Guest blogger Gary Runn has served with Cru for over 30 years. For the past five years he and his family served in Florence, Italy where he focused on leadership development for the national ministry. He currently serves as National Director for Leadership Development of Cru City in Austin, Texas. He’s also my brother-in-law and blogs at garyrunn.wordpress.com.

We live in dynamic times regarding culture and the mission of extending God’s kingdom. New leadership paradigms and fresh learning are necessary elements in stewarding well the resources that God has entrusted to His people.

In a previous post on this blog, Ken Cochrum has argued for Shared Leadership. I think Ken is correct in his estimation of what it is going to take to lead in ever increasing complexity. Ken quotes Marshall Goldsmith in defining what is meant by shared leadership. At the heart of the definition are three key components: maximization of resources around you, empowerment of others to contribute well and opportunity for true leadership out of expertise. This is not leadership by committee. This is leadership at its highest level that can navigate the complexities and steward critical resources towards the best possible solution-all the while raising the leadership culture around them to new heights. But ultimately what a leader does will never outpace who a leader is. This style of leading requires some growing character qualities to ensure both a good environment and a good result. It requires letting go of one’s ego — the exaggerated sense of self. I will suggest three character qualities for your consideration.

Humility
For the Christ-centered leader humility is always required. But in a command and control style this can be feigned and expressed in measured doses. If a leader is aiming for a shared leadership style this is the starting point and must prove consistent day in and day out. Humility is not thinking less of yourself — it’s not thinking of yourself at all. Humility is the character trait that allows you to get out of the way so others can succeed-again, shunning any form of egotism. Humility actually lends itself to bold ideas because there is nothing personally at stake. The mission and God’s agenda are the only things at stake. Humility is what allows the leader employing this style to empower others. Humility by definition does not have to be the epicenter of power. It rightly shares power with qualified others. A right estimation of self and God is at the epicenter of humility.

Determination
The error of a command and control style of leadership is that it is extremely limiting. You are limited to the best and worst of who you are. But the potential error of a shared leadership style is a watered down, fluffy solution with no visible impact. You could end up with leadership by committee and greatly reduce impact. Determination is needed to keep God’s agenda and organizational calling in the forefront. The idea of shared leadership is to get to a better, more impactful solution through partnering efforts. But this requires a leader who can keep connected efforts on track and moving in the right direction. This is knowing when to provide accountability, correcting insight and a refocused vision.

Authenticity
This one might surprise you. But good partnership requires safe relationships. There has to be a leadership environment where divergent opinions can be freely expressed. The best way I know to create safety is if the leader demonstrates true authenticity. This means that the leader is able to admit mistakes, weaknesses, and limitations. This also means that the leader can freely encourage and praise the contributions of others. People readily follow gracious, authentic leaders. Leaders should always be conscious of the working environment around them and the development of leaders around them. An authentic leader fosters a safe, energetic collaboration environment.

Where are these traits nourished and grown? At the foot of the cross. Our constant recognition for the grace of the gospel is the soil for growing these qualities. A helpful fertilizer is regular feedback from peers, superiors and those you lead. A deadly weed is letting egotism run rampant. Shared leadership in all of its varied expressions is the way forward. Will you strive to become this type of leader?

Which group has a higher success rate in collaborative work: B-school grads, kindergartners, or CEOs?

Watch the video to find out. “Build a tower, build a team,” declares Tom Wujec in this fascinating explanation of why multiple iterations are one key to successful collaboration efforts. Unfortunately, most of our training in strategic planning has taught us to plan-plan-plan, assess options, choose the “best” alternative, and execute on that one idea. Annual budgets are then set, personnel reassigned, and we forge ahead while hoping for the best.

In a dynamic networked world, we don’t have to lock ourselves in to such linear plan/produce models. Rapid try/fail/learn/try again cycles are winning the day. This rapid learning approach seems less forced and more organic to leaders in many cultures.

I’m going to try this Marshmallow Challenge with my teams the next time we have some development time. I wonder what we’ll learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0_yKBitO8M

Enjoy these if you haven’t already. Please retweet, share or forward any favorites. Thank you!

