Author Archives: royeyre

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About royeyre

I'm a student of leadership at Wycliffe Bible Translators. Besides getting the Word of God into every language that needs it in this generation, my passion is to see young people step up and take leadership.

Who are the leaders of the future?

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While wrapping up Brad Smart’s book Topgrading, I launched into the first chapters of The Age of the Unthinkable, by Joshua Cooper Ramo. Both have me thinking about what characteristics to look for in the leaders of tomorrow. Predicting leadership characteristics in a broad view is easier than predicting for any one position, because the requirements for a particular position at a particular point in time are extremely difficult to predict. Organizational priorities and opportunities might require a successor to look very different from his predecessor.

Ramo doesn’t answer the question directly, but he does offer a suggested resume for someone pursuing a career in foreign policy. There are leadership implications in this list:

  • Should be able to speak and think in revolutionary terms
  • Should have an expertise in some area of the world — be it China or the Internet or bioengineering — where fast change and unpredictability are the dominant facts of life
  • Should have experienced the unforgiving demands for precision and care that characterize real negotiation
  • Likewise, should have experienced the magical effect of risk-taking at the right moments
  • Should have mastered the essential skill of the next fifty years: crisis management
  • Should be inclined toward action, even action at times without too much reflection, since at certain moments instinct and speed are more important than the lovely perfection of academic models
  • Most of all, however, we need policy makers and thinkers who have that revolutionary feel for the inescapable demands of innovation. We need early adopters…

Smart meanwhile talks a lot of about the competencies most desirable in “A players.” Number one on his list:

Resourcefulness refers to your ability to passionately figure things out, like how to surmount barriers… It is a composite of many [competencies]: Intelligence, Analysis Skills, Creativity, Pragmatism, Risk Taking, Initiative, Organization/Planning, Independence, Adaptability, Change Leadership, Energy, Passion, and Tenacity.

No wonder Smart refers to it as “the megacompetency.” Do you see the overlap with Ramo’s list? In an era of epic change, the leaders of the future will be resourceful, instinctive and action-oriented revolutionaries, risk-takers and innovators. This goes back to a previous point I’ve made that academic institutions and MBA programs have been training people for a reality that doesn’t exist anymore. There are few existing models for the world these leaders will face. So, perhaps we should add one more to the list: Critical Thinking skills. They need to be able to think on their feet.

Reading Update

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Books I’ve read this quarter:

  • Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey
  • Start with Why, by Simon Sinek
  • Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint, by Christopher Witt
  • The Return of the King, by J.R. Tolkien (to my boys)

I’m currently reading:

  • Topgrading, by Brad Smart
  • Servant Empowered Leadership, by Don Page
  • Radical, by David Platt

On my nightstand to read next:

  • Many Colors, by Soong-Chan Rah
  • What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith
  • The Mentor Leader, by Tony Dungy
  • First Break All the Rules, by Marcus Buckingham
  • A Sense of Urgency, by John Kotter

A friend recently told me he had a voucher for a free book at Amazon. “Which book would you recommend?” Great question. I’ve been posting my reading list for a year now, so let me go back and give my top 5 books for this year.

  • Leading Across Cultures: Effective Ministry and Mission in the Global Church, by James E. Plueddemann
  • Leading with a Limp, by Dan Allender
  • Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath
  • Start with Why, by Simon Sinek
  • The Leadership Jump, by Jimmy Long

So if you can only pick one and you work in a cross-cultural ministry setting, Plueddemann’s the one to read. For leadership in general, it’s Allender. And for leading change, it’s the Heath brothers. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

“De-commit” is not a word

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In an attempt to get inspired to write regularly again, let me take a moment to jot down some random Friday thoughts and see if I can tie them to leadership.

It seems that every time a long-time football coach retires, he talks about how he saw his role as a developer of young men. Many certainly have. I can think of a number who have left a long wake of young men who were having trouble with school or the law and turned them into students and men of character who could succeed in life. If that’s true, then football coaches are indeed among the best of models for leadership.

That brings me back to the word, “de-commit.” It’s a word that’s being more and more widely used in the world of college athletics recruiting. I saw it again in the paper this morning. An athlete commits to one school but circumstances change or the athlete, claiming youth and immaturity, simply changes his mind. He then “de-commits” and then commits to another school.

