Video Transcript: Be a Better Leader Part 1

3 Be A Better Leader part 1

All right. We're back. In this section of videos, we're looking at your job. We're thinking about enterprise and how you might be engaged in enterprise, which has to do with making money. But we're also thinking about tent-making and making enough money that allows us to do ministry. You can start your own business, you can expand your business. There are a lot of different ways that you can do it. You can do better with your own personal finances. Anything that will save you money will give you more opportunities to do ministry. So here we're talking about maybe just doing better in the job that you have and maybe if you did better in your job, you would get more money and/or free time, which would again allow you to do the ministry that you really want to do.

We looked at part one. This is part 2, How to Make More Money at Your Job Part 2.

How to be a Better Leader

Last time we talked about the basics of how to be a good employee. Without the basics, there's no possibility of getting more money or more time. But if you really want to get more money and more time, then you have to go beyond the basics. What employers are really looking for are leaders. It's relatively easy to find people to do specific work, but it's harder to find people who will actually lead. And leading makes all the difference. So I'm going to give you this certain thing that might be helpful in that.

First of all, dealing with superiors.

In other words, how can you be a good follower? You have people, maybe a foreman, maybe a superintendent person, someone that's in charge of you. It might be the owner of the company. It might be someone else, a manager of some sort. But you have people that are in charge of you. How do you deal with them? I just have six things.

1.   First of all, show respect. You have to respect the people that are above you. That in some ways goes without saying. But let me illustrate this with a biblical example: Moses versus Joshua. Moses came on the scene as you recall. God just called him out of the wilderness, the fire that wouldn't burn the plant up. And God spoke to Moses. "You have to go back to Egypt and lead my people out of Egypt."

Moses came out of nowhere. He shows up at Egypt. "Hey, some god that you hardly know asked me to take you out of Egypt." The people were reluctant. All the signs and wonders, the 10 plagues that the people saw through God, through Moses, and finally they go out. But at every step, they didn't want to follow Moses. If you read the whole story of Moses, the people rebel over, and over, and over, and over, and over again no matter what Moses does, no matter all the wonders that are done by God through Moses, it never adds up. In fact, Moses gets so frustrated with it once. God said to speak to the rock and water will come out of the rock. Instead, Moses was so frustrated with the people, and what was going on, and how they weren't following that he took the rod and he hit the rock instead of speaking to the rock. Because of that, he is disqualified from going into the Promised Land. We feel sorry for Moses because Moses is totally frustrated with the people not following him.

Now Joshua followed Moses and honored Moses in everything for those 40 years that the people were wandering in the desert. For 40 years, he faithfully followed his superior. Then the people are about to go into the Promised Land. Moses doesn't get to go into the Promised Land, but Joshua is the one to lead them into the Promised Land. If you read the book of Joshua, it's totally different than the book of Exodus. The people actually follow Joshua. Joshua doesn't have all the problems that Moses did. So what's the difference?

The difference was Moses did not have any superiors to respect and honor. He came out of nowhere. So Moses shows up on the scene and he's like the king of the hill. Your best followers want to be like you. So Moses is the king of the hill. There's no one above him. All the people under him, that's what they want too. So there's always this rebellion.

Well, Joshua modeled to the people what a follower should do. For 40 years, Joshua was modeling followership. This is how you treat a leader. So when Joshua finally takes over, he's been modeling how the people should treat a leader for 40 years. He's been modeling in some ways how the people should treat him. How did Joshua treat Moses? This is how the people should treat Joshua.

So here's my point. You need to show respect and model honor to your leader not just for the sake of the relationship that you have with your leader or your boss but for the sake of the people under you. Because they're watching you, how you honor the people above you. They're going to copy what you do.

I learned this lesson a little late. I started a church in Vancouver, British Columbia, and there was a denominational agency that was in charge of church planting. And I had these denomination leaders that were in charge of me. But these were leaders who had never planted a church. They were not in the field and they would swing in and they would say things about how it ought to be done. My attitude was, "What do you people know?" I communicated that to my leaders. I communicated that we are the church planters, we are the ones on the ground, our leaders don't know what they're talking about. That's often the case. Often, the leaders up above don't know what's really going on, on the main floor. So I communicated dishonor and disrespect to my leaders. Well, I tell you, three, four, five years later some of my best people that were under me wanted to be like me. What was I? I was the one who was the king of the hill. I'm the one who goes his own way. I'm the one that knows better than other people how it ought to be done. And guess what? That's what I got.

