Over the years I’ve collected a few favorite sayings. Some are original with me, and others I’ve adopted. Here they are (I’ll add to the list as I go along through life):

1. The problem with leadership is knowing who is following you and who is chasing you. That may take a while to sink in. What it means is that some of the people behind you are supporting you while others are actively throwing knives at your back. You want to get rid of the latter or transform them into the former. Regardless, leaders need to know that some people in their circles are not followers but chasers.
2. A financial crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Use crises as opportunities to fine tune the organization and prune programs, expenses, staff, and even buildings that are not in the critical path of your mission. If everyone knows there is a fiscal crisis, then don’t waste it by continuing to support ministries that have needed to go away but you didn’t have a good enough reason to terminate them.
3. Give God what’s right, not what’s left. Neat stewardship quote (not original to me).
4. Separate the Personal from the Professional. Too many times people perceive a professional criticism as a personal attack. Or they mix their professional lives with their personal lives and that blend causes angst for them and those around them. Professionals should act professionally and realize that who they are (personal life) is NOT their job or career (professional life).
5. Committees should be a balance of institutional memory and new ideas. As you work with who should be on a committee, always have a balance young people and new people with new ideas with people who’ve been on the committee a while and those who’ve been in the church a while. The longevity group tempers the younger/fresher group (but hopefully doesn’t completely dampen them) and the younger/fresher group instills vitality and enthusiamsm (but not at a cost that tramples history or leads into minefields which could cost the church its unity).
6. Quality + Service + Cost = Value. This is based on Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, who used the QSCV formula to run his stores. I’ve modified it to define value which is what I strive for in all my purchases. I don’t necessary take the low bidder but I will go with the vendor that gives me the best perceived value, and that is a combination of quality, service, and cost.
7. If nothing unifies us, then everything divides us. Every church and every organization should have one central thing around which everyone unites. That one thing will keep everyone on task and everything in focus. When a church or organization just does routine things without any unifying commitment, then everyone will feel that their particular passion should be the most important thing. That leads to division.
8. Attack the problem, not the person. Quote from an article in the 1980s in Fortune magazine. It’s been something I’ve used with every staff I’ve ever had. It helps people to focus on the issue and not the person. If the person is the issue, that’s another thing, but most of the time, problems (not people) are at the root of conflicts.
9. Hire attitude; train aptitude. After hiring and firing dozens of people, I’ve learned that aptitude (skills, abilities, talents, knowledge, etc.) can be taught or learned (not always, but most of the time). Attitude cannot be taught or learned; it is in someone’s DNA to have the right (or wrong) attitude. My experience as a manager is that a person’s attitude is the single most important factor in that person keeping or losing a job. Résumés list a person’s aptitudes; the interview reveals the attitude, and that is the part that should get you hired.
10. If you need a tool to do your job and I don’t give it to you, shame on me. If I you need a tool to do your job and I give it to you but you don’t use it, we’re going to talk. I let all new employees know that this is what I expect from them. First, if they need something, they need to ask me for it. Second, if I don’t provide it (and don’t have a good reason for not providing it), that is my fault and they should complain louder or to someone else. Finally, if I do give them a tool and they don’t use it, then the employee is heading toward losing his/her job.
11. Have conversations, not policies. This comes from North Point Community Church where they have almost no operating policies (except Personnel Policies, which are a must). Instead, they have conversations when someone acts up. So, when someone does something that out of bounds, instead of passing a policy to “punish the entire class” the supervisor has a conversation with the person. For instance, if someone schedules an event and gives the building staff about 24 hours to get ready for it, that results in a conversation to explain to the person that there are lots of moving parts to pulling off an event, even a small one, with just a few hours’ notice and the best practices is to give two week’s notice of a event.
12. I get worried when I don’t hear laughter in the halls. A former boss said this. He feels that having a staff that laughs with each other is healthy emotionally. When a staff does not laugh and carry on, then things have become very serious in the office and even tense. I encourage laughter in the halls!

Lead On!
Steve

Willie died a few years ago but he wouldn’t mind me telling you his story, at least the part of it that has stuck with me. Willie and I met in February 1995 when I became the Director of Operations of South Highland Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. South Highland Presbyterian is a beautiful building – built in phases in 1892, 1926, 1955, and 1996. The sanctuary and chapel are stunningly gorgeous (sometime I’ll post about the Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket that a donor family and I approved to be placed in stained glass window in that church!).

In 1995 South Highland built a 25,000 square foot, $4 million dollar children’s building and renovated the existing facilities. It was a much-needed overhaul of the current buildings with a badly-needed structure designed for kids. South Highland had a glorious past but had struggled to retain its members so the children’s building was the church’s effort to tell those who moved to the suburbs that the church was very much alive with a vibrant program for kids. It worked – South Highland to this day is a wonderful church.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama was racked by racial strife. City and county leadership didn’t want Blacks to have equal rights, equal education, equal opportunities, etc. In the midst of that tension, there were good relationships (but not equal) between individual Blacks and Whites – they were cordial and friendly to each other but there was a caste system between the two races. They lived on different sides of the railroad tracks and different sides of Red Mountain. In the 1960s, White Flight created the booming cities OTM (Over The Mountain, Red Mountain) which today form the business engine of north central Alabama. Willie grew up in a segregated and sometimes violent city.

