Have a Seat

By Phil Pringle

We’re all familiar with the meme: a hilarious photo of someone’s stunning incompetence—often at accomplishing a simple task—along with the words, “You had one job.” Wildly crooked center lines on a straight road. A sign reading “Turn left” with an arrow pointing right. A cat napping with a mouse. As a leader, however, it’s not that simple. You do not have just one job. At any given time, you have multiple roles, and each one must be performed not only with competence, but excellence.

In this article, I want to explore the six chairs we as leaders must sit in over the course of our journey. These are not consecutive, and there will be times we need to sit in multiple chairs at the same time. We may have a passion or gifting toward one or more of the chairs, but we must not allow that to cause us to neglect the others.

VISION CASTER

Many racing experts consider Mario Andretti to be the most successful and versatile racing driver of all-time. During his career, Andretti won the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500, Formula One World Championship and the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb. He is one of only two drivers in history to win races in Formula One, IndyCar, World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR. During an interview with Success magazine, Andretti was asked for his No. 1 tip for success in race car driving. He said, “Don’t look at the wall. Your car goes where your eyes go.”

Leaders see the future. They don’t hope it, imagine it, wish it. They see it. This is why they can lead. They’ve seen the mountain, the promised land, something breathtaking. On fire about something others haven’t seen, they impart the fire. Position does not a leader make. Vision does that, moving people to act. Without vision the leader leads people nowhere. They may have the position, but they are not a leader.

This vision begins because great leaders see something that inspires their own souls. Personally inspired to do whatever it takes to bring their vision to reality, they sacrifice, going the second mile at every level. Others buy in and do the same, forming a team. The fulfilment of the vision becomes the purpose of the follower as much as it is that of the leader.

Managers maintain ground taken by a leader, but when leaders morph to just managing what they built, vision fades. Managers and management are essential. However, leaders must keep stepping out into growth, expansion, progress, discovery, development, so they multiply what they have.

For a vision to be compelling, it needs to touch people’s hearts. People need to see, feel and touch the values and the vision of the organization to make these abstractions meaningful. They need to feel as if they can reach for the organization’s dream without compromising their own dreams, their own beliefs and their values.¹

Vision comes before strategy because, without seeing the destination, we don’t see the pathway. That’s why vision must be believable. If I don’t believe I can get there, I haven’t seen it, but believing I will accomplish it opens my eyes to the path ahead.

Vision must be broken down into goals to be achieved—one step at a time. Fulfill the next step on the pathway, and you’ll inch toward fulfilling the big picture. Goals answer the questions, “What?” and, “By when?” If you can see (and believe) the end, the pathway to that end emerges. Seeing the destination, I see the steps to get me there.             

TEAM BUILDER

A quarter horse on its own can pull approximately 1,500 pounds of dead weight. Harnessed together you would think two would be able to pull twice as much—3,000 pounds. However, together, two quarter horses can pull about 4,500 pounds. There’s an energy that is only discovered through working together in relationship.

Not only are teams able to achieve more, they can also withstand more. One twig is easily broken, but a hundred twigs joined are very hard to break. As Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (4:12).

Team building includes building individuals and building the team at the same time. Both feed each other. Great individuals develop through interacting with others. It is only in community that we are who we truly are. It’s easy to be loving, patient and forgiving on your own. In community, though, we discover if we really possess those qualities.

If a team’s not fun, it won’t be functional. People should be excited about coming to work. As the leader, you set the emotional tone of the team: If you’re angry, anxious and sour, so will the team be. If you’re positive, faith-filled and caring, your team will be, too. Fun has become a criterion by which people judge almost everything. When people are asked what they thought of an event, they say it was either “boring” or “fun.”

Set everyone up for success by putting them where their gifts, responsibility and capacity align. Delegate, give jobs away and encourage everyone on your team to do the same. This is discipling, and it must be part of your culture. Everyone should have a backup, a plan B, walking around with them.

Team building taps the full potential of the people with whom God has surrounded you. We all do better together. We think of things together we never would have apart. We are stronger together, we go further together, we attempt greater things together. God has called us as a team, and leaders guide teams into destiny.

