How Does a Leader Act?

DESPITE popular belief, leaders aren’t born. They learn how to lead. The real test of leadership is: If you have no title or ability to reward / penalize others, could you still get them to follow you?

Are there principles of leadership? I believe there are….

#1 The Power of Self-Mastery – very few of us live our lives to its fullest potential

As a Christian, one of my favourite verse is taken from the bible – John 10:10. The Abundant Life that Jesus promised to his followers.

Obligation, or Opportunity?
How do you live life? Those who see life as an obligation want the task at hand to be done with as quickly as possible, with little regard to the outcome. The people who change the world around them – for themselves, their communities, their families – rarely act from a sense of obligation. In fact, the people who act as leaders almost always act from a sense of incredible opportunity. They don’t interact with the world around them because they have to – they do so because thy want to.

When we feel stressed and overwhelmed, we tend to look at our circumstances as obligations, and obligations, by their nature, are oppressive. They are things we have to do, whether we want to or not. That sense of obligation is rarely a motivating force.

On the other hand, those who lead effectively tend to view such circumstances as opportunities. They tend to be happier because they realize they can make something good out of a situation or circumstance that others would bemoan or at best tolerate.

Leaders believe that how we live out our lives is a choice. We do not allow circumstances to control us – rather we master our circumstances. To truly lead and make a difference in the world, you must always start with yourself.... constantly evaluate your life - under the scrutiny of intentional self-diagnostic, strengths and weaknesses will surface. Act on them!

Called to Become or Driven to Do?

MY work commitments have been pretty heavy lately and it's hard to keep pace with blogging - there are just too many issues and happenings in the news these days that puts my mind into overdrive wrestling with those implications and trying to stay sane and adopting a balanced perspective.

Gordon MacDonald (Ordering Your Private World), makes the distinction between people who are “driven” and people who are “called.”

“Driven” people spend most of their time defending what they own – their ideas, relationships, possessions, etc.

On the other hand, “called” people live by the philosophy that everything is on loan. They contend that we come into this world with nothing, and we leave with nothing. When all is said and done, all we can take with us is the love we feel toward others and the love they have sent our way. Adapted from Ken Blanchard (The Heart of a Leader).


How true. In my encounter with people, they fall generally into these two segments.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong between the two, the results are significantly different. You must be sure what results you are looking for when appointing or working with people from either of the category.

You see, “called” people will be committed in bringing out the best in what is on their plate – they’re not concerned with their own benefits – they’re looking at bringing out the best at what they’ve been given – to discharge their responsibilities to the best that they can.

“Driven” people, as the term suggests, are people motivated by something – a force that it within them that they sometimes becomes overwhelmed and consumed – to the extent that they do not question what is it that they’re doing; and why they are doing it.

I’ve seen people changed their attitudes halfway because they are actually not called into a particular situation. When things do not happen as anticipated, or when they faced dissonance, difficulties and discouragement – they lost their bearing – their calling – and the real reason for their involvement in a particular project or work is brought to the surface - the “drive” to “do” or to “involve.”

Sadly, many leaders failed to differentiate between the two and sometimes, the impact can be very negative indeed.

Making Your Attitude Your Greatest Asset

I SUBSCRIBED regularly to John Maxwell and came across an article which I must share with readers....

Motivational speakers have famously touted the slogan, "attitude is everything." While there's no doubt about the power of a positive outlook, attitude alone won't take you to the top. By itself, attitude is unable to resurrect a doomed business plan or make up for a deficiency of knowledge. Attitude can't alter reality or reverse a dire financial situation.

The "attitude is everything" doctrine becomes dangerous when a person lives on hope rather than paying his or her dues for success. The mindset, "Everything will turn out for the best," substitutes for planning and effort. Attitude has undeniable benefit, but it's not a magic ticket that compensates for failure to perform. You cannot disconnect attitude from reality and expect to be successful.

1) What Your Attitude Cannot Do For You.....

• Cannot Substitute for Competence.
  In my leadership experience, I have made the mistake of hiring for attitude and discounting ability. I erroneously thought that positive people would eventually find a way to get the job done-even if they didn't have the exact abilities for their role. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for talent. An attitude of confidence cannot replace competence.

• Cannot Substitute for Experience.
  Idealists have intense desire to change the world and often have a courageous attitude to match their ambition. However, without experience an idealist's wave of enthusiasm will crash on the shores of reality. Certain leadership positions-due to their scope of responsibility-demand the kind of wisdom that is earned solely through experience.

