Episodios

  • The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It?

    The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It?
    May 23 2022
    The Shrinking Church #6: Got Conflict? By the Way, Did You Cause It? Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. – Henry Ford We are called into service as individuals, but we work in community in teams–both formal and informal. Whether we work on large teams, small teams, or on short-term projects or ongoing programs, does not matter. The tension between creative energy and routine is a balance that effective leaders must manage. Each team member has a responsibility to the rest of the team. The team leader must know and maintain the best group processes. I spend my time working with leaders building energized teams that reach decisions through synergy and consensus. The journey plays out differently in each situation. However, the basic routine consists of exploration, discussion, refinement, debate, reflection, listening, and consenting to the best decision for the group’s needs. These steps are more difficult for some team members than others. There are many reasons why this is true. Diagnostic: How to see potential conflict Look for early warning signals that relationships are about to get into trouble. Do not wait. Do not go into denial. Conflict appears for many reasons. Basically, it is a disruption that comes as a result of broken expectations and creates a disruption in stable relationships. The dictionary description is as follows: Conflict – a disagreement or clash between ideas, principles, or people’s psychological state resulting from the often unconscious opposition between simultaneous but incompatible desires, needs, drives, or impulses. Broken expectation is a principle that is at the root of much staff conflict. If we do not receive what we expected, there is a level of disappointment. When these expectations are not met, there is conflict. When expectations are not clearly articulated in advance, trouble is ahead. Putting off addressing expectations makes the situation worse. Letting the situation continue increases the stress. When something is wrong, pay the “upfront cost” by dealing with it promptly. The “cost,” in terms of loss of relationship and difficulty in dealing with the situation, will only increase exponentially. Act on the earliest signal that something is not right. Layers Underneath Conflict The layers underneath conflict are as follows: Behavior – how we act toward each other, both intentionally and unintentionallyPatterns – ways a conflict repeats can create an identifiable pattern–look for how the conflict shows up and with whom. Find identifiable patterns – define how long it has been going on and with whomValues – ways individual rights and values can be violated or compromisedBelief System – what we have been taught is our internal belief system, which guides our actions. Define from where the learned style of dealing with conflict comes (parents, boss, peer group, etc.). Learned systems can be the cause of unintentional actions. Leaders often set up conflict unintentionally. Here are some of the causes I observe: Expectations – When expectations are assumed but not clearly articulated in writing, then this is a formula for conflict. We might have a general idea of the desired outcomes when creating a verbal agreement; however, seeing the written outcomes helps to validate that each person has heard and understood the facts the same way. We also might forget the exact terms of the verbal agreement or the terms might get confused over time.Accountabilities – Not having mechanisms for accountability weaken any agreement and ultimately make the agreement worth nothing. When accountabilities are missing, the leader is at fault.Micromanagement – Delegation is assigning a task and getting out of the way. When the leader asks a team member to manage a task, then there’s a transfer of authority to that person. Assigning a task and then managing all the details is not delegation. Improper and incomplete delegation is a top cause of dissatisfaction and anxiety.Follow-Up – Assigning a task and then not having any interaction until the due date is risky. The effective leader assigns tasks and then defines touchpoints along the way for a check-in. This is mentoring and not micromanaging. Falling to have a system for mentoring leaves too much room for the team member to go astray, and then there’s a potential course correction that could be severe enough to cause friction. Preventative: Ways to build relationships and reduce conflict Develop Team “Norms” A very helpful and effective way to prevent unnecessary conflict is to establish a “Team Covenant” for a formal team that works together for the long term. Define Your Roles Another essential tool is the Role Renegotiation Model, defined and taught by John J. Sherwood and John C. Glidewell in their time-proven methods included in the 1971 article, “Planned Renegotiation: A Norm-Setting OD ...
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    14 m
  • The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus
    May 11 2022

    The Shrinking Church 05 - Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The Shrinking Church 05 - 
    Dumbing Down: How Church Leadership Has Set Up the Exodus

    The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. - Reinhold Niebuhr

    Is the massive exodus from the church due to the dumbing down over the years? What are ways we have dumbed down, and is the trend reversible?

