Elevating Excellence

As the leader, it is your job to give direction and then send your team off to implement  Early on, during one of our stage play tours, my boss did me a great favor. He got up in front of the staff and explained that if I told them something, I was speaking for him.…

A vital characteristic in a senior executive is the ability to tell truth to power.  At first blush, you probably think, of course my staff is honest—and they are. The issue is the ability to respectfully disagree with the leader and be able to articulate why. One of my favorite television shows is The West…

Lots of ministers spend a huge amount of time and effort telling their congregations about how to be empowered in their lives financially, spiritually, and otherwise. However, too many churches fail to adequately empower their own teams. It is “Management 101” that people who are not empowered are not effective. People need to feel like…

Part of motivating any team is actually doing something. Organizations that get stuck in paralysis by analysis—or worse, a simple inability to create the inertia needed to act—will drive good people away. People, especially cause-oriented people, want to see things happen in a deliberate manner. People want to be associated with winners who are moving…

In a great episode of The West Wing, one of the president’s senior advisors, Sam Seaborn (played by Rob Lowe), was attracted to and wanted to date the daughter of the chief of staff, Leo McGarry. Leo decided to have a little fun and gave his daughter, a public school teacher and a staunch advocate…

Too many pastors believe the ability to lead equals the ability to manage. If you are like most pastors, the most important position(s) for you to fill are those one or two senior executives who manage the major elements of your organization. For example, with Bishop Jakes, I am COO of TDJ Enterprises, and I…

Here are some of the attributes that I think you should be looking for when seeking your go-to person: 1.  You will, naturally, look at the typical factors: Educational backgrounds and prior work experience are of course very important. Remember that everyone is a result of the sum total of his or her experiences. You…

The pastor needs a team with the talent, experience, and expertise to manage the organization. The problem is that as many pastors start building their staffs, they make the understandable mistake of only focusing on the ministry side of the organization and only hiring people who look, think, and act like they do. Most good…

From the very beginning you should start building your team—even before you can afford a team. So what should you do? When there aren’t sufficient resources to fund employees, work your contacts within and outside of the organization to find people who can support you on a volunteer basis. Put together a board of quality…

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