• Cannot Change the Facts.
  As John Adams said, "Facts are stubborn things." They may be painful to accept, but they cannot be ignored. Attitude alone cannot reverse financial numbers showing a company on the verge of bankruptcy. The reality for many companies involves difficult decisions like outsourcing or layoffs to cut costs.
  By itself, attitude cannot stem the tide of an evolving industry. For instance, newspapers must adjust their advertising strategies to confront the fact that consumers are flocking online for news. Without a fundamental shift in their business models, traditional newspapers face extinction-regardless of the attitudes permeating their company cultures.

• Cannot Substitute for Personal Growth.
  Attitude fills us with hope that we might reach our dreams. However, hope divorced from action proves false. In the words of musician, Bruce Springsteen, "A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be." Never stop dreaming, but also never cease growing if you expect your dreams to come true.

II. What Your Attitude Can Do For You

• Makes a Difference in Your Approach to Life.
  Our performance will likely match the expectations we have of ourselves or the expectations we allow others to impose upon us. In fact, it's very difficult to behave in a way that is contrary to self-expectations.
  At the professional levels, athletes are encouraged to visualize themselves having a successful performance before competing. Visualization has proved to be a productive technique for enhancing an athlete's play. Likewise, flooding your mind with thoughts of successful leadership can be pivotal in setting healthy self-expectations.

• Makes a Difference in Your Relationships with People.
  Many factors come into play when working with people, but what makes or breaks interpersonal skills is a person's attitude.

• Makes a Difference in How You Face Challenges.
  Circumstances appear to be instrumental in the creation of great leaders and thinkers, but such is the case only when their attitudes are right. Your attitude is the paint brush of your mind. It colors your world with brilliant optimism or a dark veneer of negativity. Consider these historical examples of leaders whose attitudes carried them beyond circumstances:
  

1. Demosthenes, called the greatest orator of ancient Greece, possessed a speech impediment. He overcame it by reciting verses with pebbles in his mouth and speaking over the roar of the waves at the seashore.
2. Composer Ludwig von Beethoven wrote his greatest symphonic masterpieces after he had become deaf.
3. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress while in prison.
4. Daniel Dafoe also wrote while in prison, producing Robinson Crusoe.
   Franklin Delano Roosevelt is considered by many to be among the best American presidents. Despite his polio handicap, FDR led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II.
   

I cannot always choose what happens to me, but I can always choose what happens in me. My attitude in circumstances beyond my control can be the difference maker. My attitude in the areas that I do control will be the difference maker.

Over the weekend, I'll resume the topic "The Practical Realities of the Call "

Discerning the Right Voice

HOW do we know we are hearing God’s voice and not merely the voice of our own aspirations, desires that contain godly ambition and selfishness co-mingled? How do we sort God’s voice out of the clamor of so many messages?

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking – A Theological ABC.

Without both, we fail.

Too many people in the church are doing things that “ought to be done,” but they don’t like it. It’s just wearing them down, and there’s a joylessness about the whole thing.

We failed miserably when we are doing something that “needs to be done” but doing it with no gladness. And this gladness isn’t necessarily emotional “highs” - we can suffer and sacrifice and still be glad about it. It is the sense of significance / meaning / purpose / seeing that the work as worthwhile rather then necessary. The former precedes the latter.

It’s just as wrong to do something that needs doing and hate it as it is to just do something that we like but doesn’t really need to be done. So a working theology of a call needs to include this sense of gladness, trying to find the common ground between our deep gladness and the needs around us.

Inherent in God’s call is something fierce and unmanageable. He summons, but he will not be summoned. God does the calling: we do the answering.

Jesus told his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). There is always a sense of compulsion, at times even a sense of angst and pain, about God’s call. Struck blind on the road of Damascus, Paul later wrote, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). Jeremiah said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jer 20:9).

Spurgeon saw the “divine constraint” as such a sure sign of a call that he advised young men considering the ministry not to do it if, in any way, they could see themselves doing something else.

At times, we try to “tame” the call:-

(1) Equating a staff position in a church or a religious organization with the call itself. But the call always transcends the things we do to earn money, even it those things are done in the church. The same distinction we urge our people to recognize applies to us: Our vocation in Christ is one thing; our occupation, quite another.

Our vocation is our calling to serve Christ; our occupations are the jobs we do to earn our way in the world. While it is our calling to press our occupations into the service of our vocation, it is idolatrous to equate the two. Happy is the man or woman whose vocation and occupation come close. But it is no disaster if they do not.

