Spiritual Growth Isn't Leadership Growth - Jef Fite | Faithly Podcast

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Sometimes, frankly, the most important warning sign is personal for the pastor, right?

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They're just walking around going, man, I am exhausted.

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I'm frustrated.

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Everything seems to depend on me, right?

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That may be telling you that the way leadership is structured in practice needs attention.

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If you feel like the buck always has to stop with you.

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This is the Faithly Podcast.

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Welcome back to the Faithly Podcast.

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I am joined today by Jef Fite.

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He is the founder of Core C Leadership.

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And after four decades of leading different teams and organizations, including almost a decade at McKesson, Jeff is bringing those lessons into a new chapter.

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In this new chapter, he's focused on helping leaders in churches to lead from a healthy sense of identity and calling.

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Today, we're going to hear Jeff's own story, why he has such a heart for church leaders, and how pastors can recognize when the challenges they're facing might actually be leadership challenges.

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So, Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

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Thank you, Alicia.

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I'm thrilled to be here with you.

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Well, before we talk about leadership or Corsi, I'd love to go back to the beginning.

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I'd love to hear about your faith story.

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Okay.

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Yeah, this really will be going back to the beginning.

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My faith story kind of begins certainly before I can remember.

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My mom has a picture of me in a crib in the church nursery when I was two weeks old.

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But my memories actually begin growing up in very large Southern Baptist churches in Texas, giving my life to Christ when I was in middle school.

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and being baptized actually by my grandfather, who was a Southern Baptist pastor.

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But that happened in the First Baptist Church in Dallas in front of a very large crowd.

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So it was a little bit intimidating, but very obviously formative in my life.

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I was

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I was really very active in church activities through high school, but I must admit I drifted a bit in college and even into early adulthood as I got into the workforce and came up with all kinds of wonderful excuses why getting to church wasn't a priority.

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But then gradually began to come back to a more intentional kind of faith life through marriage, working at family Christian stores for over a decade and becoming a father.

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By about age 30, I was deeply involved again, serving in our local church, playing drums in the praise band, which I still do and enjoy very much today.

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They refer to me as the old drummer, but it's something I really love doing.

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I've led small group Bible studies, mainly for couples, but some for men and also for our praise and worship team.

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at different points.

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And I also chaired a large building and infrastructure campaign to expand the children's ministry in one of the churches we belong to in the past.

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But looking back, certainly all of these things, I have to look back because I'm not always smart enough to get it or see it at the time, but all of these things were certainly formative for me.

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All of these experiences helped form me.

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And I admit today I am, I'm especially grateful.

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in this season to see my own children pursuing their own relationships with Jesus and engaging in their churches as well.

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So I'm hoping at least somewhere along the way I provided a good example for my kids.

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And that's probably the thing that I'm, for lack of a better term, most proud of at this point.

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That's a great story.

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And in that story, in there is four decades of leading in the corporate world.

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Take us through that.

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What were some of the major chapters of your career?

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Yeah, there really were several chapters.

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And again, looking back, I see the progression in them.

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Didn't always see it as I was going through it.

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So early in my career, I started with Anderson Consulting, which is now Accenture, a large global consulting firm.

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And, you know, originally, as I used to think about that, I didn't think about anything real positive in that experience from a leadership perspective, honestly.

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But I really learned how to lead in a...

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in kind of a high-pressure, results-driven kind of an environment.

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I was successful, but I was even referred to as a steamroller.

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And I actually thought of that as a compliment at the time.

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Certainly, I figured out over time that that wasn't necessarily the case.

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But in that culture, it actually was.

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But from there, I went on to Family Christian Stores.

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my last client when I was at Anderson.

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And there I met a boss and a mentor that really showed me a very different way to lead.

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He had very high standards, but he was kind, he was humble, he was transparent, he was consistent, courageous, all those things you'd really hope to find in a healthy leader.

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And I began to also see that people weren't simply resources to achieve results, right?

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Seems so obvious now, but in my 20s, that's kind of the perspective I had.

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So really then came just a series of, I guess, what I'd call formative experiences.

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I had the opportunity to launch an internet startup while at Family Christian stores called iBelieve.com.

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Experienced some significant failure during that time as that company really only existed for a couple of years.

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I left Family Christian after what I believe was an unhealthy leadership change.

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There led several functions at Gordon Food Service, a family owned multi-billion dollar organization based here in Michigan.

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I spent a couple of years at Hewlett Packard back in a consulting role and then eventually spent, as you mentioned early on, spent almost a decade at McKesson, a huge pharmaceutical and medical supply distributor.

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And these experiences really taught me that leadership is a craft, which I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about, taught me that character matters, especially under pressure.

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and also taught me that clarity and alignment are really critical regardless of the setting in which you're trying to lead.