People saw me do that, and so they wanted to do it too. I had this rebellion under me. And I realized I had caused it. So respect your leader not only for your leader's sake and the relationship that you have with your leader or your boss but also respect and show that respect for the sake of people that you want following you.

2. Dealing with your superiors. No gossip. It's easy to get into a situation where we're all gossiping about the manager or the person in charge. We're the worker bees, we're the ones making it happen, he doesn't understand or she doesn't understand what it's all about. It's easy to form a team and to talk about that person and it feels good for the moment. But believe me, the people that you're talking with about someone else who's not there in a negative way, the people that you're feeling good about, one day those same people will be with some other people talking about you. Stay away from that.

3. Look your boss in the eye. If you want your boss to respect you as a person, to think of you as a somebody on this team, stand up. You're not this small, untalented person. You are a gift to the company that you work for, and they are lucky to have you. I'm not talking about looking down, I'm not talking about being disrespectful, but I'm talking about stand proud. When your boss is talking to you, you look him right in the eye when you talk back to them. You don't have to be looking down like, "I'm unworthy. There's something wrong with me. I can't really stand in your shadow." No, you look them straight in the eye.

4. Share your goals and dreams. A lot of times as employees, we have bosses and someone above us. Maybe it's the company owner. They're the smart ones, they're the ones that have gone out and done things. And so we come in, "What have I done? What are my ideas?" And you have ideas. Some of the ideas that you have are only ideas that you could possibly come up with. Because of your role, because of the thing that you're doing at your company, you see things that your boss or the owner will never see. So don't think of yourself as, "Well, I never started a business. What do I know?" And you think that people above you somehow know things that you don't. You stand in a unique place to know things that no one else can. So share that. Share your ideas, share your dreams about the company that you're working for.

If I'm the boss and someone comes and actually has a dream about the company, it tells me that they care, that they're interested in this place.

5. Honest communication. Being able to honestly say what you think. Now, it kind of goes both ways. You hope that if your boss is honest with you, but even if he isn't, your job is, to be honest back - not to fudge if there's a problem. You could sort of squirrel away and say, "There are all these factors." You honestly say exactly what you honestly think, either good or bad. And you let the consequences fall. A lot of times, we don't want to be totally honest because it's going to make us look bad. But then the boss finds out any way that this was a problem and now he looks at you with distrust. Trust is everything.

Every employee, every person makes mistakes. We're all going to make mistakes. But what do we do with those mistakes? We can't fix mistakes unless there's at least an honest telling of what happened. Face the music then at least you can get on to the problem-solving. We'll talk more about that later.

6. Work hard. You're hired, you're employed. This company has you there because whatever it is that you do contributes to a product or a service that is sold, and then the money comes back to the company, and then they have to pay you and hopefully pay for other things. It's not like they have a bunch of money just sitting around somewhere and they can just hire you, and they make all this money so they might as well hire you. They only hire you because you and what you do somehow contributes to bringing more than what they're being paid; otherwise, they wouldn't do it.

So realize that the company doesn't owe you anything. It only owes you something if you actually contribute at least the value of what you're getting paid. So don't be afraid to work.

How to be a better leader

Now we're dealing with subordinates. We're looking at your superiors, the people that are in charge of you. Now let's look at the attitude that you have toward those that are under you or working for you.

1.  Again, respect. Respect goes both ways. You respect the people above you, you respect the people below you. Why respect the people below you? Because you want them to work hard. If you don't respect them, they're not going to respect you.

2.  No gossip. If the people that are working under you find out that you talk negatively about them with someone else when they're not there, all trust, all respect is lost. Don't do it.

3. Look people in the eye. Looking at the people that are under you in the eye communicates that you're actually talking to them, that you're not dismissive, "Hey. You guys I want you to start doing..." And you just generally-- no, you look them right in the eye. "I'm talking to you. I'm trying to communicate exactly to you. If you don't understand what I'm saying, then let's keep talking about it. You deserve my full attention."

