Encouraging - Change

Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.

Change begins at the level of individual decisions and behaviors, but that’s a hard place to start because that’s where the friction is. Inertia and decision paralysis will conspire to keep people doing things the old way. To spark movement in a new direction, you need to provide crystal-clear guidance. That’s why scripting is important – you’ve got to think about the specific behavior that you’d want to see in a tough moment, whether the tough moment takes place in a Brazilian railroad system or late at night in your own snack-loaded pantry.

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change things when Change is Hard, (Broadway Books, New York, NY: 2010), 44, 56.

Encouraging - Impressions

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions - we can alter the way we thin-slice - by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions. If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way - who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites - it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren't betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort. Taking rapid cognition seriously - acknowledging the incredible power, for good and ill, that first impressions play in our lives - requires that we take active steps to manage and control those impressions.

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink (Back Bay Books, NY: NY: 2005), 97-98.

Encouraging - Innovation

But careful study has shown that creative innovation follows a very precise pattern: like excellence itself, it emerges from the rigors of purposeful practice. It is the consequence of experts absorbing themselves for so long in their chosen field that they become, as it were, pregnant with creative energy. To put it another way, eureka moments are not lightning bolts from the blue, but tidal waves that erupt following deep immersion in an area of expertise.

Matthew Syed, Bounce (Harper Collins, New York, NY: 2010), 98.

Encouraging - Expert

Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again. Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavor, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of performance.

Matthew Syed, Bounce (Harper Collins, New York, NY: 2010), 85.

Encouraging - Well-Differentiated Leader

I want to stress that by well-differentiated leader I do not mean an autocrat who tells others what to do or orders them around, although any leader who defines himself or herself clearly may be perceived that way by those who are not taking responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny. Rather, I mean someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others, and therefore be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing. It is not as though some leaders can do this and some cannot. No one does this easily, and most leaders, I have learned, can improve their capacity.

Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (Seabury Books, New York, NY: 2007), 14.

Encouraging - Leadership

The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” rather than “what,” you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need to change direction? You’ve got a problem. But if people are on the bus because of who else is on the bus, then it’s much easier to change direction: “Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.” Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't (HarperCollins, NY, NY: 2001), 42.

Encouraging - Vision

Leaders, don’t ever apologize for the strength of feeling you have for the vision that God has put into your life. Don’t hide your feelings about it. God meant for you to feel as deeply about his vision for you as you do about anything. I mean that! Anything. Paint your God-given vision for family, friends, colleagues, and total strangers, if they will listen. Paint it as colorfully and passionately as you can! Just get it painted so that people’s hearts are stirred enough to shout, “Count me in!”

Bill Hybels, Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2008), 31.

Encouraging - Leadership

The nature of human beings is such that we tend not to drift into better behaviors. We usually have to be asked by someone to taking it up a level.

Leaders must never expect from others anything more than they’re willing to deliver themselves. They should never expect higher levels of commitment, creativity, persistence, or patience than what they themselves manifest on a regular basis. If you cannot say, “Follow me,” to your followers – and mean it – then you’ve got a big problem. A big one. Speed of the leader, speed of the team.

Bill Hybels, Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2008), 23, 94.

Encourgaging - Own It

I chose this particular passage after watching Amazing Grace - the remarkable story of William Wilberforce's crusade against slavery.

Wise leaders understand that the single greatest determinant of whether followers will ever own a vision deeply is the extent to which those followers believe the leader will own it….Your followers take their cues from you. They will only sacrifice for the vision if you will. They will only take a bullet for the cause if they believe down to their toes that you would do the same. Are you a half-hearted, low-cost hireling? Or are you a full-on owner? Your followers are immensely curious about which it is, and over time each of them will come to a conclusion.

Bill Hybels, Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2008), 35.

Encouraging - Self Care

“Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching” (1 Tim 4:16)
“Discipline yourself for the purpose of the godliness” (1 Tim 4:7)

Leaders cannot focus on their mission, care for their people, or reproduce and multiply if they do not take care of themselves. Spiritual care is the first priority. Practice what you preach. Do not neglect a regular time with the Lord in prayer and the Word. Ministry preparation – preaching, teaching, serving – is not the same as personal time with the Lord. Nourish yourself spiritually. Don’t neglect to confess your sins and receive the blessing and empowerment of God’s forgiveness. Avoid compromise, violating your conscience, and falling into patterns of sin. Maintain your witness with a faithful lifestyle. Strive before the Lord to live above reproach to honor your Savior.

Harry L. Reeder III, The Leadership Dynamic: A Biblical Model for Raising Effective Leaders (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2008), 74.

Encouraging - Servant Leadership

A leader is not someone who is consumed with his own success and his own best interests. A true leader is someone who demonstrates to everyone around him that their interests are what most occupy his heart. A real leader will work hard to make everyone around him successful. His passion is to help make the people under his leadership flourish. That is why a true leader must have the heart of a servant.

John MacArthur, The Book on Leadership (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2004), 12.

Encouraging - Godliness

A second leadership requirement is this: Godliness is more important than giftedness. While being gifted is important, a gifted leader who lacks godliness can lead others to destruction. Godliness is crucial. “An overseer must be above reproach” (1 Tim 3:2). When God develops a heart of a leader, there’s evidence of grace-saturated character, which produces godliness. A leader’s character is forged from loving submission to the One who possess him, his life, and his leadership.

Harry L. Reeder III, The Leadership Dynamic: A Biblical Model for Raising Effective Leaders (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2008). 56.

Encouraging - Affirmation

One aspect of our God-created makeup is our inherent desire to fellowship with one another, and part of our sinful human nature is to constantly seek affirmation from each other. The ever-present temptation is to think that being “in Christ” is not sufficient and that we must have affirmation and approval from other human beings. This compulsion is so great it can often drive us to being man-pleasers rather than God-exalters.

Harry L. Reeder III, The Leadership Dynamic (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2008), 24.