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And

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By the time I retired this past December, at least retired from full-time corporate America work, I realized that leadership itself really had been my craft across those industries and functions.

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And Corsi leadership really is the result of reflecting on those experiences, trying to bring into view also kind of relevant biblical themes and characters.

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but also being true to kind of some of the contemporary research and contemporary leadership thinkers out there and really trying to get a really good handle on what I consider healthy leadership to actually look like.

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So I feel good about kind of where I've landed at this point with Corsi leadership.

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And I do believe that this is kind of what God has entrusted to me as a mission and a calling in this season in my life.

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Yes, yes.

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All right, so you built this corporate career.

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Your leadership views and philosophy were really shaped, it sounds like, by leaders that you came across along the way, certainly by failures.

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I think many of us can relate to that.

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At the same time you were building this corporate career, you came to be deeply involved in the church, right?

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you talked about how you've served over the years.

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Before we recorded, you and I were getting to know one another in a conversation.

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And one of the things that came through Loud and Clear was your heart for pastors and the church and ministry leaders.

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Talk about where that came from.

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Yeah.

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You know, I think it comes from a couple of different places, if you will, over the course of my life.

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It starts, I think, with,

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how I grew up.

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You know, my parents and our family, we were deeply involved in the local churches where we went growing up.

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And I kind of alluded to earlier, my grandfather was a pastor and my mom has other pastors kind of up her hereditary line there.

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Yeah, I've come to realize that it's hereditary.

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It does appear, yes.

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But our family always...

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I guess I would say we knew our pastors as people, right?

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We knew them as husbands and fathers and friends.

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And in a couple of my cases, even coaches when I was growing up, right?

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We knew these pastors, not just as pastors.

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And then, you know, as I got into adulthood for about the last 30 years or so, we've been a part of Wesleyan Churches in West Michigan.

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serving in various areas of church life, right?

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I've been involved in pastoring minister search committees.

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I mentioned a building campaign, small groups, playing in the praise band, you know, a number of different things.

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And I feel like I've kind of had a little bit of a front row seat of the challenges that pastors encounter, especially in the leadership space, but personal situations as well.

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And

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Most recently, certainly, I saw kind of how our pastoral staff at our current church tried to navigate through COVID, trying to make the right decisions around how to continue to build and maintain community and, frankly, make decisions that inevitably disappointed some people.

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in the process, right?

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It felt like at times there, there was no way to win and no way to please everybody.

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But I just think pastors have a really tough job, frankly.

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And I have a tremendous appreciation and respect for their willingness to continue to answer that calling in the good times and the not so good times.

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That's good.

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That's good.

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So you eventually reached a point after four decades in corporate leadership where you could step away from a full-time corporate work.

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I know the why behind Corsi.

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I know I can hear your heart for the church and for the pastors.

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But how did you decide that that would be your next chapter?

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Yeah, I really at least began thinking about this before retirement came.

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I mean, I can remember sending emails to the pastors at the church where we attended and a few other pastors that I knew just saying, hey, I'm thinking about this.

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What reaction do you have?

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You might, you help me pray a little bit about, you know, help me discern whether this is something that makes sense for me.

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And, you know, I chose pastors that knew a bit of my history and what I had done for the last four decades and so on.

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And I got, I certainly got plenty of questions, but I got good encouragement from them that some of the things that I was thinking about of the challenges were in fact important.

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challenges and something that they felt like was relevant to try to address.

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So at least for me personally, I don't really see what I'm doing with Core C at this point as much of a change in what I consider my vocational calling.

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Again, looking back, I really never had, it may not sound great, but I really never had a functional or technical mastery, right?

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I wasn't an expert in finance.

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I wasn't an expert in technology.

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Even though I led those organizations over time, I really feel like my craft was leadership.

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Right.

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I led teams across retail, food service, healthcare industries, technology, marketing, customers, you name it from a functional perspective.

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So I felt like that was my craft.

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So after retiring...

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from McKesson and having the gift of some time to reflect and pray and think seriously about what I had learned and what I kind of felt like I was being called to do going forward, it just kept coming back to this, right?

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I mean, frankly, I looked at a number of other things and it just kept coming back to this.

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So as I started putting more energy into this, it just became, frankly, for lack of a better

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And kind of bring that together with biblical themes and what I was hearing from contemporary thinkers and leadership research.

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And it was kind of falling into place, for lack of a better way to say it.

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And I began to see patterns, and those patterns really became the Corsi leadership framework and the pathway.

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that I've put together at this point.

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I admit when I first retired and started looking at kind of what was out there, I did some canvassing.

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I certainly can't say it was exhaustive, but I looked at things that were going on in the leadership development space and did I want to just go work for somebody doing that?

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And I just didn't, I didn't find what,

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what I felt like I was being called to do.

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I didn't find things that were kind of identity first in the way I really viewed the way healthy leadership works best.

