Chris Marshall Resources

During the month of January, we have been participating in a daily prayer emphasis at New Life Christian Ministries, the church I serve as lead pastor. I bring that up here, because all leaders have a “center” from which we lead. While not all leaders are men or women of faith, you know I come from that perspective and I wanted to talk about the impact this emphasis has had on my leadership, because I believe it is a transferable experience, and I want to commend it to you.

The process for the daily prayer has been simple. Each weekend our messages have focused on prayer, and each day Monday-Saturday we have opened the church building from 6:30-7:30 and invited folks to join us for a time of prayer. The response has been encouraging. Anywhere from 15-30 people have gathered each morning for the past three weeks, and after a brief time of welcome, reading a short Scripture and singing a song of praise, we have broken into small groups of three or four people and prayed together using prompts from a prayer guide I developed.

The results for me personally as a leader have been powerful. One of the most obvious impacts on me is the overall sense of well-being I’ve experienced throughout each day of the month. I start my days with my own time of prayer, and then go to the church and join with others for more prayer. After that, whatever I face my attitude is more positive and my commitment to work through each situation deeper. My tendency when challenges come up is to stop and turn to prayer, and those times of pause to gain insights from God have resulted in better decisions, and better follow through.

The benefit of joining with others from the church to prayer has also been deepened interpersonal relationships, and a greater sense of esprit de corps among us. The focused prayer guide has also helped us to literally be on the same page when it comes to New Life’s mission, and to focus our heads, hearts and hands in the same direction to fulfilling it. While some of this may not be directly transferable to a business setting, even a personal time of prayer, meditation, and reflection each day would result in some of these benefits, which is why I commend it to you.

Could you gather two or three others from your leadership team, or from the factory floor on a daily basis for that time of prayer, meditation and reflection, and would that impact your team’s overall attitude and commitment to the mission of the organization? Only you can answer that question, but I know it has had tremendous impact in ours.

While it is difficult to determine the exact correlation between the daily prayer times and the metrics of the organization, we have had the highest attended weekend worship services in the church’s history during January, which isn’t typically a time to see that kind of response. So far all indicators are more positive than at this time last year, and many by a great deal. In addition, when I have had the opportunity to speak on the weekends, I have had a more powerful sense of God’s presence in me than ever. Again, this may not be part of your worldview, but it has definitely been part of my experience, and I commend the principle of emphasizing the core or driving reality reality behind your organization in a concerted way as a means of leading more effectively.

Here’s to leading better by investing time to pray, meditate and reflect individually and together–today!

As we draw our segment on personality style and leadership to a close today we focus on the fourth set of paired traits in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Judging-Perceiving. (If you’ve missed the three previous posts, we covered Introversion-Extroversion; Sensing-Intuition; and Thinking-Feeling.) Of the four pairs of traits, the final one is the least apparent from the names. When you read the words “judging” and “perceiving,” it would be challenging to understand what the traits mean. In reality, the two words are intended to tell us more about how we order our lives, how we take the information we have received and considered and apply it in our daily experience.

The “judging” person approaches life with a more ordered and orderly style. Planning and organizing are likely to come more naturally for the “J.” J’s typically aren’t thrilled with surprises. They prefer routine. This is in contract with the “P” who approaches life from a more spontaneous angle. P’s tend to take life as it comes, and enjoy the surprises life throws our way. While each of these paired opposites relate to one another on a continuum, leads can gain a great deal of insight into other leaders, employees or volunteers, and family members and friends when we are aware of the differences.

One of the most important aspects of our personalities to remember is unless we give intentional thought to the reality of personality distinctions, we will tend to assume everyone approaches the world the way we do. As an ENFP, I find it challenging to create and follow a schedule. Perhaps a better word than challenging is boring. I find it boring to be “locked in” to a particular schedule, and to daily routine. That is not an excuse, although we can easily take our personality traits and use them as excuses. I am a leader, and I am an ENFP. That means when it comes to planning and organization, I am not a natural. Yet I serve as the lead pastor of a church with hundreds of participants and nearly twenty full and part-time employees. That means I need to know the strengths and short-comings of my personality style and lead accordingly.

Because of my personality, I am energized by interacting with others, and yet unless I invest the time in solitude for prayer and planning, my interaction will be of little value. I am also inclined to “go with my gut” because I am an intuitive feeler, and yet my gut isn’t always right. That means it’s important to gather useful metrics, and to seek the counsel of other staff members who are more inclined to look at the facts, analyze them and then consider a course of action. Neither approach is “right” or “wrong,” but they are quite different. The best leadership team’s will complement each other from a personality standpoint.

