Leadership

The Courage-Giving Leader

by Andy Wood on January 18, 2012

in Executing Your Plan, Five LV Laws, Hoarders, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Pleasers, Principle of Abundance

Quick Question:  What do the people you lead (and you do lead somebody) do when trouble shows up?

Quick Answer:  They do what you lead them to do.

More Thoughtful Question:  Do the people you lead (and you do lead somebody) run for the hills or cower in fear at the first sign of trouble, or do they courageously rise up to the challenge?

More Thoughtful Answer:  They do what you lead them to do.  Not necessarily what tell them to do or manipulate them to do.  What you lead them to do.

That reminds me of a story.  True story.  About a guy named Eli.  Now Eli was a soldier, and being a soldier, he had a Commander-in-Chief.  And the reason Eli’s Commander-in-Chief was the Commander-in-Chief was because he was the biggest dude in all the land.

You know what the problem is with making the biggest dude in all the land the Commander-in-Chief?  Sooner or later he’s gonna run into a bigger dude.  And that’s what happened.  Eli’s boss went quaking in his boots to the rear of the line because he was staring down the barrel of an overwhelming challenge.

So you know what Eli did?  He quaked in his boots too.  I’m talking, Give up now.  Better fled than dead.

One day later – one day! – that’s Eli with his shield up, his sword drawn, charging headlong into the enemy’s camp and taking no prisoners.  What made the difference? [click to continue…]

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How Does Your Leader Make You Feel?

by Andy Wood on December 12, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Leadership, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

Okay I need your feedback.  Now.  Humor me, it’s easy.  Scroll down to the comments section. Or click on the article title if you’re reading this on the feed or email, then scroll down to comments.

When you get there, give me your first response to this question.

Think of someone who is in a leadership position over your life – work, church, nonprofit, political.  How does that leader most often make you feel?

One word answers are fine.  Diatribes are fine.  Rants are fine.  Gushing is allowed, too.  First names are OK.  Give your answer,  then click “submit” and come back to the top.

I’ll wait right here.

(This is me waiting.)

Okay.  Back?  Let’s talk. [click to continue…]

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What to Do When You’ve Suddenly Lost Your Vision

by Andy Wood on November 25, 2011

in Insight, Leadership, Life Currency, Turning Points

The other day I turned left out of a parking lot and started heading south on Avenue Q, between 19th and 34th Streets in Lubbock, where I live.  If you’re not familiar with that stretch of road, it’s a seven-lane thoroughfare, with three lanes each heading south and north, and a turn lane.  Big.  Wide.  Sprawling.  Busy.

It was in the afternoon, around 3:00 or so.  I was talking on the phone with Joel, my son.  Traffic was busy enough, but not nuts.  I was in the middle lane, with cars pretty much all around me – left and right, front and back.  I was probably about a quarter mile from the 34th Street intersection when the strangest thing began to happen.

I went blind. [click to continue…]

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Leading Your Organization Through Conflict

by Andy Wood on November 18, 2011

in Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase, Protecting Your Investment

The call or opportunity to lead is a call or opportunity for conflict.  I doubt if I’m the first to tell you that, but if so, well, sorry.  That’s certainly true on an interpersonal or team level.   It’s also true organization-wide.  Whether you’re leading a church or a business, a nonprofit or an institution, a state or a nation, the bigger they are, the harder they brawl.  Or squall.

If your goal is to avoid conflict at all costs, let somebody else take the leadership roles, because what you’re saying is that you don’t want to influence anybody.

Assuming you’re still reading, let’s assume that the idea of conflict hasn’t scared you off – at least not yet.  I have good news.  Some of the greatest demonstrations of leadership in history took place when someone rose to face the challenge of seemingly impossible conflicts.  So if your organization is facing competing values and visions, wise leadership can help make it stronger and more successful than ever.  If it’s true that conflict is the moment of truth in any relationship (and I think it is), then the way you lead your organization to face those conflicts sets the course of the organization, sometimes for years.

It’s important to remember that the people in your organization have brains, hearts, and feelings, just as you do.  Resistance to your or the organization’s direction is a way of saying you haven’t communicated the vision clearly.  Or maybe you haven’t anticipated their objections or their priorities.  Maybe you have yet to earn the trust of the people.  Or maybe they are insecure in the roles in which you are asking them to perform.

Here are five ways to work with – not against – the members of your organization to turn conflicts into jumping off points. [click to continue…]

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What You Can Learn From a Ghost House

by Andy Wood on October 31, 2011

in Five LV Laws, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Photos, Principle of Legacy, Protecting Your Investment

I don’t know what else to call them.  But if they were all in the same vicinity or neighborhood, they’d be part of a ghost town.  They’re usually uninhabitable, with windows and doors gone or broken, and the roof letting in morning sunshine.

There’s at least one near you somewhere, but it may not be as easy to see as the hundreds that dot the wide open landscape near where I live.

Abandoned, but never empty.  For lack of a better term, I call them ghost houses.

Not haunted houses, though I’d rather not wander into one of these things after dark.  Broad open daylight either, for that matter.

Once upon a time these places provided a home for families.  Now they sit empty.  Sometimes the reason is obvious; sometimes it doesn’t make sense at all. Just in the last week I’ve seen several once-lovely and spacious homes now left to the elements, vandals, and critters.

Maybe someone died, and left no heir.  Maybe business dried up or sold out and forced a move.  Maybe the place got tied up in some sort of disagreement in court or with a bank.

Regardless, the end result is the same – empty, eroding testaments to lost usefulness and life.

Oh, if they could talk!  Oh, if they could teach us!

