LEAD - Listening Skills

A friend of mine who is a corporate leader and thinker remarked recently that the problems of the world could be summed up by the lack of leadership and the presence of injustice in the world. He also believes that business where there is the absence of injustice and the presence of leadership can move the world forward in a substantial way. Considering that injustice is about the lack of fairness, inequity, corruption, tyranny, repression, exploitation, and intolerance it seemed that the answer or at least a small step forward was to improve relationships between people which at its core is one of the strong tenets of effective leadership.

Relationships in the workplace are focused on the way employees, supervision, and the organization (senior management) treat each other. How they talk to each other, behave toward each other, and deal with one another is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary views relationships. A key leadership skill to shape and improve the work environment and perhaps the world is to develop effective listening skills. Good listening skills are important to relationships because at the core of sustainable positive relationships are trust and respect which can be mutually found through effective listening to one another.

There are a number of scholarly works that spell out the characteristics of effective listening. In business and in building teams of people these are some of the best practices:

• Be involved in the conversation and listen actively. Show interest, nod, ask questions, and paraphrase what is being said and learned. 
• Ask open ended questions by avoiding "yes & no" questions and process the response with an open mind that wants to learn not a mind already made up.
• Stay focused on the conversation. Do not get distracted rather concentrate on the moment. Since thought is faster than speech, stay in the moment by summarizing and checking back to the point being made.
• Stay open to the possibilities of changing position and hold your fire. Do not judge until the other position is fully understood. The stronger you feel about your position, the more open to the possibilities you need to become.
• Listen for the idea and rationale. Resist nit-picking the facts, find areas of common ground of agreement. Emphasize the areas of agreement and stay away from focusing on the differences.
• Work at listening by good eye contact, positive posture, and engaging actively. Resist interrupting thought trains and learn to be present with the other person.

Let me know if you have other best practices. Good listening skills promote and multiply good leadership. Good leadership fights injustice. The business improves and sustains performance. At least that is the premise of good leadership being promoted here.

Leadership Lens & Role - HR

Human Resource professionals are tasked with viewing the organization through the leadership lens that employees are the most valuable organizational asset. Employees, if led properly, will create a competitive advantage and appreciate in value to the organization. Leadership change theories are plentiful that can be deployed to create an environment and develop leadership skills where the human resource asset appreciates and contributes to that competitive advantage. Appreciative Inquiry provides a complementary and powerful change tool to today's lean organizations, as an example, that seeks to find the best of what exists, imagine what could be, formulate a plan to achieve what should be, and then live out that new vision. Leaders are seen as not relying solely on position power rather build relationships by empowering and engaging the individual employees and work teams in the common mission.

The role of the Human Resource professional is complex seeing the organization through this Leadership lens. The effective Human Resource professional in facts takes on three distinct roles:

• Employee advocate 
• Supervisor / Manager supporter 
• Organization advocate & protector 

The HR professional as an employee advocate looking through the leadership lens that the employees are the most valuable organizational advocate stands up for those employees when they are seen as being a cost and a waste as organizations deploy lean concepts without the partnership with AI. Pressure on organizations to constantly reduce cost place the HR professional acting as an employee advocate in direct conflict with operations and financial management unless handled properly. The HR resource must argue for the concept that employees appreciate in value and offer a competitive advantage or they can become cynical and numb to the impact on the organization of poorly treated employees. The economy, the move to distance/part-time workers, and merging of companies have led to this becoming an increasingly rare effective role for the HR professional.

The HR professional as a supervisor/manager supporter is one of advisor and partner who helps the supervisor get the most out of their employees. Equipping the supervisor/manager with mangement and leadership skills to empower and encourage their employees to achieve improvements in output or reduction of costs. Pressure comes from the employees who sees the supervisor/manager as not supporting them and from poor performing employees who weigh down the performance of the units. At the same time the company needs to be protected from the impact of failure to follow the employment laws. The HR professional instead of acting as a partner with the front line manager and supervisor often seems to be the chief critic of the supervisor/ manager obsessed with protecting the company and abandoning the supervisor/manager.

The HR professional as the organization advocate & protector can become so focused on that protection that the most valuable asset - the organization's employees - are not uniquely encouraged and empowered for success, rather all employees are treated the same as to not create the environment to excel. Creativity and initiative are crushed under the heavy weight of conformity.

HR professionals need to find a effective balance between these three roles. Appreciative inquiry as a change model values employees by finding the best in them, sets free the supervisor/manager to encourage and empower their employees, and develop a plan that protects and advocate for the organization through a vision of what could be...

Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is the ability to anticipate and envision the future, maintain flexibility, think strategically and initiate changes that will create a healthy organization living out its vision and mission in the community within and outside the walls of the church. Strategic leadership consists of the relationship between the external environment and the church's vision, mission, strategy, and their execution.