While four posts about the importance and nuances of personality differences and how they impact our leadership styles is barely scratching the surface of this important matter, I hope it has challenged you to dig into it, and do more research on your own. Better yet, if you’re an ENFP as I am, get someone on your team who is an ISTJ or INTJ to do it. It’ll be more fun for them! I enjoy learning about others’ personalities simply for the enjoyment of it, but to translate that into how to build more effective leadership teams, while interesting for a moment, is something I tend to lose interest with over time. That’s another reason it is vital for us as leaders not to bring people around us who are closely like us. It is the differences in us that bring the greatest effectiveness to our cause, provided of course, we agree on the cause. More about that on Wednesday.

Here’s to leading better by understanding one another’s personalities better, so we can work together more effectively–today!

As we continue discussing personality style and leadership, using the four paired opposites of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as our launching point: introversion-extroversion; intuition-sensing; thinking-feeling; and judging-perceiving today we look at thinking-feeling. This pair refers to how we tend to process the information we have received. While no one is either one or the other in any of these pairs, the dominant aspect colors how we respond. When it comes to thinking or feeling, the way we process information is from a primarily analytical perspective or primarily from our emotions.

I am a strong feeler when it comes to my natural tendency. I prefer to “go with my gut” when it comes to making decisions. When we’re calling/hiring a new staff member at New Life, I’m more concerned about how I feel about the person, what Bill Hybels will refer to as the chemistry, than I am about the persons qualifications. While this is neither right nor wrong, I have found over the years that my feelings can lead me astray. This is also true for those who are primarily thinkers when it comes to analyzing a situation. While it is good to consider the metrics, the numbers, of a a situation, at times one can think through the entire situation, make a decision based on the numbers and find out the decision was still wrong.

Thus, we find what is true of every set of paired opposites: one is not to be preferred over the other. They are simply different. The best case scenario comes when a leadership team is comprised of folks whose personalities cover all the perspectives. I have often said over the years, when Nancy and I are making a decision and we both agree, it is usually the right decision, because we come at life from totally opposite perspectives, she being an ISTJ and me being an ENFP. I also generally add, when we disagree about a decision Nancy is usually right, because she is the analytical one, the one who looks at the facts of the situation. The exception to this is when a decision can’t be made based on the facts alone. In those instances the intuitive feeling aspects of my personality come into play.

To be sure, everything can’t be boiled down to components of our personalities, when it comes to decision-making and other leadership tasks. Nancy and I have discovered that at times the Holy Spirit has guided us to decisions neither of us would have come to through our personalities. At times even with “all the facts,” we don’t have enough information to make a decision, because of intangibles involved. Yet, understanding our personalities and particularly the way we process information is quite helpful when it comes to leadership.

For example, when we’re in a leadership discussion and someone says, “I think we ought to do _____,” the question is “Is the person actually thinking at the moment or is it merely a feeling?” Nancy and I have learned to make sure when we say, “I think…” or “I feel…” that we are, indeed, either thinking or feeling. While it seems obvious, a great deal of confusion can result when a person who is naturally a feeler expresses a feeling as if it were an analytical evaluation. The opposite is true as well when a thinker says, “I feel…” and then expresses a well-thought out idea without an ounce of feeling.

As leaders the key is to understand one another’s personalities and then to let the strengths of those personalities produce a greater overall benefit for the organization. This takes time and energy, but produces tremendous benefits in the way of relational and organizational unity, as well as greater overall productivity for everyone.

Here’s to leading better by making sure we know when we’re leading through our minds or our hearts–today!

On Monday we started a brief series on how personality style impacts leadership. We’re using the MBTI as the instrument for considering how personality style impacts leadership and looking at the four paired opposites of the MBTI: introversion-extroversion; intuition-sensing; thinking-feeling; and perceiving-judging. I had a great question from a reader about whether introverts or extroverts make the best hires. In short my response is that the single trait of introversion or extroversion hasn’t been a determining factor in hiring people. It’s the overall personality that impacts our response to others. I do like Bill Hybels’ “formula” of hiring based on a person’s character, competence and chemistry. Hybels observes that character is a necessary pre-requisite for any hire, while competence although important can be taught. The determining factor is often “chemistry,” how the candidate feels or fits with others who will be working with him or her.

