Monthly Archives: November 2016

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Teaching the Millennial Leader – Pt. 1

“Leaders are readers and readers are leaders”

This is an expression that my mother, who raised six successful children, would often proclaim. My mother wanted us to read the Bible and then any other good book that we could learn from. But, she wasn’t picky, fiction or non-fiction, she just wanted us to read. Our television watching and video game playing was limited and this gave us the “opportunity” to read. One of the reasons that I write to this day is because my writing is an extension of my reading. Reading is where your thoughts collide with the thoughts of another. Reading is mental exercise. Too many leaders today have grown thought-obese, because of too little mental exercise.

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This collision of thought is healthy for anyone, but especially for leaders. Because the world moves at a much faster pace these days and information comes at light speed, leaders must set time aside to engage their mind and their thoughts in a healthy, contemplative manner. Reading (and writing for me) accomplishes this. Reading is healthy, mental exercise.

If you want to make better decisions, think better thoughts. If you want to think better thoughts, read better books. For me, I have not found a better book than the Bible to read.

Reading is where the collision of thought happens. A collision without a conclusion does little good. So the will must get involved. The will must form the thoughts into actionable behavior. Storing up information does a leader no good. A leader must read for understanding and application. If application is not the goal of the leader, then the leader will always play a supportive or frustrated role which will summarily yield little in the way of results and influence or simply be a knowledge collector. Reading stretches your mental template for learning. So, read this article, think and maybe learn something…

Leaders have to be and they have to do. Let’s assume that if you are reading this article, then you are currently leading or are aspiring to lead to a greater level. Then, let’s ask a question and see where it takes us.

What must leaders do?

#1 – Leaders Set Direction. People everywhere at all times need direction. This means they need directors. Leaders are Directors. Leaders are directors not collectors. If you think you are a leader, but aren’t directing anything, then you aren’t really leading–you are occupying a position and have probably become a roadblock for your team.  A good directo14732230_1317731744927376_7421359847898036775_nr knows the team, the players, the landscape, the obstacles, the goals and the vision of a future outcome before communication begins to happen. A good leader must first understand where the organization or team is going and then how to get the team moving in the right direction. Here’s the bottom line: Someone has to lead, because someone will always lead. In your organization a leadership position does not guarantee that you will ultimately be the one that is the director. The director must be a highly effective communicator. I have taken to teaching my millennial leaders how to be more effective in communicating, because they will become more effective at directing. The breakdown most often is not in the desire, but in the directing. Bad directors, get bad results.

Learning: Better Communicating creates Better Directing.

#2 – Leaders Set the Tone. Once the direction has been set and the directions given, the morale and the environment can still not be productive or effective. In fact, a leader can be great at giving directions, but terrible at getting anyone to follow them. This is because, leaders must also set the tone. What is the tone? The tone is the temperature or the climate in which the team will be operating in. Tone is critical in the construction of chemistry. If a team is struggling with chemistry, chances are the tone has not been set well by the leader or someone else beside the leader is creating the tone. It is critical that leaders understand that they must set the tone. If a leader is always too busy, too rushed to take time for questions or explanation, then they are setting a tone that will result in a coldness or corner-cutting environment. The tone is also set in work ethic and upholding the standards. If the leader cuts corners, takes perks and slacks off because of their position, then they are setting a poor tone. Leaders must hold themselves to a higher standard.

Smoking in the Office

I was discussing this point with some of my learning leaders and one of them shared the example about a factory where smoking was forbidden. In fact, the manager ensured that no one smoked on the production floor, in the break room, outside or even the bathroom. However, when the manager would return to his office that overlooked the factory floor, he would close his door and smoke in the office. As a result, the manager always smelled like smoke. Soon, the workers realized that the manager didn’t hold to the standards himself and neither should they. The manager set the tone with his actions, not his words.

Learning: Don’t Smoke in the Office (Leaders must hold themselves to a higher standard)

#3 – Leaders Control Emotion. If you work with millennials or are a millennial, then this is one you really need to pay attention to.  We need to review emotions for a minute: not everything you feel is the correct feeling at the appropriate time. Feelings or emotions are triggered by different stimuli. These stimuli can be both internal and external. Before you express how you feel, the effective leader needs to work through what caused the specific emotion to arise.

