Tag Archives: image

The wrong people can become the right people

Posted on by
1

I’ve heard people casually refer to “the right people on the bus” who would never read Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. While some have tried to discredit the book, Collins’ ideas have had enduring impact. This expression has made it into mainstream culture.

There’s certainly merit to the idea of having the right people. As I build teams, I regularly consider what seats best suit existing staff and imagine the kinds of people I might add to build out a high-performing team. I’ve had some success in my teambuilding efforts and have had the privilege of working with some amazing teams.

But let’s be realistic: many of those in lower levels of leadership don’t have much choice over who they have on their team. Those who lead churches likely find the idea of choosing your own deacons and elders laughable. And almost every leader inherits a team that someone else assembled.

As a leader who has led a lot of change initiatives, I can tell you it would sometimes be easier to start fresh. No doubt there’s a time to clean house and rebuild with new people. But for most of us, the ideas of Jack Eckert, which Brad Smart unpacks in Topgrading, are unlikely. In fact, they feel fundamentally wrong.

I’m a firm believer in people. I believe all people are made in the image of God, and therefore they are more than pawns to be moved around. I believe that environments either support people in becoming who God intended, or erode their opportunities for success. I believe that the same Holy Spirit in me is also in the Christians that I lead. And I believe in the transforming power of that Spirit. I believe these things enough that I’m willing to be punished for implementing them in my leadership. (If you didn’t catch that, it’s one of Patrick Lencioni’s indicators of a core value.)

So in this post I want to consider the idea that the wrong people can become the right people within the right culture. 

This provocative leadership concept comes from a surprising source: an unconventional corporate leader. Reading Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. in 2015 inspired me. I wondered: if this people-first idea could be true for business, surely it should be even more true in ministry. If we really put people first, shouldn’t we give them every chance of becoming the right people? It’s much more difficult to shift a culture that’s in a downward spiral and a staff who seem to be contributing to that spiral. It certainly requires more of a leader.

Catmull’s conviction developed in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar Animation and installed Pixar’s creative executives over Disney Animation. Catmull says he and John Lasseter discovered a group of very creative people who were demoralized after a lengthy string of second-rate films. Disney hadn’t had a hit in 16 years and the once-great studio had stagnated since losing its founder. The question for these executives was whether to let all the staff go and bring in their own people or work with the existing staff.

In a radical experiment, they chose to work with who they had.

Could disillusioned, negative, change-averse people become motivated staff members, full of energy and creativity? I’ll answer that question in my next post, and consider ways to implement this idea.

Lincoln: Getting past the stereotypes

Posted on by
Reply

I watched the Lincoln movie with my wife last weekend. Someone had described it to me as the American version of Amazing Grace. Indeed, that movie could have been called “Wilberforce,” and this one could have been called, “Emancipation.” Both recorded a journey to eradicate a horrific practice. Both were excellent portrayals of leaders and leadership. And both stirred in me a deep longing to grow as a leader.

There were a few themes that hit me, and I’ll hit them in a handful of blog posts.

The first theme was that Lincoln was more than his myth.

It’s dangerous in film to take on such a well-known personality as Lincoln. You have to include the elements everyone knows, but without falling for the trap of thinking we therefore know the real Lincoln. The film waded in on a couple of key points to create a more 3-dimensional man rather than the 2-dimensional myth.

First, the famed orator. There’s a funny moment when everyone gathers around a flag, anticipating another great speech. Lincoln takes his time pulling his speech notes out of his hat. Then he delivers a one-minute speech built around a single point. When he looks up and sees everyone waiting for more, he smiles and says, “That’s my speech.” It reminds me of a graphic designer who mentored me once. He had spent a year traveling around the world to meet the top ten designers of his generation. As he entered the office of one of them, he eagerly complimented the man’s work. The man gestured to a wall of filing cabinets and said grumpily, “Most of my work is junk. I pay the bills with thousands of sub-par projects. You remember the 2-3 in 20 years that are worth mentioning.”

Second, his wife’s mental state. The film does a good job of creating empathy for a woman who never recovered from her son’s death. Abraham internalized his grief while his wife dealt with it externally. Paralyzed by the idea that she would lose another son, Mary became mentally and physically unstable. In the final scene when (spoiler alert) she reacts to her husband’s death, you can just imagine how it will unhinge her. Just before that scene, she muses with her husband on a buggy ride about how history will remember her as the crazy woman by his side. He naturally denies it and tries to assure her, but she was sadly prescient.

It’s easy for the public to develop a robust, stylized image of a leader based on the snapshots that are publicly available to them. These are usually far from reality. It’s probably even more common to do this with their spouses, fitting them into a small set of pre-conceived notions of a leader’s helpmate. Just think about the popular stereotypes fashioned of Prince Philip, Jackie Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Of course, leaders do contribute to the misconceptions. We all like to be seen in a certain light, and we know that there are things we can put out on Facebook or in image that reinforce the image. But this film has me asking what I can do to be more transparent, more open, better known.

Continue reading →