Today, let’s turn to the second paired opposites in the MBTI: intuition-sensing. What is meant by these pairs is how does one gather information. The sensor is one who tends to be more concrete in the process and gathers information more through her senses: touch, taste, feel, smell and hearing. The sensor tense to be more practically oriented, and while all sweeping generalizations are over generalizations, the sensor is more prone to this than the intuitive. The intuitive tends to focus more on the realm of ideas than the realm of sense. I am an extreme intuitive, while Nancy, my wife is a strong sensing personality. We have known our personality differences since early in our marriage, and since we are four letter opposites: I’m an ENFP and she’s an ISTJ, it has made for a lot of interesting and lively marital adjustment sessions over the years.

Since Nancy comes at the world with a solid sensing perspective she tends to notice details that I never even notice. Whether it’s a simple matter such as the mismatch I have going on between my shirt and my pants, or the much more vital matter of a person’s sad or disturbed tone in conversation that I miss completely, being an intuitive can cause frustration, particularly for a sensor. What does all of this have to do with leadership style? Plenty. I have found it extremely helpful to have some sensing folks around me, because I am often oblivious to obvious details of life. At the same time my intuitive nature often has me picking up on the overall theme of a situation quickly, which can be a great advantage at times.

As a leader, I have found it challenging to be patient with sensing types, because they often require a great more detail than I do. At times the level of detail they ask for isn’t reasonable, but many times their attention to detail has kept me from making minor and major mistakes. When selecting members of your leadership team, it is always helpful to find folks who aren’t exactly like you, so they can fill in your blind spots. This is definitely true when it comes to the sensing-intuitive split. I’m grateful for the folks on our leadership team who help me see things I miss, even though at times it makes me crazy before I realize how important their input is to our success.

Even if you’ve never taken the MBTI, you probably have a sense of which side of the continuum you fall on when it comes to intuition and sensing. It’s worth your time to find out what you are if you haven’t. The website 16personalities.com will give you a free assessment of your MBTI type, and for a fee will give you extensive detail. It’s well worth your time to find out your type and the type of those on your team so you’ll understand one another better. After all, understanding is a major key to working together effectively.

Here’s to leading better by using the sensing-intuition spectrum effectively–today!

Our next four posts are going to take a look at how our personality style impacts our leadership. Personality is a word that can mean many things, but for our purposes, we’re going to consider personality to be the sum of the personal traits that were basically set within us by the time we were five, and out of which we approach life. Many personality inventories and viewpoints have been developed from which to assess and explain our personalities. My personal favorite is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI offers four basic aspects of personality expressed as opposites, which result in the expression of sixteen different basic personality types. Many of you are familiar with the MBTI or one or more of its variations. The MBTI’s paired opposites are Introvert-Extrovert; Sensing-Intuitive; Thinking-Feeling; and Judging-Perceiving. We’ll consider each of these pairs, one at a time over these next four posts.

While many see introversion and extroversion as a matter of whether one is more inward focused or outward focused, the MBTI expresses it more as a matter of whether one gains energy from interaction with others–extroversion; or one’s energy is depleted through interaction with others–introversion. As an extreme extrovert, I gain energy through interaction with others. This has been a boon to my leadership over the years, because as a pastor I interact with hundreds of people every week, and particularly on the weekends when they attend corporate worship. I have the opportunity to stand in front of them to “preach” and interact with them before and after worship. Typically after several hours of that on the weekend I am wound up. Others in the same situation whose basic make up is introverted need to take a nap, or recharge in some other way. I’m not saying I never take a nap on Sunday afternoons, I do, but not because of my people interaction. I need a nap, because I’m 59 and I just need to give my body a break. After a nap I’m ready for me.

This distinction between introversion and extroversion impacts our leadership in many ways. After all, if interacting with people energizes us, we’re more likely to seek such interaction and be more comfortable being in the spotlight, which is a place leaders find ourselves often. At the same time introverts often reflect on their interactions with others in their recharging time and that is also a benefit to a leader. The fact is being an extrovert or an introvert is not an indicator of whether one will be an effective leader. It typically means we will approach leadership from a different angle, and either an introvert or an extrovert can be a great leader. The key is to use this aspect of our leadership to our benefit as leaders rather than as a stumbling block.