If you don’t have all the facts, your feelings can betray you, mislead you or delude you. It is important to acknowledge your emotions, but not be controlled by them. Expressing emotion can be fine,  if it is done in a healthy and controlled fashion. But, demonstrating too much of an emotion or the wrong emotion in front of your team or others can neutralize your effectiveness as a leader. This can also cause you to lose credibility. You can be angry, but getting angry at people you are working with doesn’t really help the situation. Learning leaders must separate their emotion from the decision. Don’t make decisions when you are highly emotional. Get control of your emotions before you make decisions. I have learned not to correct or discipline a team member until I have a firm control of my emotions and then conducted an investigation. Don’t give a raise or a promotion, because you are excessively happy. Just as you don’t fire someone because what they have done or you perceive they have done makes you angry.

Emotions can cloud judgment. I’m not saying that you need to deny your emotions (that’s unhealthy), but you do not to get control of your emotions. A wise leader learns (a) to master his/her own emotions, (b) how to read correctly the emotioyour-emotions-need-to-be-the-wake-not-the-windns of those they are leading, and (c) then effectively utilize emotions to inspire and encourage.

Emotional Intelligence

Leaders must also learn to read correctly the emotions of others. A wrong reading or misreading of another’s emotions can add further fuel to a fire you are trying to put out. This is called emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence has never been more essential for leaders than it is in today’s super sensitive environment. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage the emotions of yourself and others (Psychology Today). There are three basic skills in EI (1) the awareness of your emotions and the emotions of others, (2)  the ability to harness your emotions and apply them into critical thinking and problem solving, and (3) the ability to regulate or manage your emotions and influence the emotions of others.

Your emotions need to be the wake, not the wind. The wake follows behind the wind. When your emotions become the wind, you often lose control of your boat and capsize. Keep your emotions as the wake, not the wind.

Learning: Don’t be controlled by your emotions, rather control your emotions.

#4 – Leaders Set & Restore Order. Order is critical in every organization. Leaders who don’t maintain order aren’t leading. Very often the leader’s role is to restore order. Every organization and every team is full of individuals and variables. Harmony is born through order. Organizations are more effective when they are most harmonious. Leaders are responsible for this harmony. Part of this harmony is revealed when the leader sets the tone, but the fullness of harmony is when the leader has helped everyone discover and maximize the role needed. This creates fluidity and synchronicity in the organization or team that plays like beautiful music.

Leaders are conductors. It is the leaders job to establish what a clear picture of order should look like and move the organization to that. The leader cannot take a break for this role, because things left alone tend to decay or rot. This is why the leader must be a vigilant conductor. The leader must be more conductor than inspector. Inspectors only identify the problems of disorder, but conductors set and restore order. Order is established through a devotion to the standards.

Learning: Order is not set or restored because a leader shows up. Order takes intentional planning, preparation and a devotion to the standards.

Summary  – What Leaders Do  

1- Leaders Set Direction

2- Leaders Set Tone

3- Leaders Control Emotion

4- Leaders Set & Restore Order

The world needs better leaders. Your world needs better leadership. It starts with you and it started without you. So, jump in and see what difference you can make. Leadership always makes a difference.

 

(c) Redwall Leadership Academy. Redwall, LLC (2016)

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Keeping Jesus a Secret

Jesus: Too Well-Kept a Secret 

Too many of those that claim Christ treat him like a well-kept secret. I call this kind of Christian a secret Christian. They are like a spy for Jesus. Except Jesus didn’t send out any of his people as spies. He sent his people out as messengers and story tellers. Proclaiming the message of Jesus is simply retelling what we have already heard. This is what the Apostle John wrote about,

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” [1 John 1:1-3]

Did you see it? It’s hard to share about something you haven’t witnessed, haven’t seen or haven’t heard about. But, if you have heard the story and you know the story, then you can share the story.

A friend who tells your stories 

For example, I have a friend that loves to hear my stories. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the years and he has heard my repertoire of stories a lot. In fact, once when I wasn’t around, he was on a trip and told me that the other people on the trip were kind of boring and conversation wasn’t going so well. So, he decided he needed to share my stories and he said they loved them.

Christians must be friends of Jesus, who know his story and will gladly retell his story.

But, sometimes the story, the narrative is a little too heavy for our tastes or the tastes of the audience. We are tempted to give them a “lite” version.

Is there a “lite” version of Christianity?