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So, you know, I really do.

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I've said to multiple people, I believe God has formed me and equipped me for this season.

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But it's going to require other people to agree with that for me to be able to go work on it.

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And I'm early in the process, but I'm finding folks, you know, I've defined my calling as guiding Christian leaders in churches, nonprofits, and smaller businesses from identity to impact.

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So I've begun working now with, I've got all three of those sectors kind of covered at this point in terms of clients.

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And I'm looking to validate, quite honestly, some of the things that I have put together here with additional kind of real world moments in these settings.

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But yeah, I just really believe that this is kind of what God has entrusted to me in this season of my life.

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That's so good.

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And it really resonates with me as someone who, you know, left a Wall Street career and started faithfully.

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The way that you described, I just kept coming back to this.

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You couldn't get away from it.

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For me, like I would describe it as being filled with so much curiosity, so much passion about this particular topic, about this particular solution.

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I just I couldn't envision doing anything else.

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And really, that's what I heard in your answer.

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Well, the other thing, Alicia, was just that

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I always watched leadership podcasts or listen to leadership podcasts or watch YouTube videos like from leaders that I respected and things of that sort.

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But once I kind of shifted the lens through which I was watching those things, because it kind of was about me during my career, right?

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I was looking at those things to try to feed me and try to continue to form me.

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And as I shifted that to think, okay, how can I apply these things for other leaders that may not always have...

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you know, the kinds of resourcing that I was fortunate to have in very large companies that I worked for from leadership development standpoint.

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To your point, it really just kind of continued to energize me and even reinforce and grow the passion for that.

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Yes, yes.

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Well, so Jeff, I've been reading some of what you've been writing about leadership.

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And there's something you've written that has really caught my attention.

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You say spiritual formation and leadership formation just aren't the same thing.

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Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?

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Sure.

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Love to.

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The easiest way might be to use an analogy or two.

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And, you know, for example, I have a good friend of mine who's a furniture designer.

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If anybody listening or watching knows anything about West Michigan, it's kind of office furniture capital of the world and a lot of furniture stuff going on in West Michigan.

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So good friend who's a furniture designer.

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My sister is a CPA, does my taxes.

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If either of them wants to become better at their craft,

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I would absolutely encourage them to pray about it, right?

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But I wouldn't suggest that prayer replaces education, formation, practice in their craft, right?

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I view leadership in much the same way.

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I view leadership as a craft.

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Being an excellent accountant, which my sister is, doesn't automatically make her an excellent finance leader, which she would tell you she's not and hasn't pursued that.

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Being an excellent designer doesn't automatically make you an excellent creative director.

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And I think in contrast, my friend has been able to make that leap into being creative director, but he would also say I had to work at that.

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It was a difficult transition.

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And I'd also say that being an excellent preacher doesn't automatically make you an excellent church leader from an organizational perspective.

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I certainly believe that spiritual formation is foundational here.

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I don't want anybody to hear anything different than that, right?

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It shapes who we are becoming in Christ, and it's relevant for anybody, whether you're a leader or not.

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But leadership formation really helps us to faithfully steward the leadership calling that we've been given.

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I think there's a temptation in Christian leadership to say, you know, if God called me and anointed me, he's going to take care of everything else.

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But I think when you look at Scripture, that's not always the pattern, right?

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I think there certainly is calling and anointing, but I think there oftentimes is preparation and formation that comes with that.

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You can look at a number of different examples, whether it be David or Joshua or even Jesus, right?

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Jesus called the disciples, but he spent plenty of time teaching them, mentoring them, modeling leadership for them before sending them out and debriefing them, right?

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Yeah.

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I just think that both calling and anointing, right, it tells us what God's invited us to.

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It reminds us that we can ultimately depend on him.

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But I just believe that formation and practice help us become capable of faithfully stewarding the calling, the leadership calling in this case.

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That's good.

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So something else I've read about Corsi's approach is that it's identity first.

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So before we get into the framework itself, why does leadership need to begin with an understanding of who you are?

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And why is that?

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Like, I would think that pastors of all people know who they are.

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So talk about that.

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Sure.

206
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Well, and I would...

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Forgive me for not remembering the gentleman's name.

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I had watched a few of the Faithly podcasts, and there was someone in a, I believe he was from Fuller Seminary, who was talking about kind of primary calling and secondary calling, right?

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And I think he was thinking primary calling is one as Christians we kind of all share, right, related to our calling to abide in Christ and do those things.

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And then he was talking about secondary callings maybe as a husband or a father or other aspects of your life.

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And I would look at this somewhat similarly.

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I agree that the primary calling for Christians is your Christian spiritual calling, right?

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And it is largely similar, if not the same, for most of us.

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But as I mentioned, I also think there's a leadership calling, which I would consider secondary to that, if you've been called to be a leader.

