15 Assessment Questions for Potential Leaders

by: Build Network

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You know who they are: the young talents everyone eyes as executive material.

But sometimes these high-potential stars derail on their way to the top. “If they have strong results, but they sacrifice team members or the bigger picture, or are too self-serving, they would no longer be considered high-potential,” is what one executive told Jim Bolt in Fast Company.

Expert David Peterson, speaking in Talent Management magazine, concurs: “Someone who is hard-charging, smart and aggressive, is much more likely to get great results, but if they don’t learn to temper that to include other people, to get buy-in, to build alignment with other folks, they may alienate people or cause additional friction down the road.”

Okay — so how can you anticipate and prevent derailment in your leadership-development pipeline? Spencer Stuart, the global executive search consulting firm, compiled a list of 15 questions to judge leadership potential outside the realm of individual performance:

Leaving the comfort zone

1. Do I trust this person’s judgment in complex, ambiguous situations?

2. Has their decision-making been tested when leading a team outside of their area of expertise and in situations of great complexity and ambiguity?

Emotional intelligence and political savvy

3. How effectively does the executive read and respond to interpersonal dynamics in sensitive, high-stakes and complex situations?

4. Does the individual understand the power of his or her words and actions on others and quickly create alignment among stakeholders with divergent interests?

5. Can he or she successfully navigate politicized situations where personal relationships and a cooperative style are not sufficient?

Motivating and monitoring others

6. Does this person have a track record of building high-performing teams?

7. Is he or she willing to hold people accountable when they fail to meet objectives?

8. Does this person create an environment where people feel motivated to contribute, while also holding others to high standards?

Humility and flexibility

9. Does the individual show the mental flexibility to quickly evolve their thinking based on others’ inputs?

10. How does he or she react to feedback or criticism of their ideas?

11. Does he or she really listen to substantive input from people who know? Does he or she seek it out?

Molding others

12. Is talent development a priority for this executive? How has he or she demonstrated that it is a priority?

13. Are there a number of individuals in the organization whose careers have been shaped through their relationship with this executive?

Big-picture visions and leading through change

14. What are this person’s strengths? Does he or she come up with the big ideas? Are they most skilled at executing an idea from elsewhere?

15. In past situations of change, what was the individual’s role in developing the vision, influencing and motivating others to embrace the idea, and driving to a result?

Read more here.

Tags: Build Network, Leadership Development, Staff, Structure

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The Pivot Point of Organizational Change

by: Leadership Now

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We know that the vast majority of organizational change initiatives fail. Why? The general answer is our resistance to change. But what if it’s something else?

In The Pivot Point, authors Victoria and James Grady ask, “What if this is not a ‘resistance’ problem for which the organization must engineer a solution, but a deeper ‘people’ problem that the organization must first learn to understand and respect?”

Perhaps the problem is less about resistance to change and more about attachment to some thing.

Change involves destruction and insecurity. You have to give up something to create something new. It’s the nature of change. Sometimes it is very hard to give up that thing. It creates anxiety, frustration and insecurity. “We form attachments to objects unique to our organizational environment and we lean on them for support.” What we react to is our loss of attachment.

The essence of the problem is not resisting change per se, but resisting the distress inherent in somehow losing the objects that we attach to or lean on in our work environment. These objects can be people, systems, places, things, or even abstract concepts such as ideas or environments—anything that provides us with a sense of “attachment” to the organization.

If this is the case, then the challenge is to identify those attachments and the impact the proposed change will have on them, and design a solution around them—introducing changes will maintain healthy attachments. The authors refer to this as the Pivot Point of organizational change success: “when we recognize the significance of our individual reaction to organizational change, take appropriate steps to support healthy attachment behaviors, and make use of current information to optimize the situation for all concerned.”

The authors suggest that “to mitigate the negative effects of losing our sense of stability, one way an organization can ease the transition of a change initiative is to look for a generic substitute to replace the lost object until a new sense of stability is restored. Those replacements could be “a leader, a favored object, a method of communication, a continuing education series, a technology, a colleague, a culture, or any combination of these items.”

They also present other methodologies to prevent or modify symptoms before or as they are developing. It is possible to discover which symptoms are most likely to escalate, allowing you to implement a strategy to mitigate these symptoms before you ever begin your organizational change initiative.

Read more about The Pivot Point here.

Tags: Change, Leadership Now, Structure

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How Your Location Impacts Your Biblical Interpretation

by: Trevin Wax

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You may be surprised to discover just how much your culture determines what you see in the Scriptures.

During my years in Romania, I found myself challenged by the insights Romanian pastors drew from the text. Preachers seemed to spend time on things that I tended to pass over. Even now, when Corina and I discuss a passage of Scripture, we often latch on to different words and phrases. We’re both inclined to think the other has missed the point and is majoring on the minors.