Because I am an extreme extrovert, I can overlook the need for reflection and recharging time. As noted already, I also need to recharge after a long Sunday morning. During that time, I typically rest my body, but may not take time to reflect on the morning, and to consider what went well and what could have been better. The reflection time will enhance my leadership, but only if I discipline my self to take it. In the same way, when an introvert interacts with others, or needs to be on the stage the situation itself may require the introvert to focus more energy, so he or she may not be fully present in the situation, and may come off as aloof or uncaring. This can be a point of development.

As we often remind ourselves, the unexamined life is not worth living, so it’s important for us to know whether we’re introverts or extroverts. That way we can emphasize the strengths of our style and minimize the potential weaknesses. If you don’t know which you are, it will be valuable for you to take some time to get to know which you are. If you already know, then reflect on your the strengths and weaknesses of your leadership style, which are a direct result of your being an introvert or an extrovert. Make a commitment to invest some time and energy to deepening your strengths and much less time overcoming the weaknesses inherent in your style. I have always appreciated John Maxwell’s reminder to invest 85% of our time enhancing our strengths and only 15% on developing our weaknesses, because our goal is to become more effective leaders, not having “strong weaknesses.”

Here’s to leading better by emphasizing the strength of our being introverts or extroverts–today!

A key question we need to ask ourselves as we move deeper into this new year of 2017 is are we a/the leader of our organization or are we actually leading our organization? What’s the difference? The leader is the person who is at the top of the org chart, or at some level in the org chart where he or she is responsible to lead or manage others. The leader is not necessarily leading. Leading means someone is following. Leaders are fired or dismissed or quit every day because no one is following.

So, how do we ensure we’re leading and we aren’t just the leader in title only? The short answer to that question is: develop trust. When people trust us they follow us. When they don’t trust us, they don’t follow. It doesn’t matter whether we’re responsible for signing their paychecks, evaluating their performance or what other leverage we may think we have over people, if they don’t trust us eventually they won’t follow us.

For many years, I have said, “Everything in life eventually comes down to trust and control.” When we trust someone or something we don’t try to control it, but when we don’t trust someone or something we do. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a spouse, a child, an employee, a boss, or even a family pet, when we trust the other, we give that other freedom, and we listen when the person interacts with us. When we don’t trust the other whether that person is our “subordinate” or our “boss” we will either attempt to exercise control over them, or control our relationship with them, so we don’t have to be in the position of having to trust him.

If we’re leaders then, it’s imperative that we lead! We lead by knowing why we’re leading in the first place. As Simon Sinek states in his book Start With Why, unless someone know why they’re leading and believe in that cause, he or she will always resort to some form of manipulation in order to lead. It’s inherently easier to trust a leader who knows why he or she is leading, and the cause goes beyond the leader’s own benefit. After all, it isn’t really leadership to self-promote. Leadership is only necessary when we have a defined cause that is greater than ourselves, and we are championing that cause to some constituency, whether employees, voters, parishioners or friends. When we start with why, and champion that cause we nearly always move from being leaders to leading.

As already stated, people need to be able to trust us in order to follow us. Trust is hard to define. In fact, reducing trust to metrics alone is impossible. After all, we all know people who are extremely successful and we don’t trust them as far as we could throw them. On the other hand, we know others who don’t have great portfolios and yet we trust them with our lives. Perhaps the biggest single contributor to whether we trust someone or not is integrity, that is whether what they do is consistent with their why. When a person says, “I’m here to make sure the employees know they are valued and to make it easier to succeed in every department,” but she never interacts with an employee, and never visits any of the departments, there’s an immediate disconnect. Trust as they say is earned not simply given.

The more consistent we are with being what we say we are, the more people trust us. Thus, trust takes time. We become leaders the moment we are elected, appointed or self-appoint ourselves into a position. We actually lead when people are willing to follow. At the end of the day, it takes relationships, meaningful relationships in order to lead. Being a leader others want to follow means being a person with whom others want to relate. Take some time right now to reflect on your leadership. Are you leading or are you just the leader? What will it take to be a more effective leader, for people to want to follow you more in 2017? Taking the time to reflect on those questions, to answer them and then to live into them may well be the most important thing you do to improve your leadership in 2017.

Here’s to leading better, by actually leading–today!

Leaders are always seeking to find ways to save time. As we develop new habits in the new year, I have a trio that will go a long way to helping you manage your time more effectively in 2017: Eliminate, Automate, Delegate. Stated simply, eliminate means create a “not to do” list and stop doing things you ought not to be doing in the first place. After all, it doesn’t matter how effectively or efficiently we complete tasks we ought not be doing at all.