Willie had already been the custodian at the church for 16 years when I got there. He was an institution: he knew all the members, he knew their cars and would get members out of worship if they left their car lights on; he knew how to run the building; he was THE caretaker of God’s house. Before coming to South Highland, Willie worked in one of the steel mills near Birmingham. That’s where breathed asbestos particles and developed a horrible illness which clogged his lungs. He got a monthly $300 check from the asbestosis lawsuit settlement but the illness shortened his life. He didn’t die from that though, his kidneys began to shut down and he had dialysis three times a week. The docs put a tube in his arm – that really grossed me out to see that tube, yuk! His death was greatly mourned by the mostly white congregants of South Highland – they still miss him today.

On to the story, my most painful story about Willie. During the renovation work in 1996, all the bathrooms got a makeover. There was one bathroom, literally under some stairs, that was impossible to re-do. When I man used it, he would hit his head on the angled ceiling (which was the downward angle of the stairs); women never used it because it was so bad. So I had that made into a mop-sink, janitor’s closet. It was perfect. There was floor sink and a faucet – I thought it was a great solution.

Shortly after that bathroom was completed, Willie came to my office. “Steve,” he said, “where should I use the bathroom now?” I didn’t understand the question. I told Willie that the church had sixteen bathrooms and he should use whichever one he wanted to, except the pastor’s private bathroom. Willie replied, “I can’t do that. See, I can only use the bathroom that you took away.” I still didn’t understand, “What do you mean you can only use that bathroom?” “Steve, when I started working here, I was told that the bathroom under the stairs is the only bathroom I could use and now you’ve done taken it away.”

I was stunned. The history of Birmingham’s Civil Rights struggles was now squarely in my face. This Black man, a very proud and dignified man, was told he could only use the “Colored Restroom” in the church and all the other bathrooms were for “Whites Only.” I sat there not knowing what to do, how to say what, and somewhere between anger and astonishment.

After 15 seconds of silence (which felt like minutes), I said, “Willie, you can use any bathroom in the entire church. Every bathroom here is available to you. And if anyone, and I mean anyone, says anything to you about you using a bathroom, you come tell me or Dana [the senior pastor, Dana Waters, a wonderful gentleman] and we’ll take it up with that person.”

Later, I told Dana about the conversation and he supported me and was equally incensed that one of God’s children, a servant in God’s house, would be relegated to second or third-class status. We agreed that we’d do our part, the right thing, to help erase Birmingham’s taint, if it ever came up – it never did. It was nice to know the church had grown up and moved on past those issues, at least in its building. At some point later, I saw Willie in bathrooms throughout the church – it was nice to see him using the “Whites Only” bathrooms.

I miss Willie. He brought home to me for one instant, for less than five minutes, the struggles that he endured for over 65 years. I’m sorry he experienced discrimination at all but it was disgraceful that he experienced any in God’s church. I was glad I could be part of giving grace back to a really, nice man, Willie Waller.

Lead On!
Steve

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” (Matthew 21:1-3)

At some point, Jesus slipped away from his followers and found a man with a donkey and a new colt. Jesus told the man that at some point a couple of his followers would be coming around asking to borrow the donkey. Evidently the man had some type of relationship with Jesus (of which we know nothing except by implication) but it was strong enough for Jesus to borrow something of value. And when asked, the man must have said, “Jesus, I’ve got your ass.” Jesus thanked him and returned to his disciples.

Every leader has followers by definition. One of the great problems of leadership is that sometimes its hard to know if people are following you or chasing you. Leaders have lots of arrows thrown at them. Usually those darts are tossed by enemies or people who are not adherents to the leaders’ cause. Ocassionally the barbs are by well-meaning followers who help the leader manage his blindside (because every person, including great leaders, have areas of their personal and professional lives that they just can’t see). But a few times the leader is shot by followers who react to something he (or she) has done or said.

It into those slings and arrows that a few trusted people must be willing to insert themselves. These are key people that the leader has invested in over the course of months or years. These are people who have had some personal time with the leader and who the leader is grooming for their own positions of leadership. These are people who are present or future leaders – they know that they, too, will suffer attacks from friends and foes. But for now, they are willing to absorb some of the blows thrown at a leader and explain to the dart-throwers why the leader is doing what he is because they understand the bigger picture. These are people who can say to the leader, “I’ve got your back.”

Jesus spent some time with a guy who would play a critical role just a few days before the crucifixion. It may be that the man had waited for months or years for his time; we don’t know and it doesn’t matter. We do know that he stepped forward when asked. Are you grooming new generation leaders? Are you teaching them the perils of leadership? Are you helping them to explain to others about leadership decisions that come from big visions? Are you helping them to know that at some point, they need to say to you and mean it, “Lead on and don’t worry about your back because, I’ve got your ass.”

Lead On!
Steve