Cultural background and social location play an important role in the way we read a text.

Did You Notice the Famine?

A great example of this phenomenon is found in Mark Allan Powell’s helpful little book What Do They Hear?: Bridging the Gap Between Pulpit and Pew. Powell recounts an experiment with 12 American seminary students assigned to read the parable of the prodigal son and then recount it from memory. Interestingly enough, not one of them mentioned the famine in Luke 15:14: 

After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.

Powell himself had considered Jesus’ reference to the famine as an insignificant detail, but he was surprised to see all of his students forget it.

Next, Powell organized a study with 100 American students of different genders, races, ages, economic statuses, and religions. Out of 100 students, only 6 mentioned the famine in their retelling of Jesus’ parable.

Perplexed, he went to St. Petersburg, Russia, and did the same experiment with 50 Russians. He was shocked when 42 of them remembered the famine. Only 6 out of 100 Americans, but 42 out of 50 Russians.

Why the disparity? Powell believes there may be a psychological explanation that goes back to 1941, when the German army laid siege to St. Petersburg and caused a 900-day famine in which 670,000 Russians died of starvation and exposure. Even after so many years, the horror of the famine lingers in the consciousness of Russian citizens.

What’s the Prodigal’s Problem?

Even more interesting is the fact that many Russian readers made no reference to the prodigal son squandering his property! People from these two cultures tend to hear the emphases of the parable differently.

The American hears the parable like this:

Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.

The Russian hears the parable like this:

Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.

In other words, Americans see the famine as an insignificant detail that intensifies the prodigal’s big problem – wastefulness. Russians, on the other hand, see the prodigal’s wasteful spending as an insignificant detail that intensifies the real tragedy – the famine.

Social location and cultural background also impact the way we see what the boy did wrong. Americans consider the prodigal’s great sin to be his extravagant, wasteful lifestyle. But in Powell’s study, the Russians didn’t see wastefulness as the biggest problem:

“His mistake was leaving his father’s house in the first place. His sin was placing a price tag on the value of his family, thinking that money was all he needed from them. Once he had his share of the family fortune, the family itself no longer mattered. In a phrase, his sin was wanting to be self-sufficient.” (18)

In a capitalist society, we see the prodigal’s sin in terms of wastefulness. In a socialist society, the Russians see the prodigal’s sin as self-sufficiency.

Know Your Sources and Know Your People

How does this story apply to our preaching and teaching?

First, we ought to consult a variety of sources and scholars as we study the Scriptures. I know pastors who vary their commentaries based on theological diversity. Very well. But perhaps we should also consult commentaries from people in societies different from our own, to see what our cultural blinders may have screened out.

Second, we should consider how our sermons fall on the ears of others. We must be aware of the social context of our listeners and consider not only what we mean to say but how it might be heard. In order to get our intended meaning across, we must know the people we are preaching to and be able to understand how they hear us.

Powell mentions how Bible readers often remain “oblivious to what they themselves are bringing to the process, unaware that the sorting and organizing of data is influenced by particular factors of their own social location. People who hear our sermons do the same thing – they sort the auditory data, prioritizing, organizing, remembering, forgetting: they create a meaning that seems appropriate to them with little awareness of the extent to which their social location has influenced that process” (19).

Better Bible interpretation and better preaching happens when we keep social location and cultural background in mind: the social location of the Scriptures, of ourselves as interpreters, and of those who hear us preach.

Read more from Trevin here.

Tags: Local Predicament, Scripture, Trevin Wax

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Church Unique Visual Summary

by: Will Mancini

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Tags: Church Unique, Church Unique Tools, Visual Summary, Will Mancini

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Multiplying Relationships: How Every Church Can Multiply

by: Lane Corley

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Reaching North America for Christ is too big a task for one church to handle. New Church Multiplication is one of the best ways for us to work the North American fields to the edges. And every church can get involved in multiplication of new Churches. How? The sky is the limit. There is no right or wrong way to support church planting. The question is, what are you willing to do? How big of a commitment are you willing to make?

Here are three levels of relationship that excludes no church from involvement. I offer a few suggestions that are not meant to be an exhaustive list under each level.