Why Leaders Use Social Media

What Is Shared Leadership?

Steve Jobs’ Legacy: Real Artists Ship

Guest post: Bring it!

What’s Your Failure Tolerance?

Leaders speak.

It’s our job. We use words …

• to create and express a compelling vision of the future
• to inspire and encourage people around us
• to speak God’s Word to various audiences
• to engage others with questions and observations
• to “write the vision and make it plain … so that he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2)
• to empathize, respond and express love
• in countless other ways to move people on to God’s agenda

Success, said Thomas Alva Edison, is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

This week at MinistryNet 2011 in Bangkok is making me more aware of this axiom. Yesterday nearly 200 participants broke into workgroups of 5-8 people. Each group was tasked with working a specific problem from an innovation or collaboration angle. It’s not easy. I visited three groups and observed lots of starting, stopping, reframing, challenging and offering. It’s a healthy process that our organization desperately needs in order to stay near the cutting edges of social media ministry.

Janakan Arulkumarasan, CEO of Onoko, is here with us. His company writes Facebook apps. They keep the focus tight, only allowing 10 days from start to finish for a new app. Their philosophy: Just get it out there, then polish it later. Their teams create about 150 apps per year, only one of which might be popular and go to 30 or 4o million downloads. The other 149 are scrap.

This got me thinking. Am I willing to endure that rate of innovation failure in order to achieve success? I do it in some areas of my life, for instance, when I’m learning an 8-bar guitar solo. Picking out all the notes and getting the timing just right can require dozens of practice reps until it sounds right. But sometimes in ministry I naturally feel that if I’ve prayed about something and attempt to try it, God should make it work just right the first time. That’s flawed thinking. And bad theology.

What’s helped increase your tolerance for failure en route to success?

Guest blogger Andrea Buczynski is a teammate, friend, and VP of Leadership Development and Human Resources for CCCi. I invited her to share a recent ‘aha’ in her own leadership development.

When I was growing up as a young leader, it was common to look to the leaders above you for answers, resources, and different approaches. They had a broader view. They were exposed to other leaders, and I was not. So they were my conduit to more knowledge and different ways of doing things.

For many years this paradigm has framed my view of leadership and the critical role of coach as a resource distributor. A simple question someone asked me a few weeks ago made me ponder this in new way.

“How has the advance of technology affected leaders?”

I found myself talking before I even knew what I was saying. I shared my own experience and then said this, “That is no longer true. People don’t need their leaders to resource them in the same way that I experienced in the past. Even now, I will Google something I don’t know about before I do anything else. Information is available so widely. No one would depend on his or her leader for information. In many cases, people that I work with are way more knowledgeable about what is going on in certain areas than I am.”

Have you ever just said something and been surprised by it?  I was.

And then I started thinking.

If that is true, then the need for a leader to engage with team members, whether distributed or local, actually increases. Self-resourcing people can get into mission drift relatively quickly. There are thousands of sources of ideas. New ideas multiply and grab attention in ways that conventional means do not. And they can take you places that you can’t see ahead of time.

If you’re the kind of leader who assumes that “no news is good news” or that people will call me when they need me, you’re making a bad assumption. Because things can be all quiet and you can be thinking that things are going well when drift is happening.

If leaders are no longer the primary resource sharers or generators, then what do they bring to the people they lead? I have to think that it’s the interaction, affirmation, correction, encouragement and clarity that people are looking for that is the essence of the leader/follower relationship. Are we accomplishing what we are called to accomplish?

What do the people you lead really need you to bring? Are you bringing it?

Follow Andrea on Twitter or Facebook.

“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

That was one of Steve Jobs’ early mantras for his team of geniuses. What did he mean? Jobs meant that it doesn’t really matter how beautiful your dreams are, how simple your lines are, or how ergonomic your next product is in your mind’s eye. Real artists ship. They produce. They deliver.