Lite food and beverages mean less or lower calories. Christians today are seeking a less heavy form of Christianity. The want all the pleasure of Christ, but without all the cost of Christ. They want to be his friend, but with very little work, effort or sacrifice.

After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jewsa were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. [John 7:1-6]

“For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly,” said Jesus’ brothers. By the way, these half-brothers were certainly James and Jude (authors of books of the New Testament). Jesus’ brothers were skeptics and probably antagonistic toward their older, gentler and, oh by the way, perfect older brother. Can you imagine living as Jesus’s brother? Some of us had older siblings (six kids in my family) who our parents acted like they were perfect (thankfully in my case this wasn’t the case), in James and Jude’a case these was actually true.  Can you imagine Mary, their mother saying, why can’t you be more like your older brother?!

What Jesus’s Brothers Got Right

But, his brothers actually got this one thing right “For no one works in secret if he seeks to be openly known.” Jesus didn’t correct them, because they were right. But, they were wrong about his timing. He responds, “My time has not yet come…” He didn’t refute what was true. It’s true if you want to be known, then you don’t work in secret.  If you want something to be known, then you’ve got to work openly, transparently and boldly. This is why church finances, marriages, relationships, businesses, organizations, teams and projects fail: they are conducted in secret.

To be known means to apprehend or understand with clarity and certainty. The brothers of Jesus didn’t know Jesus yet as he truly was–Lord of heaven and earth, the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world, etc. There time of understanding had not yet happened. Jesus was certain or clear to them yet. They were confused about who their half-brother really was, but they wouldn’t always be. James would become known as “camel-knees” because, tradition has it, he prayed so much and so fervently that his knees grew callouses like a camel. James and Jude would become leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ, but not yet. They had to move from unknowing to knowing.

Jesus wants to be known by his followers and made known by his followers. To know something is to grasp it, to understand it and to be fully aware of it. Sadly, this does not describe Jesus’s brothers or many of Jesus’s followers today. That’s why he tells them, “…but your time is always here.” Your time to believe, your time to understand and your time to know and make me known is always here is what he is saying. As long as you are breathing, you can know Jesus and make him known. This is our jobs Christians: make him known. He’s not a secret.

The Church of Jesus Christ, more specifically, people that are claiming to be Christians, have the responsibility to work openly to make Jesus known. We have to come out of our shadows and proclaim the story of the only One that can save men’s souls. This is a Christian’s duty, responsibility and it must become his conviction. Christians must work. Yes, work to make him know. Work openly, work publicly and work with conviction.

 

 

(c) Alexander F. Vann. 2016

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It’s Time to Teach Responsibility instead of Rioting

If we don’t teach responsibility, then we are accepting anarchy. We must instill in our children and in ourselves four deeper virtues that will bring harmony to our citizenry and beauty to our humanity.

“…speak evil of no one, avoid quarreling, be gentle, and show perfect courtesy toward all people.“

Titus 3:2 

Certain elements that secure a healthy society are not being taught any more in our corporal lexicon of learning. As a result, when immature adults don’t get their way, they need crayons to color, “safe spaces” to  process and outlets that involve destroying other people’s property. They chant curses, burn flags and are “too stressed” to attend a class. They have rejected all sense of responsibility in favor of a riot. Instead of being rebuked and chastened, they are encouraged to “express” themselves. I’m sorry, when I was a kid and I expressed myself in a way that destroyed someone else’s property or cursed someone else, I got swift and painful lesson in correction.

“The time is always right to do what is right” ~ Martin Luther King 

Rejection of Responsibility. Parents, you must teach your children to be responsible. What we are seeing in our culture as a result of one group not getting their way, is a giant, collective temper tantrum. Parents, you must act responsibly and make your children act responsibly.

The “progressive” element of our society has rejected virtue in favor of violence, rejected courtesy in favor of cursing, rejected civility in favor of swearing and rejected responsibility in favor of rioting.  There are four elements that parents must teach their children immediately to avoid another generation who can’t handle adversity or not getting their way: Courtesy, Civility, Reality & Responsibility.

The Four Virtues of Reasonable Citizenry 

Courtesy – is the a general kindness with an accompanying set of manners from one person to another. Common courtesy are the set of manners that are generally acknowledge as polite and respectful towards others. Courtesy is not a demanded virtue, but rather a freely given virtue. Our children need to be taught to be courteous instead of cursing.