But “de-commit” is not a word. Instead, let’s call a spade a spade: the athlete is breaking his word. The reasons might be defensible, but his promise is no longer dependable. What makes it worse is that coaches don’t stop recruiting someone when they commit somewhere, because they can always de-commit. What a horrible starting point if the object is to develop men of character. That’s what was so refreshing about this story last year about Paul Johnson, coach at Georgia Tech:

A quarterback from Tampa made a commitment to Georgia Tech but wanted to take a visit to Auburn. Perhaps he realized he hadn’t taken full advantage of the lavish attention poured out on recruits during their official visits. Perhaps he wanted to keep his options open. Perhaps he was having doubts. Either way, Johnson warned him that he’d lose his scholarship offer if he visited another school. He decided to call Johnson’s bluff, and Johnson let him go. I think the most remarkable part of the story is that this episode made the news.

If my boys were interested in playing football, I’d put Georgia Tech a little higher on my list because of this story. I desire that my kids grow up to be men of character. And coaches like Paul Johnson know how to build men.

Pure ambition

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James 3 continues, saying godly ambition must be pure and sincere. Other versions use some helpful synonyms. Ambition must integrate as part of a holy life. It must be honest, without hypocrisy. The Message says it’s not two-faced.

What does pure ambition look like? Purity means it’s in its original, uncorrupted state. Dave Harvey says that we’re all wired to pursue glory. In the first days of creation, we existed in perfect relationship with our Creator, seeking his glory alone. If God was lifted up, we had everything we needed. But we perverted our original design, turning our focus to ourselves. (I say “we” because I’m convinced today we would do the same thing as our pansy ancestors Adam and Eve.) It’s impossible to make something pure that has been corrupted. Think about snow. Once its dirty, there’s no making it white and powdery again. Or salt. As Jesus said, how can you make unsalty salt salty again? So even when we attempt great things for God’s glory, we should suspect ourselves. Our motives are seldom as pure as we want them to be. We just can’t have pure ambition on our own.

Ambition should be sincere and honest. I come from an organization that loves the leader who stands up and says, “I never wanted this job, but since you chose me, I’ll do the best I can.” We love humility and, conversely, we suspect signs of ambition. In contrast, I have a healthy suspicion of platitudes. I admit I love the ideal of an unsought promotion and of a leader emerging from the rough. It makes a great story. But two problems stick in my mind. If a leader really has no ambition and never sought a position, then he has never prepared himself for higher levels of leadership. Who’s to say the reluctant leader is a lifelong learner or takes leadership responsibility seriously if they didn’t want the job? On the other hand, if a leader is saying that deceitfully, then I have bigger issues. False humility may well be the tip of the iceberg, a sign of darker things lying below public view.

In contrast, godly ambition is never two-faced. I heard a story that Abraham Lincoln was once charged with being two-faced. He responded, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” It’s far better for a leader to admit their ambition… and shift it toward the cause. Better to be open about ambition. When it’s on the table, there’s a certain amount of accountability, because leadership is a private matter lived out in public, as the authors of The 52nd Floor put it. Ambitious leaders need help to keep their aspirations pointed in the right direction.

Moses is a great example for us. In Exodus 2, we eavesdrop on a dialog that exposes Moses’ real fear of leadership. He is as reluctant a leader as you’ll find. But it’s not from pure motives; it’s fear based on his failure in Exodus 1, when his unharnessed, misguided ambition led to murder. The second time, he needs convincing that God is in the call and will give him everything he needs to lead. The next couple of books in the Old Testament portray a leader with mature ambition, deeply concerned with God’s glory. Multiple times Moses appeals to God to make his Name great or to act on behalf of Israel “for the sake of your Name.” Sure, he still struggles with the purity of his ambition, getting angry with Israel, breaking priceless handwritten tablets and smacking rocks with his staff, but Moses’ name becomes great only as he pursues God’s Name with his whole heart and allows God to show his great power rather than trying on his own effort to save Israel.

In this world, our leaders may never achieve pure ambition, but the pursuit of it is an admirable trait.

Ambition that’s humble and willing to yield

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I want to look at James 3:13-17 again, but from the positive side:

13 If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. 15 For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. 16 For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. 17 But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.

If Harvey’s theory is true, and this passage is really about ambition as much as it is about wisdom, then James is saying ambition should be characterized by being honorable, humble, pure, peace loving, gentle, sincere and impartial. Godly ambition is willing to yield, full of mercy and full of good deeds. That’s certainly not the traditional view of ambition. Let’s unpack the implications over a couple of posts this week.