A lot of times bosses are in a hurry, they're looking at their cell phone, they're texting, and they're saying stuff to other employees. It's like, "This guy doesn't really have time for us. We're not high on his agenda. He's coming here to do this stuff with us, but he's got really important stuff that he wants to go do that has nothing to do with us." The people working under you are the most important thing that you do. You working hard somewhere is just one person. But the 10 people under you working hard are 10 people. So if you can encourage all 10 in one situation, you get 10 times the effort and work done for the one thing that you do. They're the most important thing on your [inaudible 0:15:14] so let them feel that way.

4. Clear expectations. It's really hard to work for someone that doesn't have clear expectations. A lot of the times, the boss or the leader is just too lazy to figure it out. "Hey, I have something that I want done. It's something like this, this, this. Now go ahead and do it. I just don't want to take the time to figure it all out." So then the 10 people go off and they do it. They work hard. They spend two days working on something and they bring it back to the leader, and the leader goes, "No. That's not really what I wanted."

Now we have to do it all over again, because now that the leader sees it, he goes, "Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about it, this is really what I want." In other words, he's using all the employees to figure out what he wants because he was too lazy to figure out what he wanted in the first place. People get tired of that because, "I know you're telling me to do something, but I feel like half the thing that I'm doing right here is just going to go right into the trashcan tomorrow. So how hard am I going to work on this thing?" It just takes the heart and soul right out of the worker.

You have to know what you really want as best you can. And if there are certain things you're not sure about, then you sit down with those people and you go over it. "Look. I want something like this but I'm not quite sure." Well then let's talk.

Abraham Lincoln said, "If you gave me three hours to cut a tree down, I'd spend the first two hours sharpening the ax." So maybe we need to spend time, first of all, figuring out what it is we really want and put more time into that. Then once we know that, now the team can go wholeheartedly knowing that their time won't be wasted.

The thing that kills motivation more than almost anything is, "Does what I do count? Does what I do at this place matter or am I just putting in time?" So clear expectations.

5. Focus on progress with your team. Where are we going? How are we getting there? Are we moving the ball forward? If we know that we're making some progress, even if we have a bunch of obstacles, we can keep going. It takes the steam out of everyone when you have no idea. Are we winning? Are we losing? You try playing a game and you don't keep score, it's like halfway through, "I don't know. Are we winning? Losing? I don't know." People are not motivated.

6. Get your hands dirty. Yeah, you're the boss. Yeah, you're the leader. Yeah, you have all these people; they do things. But if you just sit back and you're the guy sitting in the nice, comfortable chair telling everybody what to do and you never get your hands dirty, you never get down on the floor especially when there's some project that really doesn't relate to all of us. "Hey, we're going to repaint our office space and that's not anybody's job.” But because you're the boss you just tell of them to do it. Do you know what? Put some old clothes on, pick up a paintbrush, and lead the way. Show people how to work hard. Show people how to do something that maybe they're not trained in or they don't want to do. You are the one with the enthusiasm. Instead of just sitting on the sideline cheering people on, be a player. Get off the bench. Demonstrate that this is a team. We're all into this together. When there's this big project and everyone's behind and we can't do it, roll up your sleeve and do whatever it is.

How to be a better leader

Dealing with coworkers

1.  Show respect; the same thing. Of course.

2.  No gossip. Among co-workers, it's almost the worst. A coworker is someone who does similar things that you do, but he's not under you and he's not above you. You just somehow work at the same company. A lot of times, there's a lot of fighting between coworkers. No gossip.

3. Look them in the eye.

4. Encourage. You're on the same team. A lot of times we think of coworkers—it’s sort of like the brother/sister relationship. "Neither one of us in charge. We've got Mom and Dad. They're in charge."

One day, when brothers and sisters get married, they have kids. "Okay, we've got subordinates." The brothers and sisters themselves are like coworkers. There's a lot of fighting with brothers and sisters, a lot of competing. "Who's better? Who's going to get more stuff from Mom and Dad? Who's going to get in trouble?" That's what happens in a company too.

Focus on cooperation. Who are we as a team? We're on the same team. We're not against one another. If we fight with each other, then our team loses against the other team. We're competing out in the marketplace. We're not competing with one another. Encourage one another.