    The statistics show that all the major denominations are losing members at an alarming rate. There’s little if any connection with Millennials. The choirs are aging without the infusion of younger voices. Members are separated into fragments divided by opinion, and not unified by faith, tradition, or spiritual focus.

    We criticize others who don’t think or act like we do or like we sanction. We are against “others” who are not as we are. Throughout history, there’s been one group after another that we are against giving privileges to.

    Members have become so disagreeable that many have forgotten the source of the disagreement. We’ve disagreed within our congregations and disagreed with the culture to lock out people who “don’t belong.” We’ve gone from the model of grace and love, and judging people on what they do in their private lives.

    Leaders have set up this judgmental culture because we have dumbed down and minimized our vision. We’ve brought in badly conceived and performed “contemporary music” to “attract the young people.” Our “traditional” worship is no longer consistent with our tradition and not relevant to life as experienced by people in the pews.

    Pastors mostly don’t study worship or leadership in seminary and continue to do what they have inherited or have seen modeled, mandating content and bossing church musicians without the skills, knowledge, or understanding of music in worship. Church musicians are petulant and churlish, pushing for their way as music being the end rather than serving the worship.

    The void has been created by ineffective leadership. The system is broken and nobody is naming it. The church consultants are doing more harm than solving problems. They are the “answer men” who give advice…the same kind of advice to each organization…one size, therefore, fits all. The consultant model is broken…as it has been for quite a while.

    When Marva Dawn wrote Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down quite some time ago, she not only traced the past, but she defined the future…where we are now. The first chapter in her book gives painful details of how education has dumbed down over the decades. Alfie Kohn, in different words, describes the dumbing down of standardized testing as an ethnic cleansing of the culture.

    What are the ways we as a church have “Dumbed Down”?
     • Music - style over content
     • Worship - attempting to please rather than listen to God
     • Mission - dumbing to the “No Mission” Mission Statement of the Great Commission
     • Children’s Sermons - what Leith calls “a form of child abuse"
     • Politeness - being polite as a substitute for being honest and kind

    It’s the leader’s duty and delight to set the pace and the tone for the team. The pastor is the spiritual leader of the congregation and not the CEO as commonly practiced. In the United Methodist Book of Discipline, the pastor is charged with ordering the life of the congregation, among other things. How does this pastor order dysfunction? How does this pastor reconcile the conflict between being CEO and being the spiritual leader of the flock? A void in leadership skills only makes things worse.

    How will you step up your leadership?
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    8 m
  • The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead?

    The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead?
    Apr 27 2022

    The Shrinking Church 04: Are You Feeling Worthy to Lead? Some people live their lives to the level of their dreams, while others live life to the level of their wounds.  - Dr. David Gruder, Organizational Psychologist   Wounded people wound people. – Richard Rohr

     

    In his daily meditation, Richard Rohr refers to our broken vision of God’s grace. "Psychologically, humans tend to operate out of a worldview of fear and scarcity rather than trust and abundance. This stingy, calculating worldview makes both grace and mercy unimaginable and difficult to experience.”* He goes on to talk about how our vision of God matures over time and we move from the early Biblical image of God as punitive and retributive.

     

    Richard Rohr also said, “Transformed people transform people."

     

    In my conversations with my clients and prospective clients, who lead various types of organizations, reveals some negative feelings that they have about themselves. Many even have negative scripts running in their minds telling them things that damage their self confidence and create self-doubt. Knowing that all of us have some level of doubt about our abilities, this might not seem unusual, however, at some point these negative scripts block success. There are many ways that massages are transferred from one person to another, most of which we don’t fully understand or even notice.