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And I just feel like healthy leadership has to start with that identity as a leader.

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because that shapes how you lead.

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I just think that's foundational and centering around, right, how you go about the rest of your leadership life.

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We tend to quickly jump to, you know, what do we

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you know, those kinds of things about our accomplishments and what we need to do.

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But I just think the first question is more about who am I?

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And therefore, what am I called to do?

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So in my mind, when I think of calling, I think of it as both identity and purpose.

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So it's kind of who am I and what am I called to do drives that calling from a leadership standpoint.

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Some of your viewers may be familiar with Simon Sinek.

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I read a lot of his stuff.

226
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He has a book called Start With Why, and those principles are really helpful.

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I got a lot out of that.

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But I actually kind of take it a little bit as a step back and say, I believe before the why, we need to understand the who, specifically from a leadership standpoint.

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I've heard many pastors, again, as I listen to folks say, you know, there's kind of a biblical pattern that seems to get described in a couple different ways.

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Some call it who before do.

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Some call it identity before activity.

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I mean, even at Jesus' baptism, right, before his public ministry started, his father said, this is my son whom I love.

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To me, that's identity coming before activity.

234
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Right.

235
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And for leaders, I think it's just more important because of the role.

236
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It's just more important to think of the role, the accomplishments and other people's expectations, not really being our identity.

237
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Right.

238
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I think that identity needs to be something that does come from Christ and comes from how we believe we've been called to do kind of our leadership craft going forward.

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So when we understand who God has created us to be and how he's created us to lead, everything else can flow from there.

240
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Hmm, that's good.

241
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Well, if I get a vote, I vote for who before do.

242
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It's very Dr. Sears.

243
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I think you should just put that on your website.

244
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Who before do?

245
00:21:15.482 --> 00:21:17.444
I wish I could claim it as my own.

246
00:21:17.784 --> 00:21:24.871
I was trying to think not long ago where I first heard that and I can't recall, but I may have to do a search or something to figure it out.

247
00:21:24.911 --> 00:21:26.232
Or maybe I just claim it as my own.

248
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Since you can't remember, you can just claim it.

249
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I think that's how it works.

250
00:21:30.940 --> 00:21:35.443
Okay, so we've talked about the who and why that's so important and why it has to come first.

251
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Now walk us through the do.

252
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Walk us through the core C framework.

253
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What are the core Cs and how do they ultimately affect the health of a church or another organization?

254
00:21:48.069 --> 00:21:49.250
Yeah, thanks.

255
00:21:49.290 --> 00:21:59.399
So, again, as we just discussed, the CORE-C framework is kind of built around the idea that healthy leadership starts with who we are before what we do, but we get into those things.

256
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So, there are seven core capacities.

257
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Each begins with the letter C, hence the CORE-C framework.

258
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I was never, again, well, I kind of said you can just...

259
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Count that as, yeah, he's right.

260
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He doesn't have a marketing mastery.

261
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That's certainly for sure, based on the simplistic way of looking at this.

262
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But anyway, I've got seven core Cs, but it does at the center.

263
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It's kind of a target.

264
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It starts in the center with calling at the center.

265
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So understanding who God has called you to be as a leader and what he's called you to do in that leadership context.

266
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The next ring around that is where we come to the personal Corsi, so more about personal formation.

267
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And I have three in that personal area, caring, character, and competence.

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Caring is all about how we treat all of the people that are touched by our leadership.

269
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I just believe that people are, you know, I sometimes get frustrated when people say people are our most important asset in a business.

270
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Like the people are your business, right?

271
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It's even more than just the most important asset.

272
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But anyway...

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making sure that we've got the right posture and how we treat all of the people touched by your leadership, which is not just your team, it's your boss, it's your peers, it's your partners, it's the volunteers, right?

274
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It's kind of all of the folks there as well as the work itself.

275
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Character is more about kind of who we're becoming,

276
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and whether our behavior is consistent with what we say we value and believe.

277
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And certainly, again, when we talk about the spiritual versus leadership formation, I think those things heavily overlap if are not very much the same, right?

278
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They are foundational.

279
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They're still about who we are and what we believe.

280
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But character to me is about behaviors, right?

281
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If I can't see that you value courage or I can't see that you value humility, I have to really wonder, are those truly values?

282
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of yours.

283
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So character, I believe, is about ultimately about behaviors.

284
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And then lastly is competence, which gets more into the craft of leadership.

285
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So it's about developing the capability, expertise, and what I think is most important, the judgment to steward our responsibilities well.

286
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So these personal Courses kind of help build the trustworthiness, the congruence, the credibility of the leader.

287
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So from that kind of personal Courses and personal side of things, we then get to the last ring, and that is what I call the collective Courses.

288
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And those three are clarity, culture, and coalescence.