This is how we shape each of these areas, both traditionally in the Strategic Leadership model and secondarily from an Appreciative Inquiry model:

• Vision - "Where are we headed?" or "How do we visualize our future?"
• Mission - "Who are we?" or "How do we live out our vision?"
• Strategy - "How do we get there?" or "How do we make it real?"
• Execution - "What do we do right now?" or "How do we live our plan out?"

Strategic leadership does not necessarily come naturally to the leader and is often not welcome with open arms by the stakeholders within the organization. There are some strategies for thinking strategically and navigating uncertainty:

• Anticipate threats and Opportunities - Effective leaders constantly test the waters of their organizations - talk to the leaders & people within the church leaders along with leaders & people out in the community. They identify early signs of change both favorable and damaging.
• Challenge the Status Quo - Strategic thinkers question their own assumptions  and processes to look for opportunities to improve. They are curious and want to learn which they do by asking powerful open ended questions.
• Interpret Trends - Leaders look for patterns in what they find out and observe. They dig deeper trying to understand new insights rather than accepting the easy answer. Leaders do not accept that things need to stay the same practicing the idea that if you keep repeating the same process you will get the same result.
• Achieve Alignment - Leaders need to get buy-in from the stakeholders and key members of the faith community who may have different, even conflicting viewpoints and interests. Everyone must be aligned in the same direction to achieve the vision, even if all do not agree with the details of the change.

Forming Strategic Leadership: Be consistent and positive in language so when people repeat the same thing conjures up the same thing with everyone else... without a clearly articulated vision that everyone understands and buys into - people pull in opposite directions - that makes it tough to go where the community is being called to go... Focus on abundance not scarcity and possibilities not barriers,

4E Encourage, Equip, Empower, & Engage - Preparing the Ask

The cornerstone to engaging volunteer servants and leaders successfully is to encourage them to find what God is calling them to be, then equiping those volunteer servants, then empower each servant, and then engage them in the ministry. This process needs to be focused on the mission of the organization and intentional in its consistent application. The process to encourage leaders starts with developing a role description for the opportunity. This understandingof the servant role is very important for the success of the process. Misty Molloy, a volunteer engagement expert, believes that creating a good system of information in a data base and then creating tools that support the process.

The development of the role description starts with the creation of a Servant Opportunity Description based on a templete of questions that are posed to the Ministry Leader seeking volunteer servants. The SOD is designed to help the leader answer the question: "What does the servant need to be successful?" The questions are asked in a way to create a very detailed profile of the position that equips the leader to encourage and explain the service opporunity to potential volunteer servants.

WHO?

• For whom possibly would this be a good fit? ( leave the possibilities open by considering the gifts, heart, abilities, and personality desirable for this role.
• To whom does the volunteer servant work with and who is the leader of the ministry?

WHAT?

• How would a servant volunteer be successful? 
• What are the opportunities presented by the opportunity?

WHEN?

• Describe all the aspects around time?
• Commitment length (ie: one month?, one year? how often?)

WHERE?

• Describe all the aspects around location? 

WHY?

• What will be the immediate impact from the volunteer servant's participation?
• What is the greater purpose? 
• How is this opportunity tied to the BIG PICTURE?
• How will this opportunity allow them to follow the organizational mission?

The development of the role description starts with the creation of a Servant Opportunity Description based on a templete of questions that are posed to the Ministry Leader seeking volunteer servants. Asking these question create the foundation to move forward with encouraging new servant volunteers.

Developing Leaders Continuously

Leaders in many faith organizations are typically appointed for a period of time, often three years. This frequently happens once a year and often as a process of seeking people to fill open leadership roles. At Assurance UMC, we seek to grow leaders through an intentional process of identifying, encouraging, equipping, and apprenticing leaders through a year around process. 

The process is tied to the church’s singular mission to follow Jesus to “Grow and Go”. Assurance is Growing Disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ so that we can Go serve Christ in the world. In “Growing and Going”, we emphasize the 3 S’s: Spirit, Serve, and Share. We grow our Spirit in worship, prayer, and small group connections. We grow by Serving others inside and outside the walls of the church. And we Share our gifts and the good News that God loves us all.

One of the key leadership development initiatives is in deepening discipleship to develop current and future leaders through intentional identification of apprentices; create candidate pools in order to ensure adequate numbers of equipped candidates; and provide training/equipping opportunities. This LEAD process: ‘L’  Learn Leadership Skills; ‘E’ Encourage SHAPE; ‘A’ Apprentice Others; and ‘D’ Disciple Through Grow 7 GO.

These are some key results from this LEAD process:

ü  Identification of Apprentices - We continue to find future leaders to work alongside current leaders through intentional invitation. We explore member gifts through SHAPE, participation in small group and ministry work, and a heart for leadership.

