalty;
3. Facilitates consensus about key organizational goals;
4. Encourages ethical behavior;
5. Reduces levels of job stress and tension; and
6. Promotes strong norms about working hard and caring.

One of the core jobs of a leader is to be the “tender of the culture,” the person who nurtures and develops the group’s understanding of itself.

Here are six reactions to culture conflict:

1. Conformer: “I’ve just got to accept things the way they are.”
2. Complainer: “I may have to work here, but I don’t have to like it. “
3. Innovator: “Let’s change things around here!”
4. Ritualist: “Job? What job? I’m just going through through the motions.”
5. Retreatist: “I’ve got to get out of this situation ASAP!”
6. Rebel: “They can’t make me conform—I’ll show them!”

Never underestimate the mighty power of your organization’s culture. Cultivating and changing culture should be one of leadership’s top priorities. Changing the culture in an organization takes a Herculean effort over many years, but it can be done. It is through those efforts that real lasting change takes root.  Learn to respect values different from your own.

Mistake #9: Success Without Successors

Planning Your Departure the Day You Start

Pride tightens the grip on leadership; humility relaxes and lets go. Finishing well is an important measure of success in leadership.

Letting go of leadership is like sending your children away to college: It hurts, but has to be done. Mentoring is a nonnegotiable function of successful leadership.

According to Lyle Schaller, of all the leadership transition mistakes, two occur most frequently:

1. Leaders tend to stay too long in a position rather than not long enough.
2. Leaders who stay too long do much more damage than those who don’t stay long enough.

Success without a successor is failure.  (Consider The Succession Principle.)

Who are the men and women you are grooming who may one day take your place? Consider these two important traits of successful leaders:

1. How well they get along with people
2. How good they are at accomplishing excellent work.

These traits are nothing more than the sound principle Jesus spoke two millennia ago: “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.  Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21).

Consider these barriers to preparing a successor:

• Lack of intrinsic job security
• Need for job security
• Insecurity about what to do next
• Fear of retirement
• Resistance to change
• Comfort
• Inflated/Job-associated self-worth
• Inferior self-esteem
• The role is your whole life
• Lack of confidence
• Thinking no one else can do the job like you do
• Love for the job
• Loving your leadership role
• Potential loss of further investment in stock, 501(c)(3), 401(k), pension
• Ceasing the human investment and not wanting to let it go

Paul Stanley and Robert Clinton, in their book, Connecting, have developed a model of mentoring that they call the “constellation model.” The idea behind the constellation approach to mentoring is that a leader needs all different kinds of mentoring relationships to succeed in his or her leadership. Mentoring includes upward, downward, internal peer, and external peer relationships. (Check out my posts on The Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy; Mentor Like Jesus by Regi Campbell; and “Who are Your Mount Rushmore of Mentors?”)

According to Stanley and Clinton, people who influence the next generation of leaders have these common characteristics:

• The ability to readily see potential in a person
• Tolerance of mistakes, brashness, abrasiveness, and the like in order to see that potential develop
• Flexibility in responding to people
• Patience: knowing that time and experience are needed for development
• Perspective: having the vision and ability to see down the road and to suggest the next steps a mentee needs to take
• Gifts and abilities that build up and encourage others

To end well, we must not get too wrapped up in our own indispensability. Humility is the key to finishing well and passing the torch on to our successors. One of the keys to a successful leadership transition is to learn to hold our positions loosely.

One of the great examples of a successful leadership transfer is the story of Moses and Joshua in Deuteronomy 34. For forty years Moses looked forward to taking his people into the Promised Land. But it was not to be. His successor, Joshua, would be the man to fulfill Moses’ dream. In fact, the day before he died Moses was shown the Promised Land and told that his descendants would possess it, but that he would never set foot in it: “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it” (Deuteronomy 34:4).

The New Testament depicts the development of future leadership more clearly than in 2 Timothy in which Paul charges Timothy, his chief successor, to carry on his work, and to ensure that he in turn finds his own successors: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2:2).

To survive and grow, a movement such as the Christian faith must go at least four generations: Paul (the first generation) mentored Timothy (second), who was in turn was asked to mentor reliable men (third), who would be qualified to teach others (fourth)—four layers of successors who indeed did spread the infant movement, eventually to every continent.  Success without successors is like a childless couple; the future of the family is cut off.

Finishing well is an important measure of success in leadership.

Letting go of leadership is like sending your children away to college: It hurts, but has to be done. Mentoring is a nonnegotiable function of successful leadership.

