Monthly Archives: September 2013

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Our Daughter Needs Us to Guide as We Walk a Fine Line – Week 10

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Needs - Week 10 - 3Our sons and our daughters both need us. But, I must confess that, right or wrong, usually our hearts are a little more tender when it comes to our daughters. Nevertheless, if our kids are given the opportunity, sometimes they will lose their minds.

Part of our coaching role is to bring them back to reality. Our daughters need us to guide them. And she also needs you to walk a very fine line sometimes. Your guidance should be more than simply setting a fine example, but it should not be an endless stream of lectures and diatribes.  So what do we do?  How do we guide?

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Christ and His “Team” – Part 1

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Christ and His Team - Part 1 - 1Christ selected 12 men from among his early followers to become his closest confidants and, dare we say, His friends. After an intensive discipleship course (Basic Training) and following his resurrection from the dead, the Lord fully commissioned the apostles to advance God’s Kingdom and carry the Gospel message to the world.

These men became the pioneering leaders of the New Testament Church. But they were not without faults and shortcomings. Interestingly, not one of the chosen 12 disciples was a scholar or rabbi. They had no extraordinary skills. Neither religious, nor secular, nor skilled, they were ordinary people, just like you and me.

Let’s take a few paragraphs and look at their personalities and discuss where they fit on the “Team”, and what their role was on that team.

Theological lessons tell us that Peter was maybe the favorite. So was he the 1st Lieutenant?

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Rewards and Punishments

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Rewards and Punishments - 1A leader should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid.

This quote strikes a chord with me, because as I look forward to my eldest daughter’s Jr. High years and her becoming a pre-teen, I struggle with how to punish and reward her. Fortunately for me a stern word and a harsh look has typically been all the punishment she has ever needed. However she no longer responds to “Will you do that for a Popsicle?” I honestly have never been one for corporal punishment, not that my kids didn’t ever deserve it, but because I am considerable larger than them, and was a little scared I could hurt them. Lucky for me, my tone of voice has always instilled a little fear in them and it has worked…..until recently.

It seems as though my daughters have realized I am all talk, and that they have me wrapped around their fingers. So as I struggle with how to reward and punish them, I thought I would try to get ideas from others on lessons learned from rewards and punishments.

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Manday Quote: Insecure Leadership

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My Senior Pastor Gregg Matte made many penetrating statements in a recent sermon that caught my attention.  But there is always that one  “SQUIRREL” moment when my pastor mentions leadership in his message.

“Insecure leaders make people-pleasing their priority instead of leading.”

Pastor Gregg was providing a breakdown of all the Herods listed in the Bible from Jesus’ birth to the preaching of Paul.  Our Pastor noted that one of the Herods became so enamored with the positive response of the Jews after he beheaded James, the brother of John.  He was so encouraged by the response, Herod decided to arrest Peter in an attempt to please the Jewish masses.  Herod became a people-pleaser.

The Senior Pastor then went on to confess that he has chosen the path of people-pleasing  and will probably do that in the future.  Now…he wasn’t comparing himself to Herod.  But as a leader, Pastor Gregg was admitting that it is human nature to accept insecurity and grasp at anything to please critics and followers instead of making the hard decisions and leading.

I have done it.  It is the path of least resistance.  I forfeited the opportunity to lead for the accolades and “likes” of men.

Men can have this tendency to choose the people-pleasing route instead of leading.

 

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Our Sons Need Us to Help Them Make a Life Plan – Week 9

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Needs - Week 9 - 1Dad, do you have a plan to help your son become a real man?

You’ve heard the maxim: If you fail to plan, you may as well plan to fail. Or, as I heard in a sermon illustration many years ago: “A porpoise without a purpose in bounder flounder.”  (I guess you had to be there . . .)

Your son needs a father who is thinking about his son’s future and taking action to prepare them for that future—whether we’re talking about tomorrow, next week, next year, or ten years from now.

So, what should we help them to plan for? They will need at least the following:

They will need to plan for a vocation. They may have many jobs before they settle in to a career. But they need a plan on how to start. You can help your son plan for his vocational future by:

  • Helping him explore a wide variety of interests and hobbies. Is he gifted at music? Has he been to space camp? Is he a superstar athlete? Is he a writer? Is he a builder? He won’t know unless he tries.
  • Helping your son brainstorm about career possibilities, and then exposing him to jobs that might interest him. You can do this well before high school. If he wants to be doctor, see if you can take a tour of a hospital and ask a doctor some questions about being a medical professional.
  • Trying not to talk negatively about your own career. Those comments muttered under your breath make a big impression on him. Not only do they shape your son’s ideas about your job, they color his impression of work in general.
  • Encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit. Our society needs more business owners and those willing to be creators of jobs for others. Those baby-sitting and lawn-mowing jobs teach your kids that both time and effort have their rewards.

They will need a plan for choosing a life’s mate. Dad, don’t leave your son to learn these things from his friends or some men’s magazine that he picks up. Give him accurate information. Help him really understand the importance of integrity, purity, and respect for women. You can help him plan for a healthy dating and marriage relationship by:

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How to Conduct Team Briefings

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How to conduct team briefings - 1Earlier in the week I discussed team briefings and the importance of communications in the process. But I really didn’t address the mechanics of conducting the team briefing. So, today, let’s focus on that.

As the Leader You Must Commit to a Structure and a Process  It doesn’t necessarily be a super-formal process. But, people must understand what to expect when they attend one of your team briefings.

  • Ensure that you understand what is going on in the organization and that you have been properly briefed yourself. Make sure your team leaders know what’s happening at various levels, and with various other teams, throughout the organization.
  • Provide training or coaching on how to conduct effective team briefings.
  • Recognize and reward supervisors and managers for conducting effective team briefings.
  • Brevity is the soul of wit. If you can’t say it in 15 to 30 minutes, then a team briefing is not the right vehicle for a more complex message.

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Team Briefings

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Team Briefing - 1We have many communication options these days – phone calls, faxes, emails, text messages, and so on. Sometimes it seems as though traditional, face-to-face meetings are disappearing.  It seems that the more options for communicating that we have available, the less real communication occurs.

I am probably one of the only guys at my place of employment without a Bachelor of Science degree.  Most are engineers.  My degree is a lowly Bachelor of Arts degree.  And it is in Mass Communications.  However, I have leveraged it fully throughout my career.  And one of the things that I recall about the communication process is that it has 3 parts and not just 2.  We often think of the “sender” and the “receiver”.  But we often forget the all important ‘feedback”.  And unfortunately, feedback is extremely hard to discern outside of face to face communication.  And even then it is hard to discern.

So, for On the Team Tuesday, let’s look at Team Briefings and what role we have as leaders in that setting.  And let’s consider the characteristics and benefits of well run team briefings. .

The basic characteristics of a team briefing are as follows:

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Manday: Hemingway Quote

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Our own Billy wrote an amazing article based on Col Grossman’s evaluation of the three types of people. Billy’s Sheepdog article is one of the most popular articles at Leadership Voices.  I am a Police Officer.  I consider myself a Sheepdog. I hunt things that go bump in the night.  While you sleep, we, sheepdogs, own the night.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. -Ernest Hemingway

Recently, I ran across the Hemingway quote emblazoned on the back of a t-shirt designed for Law Enforcement personnel.   The shirt is produced by Certified Wolf Hunter.  I thought I would share it with the leadership blogoshpere.

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Billy and I had a discussion about this…with our leader Kevin stirring it up.

So are you a Sheepdog…or a Wolf Hunter?