5. Focus on the team. This is our team. We have games and scrimmages against other companies, and their goal is to take us out of business. So we have to be a team. And sometimes I have to sit on the bench. Sometimes I have to give you the ball, and you're the one that has to do the scoring. We all have to do our part.

How to become a better leader

Managing personality types

A lot of different people at work and I'm thinking of your boss, coworkers, your subordinates. You have all these different personality types. How do you deal with them?

1.  You've got the bulldog. The bulldog is someone who just comes in, and they just tell people what to do. They don't say, "This is my opinion." They just speak and they act as if when they speak, this is the absolute truth and how can anyone else disagree with it. That kind of person. It might be your boss, it might be someone that works under you, it might be just a coworker.

There are a lot of different strategies. My dad was a bulldog. He just came in and this is what it's going to be. And I have two other brothers and we each had a different strategy. I don't know which is best. I'm the oldest. My strategy with the bulldog is to meet the bulldog face on. You're going to tell me what to do. You're going to push me around. Well, I'm going to push back. So I was the one who always got into trouble because I'm pushing back against the bulldog. Is that a good strategy? I don't know. It made me a stronger person. But a lot of times the bulldog can just-- it's going to be a fight and somebody's going to lose.

My brother, who is my second brother, his strategy was to listen to what the Bulldog said. The bulldog was saying you've got to do this, you've got to do that. He would listen. It would go in one ear and then it would just go out the other ear. Then he would just go do what he wanted. When the bulldog barked, he would listen. He would nod his head and then he'd just go do what he wanted to do. So there's another strategy. Just let the bulldog bark.

The third strategy with my third brother, his strategy was to just not be around the bulldog. So the bulldog is going that way, I'll go this way. If the bulldog goes over here, I'll go over there. I just avoid the bulldog. I don't know what the strategy is.

A lot of times we make the mistake that we think that we can change the bulldog. But generally, bulldogs are going to be the Bulldogs, and I find that sometimes that you just accept someone as they are. This is who they are. What I often try to do is translate. The Bulldog comes in and he says this, and it tells it as if it’s his and he says all these things. In my head, I just add on his sentence, "In my opinion." Now he didn't say that, but I just add it for him. So when he says stuff, I hear in my head, "This is how it is. The government should..." Then at the very end, I just add, "In my opinion."

"Okay. It's just your opinion." Then I'm okay with it. So sometimes you just have to live with it or find ways to live with it.

2. The passive aggressive leader. A passive aggressive is someone who passively comes off one way but they really are aggressive. They don't act like they're aggressive but they are. They're very nice about it. I've worked on a farm, and my boss at that time, he was the sweetest person. He was very soft-spoken, big huge guy, 6' 6" guy. But he'd be passive aggressive. He'd come to me and he'd say something like, "I got family coming over, my whole family. All the relatives are coming over. It's a big party. So could you do the milking?" I had to milk the cows and stuff. "Could you do the milking on December 25?" December 25 is Christmas. We all have parties, and we all have different things. So he'd ask it in this nice way, but he built it up. "My whole family's coming. If I'm not there, I'm the only one that's not there." He built it up in such a way that what could I say?

He was aggressive. Who is going to ask me to do this on Christmas? I don't have to do this on Christmas. But he did it in such a passive way that it actually becomes very aggressive. I've had people that'll come up after a sermon and they'll say something like, "Wow! That was finally a great sermon." Okay, was that encouragement? What are you saying? You're saying, "Finally." In other words, all the other ones weren't good? So this one finally measures up? Are you trying to be encouraging or are you trying to-- that's this passive-aggressive. You're never quite sure what people are doing.

So you can have a boss like that. He was always saying one thing and it's just hard to clarify that. A lot of times it's because people have a hard time just saying what they think.

Now, I've had some passive aggressive people that just say the harshest things. I had one lady come up to me once after a sermon and say, "That was an awesome sermon, but you might think about rewriting it after reading this book that I just read. I can lend it to you." She said it in front of four people. In other words, "Your sermon really wasn't very good and you should have read this book." That's what she's really saying.