If tomorrow, I am fired and am forced to find employment in the gas station down the street; to turn my hobbies collection into a business through selling on eBay, etc, my vocation would remain intact. I still would be called to preach and to teach. To inspire and to lead. Nothing would have changed my call – just the situation / circumstance in which I obey this call.

Someone once said, “I may preach as the paid pastor of a church, but I am not paid to preach – I am given an allowance so that I can be more free to preach and teach” Ralph Turnbull.

(2) “Clericalizing” it. Seminary education does not qualify a person for the ordained ministry, nor does additional psychological testing and field experience. Naturally, these may be valuable and even necessary for the ministry, but none of them alone or in combination is sufficient.

No office or position can be equated with the call. No credential, degree or test should be confused with it. No professional jargon or psychobabble can tame the call of God. No training or experience or ecclesiastical success can replace it.

Only the call suffices. Everything else is footnote and commentary – Ben Patterson Mastering the Pastoral Role.

God does the calling: we do the answering. He call us to serve him and his work. Are you doing what God had called you to? Are you in a place “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Coming Next…”Recognizing the Professional realities”. Stay tuned….

Call vs Career

The Call to Ministry

“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?” Apostle Paul - 2 Cor 2:15-16.

The question strikes most pastors and ministers every once in a while, if we are honest with ourselves: “Who am I, of all people, to tell the congregation what God thinks?”

We have no right, no reason, no hope in ministry if not for one thing: Almighty God, in his inscrutable wisdom, has called us to it. That is all. God has willed it; not me. The Spirit blows where he wants (John 3:8), and he has blown some into the clergy; some into laity.

Like the new birth, we were born into this thing not by the will of a person, or an institution, but by the will of our Father in heaven.

Yet we still puzzle over this thing we designate a “call.” What is it? How does it come? How do we know when it does come to us?

Hearing the Call

There is much we may not understand about the call to ministry but one thing must be clear in our minds: a call is not a career. This pivotal distinction between the two may be the most important thing we ever understand about the call of God, especially in these times.

“Career” is derived from the French carriere, meaning “a road,” or “a highway.” The image suggests a course that a person sets out on, road map in hand, goal in sight, with stops marked along the way for food, lodging, and fuel. With hindsight, we can speak of one’s career as the road one took in life. But more often we speak of it as we look forward, as the path we choose and plan to travel professionally, an itinerary charted and scheduled. The destination is primary. The roads are well-marked. The rest is up to the traveler.

“Call” on the other hand, has no maps, no itinerary to follow, no destination to envision. Rather, a call depends upon hearing a Voice. The organ of faith is the ear, not the eye. First and last, it is something one listens for. Everything depends upon the relationship of the listener to the One who calls.

Careers lend themselves to formulas and blueprints; Call, only to a relationship. A career can be pursued with a certain amount of personal detachment; a call, never.

When Moses heard God call him to free the slaves in Egypt, he first responded as though he were presented with a career decision. Was he qualified? Did he have the proper experience and unique skills required by such an undertaking? He talked to God as though he were in a job interview: Who am I to do such a thing? What if the people don’t follow? Doesn’t God know that I am a poor public speaker?

All of this was irrelevant to God. All that mattered was that Moses believe God could be trusted when he said, “I will be with you.”

In short, all that mattered was the call, and that Moses bind himself to the One who issued the call. There was no road map, only the Voice.

Ministry is not an occupation but a vocation. It primarily demands not professional credentials but the ability to hear and heed the call of God. Therefore, we must stay quiet enough and close enough to hear his voice and be held firm in our impossible task by his everlasting arms.

Coming Next…”Discerning the Right Voice”. Stay tuned….

Christian Vision In Short Supply

TRUE ministry begins with vision. For a Christian leader – that is, an individual chosen by God (not man) to move His people forward – vision is not to be regarded as an option. It is the insight that instructs the leader and directs his or her path.

If, for whatever reason, you are attempting to lead God’s people without God’s vision for your ministry, you are simply playing a dangerous game – a game that neither pleases God nor satisfies people.

George Barna - The Power of Vision: How You Can Capture and Apply God's Vision for Your Ministry.

Five Contrasts - Which Ones Best Describe You as a Leader?

1. Careful is cerebral; Fearful is emotional.
2. Careful is fueled by information; Fearful is fueled by imagination.
3. Careful calculates risk; Fearful avoids risk.
4. Careful wants to achieve success; Fearful wants to avoid failure.
5. Careful is concerned about progress; Fearful is concerned about protection.

The leader who refuses to move until the fear is gone will never move. Consequently, he will never lead. There is always uncertainty associated with the future.

Uncertainty presupposes risk. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk.

- Andy Stanley