PATH MAKER

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, wrote, “Strategy is first trying to understand where you sit in today’s world. Not where you wish you were or where you hoped you would be, but where you are. Then it’s trying to understand where you want to be five years out.  Finally, it’s assessing the realistic chances of getting from here to there.”²

Great leaders are great because they strategize. They not only see the future, but also how they will get there. In a fast-changing world, we must keep adjusting our strategy to maintain momentum toward the goal. But don’t tamper with the basics that work and that provide a consistent return. Better to grow incrementally toward your goals than to hope for breakthroughs to achieve them. It’s amazing how much we achieve by not trying to accomplish the entire vision at once.

Strategic thinking takes complex issues and long-term objectives—which can be very difficult to address—and breaks them down into manageable sizes. Anything becomes simpler when it has a plan. We need plans and visions, but we must communicate both all the time. The signs showing the way must be simple and clear. Checking the system ensures the plan is working. As former IBM chairman and CEO Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., said, “People don’t do what you expect but what you inspect.” Repetitive actions create systems that help individuals and organizations run on automatic.

In his studies documented in his book Natural Church Development, Christian Schwarz notes that churches rose to their lowest performing area, no matter how well they were doing in any of the other areas vital to church health. If all the small, simple steps are happening then the vision is achievable.

A leader’s job is to supervise all systems and identify weaknesses before they turn into system failures. At each new level of growth, the leader must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive.

            CULTURE CREATOR

Walmart founder Sam Walton was famous for driving an old pickup and showing up in overalls at any one of his stores to see how he would be treated by the staff. If he found they treated him less than he expected because of his appearance, he closed the store immediately to hold a training session.

Leaders are cultural architects, social engineers coding their organization. How they do life, what they say, how they present, how they lead—all create culture. Like Walton did, great leaders don’t just create culture, they insist on it.

The leader begets a relational culture by the way he treats the team. If the vision is right but the culture wrong, vision will elude fulfillment. As Sam Chand writes, “Culture—not vision or strategy—is the most powerful factor in any organization.”³

If a leader’s behavior betrays the team’s stated culture, this variance strains the group’s integrity, the group disintegrates and the vision implodes. The fulfilment of a vision rests on an organization’s healthy culture. In fact, “A positive culture will act as an accelerant for your vision,” Chand continues.⁴

Some may think culture is instinctive to all players on the team, but culture is created, then maintained by the leader. They teach it and model it, holding people accountable to the expectations they have clearly outlined.

For example, if we say our culture is evangelism, but we always celebrate education, we will become educational, not evangelistic. If we honor those who add people to the church, then others will start adding people too. Poor leaders reward those not achieving the goals, and then don’t achieve the stated aims.

The first step in creating culture? Teach it. If I want a certain culture, then as the leader I create it, by teaching it in staff meetings, highlighting it with stories of team members doing it, modelling it and celebrating it when it’s expressed in others. What we celebrate, honor and profile, we get more of. Identify what’s lacking in your culture by having your team and customers rate your stated values, assigning a 1-10 score for each of them. Whatever is lacking, teach it, model it, insist on it and check it’s happening. Celebrate and highlight your team when they do it.

PROBLEM SOLVER

John F. Kennedy said that President Eisenhower gave him this advice the day before his inauguration: “You’ll find no easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.”

A test of a leader is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. Under excellent leadership a problem seldom reaches gigantic proportions because it is easily recognized and fixed in its early stages. Get to it quickly before it gets to you. Outpace any problem you face.

Good leaders usually recognize a problem in the following sequence:

• They sense it before they see it (intuition).
• They begin looking for it and ask questions (curiosity).
• They gather data (processing).
• They share their feelings and findings with a few trusted colleagues (communicating).
• They define the problem (writing).
• They check their resources (evaluating).
• They make a decision (leading).

Obviously, we cannot control most of what happens to us in life, but we can control how we respond to what happens to us. Great leaders are private overcomers. Everyone has challenges calling us to rise higher than normal. We never solve public problems without being private overcomers.

Just as you don’t blame others for your problems, don’t expect others will solve them. Just because you’ve hired your accountant, don’t think he will do your thinking for you. Don’t think your lawyer will do all your fighting for you. Same with your staff and your team. Delegation is not dumping! Collaboration is not an opportunity for the leader to cease thinking. Keep your brain turned on. Think about everything you are facing.

