10 NON-NEGOTIABLES FOR LIVING AND LEADING OTHERS

Setting Healthy Boundaries to Be Intentional

INTRODUCTION

Why This Topic?

The “5 minute elevator speech” is a challenging idea.  The concept stretches business people and managers to narrow down how they might describe their business to a stranger, and bring focus and clarity to their career, their life endeavor.  Quite challenging, I must say.  One thing I always admired about leaders and speakers like the late President Robert Reardon, former president of Anderson University in Anderson, IN, was his incredible, powerful ability to say very little, but always said so much. 

Those who possess this ability seem to have one very powerful discipline in common – they do their research and homework ahead of time.  They seem to build on a concept in a very organized and clear way.  The preparation for these kinds of people pays close attention to detail, to context.  Verbal processors struggle with this discipline.  (I know, I am one.)  Instead of taking time to form thoughts on paper ahead of time, I’m often guilty of simply opening my mouth and thinking, all at the same time.  My father always accused me of allowing the mouth to be 2 sentences ahead of the brain.  President Reardon was different in this respect.  He was well versed and well prepared when he spoke.  It seems that each thought, every concept had been painstakingly gone over, thought through, and presented, like an elevator speech, with great forethought and planning.  He seemed to relish in the difficult task of preparation, of refining the details first.

For speakers and personalities like me, this always seemed like overkill at first.  Slowing down long enough to prepare, to organize, to lay out a plan just seemed like it brought the momentum, the excitement to a screeching halt.  It seemed like time wasted, when you could be out living your life rather than stopping long enough to prepare.   In my past, life was lived one hundred miles an hour, taking in all of life’s experiences, and living what I thought was “a life to the full.”  This is where we begin this book together with a challenge to take some time to slow down, to study and read these pages very carefully, to set aside other agenda items in life and thought, and simply invest the time to prepare well.  I promise you, from one type A to another, the contents of this work will serve as the foundation for your “living of life” if you will allow the time here to study, read and prepare.

Portions of this book are being written from the beautiful setting of Hudson Beach, just north of Clearwater, Florida.  Hudson is a very small, hidden beach on the western inter-coastal water way of Florida’s Gulf of Mexico.  As I write, I’ve noticed that there are a series of poles and triangle –shaped signs that seem to be directing incoming and outgoing boat traffic through the inner-coastal waterway.  From the beach it looks like you could just hit the gas and head to the open water.  Instead, these signs have been specifically placed ahead of time to direct boat traffic in a zigzag pattern around what appears to be obvious obstacles and danger under the surface.  Once again, if it were me, I probably would have simply gunned the boat and headed in a straight line out to sea. 

This tendency to see mere action and speed as progress essentially describes my first 15 years of leadership and marriage. There was very little, if any, time spent processing, organizing and articulating a plan, a context, or placing any signs of danger.  Instead, it was just about as simple as “I’m the dad.  I’m the husband.  I’m the pastor.  I’m the leader, follow me.”  That kind of approach works fine if those you ask to follow either have to because they live with you, or are too intimated to challenge this kind of leadership.    

Once placed into leadership roles outside the home and in ministry, it became quickly apparent that this kind of leadership approach bred doubt, confusion, intimidation, distance in communication, and a sense of a vague direction.  Just what I had hoped for, right?  Much of everything I thought was correct and appropriate for a leader was suddenly challenged and labeled “immature” at times.  They were right.  The trap of thinking “busy” meant “progress” wrapped itself around my ankles.  At first, children and my spouse and leadership newly appointed would follow me because of charisma alone.  They all soon found out that while we were speeding out to sea on a great adventure, we were encountering rocks and bumps along the way that a good, visionary leader, paying attention to details and planning ahead of time, would have navigated around easily.  That was a very trying time in my life personally. 

Thankfully, former senior pastors, parents, leaders and authors began addressing this approach to leadership.  In their own way, they each challenged me to take this excitement and desire to accomplish something great and spend crucial time getting ready before you run.  My mother once handed me a card in the midst of a great decision – making time in my ministry.  This card was handwritten and offered a quote of advice that read: 

“Blessed is he who hustles while he waits.”  Thomas Edison

That quote forever changed my life and my ministry, challenging me with the concept that accepting God’s vision and dream for me isn’t always about speed and experiencing the vision alone.  It often requires a time of preparation, of hustling, of getting ready in case God does decide to accomplish a powerful vision through me and my efforts.  This quote taught me that God often waits on me to hustle ahead of time, to prove to Him that if and when He decided to make a vision become reality in my life, I was actively getting ready, preparing and hustling ahead of time.  I know for some reading this, the topic of “vision” is a frustrating one.  Any good pastor or leader reading books and attending conferences has a probably filled libraries with books and DVD’s along this topic of vision.  We hear about it all the time.  We dream about it all the time.  We sense the pressure to come up with one all the time.  And yet, In all the conferences and DVD’s and books in my past, not one every practically helped me truly, powerfully move in a life/ministry changing way.  However, before you tune me out with this brief talk about vision, please read on.

