Building Leadership Development Habits

by: Mac Lake

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Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of habit says, “A habit is a formula our brain automatically follows.” It’s something you do that’s on autopilot. But one of the most important things to understand about a habit is you have to build it. It’s not automatic. We have to cross what I call the Discipline to Habit barrier. First, we have to develop discipline, discipline is something we do willingly, consciously and intentionally, but not automatically. The more we do it, it becomes ingrained in us and over time it moves from being a Discipline to being a Habit. It becomes automatic to us.

The practice of developing leaders is typically not something most people would say is a habit for them. But if you want to see an abundance of talent and a deep bench in the leadership pipeline of your church it will require specific consistent behaviors to make it happen.

In this video, I share 6 habits you can build that will impact your ability to develop more leaders for your leadership pipeline. I’ll share the habit, but then give you an action step with each so you can begin to do them as disciplines but eventually build these into habits over time.

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I would love to hear your comments on this topic so please comment below. Share the LINK for this video with your team and use the questions below in your next meeting.

LINK: https://youtu.be/0yuIriR5TZw

Discussion Questions:

1. Which of the 6 Habits comes most naturally to you?
2. Which of the 6 habits do you need to develop into your leadership? What impact would it have it you became consistent with that habit?
3. What stood out to you the most from this video?
4. What one action step could you take that would make the biggest difference in your leadership development efforts?

> Read more from Mac.

Tags: Leadership Development, Mac Lake, habits

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How an Actionable, Gospel-Centered Plan Makes the Difference in Your Life

by: Kelly Kannwischer

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The Exponential 2019 conference rebooted the age-old conversation in the church about personal call. Unlike Elvis, we at Younique don’t want “a little less conversation,” but we do want to see a lot more action.

Since the beginning of the Jesus movement, disciples have been exploring what it means to be faithful in their families, in their communities, and even in their work. Redeeming the Greek notion of work as a curse, Christian thought leaders throughout the centuries declared the dignity of work and the importance of bringing justice to social and economic systems.

Unfortunately, today’s culture has fallen into the ditch on the other side of the road from the ancient Greeks. For many modern people, work has become a religion, an identity unto itself. In a recent article in The Atlantic entitled “The Religion of Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” Derek Thompson describes how people are turning to their work instead of their faith for meaning and fulfillment.

Meanwhile, the church is becoming attuned to both the need and the power of helping our people name their personal calling. For example, model Hailey Bieber (wife of popstar Justin Bieber) is one of many celebrities featured in a docu-series from Hillsong Church hosted by Christian businesswoman Natalie Manuel Lee. The show explores how purpose and identity play out in the modern world. In addition, many of us read books that explore these questions, from The Call, by Os Guinness, to Culture Making, by Andy Crouch, and more besides.

Believers also go to the Bible for answers. At Younique, we lean into Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 2. Paul begins by celebrating the power of the resurrection and the life we have inherited through faith in Jesus. Then he goes on in verse 10 to describe our new life through Christ as one that has purpose and potential. We are portrayed as God’s masterpiece—the Greek word is poema. We are a one-of-a-kind work of art that is full of possibility for partnership with God in His Kingdom purposes.

This portrait of a believer’s potential is so beautiful and compelling that we naturally begin to wonder, “What about me? Who am I, and what are the good works that God has prepared in advance for me to do?”

Yet here is where the disconnect begins in the church, because it is much easier to talk about “being,” “doing,” and “going” than it is to create an actionable, gospel-centered plan to make it happen in our lives.

I recently read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. Clear notes that there is a sharp difference between motion and action. It is easy for us to be in motion and convince ourselves that we are making progress. We run lots of programs and offer great classes believing that we are making headway in helping our people on their discipleship journey. While some of these may be effective actions, many fall into the category of mere motion—activity without impact.

Younique is our answer to the problem of how to take action in the realm of personal call. Younique is a replicable process for helping people to design their lives according to their Ephesians 2:10 calling.