When I think of humility coexisting with ambition, I think of Jim Collins. In Good to Great, he suggests that the best companies were not run by superstar CEOs, but humble men and women who were homegrown in the company. The defining factor was not a lack of ambition, but a lack of ambition for themselves. They didn’t seek out the media or even to be out front speaking to their staff. Instead, they were ambitious for the company, for the cause. Collins noted that they were determined, even stubborn about seeing their company succeed.

Ambition and submission are seldom said in the same breath. We think of ambition as elbowing people out of the way to get to the top. But there is another kind of ambition: James says it’s “willing to yield.” Aspirations to advance God’s kingdom should look as countercultural as God’s kingdom itself is. With God, the ends don’t justify the means. Since God’s kingdom is not just a future hope but a reality here and now, it must be advanced in God’s way and with God’s methods. That means an inverted value system where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. That’s exactly how God’s kingdom expands, because it is so contrary to every earthly system and every earthly instinct in us. The great in the kingdom of God are those who are considerate of others, who serve and who “turn the other cheek.”

Mother Teresa is the example that comes to mind. She certainly was humble. But her ambition to bring God to the poor led her to confront presidents. She was determined. Her ambition to bring the kingdom of God into some of the darkest places was marked by servanthood and a hands-dirty style of leadership. I remember that her death was upstaged by the death of Princess Diana. But when history defines greatness, Teresa will win hands-down over Diana.

Ambition’s evil cousins

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One of my favorite topics to blog on is ambition. It’s so misunderstood among Christians today, and when the topic is misunderstood, it’s either avoided or piously denied. When the topic is avoided, it doesn’t go away; it goes underground. When it goes underground, it becomes weaponized.

Martin Luther once said, “If you’re going to sin, sin boldly.” That’s not how most churches and Christian organizations operate today. His point was that overt sin is better because it comes to light quickly and can be covered by grace. In contrast, western Christianity has been boiled down to Niceness and the appearance of godliness. The result is that sins have a caste system: there’s no room for overt sins while covert sins are tolerated.

A friend who reads this blog referred me to Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey. As I enjoyed Harvey’s marriage book, When Sinners Say I Do, I figured correctly that I’d enjoy this one. Harvey did his research. He really unpacks the roots of ambition and what the Bible has to say about it. Harvey says ambition is hardwired into all of us. At its heart, ambition is a quest for glory. The question is whether we will pursue God’s glory or corrupt it in the pursuit of our own glory.

Harvey refers us to James 3:13-17, where the early leader of the church in Jerusalem talks about the results of ambition going bad. I’ve always categorized this passage under “wisdom” and therefore missed the important message it makes about perverted ambition.

13 If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. 15 For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. 16 For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. 17 But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.

Harvey says the word for “selfish ambition” refers to demeaning yourself for gain, like a politician or prostitute. He suggests the word picture that this kind of ambition shrinks our souls.

Let’s look at some of ambition’s cousins. Three times James pairs selfish ambition with jealousy. Why? Because the pursuit of your own glory will always find others to be a threat. Boasting and lying are likewise a pair of troublemakers, usually required for inflating your own sense of importance and glory. Then along come disorder and evil of every kind. Do you see the progression? It’s like a mud slide. Ambition doesn’t always start selfishly, and no one seeks disorder and evil. But when ambition is corrupted, eventually all kinds of evil join it as it slides.

Likewise, hidden ambition leads to nasty sins like false humility, gossip and slander. These sins are far too common in church and Christian organizations today. Somehow they’re tolerated. So I enjoyed hearing Dave Ramsey a few years ago share about how he runs his company. The first incident of gossip goes in your record. The second one means termination. The result is a very healthy organizational culture.

James doesn’t pull punches: “Such things are earthly.” They have no place in God’s kingdom. “Such things are unspiritual.” They have no place in church or Christian organizations. “Such things are demonic.” Their root is in the one who is seeking to destroy us.

When WHY and HOW get together

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I want to look at two more partnerships where one leader clearly eclipsed the other, but couldn’t have been successful without the other guy. In both cases, one had the clear ability to originate vision but didn’t have the ability to make it happen without his older brother.

The spokesman

In the third and fourth chapters of Exodus, when God appeared to Moses to tell him that “I have seen” the oppression of Israel and “I have come down to rescue them,” Moses prepared to watch the fireworks. But he didn’t like God’s conclusion: “Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.” Nice twist at the end. Total set up.