Courtesy is the true vestige of nobility. To show courtesy is to live humbly. Courtesy is a rejection of self and an invitation to others. To be courteous is to make the world a better place, a more agreeable place in which we find inhabitation more amiable. Courtesy without provocation turns the table on hostility.

“If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.” ~Francis Bacon

Civility – means formal politeness with elevated courtesy. I grew up and live in the South. We still say “Yes Ma’am” and “No Ma’am,” we hold the door for ladies and let cars go in front of us in traffic.  Do you know that having a young man hold the door for a young lady is a sign of respect and courtesy? Of course she can open her own door! Civility has to do with formality. Formality is a code of manners and actions that demonstrate honor and respect to others. Civility is different than courtesy in that the onus of civility means you may not agree, but you do respect the position of another. Civility restrains the worst of humanity and promotes the best in humanity.

Kids need to learn these things! Teach your children to push their chairs in, to thank their host, and to eat food that someone serves them even if they don’t like it. Teach your children when they go to a restaurant to eat with a napkin in their lap. We are raising young men and young women, not barbarians. Teach your children to respectfully disagree. We aren’t raising robots or puppies, who must follow every order or command. We are training children to become mature adults. Mature adults should know some common courtesy. Sadly, our culture is being stripped of its formality and becoming very casual. Formality is good because it reinforces value and worth.

Your children will disagree with others. However, they need to be trained to disagree with civility. Civility is a controlled respect for others. Our nation just had an election with the electorate falling on extreme opposite sides. However, we must demonstrate a civility to others that we don’t agree with. Civility speaks of a desire to do no harm and respectfully disagree with an amiable dialogue. The best way to teach civility is to train your children to be consistent in their manners and to model the behavior yourself. You are your children’s greatest model. You are training your children towards incivility when you do the following: curse another driver that pulls in front of you, gossip on your cellphone or become demanding & act rude in public.

Civility means you can respectfully and politely disagree and not become enraged or enflamed with emotion.

Reality – means the state in which things actually exist. What this really means is accepting reality. You can’t change your reality until you accept that things are the way they actually are. Reality TV is not reality. TV is not where you learn your reality. The Internet is not where you learn reality. Your friends social media post is not reality. The greatest picture of reality is found in the Bible. Without a proper understanding of the Bible, the world will quickly become a confused and chaotic place.

Parents need to live in reality the Bible reveals first. Then they must apply this reality to themselves and then teach their children to live in this reality. Too many parents are living for a fantasy or in a fantasy. Fantasy is the state in which things don’t actually exist. The fastest way to live in fantasy is to live in denial. Parents must teach their children to investigate, study and to think for themselves. Most people make mistakes when they rush to judgment.

Reality is about perspective. This is why the Bible is so important. The Bible is your perspective compass. The Bible correctly calibrates your reality compass. Without the Bible, your true north will appear to be true north, but in truth your compass will be misaligned or spin widely out of control. Even a minuscule variation with your compass, over time, will keep you from your destination. Your reality is born out of your perspective. But, this doesn’t make you the authority on the way things really are. Now, with your children you are the authority. Stop letting your children create their own reality. When someone creates their own reality, they are living in a fantasy. You must bring your perspective to your children and your children into your perspective. A perspective without the Bible is an automobile without wheels, a ship without a rudder and a kite without a string.

The Bible is the key to understanding the state in which things really exist. 

Responsibility – means that you are accountable for something. Progressives in our culture are teaching that we are to give our responsibility away and someone else can manage it for us. This only weakens our society. Parents, teach your children to be responsible. Responsible for their words, their deeds and their actions.

Every action has a reaction. Every a reaction has a responsibility. The best way for parents to teach responsibility is to hold their children accountable. Give your children things that they can control, teach them how to control those things and then hold them accountable to the standards you’ve taught them. Standards set the responsibility. The Bible is where we discover and learn God’s standards for living. This is why the progressives reject the Bible, they don’t like, want or agree with God’s standards. However, God will hold all of us accountable to his standards.

Let us then, with good intentions and great effort, set ourselves to learning and applying the standards God has set forth for men and women to live with. Let us apply them first to ourselves, our children and then to our government. Whereby, God honors and blesses his standards. May God honor and bless our adherence to his standards.