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Leadership: Doing life together makes it easier

I've been thinking a lot about leadership stuff over the last two weeks and I've been recalling lots of things that make the task of leadership challenging and fun. This morning all I can think about is the reality of where I'm leading now.  I'm not the captain of the Notre Dame Football Team anymore, I'm on staff in a church and as you can imagine there are some pretty DRASTIC differences between the two...BUT over the last 3 years as I've looked closer there are SO many similarities that it actually makes my leadership style relevant and effective. One of those similarities is that I LIVE with the team I lead. We do life together all the time through the way we work, it's awesome!  The other night after GSM we went out to eat at BW's to hang out.  It reminded me so much of the the days leaving football practice and walking to the dining hall with all my teammates to eat and talk about who got RAN OVER or who coach yelled at or who made an incredible play at practice or how hard our Calculus professor was! (He was hard!) Doing life together you get to talk about all the stuff that matters and even talk about trivial things that don't matter to much at all but lets you into the minds of how players on your team think. I LOVE IT!!! Leading and coaching people who you live with and who know you is different than what you get at conferences/workshops/seminars, which is what in college we used to call "The Visiting Leadership Coach". "The Visiting Leadership Coach" is someone who stands on a stage and presents leadership principles and best practices to an audience he/she doesn't know. The downside of this type of leadership is that it's easier to dish our leadership advice, coaching, or next steps to an audience you don't know but that's not what REALLY matters.  I mean think about it, how often have you went to a conference, got some AMAZING one-liners or leadership principles, that in the moment you thought was earth shattering, THEN got home and NEVER done anything with it.  Real effective huh?  That's not the world that matters most. In churches, what we're called to do on a daily basis isn't to spew leadership principles and best practices but to ACTUALLY coach, lead, and shepherd the flock that's in our care...and I've found that doing life together makes this easier.

Here's 5 simple reasons why:

1. Your team knows who you are...The more time you spend together the more they know your heart, the more they know what you mean beyond what you say....and the more they know when you're full of it. (I call it "Proximity Accountability". I might need to coin that phrase.)
2. They know you're WITH them...My dad once told me when I was at Notre Dame, it's hard for your team to know you're WITH them if you never see them 'off the field'.  If the only time you're WITH your team is when you're DOING ministry, YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY WITH THEM, you just work together!
3. You learn how to communicate better...The more you're with your team the more likely you are to communicate.  (note: the term "likely".   Proximity doesn't generate communication, it just gives you an opportunity FOR communication.) The only way to get better at communicating with your team...is to communicate more. Phone calls, emails, meetings, dinner, lunch, coffee, whatever it takes, use all of it as excuses to "talk".
4. You learn your "Group Talent"...the more your team is together the more you realize how true the statement is that "two heads are better than one".  I've always called that "Group Talent". (saving this for another post)
5. It accelerates unity and unity honors God...taking a tight-knit, well-oiled, pristine-conditioned leadership machine to those you lead is more effective and God honoring than taking a dis-jointed, self-serving, hodge-podge, rickety-old leadership machine. (Eph. 4)  It's easy to knod your head at this one but what does your leadership machine really look like if you had to draw a picture?

There are more but those are some of my favorites!  Have an amazing day!