For me, discussions and conferences about “core values” and “vision” and “mission” were always so filled with unusable information.  There was an understanding about the necessity for it all.  However, the way it was presented and led ended up becoming more busy work than anything.  Oh, how frustrating to spend that much time on something that felt right at the time, but ended up causing more frustration.  Upon our return, the “vision” we discussed and compiled was so idealistic and so far out of reach, it seemed impossible.  Secondly, it seemed like an “all or nothing” proposal.  You either accomplished this vision, or you failed.  There were no second level steps toward this dream, no context on changing our culture.  Retreats with leadership and church meetings often spent countless hours hashing through what was considered to be groundbreaking, life-giving direction and vision.  Instead, those hours of creativity and excitement gave way to fancy paragraphs on a website or a slick phrase on a business card or an artful slogan on a wall.  These seemingly powerful discoveries did little, if anything to change the culture and direction of the corporate entity, my family or me. The challenge remained focused on how to bring a vision and dream on a piece of paper to a true, deep, life-changing reality.   I knew there had to be a better way to define our church, a company, a family and an intentionally lived life.

Those in my sphere of influence seemed to be crying out for so much more from us as leaders and for themselves in the way of understanding God’s dream and vision.  Instead, we gave them activity, and projects and goals to meet, rather than personal clarity about God’s dream and vision for them as a person.

So, this book is the first in a series on a way of defining what you believe to be God’s vision personally, for a family, for a church or ministry, or an organization of any kind.  The concepts and thoughts to follow come from God’s Word, and from a life-long pursuit to be significant for Him in the most profound way.  I wish I could say that these thoughts solidified themselves prior to becoming a parent to our three sons.  Unfortunately, that is not true.  Instead, I began to see a pattern in my way of leading and understanding myself that was more destructive than helpful. 

I once attended a mission trip experience with a group from my church.  Upon arriving in this foreign country, our hosts met us with what we thought was a well laid out plan on the activities and strategy for the week.  Instead, we found out that everything we were told to prepare and plan for, everything we raised money for, everything we packed supplies for was not going to happen.  I remember the feeling in the cabin that night amongst our group.  It was a feeling of wasted time, of wasted effort, of confusion.  We were given the sense of a direction, and in midstream, in fact half way down the river, someone decided to row in a different direction.  While God did something awesome as a result later on, the emptiness of not knowing what was going on, and what should be happening, and feeling like we were going three steps backward rather than forward was so defeating.  It depleted the life and excitement and willingness to sacrifice from our group for a time.  That pretty well describes the way I led my life and family for the first few years of our marriage and parenting.  This style of leadership centers on indecision, the latest and greatest ideas, projects and rules and schedules rather than definition, purpose, and personal development of people as the main target. 

While our three sons have turned out to be incredible young men (thanks to their mother), I quickly saw that I had to begin leading in a different way, or I was going to frustrate these young men, my beautiful wife, and anyone I expected to follow me for eternity if I didn’t find a better way to position people for a win under my leadership.  The challenge – to define us before we initiated becoming “us.”

Without this clearly defined direction and vision, we beg people to question us.  Without doing the tough work of taking time to articulate and define our leadership and direction, we plead with people to breed doubt around us.  In my opinion, while unfortunately very prevalent in leadership today, leaving people in the dark without defining certain elements of our direction is quite simply, completely unfair to those we ask to follow us.  I just couldn’t stand to see that look on the faces of my kids, my wife, and those I expected to follow me in ministry ever again like I did on faces on those who attend that mission experience.  The following pages are a planned out, detailed description of this journey that I pray will encourage, challenge and lead you to a new level of leadership with those God has placed under your care.  I believe by the end of this text, you will re-position your role as the leader of your home, your ministry or career and your life.  This is a book about the “hustling” phase of being a great leader.