     

     

    When I work with clients making capital presentation for investors, donors, sponsors, or some other funding source, I notice that they transmit doubt because they doubt there will be positive results. As James Allen stated in As a Man Thinketh, "we attract what we are and not what we need." If we feel unworthy, does that feeling attract negative results? In addition to the unspoken feelings, I get verbal clues that many leaders lack self confidence and event self esteem. Do we get this only from our family of origin? Or, do we get this from our church experiences? I continue to grow my vision of God and take away the image on putting God into my very small box. As I grow my image of God, I can release some of the limitations I have on myself. Releasing the doubt is not necessarily going straight to pride or arrogance. Being humble is not like self doubt. I am worthy and I don’t have to have all the right answers. Leading is not about having the right answers, It’s mostly about asking there right questions and then establishing a process for getting the right answers. I come to a place of knowing that doubting myself is doubting God. God created me and God didn’t create any junk. I’ve arrived at this point mostly from my studies in Bowen Family Systems over the past 6 years. It’s been a transformative journey of self discovery and personal growth. I recommend Roberta Gilbert's book, The Eight Concepts of Bowen Theory. * 

     

    I am worthy to lead and continuing to grow my abilities. How about you? Hugh Ballou 

     

    The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM 

     

    (c) 2022 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved. 

    * Affiliate link. Proceeds benefit SynerVision Leadership Foundation.
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    5 m
  • The Shrinking Church 03: The Way We Perceive Church Leadership is Way Wrong

    The Shrinking Church 03: The Way We Perceive Church Leadership is Way Wrong
    Apr 20 2022
    Leadership As We Have Been Taught is Wrong! I must admit that I've been struggling with this topic for many, many years as I work with leaders functioning under a limit to their effectiveness...how they have been taught! When having lunch with a local clergyperson nearing retirement, he proudly stated, "I voted for Obama because I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat. That's what I've been taught and that's what I do." I thought that it was a shame that this man has lived his life under the pressure of what had been taught to him. I have realized that many of us are unaware of the DNA imposed on us by our family of origin and how it impacts our decisions. This leads us down a troubled road, indeed. I've given definitions of leadership alternatives. The work of Murray Bowen has been especially helpful in my work. His perspective is to learn about ourselves by learning about our family of origin. Things are neither right nor wrong. They just are. This post has been inspired by the TED Talk by Dan Pallotta on "How We Think of Charity Is Way Wrong". In 2013, the Meyer Foundation surveyed nearly 100 executive directors of nonprofit organizations to learn how it could best support them. Executive directors reported a range of challenges affecting their effectiveness; some of the most commonly cited were fundraising, personnel management, and working with boards of directors. “These people are sacrificing so much to take on the executive roles of these groups,” Julie Rogers, President of the Meyer Foundation in Washington, D.C. said. “We are watching people not just burn out but make themselves sick in service of their communities. It’s our job to take care of them.” * We have been taught leadership in ways that inhibit our ability to lead. We think that the leader is the boss and must have all the right answers. We think, therefore, that asking others for input on decisions, delegation, collaboration, and observing group processes are examples of weak leadership, when, in fact, these are examples of effective leadership. Charismatic vs. Transformational Leadership The Autocratic leadership model is what many people view as strong leadership. It’s a sample of Charismatic Leadership. It’s an example of leadership that’s all about the leader. It’s all about the power of position. It’s ultimately a bottleneck for decision-making if every decision must come to the leader for approval. It also represents a lack of trust by the leader in the members of the team. Reframing leadership means learning a different style of leadership. Both Transformational Leadership and Bowen Family Systems are effective systems for leaders to embrace. There’s a synergy between these two systems. Transformational Leadership is about building high-performing cultures by building leaders on teams. Bowen Systems is about managing self as a leader. Here is a summary of the major points of these powerful and scalable systems: Transformational Leadership The transformational leader: Clearly Articulates Vision And Goals - Having a vision and being able to effectively communicate that vision is key.Defines Things Others Can Do - Getting things off their plate, so to speak, is a primary team-building skill.Builds Leaders Within Teams - Elevating others and mentoring others in the culture of transformation is the culture of high performance.Effectively Delegates - A very underutilized and misunderstood skill that must be mastered.Encourages Boldness - Creating a culture of affirmation and safe culture to learn from mistakes is healthy.Gives Information And Support - Withholding information, whether intentional or not, is a barrier to success.Affirms And Celebrates Competence - Give as much or more attention to affirmation as to the correction. Celebrate often!Respects The Individual - Effective leadership is based on effective relationships.Avoids Micromanaging - This is the ultimate team killer! It’s not good.Models What They Preach - The leader sets the bar and creates the pace for the culture. Bowen Systems: There are 8 concepts of Bowen Theory. Here’s a summary of the concepts. Check the link to the Bowen Center at Georgetown University for more information. (http://www.thebowencenter.org) 8 Concepts of Bowen Family Systems Triangles - When there are three people in a relationship. Triangles are neither good nor bad - they are. Triangles sometimes have one person on the outside when the other two are strongly connected, causing tension.Differentiation of Self - Strong grounding in personal guiding principles where a person does not depend on the approval of others for decisions. Each person in a group emotional system thinks for themselves rather than opting into the will of the group in what's called "groupthink."Nuclear Family Emotional System - The basic family unit is where we learn patterns and behaviors. By observing our family, we learn about ourselves and gain abilities to observe other emotional ...
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    12 m
  • The Shrinking Church 02: No More BS…The Church Needs Resurrecting