Delivering great products will be one of Steve Jobs’ enduring legacies. Did you know that Steve delivered the Apple II computer in 1977, when he was a 22 year old college dropout? Like Michael Dell and Bill Gates (two other college dropouts who began to change the world before they reached 25), Jobs seemed to me an eccentric positive deviant whose ideas were initially resisted by the establishment. Cultural inertia tends to norm everything to average: average grades, average products, average levels of initiative. Jobs inspired and delivered, redefining “normal” for millions of people. For example, I find it totally normal to have my entire music and video collection of 5,913 items in my pocket, going everywhere I go, every day. That wasn’t true ten years ago.

Here’s a thought in the same spirit: Real leaders lead. Real leaders make stuff happen. They don’t just daydream, strategize, plan, and cast vision. Real leaders deviate from the system. They reset their culture’s “norm” needle. They make deadlines and hit targets. Not perfectly, and not every time. But often enough to build legitimate expectations and set new standards among their followers. Things are different after they leave.

Nehemiah was another leader who delivered. Burdened by reports of the desolation of his hometown, Jerusalem, he inspired and motivated hundreds of ordinary citizens to refortify the city’s wall and gates. He endured attacks from external foes and dissent from within. Yet “the wall was finished… in fifty-two days” (Nehemiah 6:15).

Real artists ship. Real leaders lead.

What is stopping your dream from shipping?

This paper is not going to write itself.

October arrived four days ago. With a November 1 deadline looming for the first three chapters of my 150-page dissertation, I reached the sobering conclusion that:

This paper is not going to write itself.

For the next few weeks (27 days to be exact) my early mornings, late evenings and weekends will have a singular focus. This is painful. It’s also helpful. The process helps me clarify ideas that have been rumbling around in my head for several years. The deadline is a gift. To enjoy it, I must act now.

What challenge are you facing?

That new exercise regimen isn’t going to work out by itself.
That strained relationship probably won’t reconcile itself.
That agenda for the upcoming meeting won’t plan itself.
That afternoon with a spouse, child or good friend won’t just happen by itself.
That huge project isn’t going to be broken down into workable next steps and delegated by itself.
That time to rest and Sabbath won’t simply appear in the overloaded calendar.

Leadership is character in action.

What is God leading you to do? Act now.

In today’s postmodern cultures, the ability to influence others – to lead – is increasingly dependent on one’s credibility rather than one’s position. “Because we said so” never really worked that well in leadership. Authoritarian leadership by coercion has become passe.

That doesn’t mean we can’t lead authoritatively. As authoritative leaders we call others to a shared vision. We mobilize. We engage in conversations followed by action. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. When we do what we say we will do, we close the gap between words and action. The smaller the gap, the greater our credibility. The greater our credibility, the more naturally people will lend us their trust. Genuine authority is grounded in earned trust. 

The U.S. economy is in turmoil in large part because we lack authoritative leaders who will summon us to clear steps of disciplined action. Thus, U.S. credibility – our credit – is in crisis.

Most of us aren’t in charge of managing a national economy, so what does this look like on a smaller scale?

I am currently traveling and posted this entry from my hotel room. A green sign below the bath towel rack reads “Save Our Planet: Dear guest, every day millions of gallons of water are used to wash towels that have been used once. YOU MAKE THE CHOICE. A towel on the rack means “I will use again.” A towel on the floor means “Please replace.”

The hotel chain is offering me a simple way to be “green” and save them some effort in the process.

For the past three days I have hung my towel on the rack after showering.

For the past three days I have returned to my room to find all my towels replaced.

My choice obviously didn’t matter much to this hotel’s management. This gap between words and actions reduces the hotel’s credibility in my eyes. Yes, it is a small thing. But I find myself wondering how many other disconnects go on around here. To increase credibility the manager either needs to change the sign or change the behavior.

Looking into the mirror, is there a gap I see in my own words and deeds that may be threatening my credibility?

Close it. 

This fourth post in our series on Distance Leadership comes from my good friend Erik Butz. Erik has been serving as an Operations leader in East Asia for over a decade.