On my list of items to eliminate in 2017 are: checking e-mail multiple times each day. Instead, I’m checking them before my work day begins and as it ends. Shut off automatic notifications so the familiar ding doesn’t have you have you pulling yourself away from an important task for the urgent, but usually not important, task of checking the latest e-mail. Another item I’m eliminating is automatically turning on the television after dinner in the evening. We moved our television to the basement, so it takes an intentional effort to watch it. It’s a blessing because now television can’t be a brainless activity, nor an automatic time waster. The list is long, but let me mention one more: I am eliminating long to do lists. After all, how many items can I actually complete in a day. As Michael Hyatt reminds us making a list with three important tasks to complete each day and then completing them is much more time effective than listing fifteen or twenty items of various importance and accomplishing half of them. As he points out even completing ten such items leaves us feeling defeated, because we didn’t finish ten.

For the past couple of years, we’ve been saying, “Automate the important,” at New Life. We’ve been helping folks see that automating their giving means they won’t forget to do it. We can automate so many things in our day, from paying repeating bills, to setting the thermostats in our homes, to sending standard e-mail replies to repetitive e-mail inquiries–the list literally goes on and on. With a little creativity and time invested up front automating the important and the mundane can save a great deal of time in this new year.

Finally, I’m learning to delegate work that is not in my wheel house. After all, while I can master many different tasks, why would I want to master ones that are not in my are of giftedness and skill, and which I will never have passion to accomplish. As John Maxwell reminded us decades ago, all that happens when we work at our weaknesses is we end up with strong weaknesses. Better to find someone who has strengths in the areas we are weak, because they will have passion to do the tasks, they’ll do it better and our organizations will be better off for it.

Here’s to leading better by eliminating, automating and delegating tasks  from our to do lists–today! (and throughout 2017!)

As we launch into 2017 one of the most important tasks for each of us is renewing our minds. I use that phrase, because one of the world’s great leaders, the Apostle Paul, used it 2,000 years ago to tell early followers of Jesus how they could overcome being shaped or molded by the world. Now more than ever, the danger of being shaped or molded by the world threatens leaders. It doesn’t matter whether we’re followers of Jesus, adherents of another religion or atheists, the messages offered by the world are insidious and designed to move us away from leading.

How can I make such a blanket statement about the world’s purposes? The world has always had an “agenda,” and while it may not be possible to express it extensively in a blog post, let’s sum it up in the word “drift.” The world’s goals have never been noble, bold, or eager. The world doesn’t care whether we succeed or become significant. The world says, “Take it easy,” “Worry about that tomorrow,” “Whatever.” You may ask, “What do you mean by ‘the world?” I mean the force of entropy that is all around us. While entropy is a natural force stating that everything moves from a state of higher order to a state of lower order, and from a state of higher energy to a state of lower energy, entropy is part of the natural world order across the spectrum.

When it comes to leadership, we will always be swimming upstream against entropy. One of the way entropy expresses itself in our arena is through a sense of entitlement. Rather than wake up asking, “What can I do to contribute to the value of my life and the good of my company, church or organization?” the natural tendency is to ask, “What can my company, church or organization do for me?” We all fight against this tendency, but leaders must win the fight. We must show those around us why contributing to the value of our lives and our organizations is to all our benefits. As the Apostle Paul wrote so long ago in Romans 2:2 this is accomplished through the renewing of our minds.

We must think new, different and creative thoughts in order to combat the tendency to drift or entropy. We must wake up thinking about how we can help those around us realize the vital necessity of exercising leadership in our own lives first and then in our relationships, our work and even in our play. After all, if we don’t think and live intentionally, life will happen to us rather than us living it to some greater end or purpose. Of course, for me, the great end and purpose of life is knowing God and advancing His will in the world. Even if our great end and purpose is serving other human beings, or producing a product that will enhance the human experience, we must take steps to live in constant growth and renewal. Otherwise, we’ll waste our days, which means wasted months, years and ultimately lives.

As you go about this day, pause at some point–the sooner the better–and ask yourself, “Where do I need to fight against the tendency to drift? What steps do I need to take to ensure that I live intentionally, that I am renewing my mind and letting God renew my mind by His Spirit? (You may not see the second half of that last question as being as important as I do, but I include it, because it is a vital aspect of having our minds renewed for those who hold faith in our core.) As you ask those questions make sure to respond to them and then act on those responses. As you do, 2017 will become a year with renewing your mind at the center.

Here’s to leading better by investing time in renewing our minds–today!