289
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Now, I must admit, coalescence is a bit of a stretch, right?

290
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But I had to get a C out of it, and unity just didn't work at that point.

291
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So I'll describe a little bit about that.

292
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But clarity kind of answers, it allows the leader to answer, where are we going and why?

293
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Making sure that there's clarity across the entire team, across the collective, around what matters most.

294
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Where are we going and why?

295
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Culture asks kind of how are we going to live and do that together as we pursue that?

296
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And then coalescence really is about bringing people together around the shared belief in that mission, the shared trust in each other to do kind of do everybody's role and that shared way of working together and building momentum.

297
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So kind of in shorthand, calling shapes who we are as leaders.

298
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Caring character and competence shape how we lead.

299
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Clarity, culture, and coalescence shape how we work and move forward together.

300
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That makes a lot of sense.

301
00:25:35.351 --> 00:25:37.573
And congratulations on getting seven Cs.

302
00:25:37.773 --> 00:25:42.478
I think Colossus totally works, but it makes a lot of sense.

303
00:25:42.498 --> 00:25:45.702
And it's very comprehensive to use another C word.

304
00:25:45.982 --> 00:25:50.166
I want to make this really, really practical for the pastors who are listening.

305
00:25:50.427 --> 00:25:50.647
Mm-hmm.

306
00:25:51.568 --> 00:25:56.192
there is no pastor who is not experiencing some kind of a challenge, right?

307
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Running a church is hard.

308
00:25:58.794 --> 00:26:04.399
But how does a pastor know that what their experience is actually a leadership problem?

309
00:26:04.419 --> 00:26:07.781
Like, what are some of the warning signs you'd want them to notice?

310
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Sure.

311
00:26:08.502 --> 00:26:09.543
No, that's great.

312
00:26:10.804 --> 00:26:12.025
There's a couple of things here.

313
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And then...

314
00:26:14.455 --> 00:26:19.316
Well, let me just start, and I'll maybe conclude with a couple of thoughts as well.

315
00:26:19.336 --> 00:26:22.796
But one warning sign is certainly kind of when the same problems keep recurring.

316
00:26:23.597 --> 00:26:29.217
I think you really have to think about is that part of a leadership issue, right?

317
00:26:29.398 --> 00:26:41.420
And, you know, if conflict keeps resurfacing, if people aren't clear about who's responsible for what, if decisions keep getting revisited, if staff becomes frustrated or disengaged, good people leave, right?

318
00:26:45.193 --> 00:26:50.015
okay, we're just not getting there even though we keep working harder to solve something.

319
00:26:50.415 --> 00:26:58.038
I think there's likely some kind of problem in either the leadership capability or capacity in that situation.

320
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And I wanna be clear, this is not necessarily about blaming the pastor, right?

321
00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:13.465
I mean, leadership is about creating conditions, hopefully the right conditions around some of those Cs that I just mentioned, but it's about how people kind of affect how people experience the ministry.

322
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if you will.

323
00:27:14.946 --> 00:27:19.931
And sometimes, frankly, the most important warning sign is personal for the pastor, right?

324
00:27:19.951 --> 00:27:21.853
They're just walking around going, man, I am exhausted.

325
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I'm frustrated.

326
00:27:23.675 --> 00:27:25.957
Everything seems to depend on me, right?

327
00:27:26.618 --> 00:27:34.366
That may be telling you that the way leadership is structured in practice needs attention if you feel like the buck always has to stop with you.

328
00:27:35.888 --> 00:27:40.772
And if you'll permit me, I'll even be maybe a little bit more direct on some warning signs.

329
00:27:40.812 --> 00:27:44.755
And again, these are things that have come just repeatedly out of my career.

330
00:27:46.277 --> 00:27:56.245
But if you're not having one-on-ones regularly with your direct reports, at least monthly, you might consider whether you've got a leadership opportunity.

331
00:27:57.135 --> 00:28:01.256
If you or anyone on your team, this is kind of related to the clarity aspect.

332
00:28:01.476 --> 00:28:14.578
If you or anyone on your team doesn't understand the vision, mission, strategy, priorities, kind of how you're measuring progress against those things or how their role fits in, you have a leadership opportunity.

333
00:28:14.778 --> 00:28:15.798
Your team is not clear.

334
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:22.579
If you can't remember the last time you gave feedback to your direct reports or you received

335
00:28:27.295 --> 00:28:30.338
More than likely, you've got a leadership challenge in there somewhere.

336
00:28:30.358 --> 00:28:33.681
You're not having the kind of conversations that you need to be having.

337
00:28:33.801 --> 00:28:53.818
And probably my last one and might be the best indicator is if you are constantly thinking that you're making decisions that others in your organization should be making, or you have to go to your leader for decisions you believe you should be able to make, you definitely have a leadership opportunity to pursue.

