Scott Williams served as a key leader and Campus Pastor for LifeChurch.tv.  Now he is the Chief Solutions Officer for Nxt Level Solutions, a consulting company he founded to help businesses, non-profits and individuals with both internal and external growth.  Here is an article he wrote — “Four Reasons Leaders Fail” — that every leader should take to heart.

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Leadership is the most commonly used word when it comes down to the success of an organization, product, group, or team.  No matter how you slice the success pie, the success pieces all boil down to leadership. There are countless books about how to be a successful leader, 21 laws of leadership, how to go from good to great, and the list goes on and on.  People thrive on learning about leadership; the fact that John Maxwell has sold over 19 million books is a clear indication of such.

There are many reasons that contribute to the success of a leader and just as many reasons for why they fail.  I am a firm believer that you can learn as much from your failures and working around poor leadership as you can successful leadership.

Why do leaders FAIL?  Below is a list of 4 memorable reasons leaders FAIL in an easy to remember acronym.

1. Fake

A leader who attempts to be someone they’re not instead of simply being themselves will always have a difficult time succeeding; at some point, it just catches up to them.  This also applies to the leader that has a different face, different persona, different tone, and different everything when certain people are around.  In other words, when the big boss comes around, they put their fake face on.  That’s not to say a leader might not make some adjustments when “company” comes around; however, the super-fake face comes from insecurity of their true self.

Remember: Don’t be fake; be yourself.  “Do You! It’s a Statement…Not a Question!” Fake Leaders Fail!

2. Attitude

One of the primary reasons that a leader fails is because of a poor, negative, or a no-can-do attitude.  If a leader thinks he can fly and has a positive can-do attitude, even though they may not be able to fly, they will come close.  The reason why attitude is important is that the leader’s attitude will rub off on their team members and their followers.

Remember: “Attitude reflects leadership, Captain.” ~Julius in Remember the Titans  The outward negative attitude is generally a sign of internal struggles, challenges, or insecurities.  Leaders with Bad Attitudes Fail!

3. Integrity

If a leader doesn’t exhibit a high degree of integrity, they will fail.  The integrity issues will either catch up to them (what’s done in the dark, will come to light) or those that follow them won’t respect them.  If team members or followers don’t respect the leader, it puts the leader in the place of pushing a snowball up hill…it’s a difficult task.  These integrity issues run the gamut: profanity, lying, cheating, stealing, affairs, flirting, yelling, substance abuse, pride-filled decisions, etc.  I have worked with many high capacity leaders in both the secular world and ministry that have failed because they allowed their integrity to get off track.

Remember:  Integrity is doing the right thing, even when nobody is watching. The recent failure episodes of the Herman Cains and Jerry Sanduskys of the world demonstrate how the lack of integrity will always lead to failure of the leader.  Unfortunately, it demonstrates that leadership failures can leave a trail of wounded followers behind.  Leaders who lack integrity Fail!

4. Lacking

Although everyone has potential for some degree of leadership in them, the bottom line is that some leaders fail because they are either: a.) Not the leader they think they are, or b.) Promoted above their leadership capacity/leadership role has outgrown them, or c.) Not a visionary, or d.) Not a leader at all!  They are lacking what it takes!

Remember: Just because someone has an office, role, title, or responsibility doesn’t mean they are a leader.  Leadership is an art, a skill, a craft, a gift… and it must be developed!  A leader must have the ability to inspire people to do more, be more, and go farther.  If a leader lacks genuine followers or lacks what it takes to be a leader, they aren’t leading; they are simply going on a walk.

I picked up a copy of Dave and Jon Ferguson’s book “Exponential” yesterday.  After reading the first fifty pages, my first question was: “Why didn’t I buy this book five years ago?”  Then I realized it hadn’t been written five years ago … so I felt a bit less guilty.

In 2001, when Tonya and I were leaving the Churches of Christ, I interviewed for the Senior Associate Pastor position with Dave and Jon’s dad, Earl Ferguson.  The job went to the other candidate but I was honored to be considered.  A large part of the attraction for me was the opportunity to apprentice for two years with Earl.  Now, ten years later, I’m able to be a virtual apprentice to his sons through their writing.

How cool is that!