ü  Candidate Pools – We create pools of candidates for leadership positions that have been pre-identified as candidates last year and throughout this year, many of whom have received encouragement and development opportunities during the following year. We believe in co-chairs for our administrative teams for continuity of leadership. We believe ministries we are called to start should have three leaders at their inception: one who is the visionary leader, one who is the logistics and equipping leader, and one who is the inviter/nurturer of volunteers and partners to come alongside.

ü  Leadership Training & Development Opportunities - We continue to develop manuals and training events for our leadership. We believe a leader at Assurance should serve where God has equipped them and have a heart for Grow and Go.

This is what we hope will be accomplished by our year around lay leadership team:

Ø  Fill the key leadership roles with our church community

Ø  Discuss and recommend that a new leadership structure be adopted that is more conducive to successful missional and vital UMC congregations

Ø  Support the future leadership needs of a multi-site church

Ø  Recommend Leadership Celebration and Development Days

Ø  Affirm GROW & GO characteristics of Spirit, Serve, And Share as a part of leadership

We seek to build the leadership of the faith community intentionally all year long.

Discovery and Value Stream Mapping – Powerful Change Foundation

Strategic Lean Six Sigma and Appreciative Inquiry are powerful change agents within organizations. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and the Appreciative Inquiry process (4D) step of discovery forms sustainable change foundation. This new emerging process is called Appreciative Lean Six Sigma.

The Discovery element in the 4D model focuses on identifying the strengths and successes of an organization. This complements the lean tools of value stream / business process mapping. The appreciative questions provide recognition of strengths and confidence within the teams. This affirmation creates ownership during the value stream mapping process while maintaining a perspective of the larger picture throughout the organization.

Value stream mapping discovers and identifies each step of a process from inception to completion. Each process step contains specific elements:

• What work is being done? (value added & waste)
• Who is doing the work? (people)
• How is the work being done? (machine, process)

These process steps are then mapped out in a visual manner and utilized through the continuous inquiry process (5 Whys) to determine the value added and waste. These ‘5 Why’ questions focus on discovering a root cause problem and identifying an optimum solution. Analytical tools and measures along with lean and six sigma tools are applied to improve and stabilize the process.

The challenge within an organization during this discovery and problem recognition process is the commitment of the people to the improvement opportunity. Often the value stream mapping is seen as a direct threat to individual security and competence. Complaints arise regarding the recognition of past value of the work and the individual performing the tasks being reviewed in the value stream. Organizations desire maximum buy in from associates during this value stream mapping process. Generally this buy in is sought to be attained through training on the competitive purpose and an understanding of the methodology. Often this leaves an organization feeling unrecognized and in a constant state of being unsettled. This leads to a general resistant to change.

The 4D appreciative model during the change phase of discovery offers an opportunity to create a more positive environment for the application of lean change. In the 4D Discovery appreciative questions using how questions such as “How has this process benefited the organization? Or a people / relational inquiry such as “How have this team achieved successful results through utilizing this process under evaluation?” This leads to affirmation of success and forms a solid base to achieve long lasting continuous improvement.

Value stream mapping used in lean six sigma improvement processes and business process mapping remains a very powerful set of change tools. 4D Discovery questions and stories provide depth to the value stream mapping process. This increases the ownership and excitement surrounding the result, creating sustainable change.

Leveraging AI for Lasting Transformation

Leaders of faith communities face challenging times and circumstances. Sometimes through vision and foresight ... sometimes due to the pressure of changes enfolding around them, these leaders must make fundamental and significant changes in the ways of the congregation. 

Often the challenges of change can be overwhelming: resistance builds, confusion and misinformation swirls about, and the first steps into the unknown are tentative, not bold. Language helps create the environment for positive change or the solidifying of negativity. Scarcity rises up: "not enough money", "not enough time", and "not enough people". Barriers form standing in the way of progress: "those people are different", "we don't do it that way" and "we don't know how".

The language of scripture is one of God's Abundance in the face of a world of scarcity... where we are never enough ...or have enough of anything. In God we are enough and we have blessings in abundance. God is a God of possibilities in the face of challenges when you trust in Him, yet the world throws up barriers to what God has placed on our heart.

The language of abundance and possibilities forms the foundation to look at our faith community from strength not weakness using a proven model of change: the Appreciative Inquiry Model. This model forms the shape of our collective conversation and change model. 

The practice of using AI to celebrate the blessings and resources that the faith community has been given by God which is what gives life. Leveraging these strengths by asking questions like "what do you want more of" leads to a reflection of "what might be?" During this stage of the change process, the congregation is invited to envision "what it might be like in the future" if the congregation changes some of their practices and goes where God is leading them. Throughout the process it has been bathed with prayer and scriptural reflection.

Asking the question "how do we make this real?" moves the congregation into a season of co-creation where "what should be" is developed and planned. These steps and plans are then placed into motion through empowering and resourcing the plans. This results in sustaining the momentum of the change process.

Appreciative inquiry coaching offers a model for change that builds an environment for change that is about abundance, not scarcity... possibilities, not barriers.