338
00:28:55.422 --> 00:28:56.483
That is really helpful.

339
00:28:56.683 --> 00:29:01.984
And I guarantee you, I guarantee you, you've gotten the attention of a lot of our listeners.

340
00:29:02.805 --> 00:29:03.805
Their ears are perked up.

341
00:29:03.825 --> 00:29:05.566
They're like, wait, that sounds familiar.

342
00:29:06.126 --> 00:29:07.426
That really resonates with me.

343
00:29:09.187 --> 00:29:13.608
But let's get into a couple hypothetical scenarios to make it even more practical.

344
00:29:14.449 --> 00:29:18.390
So I'm a listener, like some of this stuff, like, you know, I'm...

345
00:29:19.530 --> 00:29:20.451
It's resonating with me.

346
00:29:20.491 --> 00:29:25.295
I'm like, I think that actually might describe me, but I'm the pastor of a church that's growing.

347
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Attendance is up.

348
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Programs are expanding.

349
00:29:30.439 --> 00:29:31.820
But my staff is exhausted.

350
00:29:31.860 --> 00:29:35.363
Kind of like you were saying, I'm exhausted, frustrated, increasingly unhappy.

351
00:29:36.623 --> 00:29:40.867
What might be happening under the surface that might be causing that dichotomy?

352
00:29:41.470 --> 00:29:41.690
Right.

353
00:29:42.592 --> 00:29:46.597
Well, and I've seen this in some of my church history.

354
00:29:46.677 --> 00:29:49.340
I've certainly seen it in my marketplace past.

355
00:29:49.761 --> 00:29:51.583
I mean, growth is fantastic, right?

356
00:29:52.404 --> 00:29:54.747
In almost all settings, that's part of our mission.

357
00:29:54.787 --> 00:29:56.389
That's part of our objective is to grow.

358
00:29:57.363 --> 00:30:04.609
But growth also has a way of exposing weaknesses in leadership, whether you're talking structure, capacity, capability, right?

359
00:30:05.330 --> 00:30:08.352
As I mentioned, I've seen this in the marketplace.

360
00:30:08.492 --> 00:30:10.995
What worked when an organization was smaller may not work.

361
00:30:11.889 --> 00:30:13.770
when the organization is at a new scale.

362
00:30:14.831 --> 00:30:16.692
Decision-making gets more complicated.

363
00:30:17.433 --> 00:30:18.593
Roles become unclear.

364
00:30:19.514 --> 00:30:20.535
Communication breaks down.

365
00:30:20.575 --> 00:30:22.736
Leaders become bottlenecks.

366
00:30:23.337 --> 00:30:28.080
So if attendance is up, those things you described, right, I wouldn't necessarily say that's bad by any stretch.

367
00:30:28.120 --> 00:30:29.441
Let's celebrate the growth.

368
00:30:30.261 --> 00:30:34.064
But I'd also step and ask, what is that growth requiring of us now?

369
00:30:36.547 --> 00:30:40.753
I've often heard leaders in the marketplace say, what got us here won't get us there.

370
00:30:41.734 --> 00:30:46.740
So I think that's some of what you need to understand is you've been doing something right to get to this point.

371
00:30:47.461 --> 00:30:52.428
But is it the same something you need to do to manage what's there or even get you to the next point?

372
00:30:52.488 --> 00:30:52.728
Yeah.

373
00:30:53.672 --> 00:30:59.135
You know, questions like, do we have the right leadership practices for what we're kind of the season we are now in?

374
00:31:00.256 --> 00:31:02.678
Is the current structure still serving us well?

375
00:31:03.318 --> 00:31:06.680
Do we have the capacity to sustain what we've grown into?

376
00:31:08.021 --> 00:31:13.064
Are people clear about their roles and where their work connects to what we have to do now?

377
00:31:13.704 --> 00:31:17.767
And I just, you know, healthy leadership isn't just about leading through that growth.

378
00:31:23.410 --> 00:31:30.634
allow that current situation to be healthy, but also I'm assuming if you've been growing, it hopefully isn't going to stop, right?

379
00:31:30.914 --> 00:31:39.478
You've got to take some action to ensure that you can continue to manage it effectively going forward and that you're not going to wear out your staff and your volunteers in the process.

380
00:31:40.072 --> 00:31:40.572
That's good.

381
00:31:40.592 --> 00:31:41.393
All right.

382
00:31:41.533 --> 00:31:43.655
One more hypothetical for you.

383
00:31:44.316 --> 00:31:45.997
I have good people on my church staff.

384
00:31:46.017 --> 00:31:51.942
They love Jesus, care deeply about the mission, but we're just always stepping on each other's toes.

385
00:31:52.002 --> 00:31:53.203
Decisions take forever.

386
00:31:53.283 --> 00:31:54.744
Responsibilities aren't clear.