We believe the vision of your church won’t be fully realized until each person in your church is released into their own personal calling. They are the hands and feet of Jesus, and God has prepared good works for them to do since before the creation of the world. Instead of asking individuals to plug in to events or programs based on the need for volunteers, what if you had a process to engage their special assignment from God where they live, work, and play?

Stop intending to help people—take action! James Clear continues to help us understand where we fall short by talking about the difference between goals and systems. Goals are where we start, but they are insufficient to deliver results. “Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.”

Younique is the system to help people be, do, and go. We are committed to installing into the local church a sustainable disciple-making process that you lead with your people. The church is the hero, empowering and equipping people to step confidently into their best for what is next.

If you haven’t yet experienced the power of Younique’s life design system, then I invite you to join us at an upcoming Younique Accelerator or one of our free webinars.

Tags: Gospel-centered, Kelly Kannwischer, LifePlan, habits, younique

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Build New Habits to Insure You Meet Your Goals

by: Tim Kastelle

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The problem with goals is that most of them are too big, and they take a long time, and that requires work.  That’s also what makes them worthwhile!  But on a day-to-day basis, you need to figure out how to build the habits that will eventually get you to your goals.

Charles Duhigg wrote a great book on how to break bad habits and build better ones – The Power of Habit.  Here is his flow chart for building habits (click on the image to see it full-size):

 

> If your goal is to lose weight, you need to change your eating (input) and exercise (output) habits.

> If your goal is to write a book, you need to change your writing habits.

Austin Kleon wrote a great post on breaking goals down into habits. He says to do something small, every day:

Figure out what your little daily chunk of work is, and every day, no matter what, make sure it gets done.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. We’re all busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. People often ask me, “How do you find the time for the work?” And I answer, “I look for it.” You find time the same place you find spare change: in the nooks and crannies. You find it in the cracks between the big stuff—your commute, your lunch break, the few hours after your kids go to bed. You might have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time to work if you look for it.

What I usually recommend: get up early. Get up early and work for a couple hours on the thing you really care about. When you’re done, go about your day…

Do the work every day. Fill the boxes on your calendar. Don’t break the chain.

This approach works pretty well for most of our personal goals.  But what if our goal is to make our organizations more innovative?

That’s a bit trickier.  The main reason is that innovation is a lot more complex.  Complex systems are trickier because they require us to approach our goals indirectly.  This excerpt from John Kay’s terrific book Obliquity outlines the issue:

If you want to go in one direction, the best route may involve going in the other. Paradoxical as it sounds, goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly. So the most profitable companies are not the most profit-oriented, and the happiest people are not those who make happiness their main aim. The name of this idea? Obliquity.

Obliquity is relevant whenever complex systems evolve in an uncertain environment, and whenever the effect of our actions depends on the ways in which others respond to them.

Innovation is another thing that we need to approach obliquely.  So what habits should we build to help?  Here are some ideas that I’ve run across in the past couple of days:

• Take care of yourself.  Jason Cohen points out that we are happier and more productive when we get enough sleep, exercise, and take time to think.
• Practice divergent thinking. It’s a mistake to jump straight to solutions when we’re trying to innovate.  First, we have to explore a broad range of ideas.  Olaf Kowalik writes about how to use divergent thinking to do this – and this is a key innovation skill.
• Read widely. Jorge Barba makes an important point at the end of his post recommending some innovation books to read:
  One more thing: everything is connected in some way, so read about anything and everything. Not just books that have “innovation” in the title.
  

To innovate, you need the process, but you also need to muddle your way through a bit.  So some of the habits you need to build are oblique – like getting enough sleep.  Others are more direct, like blocking out time for thinking and allocating resources for building your ideas.

The main point is that things that are worth doing take effort over an extended period of time.

You need to build habits that will ensure that you make that effort.

Read more from Tim here.

Tags: Innovation, Tim Kastelle, habits, ministry innovation

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