    The Shrinking Church 02: No More BS…The Church Needs Resurrecting
    Apr 15 2022

    The Shrinking Church 02: No More BS…The Church Needs Resurrecting

     

    This is written during a time when thousands are leaving the church weekly, a time in which Millennials think that the church does more harm than provide value and a time when church leaders are divisive in leading their congregations to exclude "others" not acceptable to their particular dogma.   Jesus died and Christ arose...the ultimate sacrifice. Do we value this sacrifice? Many died, burned at the stake for translating and preserving our Bible, and we don't even take the time and energy to read and study it seriously. Maybe the church has died and we don't even realize it. It's time to notice.
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    7 m
  • The Shrinking Church 01: Christ Has Died and Sadly, So Has the Church

    The Shrinking Church 01: Christ Has Died and Sadly, So Has the Church
    Apr 14 2022
    The Shrinking Church 01: Christ Has Died and Sadly, So Has the Church "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried." - G.K. Chesterton Has the church died and we just don't know it?

    People don’t need an explanation when I share that I’m still a committed Christian despite the fact that I served on a church staff for 40 years. The sad reality is that the church, as a representation of Christianity, is not living up to that role.

    It’s become a haven for people who have no power anywhere else to hold a power position, and a place for blaming, criticizing, and excluding. Sometimes the people who hold the power in the local church are the very cause of the dysfunction: we avoid conflict and it then takes control.

    I have visited many churches since leaving full-time music ministry and found many churches that will not exist in a few years. There are many, many devoted and passionate pastors wanting to energize the church and engage members in a vital and relevant faith journey. They are all doing the best they can and using the best tools they know.

    This thread is intended for those faith leaders wanting to lead revitalized ministries and who are willing to be open to looking inward in order to have an outward influence that makes a difference. This journey begins with self-awareness and isn’t about blame or criticism. Faith leaders are not intentionally damaging the church. Church leaders are working within a system that’s broken and are so close to the situation, that they can’t get a view of how to facilitate transformation. As St. Paul states, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Rom 12:2

    My pattern is to ask questions hoping to prompt creative thinking and problem-solving. Readers can be offended and criticize the questions, however, we remain where we are if we are not growing.

    James Allen said, “Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they, therefore, remain bound.”

    Transformation begins with the leader. My background is in teaching leaders new pathways to transformational effectiveness through embracing Transformational Leadership as a culture of higher functioning. The culture is a reflection of the leader.

    Here are some questions, headlines, and quotes to prompt us to think creatively and to get out of the box we are in that limits our awareness...

     

    Questions:

    Should we just bury the existing church this Good Friday with Jesus?

    Where does this leave us as Christian leaders and what other options can we create?

    How do I as a Christian leader equip myself to be the influencer for transformation?

    What does the local church in which I am the leader look like in 5 years?

     
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    7 m