Here are my notes from a church planting webinar I attended today: Lessons from the Trenches.  The host/leader was Andy Wood, senior pastor at South Bay Church in Silicon Valley.  It was fantastic!

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Andy Woods – South Bay ChurchFebruary 2, 2012
Lessons from the Trenches

1.  The importance of giving the unreached a voice at the table.

Typically there is no one in a decision making position that represents the lost.  How will this decision help us reach the unchurched person in our community?

How hot is my passion for the lost?
How are we doing making decisions with the lost in mind?

2.  There are two types of health indicators: leading and lagging.

What do you measures?

Lagging = Bodies.  Seats.  First-time guests.  Budget.  Baptisms.

Leading = Are more people praying?  (What impacts the lagging indicators?).

What stats are you giving attention to?

What leading factors are contributing to the fruitfulness or the fruitlessness?

3.  Focus on revelation and contextualization, beware of imitation.

Every church has a cultural and leadership component that influences how they do things.

Use proven systems to launch; then move to uniqueness.

What parts of our vision / strategy is coming from my time alone with God?

When I hear great ideas from other leaders what lens do I run them through?

4.  Great leaders stay ahead of the curve.

Great leaders sees problems before anyone else sees them and solves them before anyone else knows they need solving.

Steve Stroop.

It’s important for senior leaders to model prayerfulness.

What’s next? What’s after what’s next?
If we keep growing at the same rate, what problems will exist in the near future?
How are we doing staying ahead of the curve?

5.  Break through growth barriers by shifting your paradigm.

Craig Groeschel = whenever he added a new kid to his family, had to change the paradigm of how the family operated.

The paradigm must change before growth will occur.  Your way of thinking must change before making operational changing.

Example: Responsibility of staff is to equip people to get work done.

What would need to change (thinking/structure/space) in order for us to double in size over the next twelve months?
Who is just beyond me that I can learn their paradigms for leadership?

6.  Organizations tend to lose urgency and gain bureaucracy.

The bigger the organization becomes the harder it is to control it.

Google = doesn’t run its organization through bureaucracy but vision.

Flexibility with accountability.

Six by six execution.  Every six weeks every employee has six objectives they are working on.

What red tape is stifling creativity and momentum?
How can you stay flexible and have the necessary infrastructure?
What can I do to infuse urgency?

7.  Healthy organizations and lives get pruned on a regular basis.

As a leader, you have be constantly making adjustments.

What systems need to be changed?
What assumptions need to be tested?
What needs to be trimmed/eliminated?
Who needs to be challenged or removed?
What are you currently having to manufacture energy for? (In other words, no one is excited about?)

8.  Focus on culture while equipping the team to create systems.

Culture is more important/powerful than systems.

Part of the shift for senior leaders is to equip staff to create systems.  Sam Chan – Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code

Staff Vision Day = driving around the community.  What could God do in the future?

You can delegate systems but not culture.

How much attention to culture?
What is celebrated/corrected?
What elephants are in the room?
How can you more effectively equip your team to develop systems?

9.  Pain and sacrifice increase with growth.

What price am I willing to pay?
What price am I not willing to pay?
How am I doing with rest?
What sacrifice am I avoiding?
What sacrifice am I making that God is not asking me to make?

10.  My heart is the wellspring of our organization.

As goes my spiritual life, so goes the church.  Proverbs 4:23

How is your personal time with God?
How is your relationship with family?
How pure is my heart?

* Bitterness or forgiveness?
* Entitlement or gratitude?
* Generosity or greed?
* Sexual immorality or sexual purity?
* Selfish ambition or godly ambition?

http://blogofandywood.blogspot.com/

http://www.southbaychurch.org/

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur.” — John Wooden

I just read an interesting article in Wired magazine about how we learn.  The author interviewed Robert Bjork, the director of UCLA’s Learning and Forgetting Lab (yes, there is such a place).  Below are a few take-homes.

1. Interleaving.  Instead of trying to master one topic or skill at a time, interleaving is the process of rotating through several related skills or topics. According to Bjork, memory works better when many different connections are made as opposed to just one.
2. Get mobile.  In other words, vary the places where you study.  If you will need to know the information in more than one location, Bjork suggests studying in more than one location.
3. Wait.  “The more difficult and involved the retrieval, the more beneficial it is.”  Bjork suggests spacing your studying times in a way that requires the mind to dig deeper and work harder at remembering what you studied the first time.  This helps cement the retrieval process.  For students, he suggests taking notes after class — forcing yourself to pay attention during class and remember what is important.