Mistake #10: Failure to Focus on the Future

Prepare Yourself—It’s Later Than You Think

The future is rushing toward us at breakneck speed. A leader’s concentration must not be on the past nor on the present, but on the future. Vision is an effective leader’s chief preoccupation.  Organizations are reinvented with new generations of dreamers.

“If it works, it’s obsolete,” says a futurist.

In his book Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be, Leroy Eims wrote, “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do.”

Someone once said, “Stay one step ahead of your people and you are called a leader. Stay ten steps ahead of your people and you are called a martyr!”

In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner say “Leaders are pioneers. They are people who venture into unexplored territory. They guide us to new and often unfamiliar destinations. People who take the lead are the foot soldiers in the campaigns for change. The unique reason for having leaders—their differentiating function—is to move us forward. Leaders get us going someplace.”

Bill Gothard said, “Leadership is seeing the consequences of our actions further in the future than those around us can.”

One thing is constant: change. In Leading Change, John Kotter wrote, “The most notable trait of great leaders, certainly of great change leaders, however, is their quest for learning. They show an exceptional willingness to push themselves out of their own comfort zones, even after they have achieved a great deal.”

Vision

In their book Leaders, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus wrote, “To choose a direction, a leader must first have developed a mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organization. This image, which we call a vision, may be as vague as a dream or as precise as a goal or mission statement. The critical point is that a vision articulates a view of a realistic, credible, attractive future for the organization, a condition that is better in some important ways than what now exists.”

In The Power of Vision, George Barna wrote, “Vision for ministry is a clear mental image of a preferable future imparted by God to His chosen servants and is based upon an accurate understanding of God, self, and circumstances.”

Burt Nanus added, “There is no more powerful engine driving an organization toward excellence and long-range success than an attractive, worthwhile, achievable vision for the future, widely shared” (Visionary Leadership).

Leaders ask, “Where are we going next, and why are we going there?” Managers ask, “How will we get there?” We need organizations today that have this balanced dose of visionary leadership and effective management. “We are more in need of a vision or destination and a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a road map,” says Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey clarifies the difference in management and leadership when he says, “management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”

T.E. Lawrence said, “All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds Awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men, That they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.”

Futurist Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline, wrote, “The ability to learn faster than your counterparts may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

In Changing the Essence, Richard Beckhard and Wendy Pritchard speak of an issue that plagues all older traditional organizations: “The assumptions that guided organizations in the past were that they could control their own destinies and that they operated in a relatively stable and predictable environment.”

“When all else is lost, the future still remains,” remarked Christian Nestell Bovee.

Leaders who surround the top person should play an integral part in shaping vision and making plans. When the team has a stake in goal formation, they have a vested interest in goal ownership and in seeing these goals fulfilled.

Here’s some advice about building for the future:

• Set aside time to think about the future.
• Contemplate the future, from one to ten years out. It is important to take time away from the swamp and forget about the alligators nipping at your neck!

Robin Cook wrote, “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped, to deal with a world that no longer exists” (Abduction).

Develop a fresh vision statement. Even if your organization is fifty or a hundred years old, new times require fresh expressions of the group’s passion.

Burt Nanus, in Visionary Leadership, defines vision as simply “a realistic, credible, attractive future for your organization. Selecting and articulating the right vision, this powerful idea is the toughest task and truest test of great leadership.”

Get together and set strategic goals.

Peter Drucker (in “Classic Drucker: Wisdom from Peter Drucker” published in the Pages of Harvard Business Review) said, “Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration… Our motto seems to be, ‘Let’s do a little bit of everything.’”

Concentrate and eliminate. Lyle Schaller observes that most churches are ineffective, not because they do too little but because they attempt too much. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it this way, “The key to life is concentration and elimination.”

Read all about it. Take time to read books about future trends by experts in your field.

Leadership Visions are Snapshots of the Future

In Changing the Essence, Richard Beckhard and Wendy Pritchard wrote, “A vision is a picture of a future state for the organization, a description of what it would like to be a number of years from now. It is a dynamic picture of the organization in the future, as seen by its leadership. It is more than a dream or set of hopes, because top management is demonstrably committed to its realization: it is a commitment.”

Attempt and expect great things.

William Carey, who declared to his critics as he left for India 200 years ago to be a positive force in a needy place, “Expect great things, attempt great things.”

Dreamers, from Walt Disney to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Billy Graham to Mother Teresa, changed the world by envisioning a state of things better than before. Businesses and churches need these kinds of dreamers to stay relevant in a changing world. Recruit dreamers. 

Spend time as leaders dreaming about what could be.

May your dreams fuel you, as you shoot for the stars!