Okay, this person constantly would say the craziest things and the most hurtful things. It was like, "What are you thinking? Don't you see how things work?" Here's one of the tricks that I employ. I only do it with a few people, but I label a few people autistic. I don't know if you know what autism is but people who have autism generally don't recognize the emotions that people have. They don't recognize that someone's angry or not angry. They don't get the social cues. So they're always saying and doing the wrong things in a social situation. They can't help it. It's like they're color blind. They just can't see it. They don't know it.

So I just label some people that are always saying and doing the wrong things, very hurtful things, I label them autistic. "That person's autistic." You can't be angry at a person with autism. They can't help it. That's just who they are. So when I label that person that, I can't get angry. This is just who they are. They're just doing the best that they can. I don't have to be hurt by that.

3. The slacker. Slackers are hard because a lot of times they're very good at acting like they're doing stuff, running around as if they're doing stuff. But in the end, they're just not doing anything. If it's someone that's working for you, you need absolute deadlines. You can't just say, "Get this done." It's, "Get this done and we'll check with you at 3:00 in the afternoon tomorrow to see if it is done," or they won't do it. That's true for the next one too - the procrastinator.

4. The procrastinator, he has all this stuff that he's supposed to do, but they just don't do it. They just can't get around to it. They can't push themselves to get the thing out - the paper - and just get it done. Because when does it have to be done? "Well, I don't know." “Well, I don't know,” means, “I don't have to do it.” Now they'd never admit that because they fully intended to do it, but they just never get around to doing it. So you need absolute deadlines with a procrastinator. They will not get it done, and then they will procrastinate and they will push it to the point where it's impossible to get it done now. So you need hard and fast not only deadlines but things that happen if the deadline is not met. "If this deadline is not met, then we're going to have to dock a day out of your pay." And you can't renege on that.

"Well, I'm close. I just need one more hour." If you renege, then the next time it will be two hours, the next time it'll be four hours. You have to be absolutely clear as to what's happening.

5. The needy. There are some people that whether they didn't get love as a child, or their father never said, "I love you," or something and they need constant encouragement. You give encouragement and you give encouragement, but no matter what you give, it's not enough. They end up making you feel guilty that you're not recognizing them enough, and they walk around feeling like, "Don't you appreciate the work that I do?" Well, maybe you're not the best encourager in the world, so you feel guilty about not encouraging them. But some people are like a bottomless chasm. They're in need is so great that you can encourage them every five minutes and it would not be enough. It's a hole that cannot be filled. So you end up feeling guilty about it.

Here's what I do. I decide what is a reasonable amount of encouragement that I should give someone, and I stick with that. Now, it's not going to be enough. But nothing I do is going to be enough. So instead of being sort of fixated on trying to meet their need, and satisfy their need, and fix their problem, I'm going to do what's necessary and what I think is right, and I'm going to leave it at that. The rest is their problem.

6. The competitor. You're going to have people at the workplace, your boss, people who work with you, people under you that are competitors. They want to win, and they want to beat you. That's fun actually. To have a little competition in the workplace inspires people to do their best. A little competition is great. But what's bad about the competitor - at least certain kinds of competitors - is when they can't lose or what they do when they lose. If you're one who has to win and you're a bad loser, when you lose you kick things, you get angry at people, that's not the way to be. Compete with people, be a competitor, but if you lose, you lose.

The beauty about competition is there's another competition right around the corner. You've got to want to win as much as possible. I want to win this. But if you lose, you lose, and you move on. You let other people win. Sometimes letting other people win once in a while is good. Otherwise, you have a bunch of people that lose at everything all around you.

7. The critical. The people that find something wrong with everything. You can't talk to them. No matter what it is, it's critical.

8. Same thing - the complainer. People that are complaining about the staff, complaining about the boss, complaining about the economy, complaining about their spouse, complaining about their family, this one negative person in your life. You don't need negative people in your life. The best way to help a complainer or to deal with the complainer is to not join in. A complainer starts complaining and what happens is they light a fire. That fire gets under you, and you start complaining too. A person starts being critical about the boss and you just join in, "Yeah, that's really true. Do you know what else I notice? This is true too."

