You Lead this week...

As a leader, you've no doubt learned that those who look to you for leadership don't always know what good leadership looks like, but they never miss the lack of it! Here are five critical elements you contribute to the security and credibility of your leadership:

1) Give CONTEXT - define the environment in terms of the roles of your team member. If her role is management then define the environment in terms of efficiencies and inefficiencies. When they look at a task or a project, do they see a thousand unrelated variables, or a thousand potential efficiency improvements they might readily effect? If her role is teaching, then give context specifically for communication. What does she need to say or do to communicate the solutions people need. One of the greatest gifts you can give your team member is seeing and speaking from their perspective, putting things into the terms they will operate with. Without this step, they must translate your ambiguous or emotional input into useful terms, and will often misinterpret your feedback. So if you tell a greeter that people are feeling frenetic and lost, that's not nearly as useful as telling them to immediately suggest where they might take their kids or wave them in the direction they should go with a smile. Vision is critical, but it's the job of leadership to translate vision into practical reality of how followers contribute to the vision to avoid peresonal disconnects.

2) Give DIRECTION - the most critical element of leadership is not vision, but direction. Vision paints the picture of where we want to be, but direction points a team in a unified way to accomplish that vision. Without direction, vision is just a great idea no one can connect with, contribute to, or get excited about. If your vision is for ministry to have a specific measurable impact in 3 years, what will be in place in 6 months, who's managing that project, and what will it cost? What will the impact be on 18 months and what is the shift in resources as it grows? Vision without strategy or direction is poison to your organization. If we disconnect our goals from our resources and priorities, we disconnect people from the vision, because there is nothing they can do to make the leap from where you are, to where you want to be... People need the "how we'll get there", too. By the way - the best direction is personal and relational. It speaks to "who we are" TODAY, and how that will bring about the vision we've set long term.

3) Give OWNERSHIP - if you're the lead that sets the vision, be the lead that gives it away. How will each of your team members contribute to that vision with their unique skills and expertise? ASK THEM! As soon as your team is working on making their ideas for bringing about the vision work, it's become theirs and not yours... and that's a really good thing. Your vision and your ideas translated into tasks for others makes them feel like their just working on your project for your success. But their ideas for what they can do to bring about a shared vision makes them feel like their accomplishment is the team's success. If your team nods assent to the vision of your organization, the very next thing you say should be a question about what they can do individually, with their unique role, gifting, skills, andopportunites to impact that vision being a reality. At that point your job as a leader shifts from vision casting to resource allocation, because the vision is now theirs,based on the success of their ideas and investments.

4) Give EQUIPPING - Casting the vision, giving context, and giving ownership make it a shared vision, but the authroaty and resources to act still have to be given away for vision to become a reality. Your goal can now become the success of your team. What do they need to be successful? Do each of them have what they need - both internally (skills) and externally (resources) - to make the contributions they want to make to the vision they've taken ownership of? If tasks, schedules, resources, or ideologies conflict among team members are the priorities clear enough - based on the direction and strategy you've set - for clear decision making? Obviously you as a leader are a limited resource. Finances, facilities, equipment, other personnel, and any centralized resources are limited in quantity as well. Without clear strategy, priorites seem arbitrary, but once strategy and direction are set, priorities become clear as well, since some things need to move forward before others. Today's priorities aren't necessarily "forever priorities" or pet projects, but necessary steps in a specific order to agreed upon goals everyone is invested in. In is way, a lot of "no's" become clearly understood and even embraced "not now's" becAuse when a task takes priority is based on it's urgency within your strategy.

5) Give YOURSELF- Once the vision is shared, the strategy is clear, and the priorities are set, the "doing" of ministry is in the hands of the practitioners - the experts (or those becoming experts) for each area within your organization. Your focus now shifts from the vision (though ever in front of you and consistently re-articulated) to your team. Equipping them, resourcing them, empowering them, running interference for them, removing obstacles for them, and Dvocating for them in any other way possible becomes your primary job as a leaders. This doesn't mean pulling the rug out from under one team member for another, but facilitating the necessary communication for priorities to be clarified and strategy to be implemented BY THE TEAM. When your job becomes your team, and the team's job is the vision, expect incredible personal and organizational growth!


In fhe final analysis, your leadership will be evident not in the greatness of your vision, but in the success of the individuals on your team. Giving direction, equipping, context, ownership, and ultimately yourself for the success of those team members redeems your vision by developing a unified, motivated, consistent, and empowered organization.

And isn't that what you want to see happen when you lead?