Problems are the doorway to your future. They are opportunities. God has never designed any problem to ultimately defeat or destroy you. He is not teasing you with a dream. Your problems are the pathway to your purpose.

Even unanswered prayers are the platform on which the power of God rests. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Paul tells us it’s our weakness God takes advantage of, not our strength. The solution to problems sometimes is not that they are solved, but that we live above them, not allowing them to defeat us. We all prefer the first half of chapter 11 of the New Testament book of Hebrews, where the heroes of faith are stopping the mouths of lions, quenching fires, overthrowing kingdoms. But in the second half they are eaten by the lions, burnt by the fire, persecuted and tortured—yet still called heroes of faith.

As leaders we learn to accept the fact that we will face more difficulties than most. We either solve problems or live with them, yet in victory.

DECISION MAKER

Rockets spend 95% of their fuel just getting out of the earth’s atmosphere, but once they have momentum, it takes relatively little effort to keep going. Planes spend up to half their fuel getting to flight altitude. Staying there doesn’t require nearly as much. The same principle applies to decision making. The initial decision to make a move requires the most energy, but once you achieve momentum, subsequent decisions come more easily.

Leaders who have stopped making big decisions have become managers of the decisions they made in the past. Think of the decisions you’ve been avoiding, and take the step. Getting started is half the journey. Don’t be afraid of taking little steps to get started.

James 2:26 says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Decisions are steps, steps are movement, and movement is momentum. Momentum depends on the leader continually taking steps, making bold decisions. Momentum is sacred. Everything—even the very ordinary things—seem to work when you have momentum. However, even the best efforts are just ordinary when you don’t have momentum.

Constantly in Scripture, God tells people to get up, start walking, leave their country, cross rivers, go to the priest, pick up their bed and walk, stretch out their hand, go to the pool of Siloam, enter the land of Canaan. All these call for strong, bold decisions. Once people started moving, so did God.

Decision making is not just about making any decision. It’s about not making bad decisions and making the best decisions on the basis of intelligent faith. Get educated about the decisions you’re making. Risk is not reckless. Calculate the risk.

The reason you’re the leader is because the tough decisions—the big decisions—arrive on your desk. The ones that nobody else could or would make. So never avoid the decision. A good decision is formed by giving adequate time to the choice. Both inspirational decisions and problem-solving decisions tempt us to react hastily. However, the best discipline in decision making is to take time, ponder all the alternatives, collect all the data, receive wisdom from others and then make a decision that you will not change.

Never rush a big decision. Take time. Think about the decision when you’re worshipping and praying. Ask the Lord, “What should I do?” Don’t presume you know what to do. If we know we have wisdom and guidance from God, our confidence will grow as we take steps of faith. Solid in the face of opposition, we will be resolute, regardless of delays and impossibilities.

As we dial the number to make the call, wisdom will come just in time. As we go to the appointment, or meet the person, we’ll know what to do. Good decisions form from a list of options. Eliminate what won’t work. It’s easier to see good decisions in comparison to inferior choices.

Decisions about problems easily distract us from the decisions we need to be making to fulfil the vision. Learn to delegate problem decision making. Don’t think you’re the one who has to do it all. At least half of my decisions are not made by me, but by my team. Forty percent would be collaborative decisions we make together as a team. The remaining ten percent are those very big, difficult, decisions I make alone.

Miraculous things happen when you step out. A supernatural power releases when we summon the courage and make a move. Peter stepped out when Jesus called him. “Come,” Jesus said to Peter, when the disciple saw his master walking on water. Peter took the step. It’s interesting Jesus did not mention Peter’s name in the invitation, yet it was only Peter who took the step. Any of the disciples could have stepped out as well.

Too many leaders get stuck in indecision, and inertia becomes their normal. Create a new normal today by making fresh decisions and implementing new momentum. Stop something or start something. Nothing will happen without us making that decision.

NOTES:

1.  The New Leaders, by Daniel Goleman Richard Boytzis and Annie McKee, 287.
2.  , 149
3.  Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code: Seven Keys to Unleashing Vision and Inspiration, by Samuel R. Chand
4.