They've done studies. When someone starts something, it makes your mind go down that path. So if you start a sentence with, "The boss isn't very clear with his expectations," if you say something like that, people will go in their mind, and they'll go back in history and look for all the times that that is true. Then they'll go, "That's right." People doing the same study say if you came to them and said, "Is your boss one who does this often? Or doesn't?" Like if you give people a choice one way or another, then people have to evaluate. "Sometimes he does this. Sometimes he doesn't." Then they come up with a realistic thing. But if you say it in a negative way, "The boss is not on time very often," then your mind searches for all the times he was not on time. Of course, you can find some. Then you add it up and go, "Yes, that's true."

How a negative person frames things pulls you in and sucks you into that negative framework. Don't get sucked into that negative framework. If someone starts complaining, is critical, you turn it around. "I think the boss is pretty cool." You find some cool thing. Don't join in with the complaining and the being critical.

9. The Timid. You've got people that don't believe in themselves, people that never stand up for what they think, and generally, these kinds of people are afraid of groups, and they're afraid of throwing their thought out there and someone criticizing it. But a lot of times, those timid people are the smartest people in the room. You want to know what they think. But they are not going to do it on their own.

One of the things we do at church like in a bible study is I always ask everyone around the room. I never just ask the question, "What do you think is going on in this passage?" All the bulldog people, the people who think they know everything, the people just like a little encouragement, like the limelight, all those people stand up and have something to say. That timid person who's probably smarter than all of them just sits there. I always make sure to go all the way around the room. The timid person starts talking, I'm going to help that person out. "Really? That's a really cool insight. Can you say a little something more about that?" So you've got to help the timid people stand up. You need them, in fact.

All right. One more slide.

How to be a better leader

How to manage a bad boss without a fight

That happens in life. You're not always going to get the perfect boss. Somehow people get into leadership that shouldn't be. What do you do if you have a bad boss?

1.  Find his or her strengths and use them. Maybe they're bad at this, maybe they're bad at that, but what are they good at? And how can you tap into that? How can you ask your boss for help in the area that he's actually good at or offer to help in the area that he's good at? So what I'm saying is find something positive in this boss. There may be a whole host of negative things. Find that one positive thing.

2. If you have a boss that is constantly asking you to do stuff, make it a habit of saying, "Yes, but could you do this for me."  I got this from my son. My son is a software developer, a very independent person. He went off on his own now. But when he was working for a company in Detroit, he had this micromanage boss who kept coming and interrupting his work, and my son is one who just likes to, "Leave me alone and I'll get work done. Keep bothering me and nothing is going to get done."

This boss would come in and he always had this and he wanted that without having any idea how long any of these things take. He wants this button on there. He doesn't realize that the destroys the whole thing that they were working on. He should know that ahead of time, all those kinds of things. What he told me that worked for him after a while because his boss would come in three, four, five times a day and ask him for something. "Could you do this? Could you do that? Could you fix this? Could you that? Could you this? Could you that?"

So what my son started doing is, every time he asked him to fix something, he'd say, "Yeah, I can work on that. But I need this from you." My son had a whole list. He just spent an hour figuring out all the things that his boss could do for him, and he'd just go right down the line. "Could you call so-and-so to talk about this thing so that we can get permission to do this?"

Every time the boss came and asked him for something, he had something to come right back to his boss. Well, what do you think happened? Eventually, the boss stopped going to him. Why? Because in a way, my son was punishing him. "If you want me to do something for you, it's going to cost you. If it doesn't cost you anything, you'd come and dump all your stuff on me and I've got to do everything. Because I'm a good employee, and I'm fast, and I'm quick, I do everything." So what does that teach the boss? It teaches him to give you more stuff. My son, his point was, you've got to punish him. "If you want something from me, it's going to cost you. You have to understand the cost involved in all of these asks. You ask me, it costs me something. So I'm going to ask you and you're going to discover that it costs you something."

We could spend a whole course on how to deal with hurtful and bad people, but the bottom line is you are not responsible for your bad boss. You are not responsible for people being who they are, the people that work under you, the people that work beside you. You're not going to be able to fix all these people. Sometimes the bottom line is you have to just accept people where they're at and try to figure out how it is that you can get the best out of what you're doing and the best of who they are and leave it at that.