387
00:31:54.944 --> 00:31:57.106
And things fall through the cracks a lot.

388
00:31:57.907 --> 00:31:58.827
What does that tell you?

389
00:31:58.847 --> 00:32:06.214
Yeah, I mean, my initial reaction is that it's probably not a people problem.

390
00:32:06.989 --> 00:32:10.473
It's probably a kind of a clarity and an alignment problem.

391
00:32:10.533 --> 00:32:19.783
And I admit that's kind of the lens that I oftentimes see these things through is I'm going to explore those kinds of things before I'm going to say we need to talk about new people or different people or whatever.

392
00:32:19.964 --> 00:32:20.164
Right.

393
00:32:21.225 --> 00:32:23.327
I just think it's an important distinction because.

394
00:32:24.448 --> 00:32:29.073
You can have, this gets back to the spiritual formation and leadership formation discussion a bit.

395
00:32:29.113 --> 00:32:45.490
You can have people who love Jesus and have strong spiritual lives and care deeply about the mission, and they still may not have the leadership formation they need to lead the organization well through challenging times or growth times or, you know, all times.

396
00:32:46.331 --> 00:32:46.551
Yeah.

397
00:32:47.595 --> 00:32:49.297
So they may not know who owns what.

398
00:32:49.377 --> 00:32:52.720
They may not know how decisions should be made most effectively.

399
00:32:52.760 --> 00:33:03.950
They may not know how authority needs to be shared amongst the team, how their roles fit together, you know, how to bring clarity around mission, vision, and priorities, and all that kind of fun stuff.

400
00:33:05.952 --> 00:33:10.557
So again, this is one of the reasons why I do talk about leadership formation versus spiritual formation.

401
00:33:10.697 --> 00:33:11.898
You can have those kinds of

402
00:33:13.596 --> 00:33:20.006
people that are all about the mission and so on, but they've got a gap in terms of their leadership formation and practice.

403
00:33:20.707 --> 00:33:20.888
Um,

404
00:33:22.418 --> 00:33:33.861
But I think the kinds of things you described around, what did you say, responsibilities being unclear or decisions taking too long, things falling through the cracks, it's not necessarily that you need to find different people, right?

405
00:33:33.961 --> 00:33:41.182
I mean, I would say the first place to look is think about, again, how you're operating and how your leadership model is working.

406
00:33:41.202 --> 00:33:44.643
Because humans are obviously living organisms, right?

407
00:33:45.103 --> 00:33:49.904
Organizations are made up of those humans, which is also, you know, creates living organisms.

408
00:33:53.526 --> 00:34:05.297
I feel like some leaders may not love hearing this, but they kind of require constant attention, feedback, refinement, so on and so forth, because your environment is rarely the same one year to the next.

409
00:34:06.097 --> 00:34:09.398
Hmm, that's good.

410
00:34:09.499 --> 00:34:10.479
This has been really helpful.

411
00:34:10.499 --> 00:34:11.980
You've given me a lot to think about.

412
00:34:12.040 --> 00:34:25.005
You've, I think, provided some vocabulary and some framework to the challenges that we all know, whether we're pastors or elders or volunteers at a church, all of this is sort of familiar territory for us.

413
00:34:25.045 --> 00:34:29.427
But the framework and the way you've approached is really helpful.

414
00:34:30.268 --> 00:34:34.930
Since we're coming up on time, I want to close it with this final question.

415
00:34:36.123 --> 00:34:49.207
For the pastor who's listening, who recognizes that their church is in one of these scenarios that we talked about, but maybe they feel like, but I'm the senior pastor, I'm supposed to know how to lead this.

416
00:34:50.187 --> 00:34:51.247
What would you say to them?

417
00:34:53.108 --> 00:34:54.288
Great question.

418
00:34:55.368 --> 00:35:02.450
You know, certainly I realized that this can be a difficult gap, for lack of a better term, for a senior pastor to acknowledge and admit.

419
00:35:03.357 --> 00:35:03.597
Right.

420
00:35:03.957 --> 00:35:09.482
But I also believe that humility and vulnerability are important aspects of healthy leadership.

421
00:35:09.542 --> 00:35:15.326
And this is an opportunity to demonstrate that perhaps to yourself and to your team, maybe.

422
00:35:16.447 --> 00:35:19.509
So I'd ask a couple of maybe simple questions.

423
00:35:20.330 --> 00:35:22.991
You know, why do you think you're supposed to know how to do this?

424
00:35:23.852 --> 00:35:24.072
Right.

425
00:35:24.132 --> 00:35:28.375
Where and when were you taught or formed to do this?

426
00:35:29.395 --> 00:35:32.537
Have you ever had a healthy leader to learn from in your past?

427
00:35:32.577 --> 00:35:41.021
I mean, to me, I found this true in business, but I think it's especially true in churches is that for some reason, people think this just comes naturally.

