H. Henry Williams

Summit Reflections (Part 10)

10 hours at a calling center.

The Jack Welch interview was one of the best sessions for ideas, humor and Hybels' characteristic spiritual conversations with a marketplace leader regarding his spiritual life. When Hybels asked Welch about communicating vision and energizing people, he illustrated what he meant with a recent trip he took to a call center for an online university he's leading. He flew in and spent ten hours interacting with 40 callers making sure these phone recruiters understood and owned the vision of the university. It's like he wouldn't leave until they really got it.

Declaration: I don't make sure people really get it. The greatest thing that happens to me with our team when I lay out vision is that someone plays dumb and asks a bunch of questions to get me to be clear and then clearer and then really, really clear. When the questions come, I start listing all the things I don't mean, I tell stories, I use analogies. But without questions, I just move on. Dumb. No, really dumb. Can I learn? Let's see. I will make sure people get it and not move on until they do so that we all share and own the vision and are energized by it.

Summit Reflections (Part 9)

What if a great athlete only got feedback on performance only once a year?

That was Daniel Pink on motivation, talking about the yearly performance review. When our staff leadership team completed the Leadership Practices Inventory, with feedback from ten other staff and volunteers for each of us, my lowest scores were in the category of "encouraging the heart." My first thought was, "These people around me are so needy. Why can't they be self-motivated like I am." That was my second and third and fourth thought...until I got over my anger. Then I realized how much I love and seek feedback from others. I love to be encouraged. I'm not nearly as "self-motivated" as I think I am. Besides, I scored myself lowest in that category!

With that realization and admission I set out to be a better encourager of our staff leadership team and others. I set out to let people know how much I appreciated them (to move it from my heart to my mouth) and to do more coaching along the way.

This will probably never be one of my strengths because of the way I'm wired. I'm pretty task-driven and I'm an information hound ("Input" and "Learner" are two of my "signature strengths" in StrengthsFinder). But I've been told more than once that I'm improving. And it is vitally important that I improve because I've got great people on our leadership team. Like great athletes, they're hungry for coaching, encouragement, pastoring and feedback from me. 

Declaration: I will prioritize encouraging, praying for, coaching and pastoring our staff leadership team.

Reward motives not work well for complex tasks
A leader defined by followership...never arrives
Everybody thinks everyone else only cares about money
Our nature is to be active and engaged
Management is a technology from the 1850's designed to get compliance
20% time (gmail, Google News)
What if a great athlete only got feedback once per year

Summit Reflections (Part 8)

Poke holes above the waterline.

This is what Gore-Tex employees are encouraged to do. Innovate and create but don't poke holes below the waterline and sink the ship. What's below the line? Their core values as a company. Lots and lots of freedom as long as the core values are followed. 

The interview with the Gore-Tex CEO was fascinating as she described an organizational structure that is highly collaborative company-wide, peer-based (the CEO is basically elected, as are other leaders, and everyone understand that their job is to make everyone else successful) and places a high value on the individual. One of the most unusual aspects of this company is that they don't allow any manufacturing plant or other facility to grow beyond 250 people. 

Declaration: I've been talking about innovation in ministry over the past year or so. I'd love to see more of our members launch new ministries to targeted groups of people in the church and outside the church. But we have not taken steps to clearly outline how that can happen at Five Oaks (how we can support people's innovations, the boundaries, the core values that can't be violated, etc.). I'm hoping this will happen as we develop a more intentional mobilization ministry over the next couple of years.

My Favorite Summit Session (Summit Reflections, Part 7)

I was prepared for disappointment but not years of disappointment...I wasn't prepared to be a disappointment.

Jeff Manion's session was my favorite. We will play this one in our services some day after the Summit DVD's come out. Manion talked about living in "the land between." Like the Israelites in the wilderness, living between Egypt and the Promised Land, we go through wilderness times in our lives. 

The land between is hard to go through and it can be long, but it is fertile ground for transformational growth. But growth is not automatic. There is danger to our souls in the land between. Complaint against God can set in, but trust evicts complaint. 

Declaration: I will continue to trust God in the land between. I will rejoice.

Summit Reflections (Part 6)

I guess that's a tension we have to manage.

This was from Andy Stanley's closing talk from day one. Some problems/tensions should not be solved. Example? Work and personal life. Solve it one way or the other and you're likely to lose your family or lose your job. Life is filled with these kinds of tensions. Church life too. Grow believers and reach people far from God. It's a tension we have to manage.

Declaration: I think this is something our team will be saying to each other for a long time to come. We will learn to better identify the tensions that should not be solved but should be managed.

Summit Reflections (Part 5)

Your only job is to help your players get better.

Chuck Knoll's instructions to Tony Dungy as a young assistant coach that ended up guiding him all his career. A recipe for creating a Super Bowl or any great team. 

Declaration: It's not my only job, but our church will be most effective when I model equipping my team and helping them get better. I will coach my teammates to be better followers of Christ and leaders.

Summit Highlights Video

Check out highlights from all the Summit speakers whether you attended or not at Summit Highlights.

Summit Reflections (Part 4)

Mom, can we go find some darkness.

The words of Christine Caine's daughter after buying a flashlight in Walmart. Great picture of our call to tell the world about Christ, isn't it? It really stuck in my mind. We'll be taking on an exciting prayer and evangelism challenge again this fall. God is calling us to shine in the darkness.

Declaration: I will pray for divine appointments.

Summit Reflections (Part 3)

Count your blessings...literally.

Jim Collins--author of one of the most celebrated leadership books ever (Good to Great) and one of my all-time favorites--talked about how great companies fall. One of primary causes is arrogance ("hubris born of success"). Collins loves data and he says the data from his team's research actually shows that the greatest leaders are humble. And he suggested that one way of developing humility is to count your blessing. He recommended using an Excel spreadsheet! Come up with at least one hundred.

How does this develop humility? You realize how much you have that you did not earn. (Sounds a lot like grace.) Just this morning I was listening to a show on MPR talking about Warren Buffet's challenge to the world's billionaires to join him in giving at least half of their wealth away. Buffet recognizes that if he had been born in a poor village in Peru, he would likely be a poor farmer and his talents would have gone unused.

Declaration: Actually, I've been doing this a lot lately. I've been listing, out loud and sometimes with Lois, what we have been blessed with as an antidote to some inexplicable blues I've been experiencing. One evening in particular, just before going to sleep, I was doing this, and it was as if a cloud lifted immediately (doesn't always happen that way). The next morning I was full of energy. I had been stuck on the message I'm preaching this weekend and the next morning I wrote it in about two hours right after I got up. (I love energy. Great for creativity.). Anyway, I declare that I will continue to count my blessing...literally.

Summit Reflections (Part 2)

You made us vomit.

In Hybels' opening session he talked about how important it is to have the right people working with you as you move people from here to there. You need a great team around you. So he asked us to imagine getting a text right now telling you that a staff member has resigned. He said you will probably have one of three reactions:

• Relief.
• Deep disappointment. You know this person is going to be really hard to replace.
• You will read it, reread it, run into the lobby, and vomit.

Hybels said he and his leadership team combed the names of their staff determining which ones are in the third category. Then they met with them and told them that they made them vomit. Of course, they explained what that means. They also said, "We're hoping you want to be here for a long time and we want to develop you to the fullest potential. Tell us what you need to succeed and what you think needs to be fixed so you can fix it."

Declaration: Make the Board and the congregation vomit. (Be that kind of pastor to our congregation.)

Declaration: Tell the high impact people around me (staff, volunteers and sacrificial givers) how much I appreciate them, how much they mean to me and how important their ideas and concerns are to me. Then listen!