Moses reacted badly. He argued for an entire chapter before closing with his speech impediment and begging God to send someone else. But God didn’t relent, instead pairing him with his brother Aaron as his mouthpiece. “You will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.” As Moses whispered the WHY in his ear, Aaron spent the next 16 chapters making the public speeches. Eventually, Moses appears to have gathered the courage to make the speeches himself, but the partnership was cemented by that point. Moses became CEO and judge while his brother became high priest, together leading the people through 40 years of preparation for getting their own land. Moses gets the credit, but clearly wouldn’t have had the confidence if he hadn’t had a confidante working shoulder to shoulder with him.

The older Disney

“If it hadn’t been for my big brother, I’d have been in jail several times for checks bouncing,” Walt Disney said in 1957. Roy was a banker, eight years older than Walt but in awe of Walt’s talent and imagination. He quit his job to follow Walt’s WHY, because he knew someone needed to guard against Walt’s tendency toward risk and neglecting business affairs. As one biographer put it, “Walt Disney dreamed, drew and imagined. Roy stayed in the shadow, forming an empire.” While Walt created Mickey Mouse, Roy started the distribution company and the merchandising business that made him so widely loved.

After recounting this powerful Disney collaboration in Start with Why, Simon Sinek concludes:

In nearly every case of a person or an organization that has gone on to inspire people and do great things, there exists this special partnership between WHY and HOW.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Herb Kelleher and Rollin King. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, who would follow up King’s inspiring speeches with the line, “let me tell you what that means for tomorrow morning.” So, let’s hear it for the HOW guy. WHY guys would be nothing without them.

What’s your WHY?

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Six months ago, goosemedia suggested I read Start with Why, by Simon Sinek. It’s a book that analyzes the success of companies like Southwest Airlines and Apple and the success of leaders like Martin Luther King. All of them started with their WHY — the cause or reason for their existence — before figuring out their HOW or WHAT.

Let me use one of Sinek’s examples to illustrate his point. In the early parts of the 20th century, a small handful of companies dominated the railroad industry. They seemed invincible. But they defined themselves by WHAT they did rather than WHY. If they had defined themselves as being in the mass transportation business, Sinek says, those big railroad companies might own all the airlines today. Instead, someone else stole the opportunity while they became irrelevant. I was just reading last week that both United Airlines and Continental Airlines had their roots in postal transportation. I suspect that those early aviation companies articulated their WHY in terms of fast and reliable delivery, so they were able to easily make the jump to flying people instead of packages. I would argue that those two companies have now defined themselves by their WHAT, but I’m watching their potential merger with interest.

In contrast, take this statement from Colleen Barrett, former CEO of Southwest Airlines: “We’re a customer service company that just happens to fly airplanes.” The way Sinek puts it is: “Southwest was not built to be an airline. It was built to champion a cause. They just happened to use an airline to do it.”

I recently heard Wycliffe USA’s president observe with amusement that our partners view SIL, Wycliffe and The Seed Company as leaders in orality. Remarkable considering where we were only a few years ago. Our WHAT has long been printed Bibles. That’s what people picture when they hear “Bible translation.” But Wycliffe has a clear WHY: to give this generation access to God’s Word, and to do it because we desire God to be glorified among the nations and because the last, the lost and the least deserve just as much as we do to know the God who created them speaks their language. We’re also about the transformation that happens as a result of God’s Word. As long as we’re about WHY, then we’ll embrace new media and new methods quickly and effectively in our hunger to accomplish that purpose.

Do you know your WHY? Do you know it on an organizational level? Do you know it on a personal level?

Let’s hear it for the other guy!

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I heard an interesting description of a leader a while ago: leaders create heroes. Now, there’s no sense in creating heroes out of celebrities. Too many people already do that, to their detriment. Instead, leaders notice the little guy and elevate him to heroic status.

I’ve been fascinated recently with the fact that breakthroughs don’t usually happen to individuals alone. There’s often another person involved, and it’s the synergy of their giftings that creates the breakthrough. Some get headlines together. Hewlett and Packard go together like peanut butter and jelly. Paul and Barnabas are like love and marriage. But they are the exceptions. Most often, one gets all the headlines while the other’s contribution goes unnoticed. Following with my last post on acknowledging those who make silent contributions, I want to spend a few minutes heralding “the other guy.”