428
00:35:41.702 --> 00:35:48.446
That because you're a solid preacher, because you're a solid anything, folks think that leadership is just going to come naturally.

429
00:35:49.166 --> 00:35:52.208
And again, my primary assertion here is it doesn't.

430
00:35:53.188 --> 00:36:05.177
And I think that it just isn't being good as an individual contributor, if you will, or being good at one thing doesn't necessarily mean that you can immediately transition into a leadership role and be good at that, too.

431
00:36:05.297 --> 00:36:06.438
It's a different job.

432
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:21.944
I can't tell you how many folks in business, the first time I promoted them into a leadership role, it required significant effort, right, to make that transition happen, both from me and from them to get there.

433
00:36:22.184 --> 00:36:23.505
It doesn't just come naturally.

434
00:36:23.545 --> 00:36:23.745
So,

435
00:36:24.914 --> 00:36:37.639
And, you know, this is one where I might take an opportunity to challenge a pastor as well and say, hey, you know, God has entrusted your staff to your leadership and your volunteers, right?

436
00:36:38.620 --> 00:36:41.881
God loves them just like you do, and he's trusted you to lead them together.

437
00:36:43.303 --> 00:36:46.046
Shouldn't we love and trust them enough to lead them well?

438
00:36:47.248 --> 00:36:52.654
But I'd also, you know, maybe that's when I start getting a little too much in their face about it, depending on the conversation I'm having.

439
00:36:52.674 --> 00:36:55.237
But I think all you have to do is look at

440
00:36:56.282 --> 00:37:00.083
the amount of leadership material that's out there, right?

441
00:37:00.704 --> 00:37:03.385
Books and podcasts and events and so on and so forth.

442
00:37:03.745 --> 00:37:07.906
I think there's just a dearth of information and there's gotta be a reason for that, right?

443
00:37:08.786 --> 00:37:11.647
It's got to be that this is something that people need help with.

444
00:37:12.348 --> 00:37:18.770
I've heard a couple of these leadership gurus more on the general market or kind of marketplace side of things say it's kind of,

445
00:37:20.082 --> 00:37:23.104
Some people might find the dot dot, I even have a job doing this, right?

446
00:37:23.124 --> 00:37:24.804
Because again, they think it just comes naturally.

447
00:37:24.884 --> 00:37:27.266
And my experience is just that it doesn't.

448
00:37:27.466 --> 00:37:40.552
And certainly I'd hope that pastors don't necessarily hear that as an indictment of their leadership, but an invitation to keep growing in a craft that God's entrusted to them.

449
00:37:43.012 --> 00:37:44.673
because I believe a leader can always get better.

450
00:37:44.693 --> 00:37:46.334
There's no shame in that.

451
00:37:46.474 --> 00:37:57.321
And again, the best leaders that I've worked with in the marketplace are always, you know, they're students of leadership and they're always looking for ways to improve and get better.

452
00:37:58.145 --> 00:37:58.385
Yes.

453
00:37:58.745 --> 00:37:58.965
Yes.

454
00:37:59.005 --> 00:38:00.066
Well, I love it.

455
00:38:00.086 --> 00:38:02.147
I love the invitation to keep growing.

456
00:38:02.207 --> 00:38:05.768
I think we all have a responsibility to do that and to continue to be students.

457
00:38:06.488 --> 00:38:08.329
Thank you, Jeff, for this conversation.

458
00:38:08.369 --> 00:38:09.670
It's been really enlightening.

459
00:38:10.530 --> 00:38:20.414
We will include the link to your website in our show notes so that our listeners can get in touch with you and can read up about what you're doing.

460
00:38:21.034 --> 00:38:22.155
It's truly been my pleasure.

461
00:38:22.175 --> 00:38:24.055
I appreciate the opportunity.

462
00:38:24.115 --> 00:38:25.516
Can I just maybe say one other

463
00:38:28.097 --> 00:38:31.838
If a pastor does want to talk, this is not a big commitment, right?

464
00:38:32.618 --> 00:38:35.439
All they're doing is simply opening a conversation.

465
00:38:36.639 --> 00:38:37.579
There's no sales pitch.

466
00:38:37.699 --> 00:38:45.381
I really am just trying to understand the context that the leader is in and what they're seeing and if there's something I can do to help.

467
00:38:46.481 --> 00:38:54.883
I'm really trying to identify folks that, again, are resonating with the things that I'm saying and that I can truly be helpful to them in their context.

468
00:38:55.183 --> 00:38:56.603
So I appreciate the opportunity here.

469
00:38:58.147 --> 00:38:58.710
Thank you, Jeff.

470
00:38:59.273 --> 00:38:59.735
My pleasure.

471
00:38:59.756 --> 00:39:00.077
Thank you.