How would these apply in your situation?

A good article appeared last week in Forbes’ online magazine about how to retain top talent.  Actually, it sought to answer the question: “Why does top talent leave?“  The author boiled ten reasons down to two primary factors:

• Top talent doesn’t like being poorly managed
• Top talent doesn’t like “organizational lameness” (shifting priorities, no vision, uninspiring atmosphere)

So, to flip this over to the positive side, how do you retain top talent?

If you are a manager, learn to manage well.  Your staff or employees don’t require perfection; but they respond well to a leader who is growing and sharpening their skills.  If you are in a hiring position, hire managers with good people skills.  Competencies can be supplemented with additional hands and feet.  You can’t contract out people skills.

Secondly, examine your culture.  High capacity people want to make more than a marginal difference.  They can’t swim long in the waters of mediocrity.  They want to share in creating and living the vision.  Inspired people do inspiring things.

To read the original “ten reasons” article, click here.

Passing this along from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

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Thinking Outside the Box – Literally
By Christopher Shea
Just how potent is the metaphor “thinking outside the box”? To find out, researchers built a literal box out of PVC pipe and cardboard — 5′ cubed.

Roughly 100 test subjects were given a 10-question word-association test designed to measure one kind of creativity (sample item: What one word links “measure,” “worm,” “video”?). As they answered, participants sat inside the box, sat outside of it, or sat in a room sans box.

People sitting outside the box answered more questions correctly than either of the other two groups (and the difference couldn’t be explained by claustrophobia or confusion, both of which were measured). Creativity seemed to be spurred by the acting out of a familiar figure of speech, the researchers said. (The cover story for the experiment was that was exploring the effects of different work environments.)

In a variation on that experiment, people pondered creative puzzles while walking a rectangular path in a laboratory; freely departing from the path when they wanted; or while seated. Once again, people who walked “outside the box” had the most creative answers.

Source: “Embodied Metaphors and Creative ‘Acts,’” Angela Leung and six other authors, Psychological Science (forthcoming)

Just finished reading “Necessary Endings” by Henry Cloud.  It’s a great book for thinking through the necessary changes we encounter in life.  Two of my favorite sections were about pruning and how to to discern the difference between hope and wishful thinking.

When it comes to work or vocation, it’s common to hear: “Do what you love.”  Sounds good …

But I love eating donuts.  As much as I love donuts, I know if I only eat donuts, I’ll die a fat (but happy) man.  To be healthy, I can’t just eat what I love — sometimes I have to eat things that I know are good for me but may not be the most enjoyable experience.

Successful people don’t just do what they love (i.e., are passionate about); they also do what they are good at.  They take into account their strengths and act accordingly.  Satisfaction comes when passion and strengths are aligned.

What do you love?

The following is an excerpt from a great article in The Atlantic entitled “This is Why You Don’t Go to the Gym” by Derek Thompson.

People are way too optimistic about their willpower to work out, Stefano Dellavigna and Ulrike Malmendier concluded in their famous paper “Paying Not to Go to the Gym.” In the study, members were offered a $10-per-visit package or a monthly contract worth $70. More chose the monthly contract and only went to the gym four times a month. As a result, they paid 70 percent more per visit than they would have under the plan they rejected. Why? Because people are too optimistic that they can become gym rats, which would make the monthly package “worth it.” Silly them.

You might call this behavior “laziness.” Economists prefer “hyperbolic discounting.” This is the theory that we pay more attention to our short-term well-being and “discount” rewards that might come further down the road. Think of a small reward in the distant future, like taking a nap three weeks from now. Doesn’t hold much appeal, does it? But when the small reward is imminent — Take a nap right now? Woo hoo! — it’s considerably more attractive. Given the choice between small/soon rewards versus larger/later benefits, we’ll take the former. Hyperbolic discounting helps to explain why Congress can’t pass deficit reduction, why drug addicts stay addicts, why debtors don’t pay off their bills, and why you keep telling yourself that the right day for exercise is always “tomorrow.”