The other Steve

A 25-year-old engineer at Hewlett-Packard, Steve Wozniak was using his spare time to design a language interpreter for a new 8-bit microprocessor called the MOS 6502. But even though the motherboard he created was smaller and less complex than other kits on the market, and even though Wozniak gave away the schematics for free, hobbyists still found the board difficult to build. So Woz and his high school pal Steve Jobs, who was working at Atari, decided to sell preassembled boards—which they dubbed the Apple I. They built them at night in Jobs’ parents’ garage, paying Jobs’ sister $1 a board to insert chips. In 1976, they produced 200 units and sold 150 of them for $500 apiece. (From WIRED magazine, courtesy of Creative Leadership by Tony Kim)

The Bible translation promoter

L.L. Legters was a Presbyterian minister who served among Comanche Indians, then on the east coast, and then as an itinerant speaker at church mission conferences. He made trips throughout South America in order to document the spiritual needs of language groups, challenging churches back home to pray and to act on their behalf. In 1921, he spoke to a Cakchiquel Indian audience at a Bible conference in Guatemala. Translating for him was Cameron Townsend. The two men got along well. Townsend told Legters of his passion for Guatemala’s distinct language groups. Legters, in turn, amazed Townsend by reporting about the hundreds of unevangelized language groups which he had seen and heard about in South and Central America alone — none of whom had a single page of God’s Word. He also mentioned the countless unreached groups reportedly living in other parts of the world. The two men talked and prayed about the obvious need for thousands of new Bible translations. By faith, they determined to do something about this pressing need.

Townsend agreed to work on a Cakchiquel translation of the New Testament, keenly aware that he lacked academic preparation for work in the field of linguistics. Legters agreed to promote the cause of unreached peoples and to raise money for Townsend’s Cakchiquel translation project at church mission conferences back in the United States. In the process of keeping his part of the bargain, Legters set up a new organization called the “Pioneer Mission Agency,” the roots of Wycliffe Bible Translators. (From The Network for Strategic Missions)

Both Wozniak and Legters fell to the side as their charasmatic, innovative partners grew in renown. But Apple and Wycliffe could not have become what they’ve become without their solid contribution. So, here’s to the small people!

Theology: spiritual gifts are for followers, too

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What about the theological belief that the Holy Spirit empowers believers and gives spiritual gifts to all who know him? In John 16, Jesus unpacks the Holy Spirit for the disciples he leaves behind, promising that they’ll be even better off with God-as-Spirit than with God-in-human-form.

Certainly, the idea that the Holy Spirit works in and flows through a leader has implications on a leader’s role. Many have written on this subject. In fact, our leadership book discussion group at Wycliffe is getting ready to read Bill Hybels’ The Power of a Whisper. I may have more to say about the leader’s need for discernment and his role in “drafting the Holy Spirit” after I’ve read that book. Instead, I want to focus for a minute on another question.

What does it mean for a leader that every believer has spiritual gifts? It means all followers are empowered. First, leaders must listen to their followers, because the Holy Spirit might speak through a prophetic gift or someone with a gift that complements the leader’s blind spot. Second, leadership is just one part of the body. Just because there are fewer heads than fingers doesn’t mean the head is more important or any less needed. That’s hard for most leaders to believe. Leadership seems a more important gifting.

But leadership is just one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. It is not given special prominence in the Bible; in fact, leadership falls under the principle that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Certainly, Jesus said that leaders shouldn’t “lord it over people” but should be “servant of all.” So where do we get the idea that leaders should be rewarded disproportionately to other gift-holders?

Let me offer a biblical perspective on leadership from Fast Company magazine. Yes, you read that right. Fast Company. Author Nancy Lubin offers this zinger in the midst of her article, “Do Something: Let’s Hear it for the Little Guys”:

The working world would be a happier place if more of us aspired to roles that were just right — if we valued job fit and performance at every level and stopped overemphasizing the very top.

Lubin says we should honor chief operating officers, midlevel managers and staffers. She would probably add career placement people, whose job it is to get staff into the right positions. So, let’s hear it for the followers!

I think Lubin has a little prophet in her:

The underappreciation of followers has a major bottom-line consequence: crazy redundancy. You can see it in the not-for-profit sector, which has a gazillion little organizations replicating one another. We all want to run our own thing, so not-for-profits never die. As a result, we have huge inefficiency and ridiculous amounts of overlap in the sector. This is wasteful, and this is fundamentally bad business.

When you consider Christian non-profits, it also reflects a lack of unity. Considering that Christ said the world would know we are Christians if we’re unified, Lubin’s statement is a complete indictment of Christian leadership. So, a failure to understand that the Holy Spirit has empowered all believers leads to a misunderstanding of the importance of followers. Bad theology leads to misprioritized values, pride, redundancy and waste, not to mention derailing our witness.