Friending / Encouraging

Church Planting is a difficult, lonely task, filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. You and your church can strengthen and encourage a church plant, as well as demonstrate a kingdom mindset, by reaching out a hand of friendship. This can be done with little or no expense to you and your church. Here are a few ideas:

• Put a church planter on your weekly prayer list. The real battle against the kingdom of darkness is free through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. As your church prays for the lost to be saved, take the new church and planter to the throne of God as they reach out to the unchurched in your community.
• Buy a church planter a cup of coffee and ask him how it’s going and offer him your insights about the community. Ask him about his family. Demonstrate a desire to see the church succeed. If you don’t have a desire to see him succeed, then repent and get over the idea that your church can reach everybody in the community. Also, encourage the women’s ministry to remember the church planter’s spouse and support her when possible. Just simply treat them as you would want to be treated. Seems like I saw that principle written in red somewhere.
• Invite a church planter to share during your Wednesday night prayer meeting, to Sunday School classes, to promote special missions offerings, etc. Exposing your church to the story of God’s work in your community will benefit the church by opening their eyes to needs in their Jerusalem and Judea.

Partnering / Sponsoring

Maybe your church is ready to be engaged in off-campus multiplication a little more directly. Investing financially & tangibly in a local church plant is one great way to help your church see their community as a mission field and multiply your impact on the Great Commission challenge. A few ideas for investing and sponsoring are:

• Become a financial co-sponsor. Put planting in the budget at whatever level you can. Most of the co-sponsors for the churches I’ve planted have been between $50 and $200 per month. Some have given a one-time gift. It takes money to minister in North America and a financial contribution encourages the planter and communicates commitment to the Great Commission.
• Adopt a church plant for your VBS offering. The kids will love the story about a church that meets in a Fire Station or Rodeo Arena or Move Theater and baptizes in a swimming pool. And it may plant seeds in their hearts that will lead them into a career on mission. One church in my region collected children’s ministry supplies for a church plant and five years later they were still using the construction paper and supplies received that week.
• Conduct a local or national mission trip to assist a church plant in outreach efforts. You can travel to a neighboring city or state or to the other side of town to assist with block parties, door to door work, servant evangelism, etc. Recently, I heard of a church that put together a team to take care of an area church plants Sunday morning setup for one month, just to give the planting team a break and to be a blessing to the new church.
• Give your cold prospect list to a church planting team. One of our sponsors gave our church plant a list of over 250 names that had only attended occasional events at the church or had not attended in a great while. We were able to contact those folks again and invite them to the new church. Later this month we will baptize a couple that we met because their names were on that list. You never know if a new church may be the tool for harvesting people you’ve cultivated and watered for years.
• Invite a church planter to attend conferences with you and your staff. Most church planters have followed a call and are choosing to live paycheck to paycheck. Most do not have the funds for conferences. Invite them to go with you. Offer to pay part of the way or challenge your church to pay their way. Pay or not, invite them along to enjoy and learn from you and your team.
• Sponsor a date night for a church planter and his spouse. Research is showing that church planting families are under great duress. There’s very little money and time for unwinding and recharging. In a difficult season of our first church plant, a church in another state invited my wife and I to spend three days in their area, put us up in a nice hotel, and left a gift basket full of gift cards to area restaurants and attractions. Priceless, simple gift that served to rescue us from a season of discouragement.
• Offer your office equipment to a church plant. Allow a church planter to make copies, send faxes, and cut post cards. A minimal expense that will meet a huge need for a guy that offices out of a spare bedroom, basement, or garage.
• Offer your facilities to a church plant. We’ve used facilities of other churches for core group meetings, leadership meetings, Thanksgiving Banquets, and housing for short-term mission teams. Extend the usefulness of your facility to expanding God’s kingdom through church multiplication by simply saying yes or being inviting to a church plant.

Parenting / Reproducing

Is God calling your church to reproduce and send out from your membership to plant a new church or a new campus? To multiply at this level you should go about it with the same veracity as you would with a new building project or capital campaign, utilizing all avenues of communication for a sustained period of time. During a building campaign, the last thing you want to hear from a member of the church is, “I’m not sure why we need a new building.” You work hard to get everyone on the same page through sermon series, letters, special web pages, banquets, personal testimonies, visual displays throughout the building, commitment Sunday’s, personal home visits, and more. If planting a new church in North America with momentum and a great potential for survivability is our goal, we should want every member to be on board and to do away with some anti-multiplication slogans – “I don’t see why we need a new church” or “Those people can just come to church here” or “Sending out people will hurt our church.” Here are a few ideas to prepare your church for off-campus multiplication:

• Answer the call from God to reproduce through off-campus multiplication. Ask, did we hear from God or from our local Associational or Denominational leader? This type of endeavor requires a vision from God that will be owned by your church and its leadership.
• Bring a Minister of Missions and Multiplication or Church Planter on staff. Part of this person’s job description should be to cultivate congregation and community for a new church. Devise a strategy that will allow the congregation to see him as an insider and whereby he can build trust with the people. Allow him to have regular pulpit opportunities, write newsletter articles, attend staff meetings, etc. Buy in and trust is so important if you want this to move quickly, so maybe this person is already on your staff or has a relationship with your church that makes them insiders.
• Prepare a Message series on Multiplication and Church Planting. The Book of Acts may be a good place to start. Bring the series to a close with an invitation to be part of a planting team or to help with the new church in some tangible way. One church devised dozens of ways that every member could be involved starting with things like prayer and making cookies for a block party, ending with the invitation to join the Core Group for two years.
• Along with a message series, guide small groups and/or Sunday School classes through basic missiology and importance of church planting. Take everyone in the church through a sustained study on multiplication and lead them to consider weekly their part in God’s Mission in general and specifically the need for a new church.
• Make a long-term commitment to the development of the new church. Parenting is the best description for this extensive role in expanding the kingdom. Parents nurture, train, discipline, encourage, and celebrate all the child does. Take that role with the church plant. If done in the right way and in God’s time, I promise they want remain with you for 18 years. With quality cultivation and core building and great parenting, it won’t be long before your church will be a GRANDPARENT! And then we are well on our way to a Multiplication movement.

In every community across our nation there are unreached population segments and people groups. The fastest growing religious affiliation is the “unaffiliated.” Church planting is one solution to stemming the tide of spiritual darkness in North America. There is no right or wrong way to support church planting. You may even find that it has a positive impact on your church. As a matter of fact, research shows that churches that sponsor new churches tend to grow themselves. Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird in their book Viral Churches point out a study of church-sponsoring churches showed that worship attendance increased 22 percent and giving increased 48% for the five years after sponsorship of a church plant. And whether your church grows or not, until everyone in our communities has an opportunity to hear the Gospel we must push forward. Reproduction and multiplication of new churches is the fastest and healthiest way to bring God’s kingdom to all peoples. As each church does what she can do, we can together reach more people and make more disciples in fulfillment of God’s Great Commission.

Read more from Lane here.

Tags: Church Planting, Discipleship, Encouraging, Lane Corley, Multiplication, Reproducing, Sponsoring

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The 3 R’s of Christian Engagement in the Culture War

by: Kevin DeYoung

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I know, I know—you really don’t like the term “culture war.” The mission of the church is not to “reclaim” America. The growth of the church does not rely on political victories or societal approval. And we don’t want the people we are trying to reach to think we are at war with them. I understand the phrase sounds more aggressive, confrontational, and militaristic than we like.

But call it what you want—a culture war, a battle of ideas, an ideological struggle—there is no question we have deep division in America. The most obvious division right now concerns homosexuality. When Dan Cathy’s off-handed, rather ordinary comment in of support traditional marriage sends big city mayors out on their moral high horses wielding the coercive club of political power—and when the subsequent response from middle America is a record-breaking avalanche of support for Chick-fil-A—you know there is more than a skirmish afoot. I know every generation thinks they are facing unprecedented problems, but it really does feel like free speech, religious freedom, and the institution of marriage are up for grabs in our day.

Given this reality, how should Christians respond?

Let me suggest three R’s.

1. No Retreat. In the face of controversy and opposition, it’s always tempting to withdraw into friendlier confines. But working for the public good is part of loving our neighbors as ourselves. The pietistic impulse to simply focus on winning hearts and minds does not sufficiently appreciate the role of institutions and the importance of giving voice to truth in the public square. Conversely, the progressive impulse to stay quiet for fear that we’ll invalidate our witness is a misguided strategy to win over the world by letting them win. Either that or a disingenuous attempt to hide the fact they’ve already sold the ethical farm.

2. No Reversal. No matter the pressure, we must never deviate from the word of God to please the powers of the world (Rom. 12:1-2). This principle does not automatically determine the course of action in every sphere, for politics must sometimes be the art of compromise. But as far as our doctrinal commitments, our pulpit preaching, and our public values, we mustn’t give a single inch if that inch takes us away from the truth of Scripture (John 10:35). He who marries the spirit of the age becomes a widower in the next. The church is not built on theological novelty, and souls are not won by sophisticated ambiguity. Whoever is ashamed of Christ and his words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels (Mark 8:38).

3. No Reviling. If this is a battle, then the followers of Christ must be a different kind of army. Even when our passions run high, our compassion must run deep. There is no place for triumphalism, cynicism, and settling scores. We must be happy, hopeful warriors.  When reviled, we must not revile or threaten in return, but entrust ourselves to him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23). We must not be surprised by suffering (1 Peter 4:12). We must not hate when we are hated (Matt. 5:43-44). And when we rest peacefully at night may it not be because all men think well of us or because the culture reflects our values, but because our conscience is clear (1 Peter 3:16). In the fight against powers and principalities we must never go away, never give in, and never give up on love.

More from Kevin here.

Tags: Culture War, Kevin DeYoung, Scripture

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