How to Improve Any Virtual Team Meeting

We all know that running an effective meeting is tough, even with a group from the same culture that is sitting in the same room. But even more things can trip you up when you’re trying to lead a virtual meeting with people across multiple locations, time zones, languages and cultures.

I’ve been a team member or leader of distributed teams for nearly a decade now. Although technology has been making it easier and easier for these teams to have virtual meetings, there are still many challenges – including the use of all the new technologies! The last few years, most of my time has been spent working with people over distance. I feel like I’ve been in the virtual meeting school of hard knocks during that time. The following is a list of best practices that I’ve found helpful for holding fun and effective virtual meetings.

1. Establish a strong foundation of relationship and trust by having initial (and occasional ongoing) face-to-face meetings with your virtual team. Solid relationship and trust are crucial to help overcome the inevitable miscommunications that happen over distance, emails and time (see Do you trust me?). If the team is a short-term work group, face-to-face time might not be possible, but you can still do initial relationship building over a video call. Take time to have people share about themselves, their strengths, working style, passions, vision for the project, etc.
2. Develop and follow virtual meeting norms. All meeting norms that a face-to-face team would use will still apply, i.e. start and end on time, have an agenda, come prepared, etc. In addition, you might find it helpful to clarify some additional “virtual meeting norms.” This could include practical things like having remote participants sit in a quiet room (i.e. not a loud coffee shop), be online 10 minutes early in case of IT issues, make eye contact with the camera, or raising your hand (on video, or virtually on a chat window) if you’re having trouble breaking into the discussion.
3. Involve all participants in virtual meetings. If all participants have a specific role in the meeting, I find they will be more engaged overall. In addition to facilitating specific topics of discussion, participants could also be assigned a “meeting role,” such as taking meeting notes, action point recorder, norms enforcer, or timekeeper. Related tip: The action point recorder can type action points directly into your online shared document and then everyone can review, clarify and confirm those action points (see Tip #4 below) at the end of the meeting.
4. Keep priorities and action points visible to all and promote group accountability. Leveraging shared document technology like Google docs can really help your team communicate and focus. We use a Google doc action point list that we add to and review at every meeting. Team members mark tasks complete or add progress updates in real time. An example of how you might do this is shown here. We also have shared planning documents and priority lists that everyone can easily reference as they do individual planning and work.
5. Leverage collaboration tools to save discussion time. We often think of virtual meetings as being less efficient as being face-to-face. However, in some cases, a team can gather information and “think together” more quickly using online tools. Try having everyone type his or her input or answer to a question into a chat window. The facilitator can review answers and follow up on key points or questions.  The Google doc feature of having multiple people type into one document simultaneously is an extremely efficient way to quickly gather and refine ideas. Have everyone type in brainstorming ideas, answers to evaluation questions, or other small group or individual work that you want to compile, review and refine in real time.
6. Test your meeting technology and tools. My teams and others I’ve observed have wasted WAY too much time on IT issues at the start of meetings. These issues could have been worked out by just 2-3 people testing the technology in advance of the meeting. Starting a meeting with tech problems can easily put a wet blanket on the mood and make people feel like your meetings are a waste of time. Related tips: (1) Use a video solution if possible as I’ve found that being on video significantly increases engagement. (2) Have a backup connection method available for the meeting in case your primary method fails.
7. Train your team on meeting technology and collaboration methods. As you adopt new virtual meeting technology (like a new video conference system) or practices (like online document sharing or project management tools), make sure to train the team on how to use these tools. If you don’t, you might see engagement drop and frustrations rise.
8. Adjust for language and cultural issues. Many distributed teams will have people from different cultures and language backgrounds. Those realities must be taken into account for the team to truly be effective. The current team I lead operates bilingually, with some stronger in one language than the other. As a result, we take meeting notes in both languages simultaneously (thus we have two note takers – see Tip #3). That allows someone who gets lost to quickly read up in their mother tongue.

These are just a few ideas that have worked for my teams. What practices have you used to make your virtual team meetings more effective?