Tag Archives: motivated

The wrong people can become the right people

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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.

Motivated enough

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The third item on Steve Moore’s list caught my attention. It reminded me of an essay by Reidy Associates on Encouraging Reluctant Leaders that explored the reasons leaders don’t step up, blaming the “hero myth” for a lot of the damage. Reidy starts with a quote from Jerry Garcia:

“Somebody has to do something and it’s incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.” We don’t have to have all the skills, all the answers. We don’t have to have it figured out better than anyone else. We do need to see something that needs attention and be motivated enough to organize a response.

Let me repeat that last statement, because it’s as good a definition of leadership as I’ve heard in a while: someone who sees something that needs attention and is motivated enough to organize a response. As Reidy points out, many get into leadership out of necessity. “Action occurs when motivation is stronger than resistance or reticence.”

Let me give you a personal example. Over the last ten years, I noticed a number of incredibly-gifted young leaders suddenly decide to leave our organization. These were people that I was looking forward to serving shoulder-to-shoulder with, long into the future, and they were suddenly gone. I realized that if our young leaders didn’t stick around, we wouldn’t have the leadership we needed to see our vision completed.

It certainly wasn’t my responsibility, but someone needed to do something about it. As no one stepped up, my desperation grew. About three years ago, I decided to send out a pact to all the young leaders I knew. It contained four points:

  1. We will practice leading. We commit ourselves in community to develop and use that gift where God has placed us. “If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously” (Rom 12:8).
  2. We will be not be disqualified. We hold ourselves to a high standard of godliness. We will hold each other accountable for our actions. “Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified” (I Cor 9:27).
  3. We will step up. We will develop our gifts by accepting appropriate positions of responsibility and authority. We will encourage each other to consider new challenges. “If someone aspires to be an elder, he desires an honorable position” (I Tim 3:1).
  4. We will not give up. Working as younger generations in a Boomer environment, we know we will get discouraged at times. We will not give up without consulting with one or two other colleagues for encouragement and prayer. “Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity” (I Tim 4:12).

We began the Threshing Floor community as a lunch discussion group, and it has since expanded to Facebook. In the three years since we began meeting, I’ve had eight conversations with people who approached me and said, “I promised I’d talk with someone before I did anything…” and then went on to share their frustrations. Only one regular Threshing Floor participant has left the organization.

It’s not just a Wycliffe need. When Steve Moore taught that breakout session on supporting young leaders, he struck a chord. At the end, a young African American lady from another mission was in tears as she said, “I’ve been so hungry for this kind of thing.” She confessed her frustration at being overlooked because of her age and her gender. That was the moment I realized that I’ve only scratched the surface with the breadth of these issues.

Back to the topic at hand. My road to leadership development started three years ago when I saw an unmet need, and I had to do something. The need isn’t gone; if anything, I’m still learning how big that need is.