Call me weird (okay, who said that?).  But what started as a years-long fascination has led me to visit and photograph over 200 of these old places over the last week.  Most were houses.  But there are also old stores, gas stations, barns, schools, and even a few abandoned churches.

Some are part of the three certifiable ghost towns I’ve visited (a story for another day).  Most stand alone on the edge of town or in the middle of nowhere.

Nobody built one of these planning for them to sit desolate.  But sit they do.  And while the ghost houses have lost their primary purpose because nobody can actually live or work in them anymore, they being dead still speak.

And no, they’re not hollering, “Boo!”

They’re teaching some powerful lessons that speak to us as individuals and leaders, churches and organizations. [click to continue…]

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The Unselfish Leader

by Andy Wood on October 8, 2011

in Leadership, Life Currency

Disciple:  Oh wise one, why do people put others up on a pedestal?

Guru:  Target practice.

+++++++

Leadership is in the crosshairs these days, and it sure seems as though everybody has an itchy trigger finger.  The most hated man in the world is the President of the United States – whoever he is.  Change the name and face, we just paint new targets.

And Congress?  Ha.  First of all, they aren’t elected leaders; they’re elected representatives.  Second, until we can vote for all 435 offices, we’ll always love ours and hate everybody else’s.

But our hostility to leaders isn’t limited to government.  Whether in business and banking, sports and entertainment, churches and nonprofits, or pretty much any other endeavor, leaders are perceived as self-serving – even at the expense of employees and the good of the organization itself.

Is that fair?  No and yes. [click to continue…]

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Building a High-Trust Culture

by Andy Wood on September 12, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

Picture a couple of goldfish in a cartoon.  Only instead of a fishbowl, they’re holed up in a blender.  One looks to the other and says, “The stress here is killing me!”

We had that cartoon at a place I used to work.

We also had that kind of stress.  We never quite knew when somebody might show up and punch “Puree.”

Morale was hard to come by in that environment because we presented one set of values to the public, but lived by a different set behind the office doors.  Information was available only on a “need to know” basis, and most people, most of the time, didn’t “need to know.”  Accountability ran down a one-way street.  Underlings were accountable for everything, including their email accounts and their bank accounts, while “leaders” answered to no one.

Oh… did I mention that this was a church? [click to continue…]

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Going for the Gold

by Andy Wood on August 12, 2011

in Insight, Leadership, Life Currency, Love

During the days of the American Old West, a tribe of Apaches captured the army paymaster’s safe.  The Apaches had never seen a safe, but they did know that it held a large amount of gold.  So they went to work on it.

First, they pounded on its knob with stones.  No results.  Then they used their tomahawks on the tempered steel case.  When that failed, they roasted the safe because they knew that iron can be softened by fire.  But that didn’t work, either.  Then they threw it off a cliff.  All that did was break one of its wheels.  Next, they soaked it in the river.  Finally, they tried to blast it open with gunpowder, which only resulted in some of them being injured.

Totally frustrated, they tumbled the safe into a ravine.  When the army found it, the gold was still inside.

As you lead your organization, reach out to friends, teach that class, or spend time loving children, remember that in any endeavor involving the hearts of people, are “going after the gold.”  And like the gold in the safe, many people have encased their hurts, their failures, and their “real selves” with a protective shell and a “keep out” sign. [click to continue…]

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Butting Heads Without Cutting Hearts

by Andy Wood on July 29, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle

Leading Individuals and Teams Through Conflict

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were great friends.  Throughout their near-lifelong friendship, as far as we know they never had a problem.

Never had a solution, either.

Friends?  Yes.  And boring.

Jefferson and John Adams?  Boy, was that a different story.  One looooong, near-lifelong debate.  Fiery exchanges.  Icy periods of silence.  And one of the warmest, most profound collections of letters in history between these two icons, who died on the same day, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Friends?  Oh my, yes.  They each had busts of the other in their homes.  And Adams, not knowing his friend had already died, departed this life with these words:  “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

That said, let’s be honest.  Few of us get up in the morning hoping to cross swords with friends.  Or spouses.  Or parents or kids or team members or employees or constituents or customers. (Dear Mark:  Please call again soon – I promise I’ll be nicer on the recorded line for quality assurance purposes.)  And yet the quality of your relationship is measured – not by the lack of conflict, but by how those conflicts are managed and solutions are forged.

(Dear Congress… Oh.  Well.  Never mind.)

Here’s how Thomas Gordon puts it: [click to continue…]

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How Long Will Your Influence Last?

by Andy Wood on July 22, 2011

in Books and Music, Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Principle of Legacy

(From the forthcoming book, Coach Lightning)

(Note:  Anybody can be an influence to people sitting right in front of them.  But it takes a special kind of character to continue to shape lives you first touched 50 years ago.  The following is an excerpt about the way Morris Brown did that, and how his influence lives on to this day.  You can see other excerpts here and here.)

Benjamin Disraeli, the British statesman, once said, “The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”  That’s what you discover when you talk to the people whose lives were touched by Morris Brown.  You hear the language of wealthy people.  And they’ll tell you that Coach Brown was instrumental in revealing their riches to them.

One of the greatest contributions any leader, teacher, or friend can make in terms of influence is to “raise the bar” in the pursuit of excellence.  Morris did that time and time again.  Don Hunt calls him a “beacon in my heart and soul” to this day.  From the days of Little League baseball until today, Don says, Coach Brown’s life and actions remind him to strive to be the best person that he can be.

It’s interesting to note that in all the conversations or interviews about Coach Brown’s influence, nobody went to a chalkboard and started drawing the X’s and O’s of a football locker room.  Morris influenced players and students by first influencing them as people.  As he helped raise up a generation of excellent people, the on-field or on-court play took care of itself. [click to continue…]

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