Archive for March, 2009
Dreams: Have you included the people you need to realize them?
Posted by: | CommentsToday is the official publication date of my newest book. To celebrate its official release, here is an excerpt for you. I hope it provides you with food for thought and concrete instruction that you can apply to your life today.
Excerpted From
Chapter 6: The People Question:
Have I Included the People I Need to Realize My Dream?
According to pastor and friend Chris Hodges (on Twitter @chris_hodges), “a dream is a compelling vision you see in your heart that’s too big to accomplish without the help of others.” I have found that to be true in my life. I could not have fulfilled any of my dreams without the help of others. The list of people who have made a difference in my life is long. Literally hundreds and hundreds of people have helped me. Some have inspired me. Others have come alongside me to help. Many have adopted my dreams as their own. All have made a difference and added value to my life in ways that I cannot adequately express.
If you want to realize your dream, you need a team to help you. It’s hard to list all the things a team can do for you. There are so many. Recently I tried to put into words how my team helps me. Here’s what I wrote:
My team makes me better than I am.
My team multiplies my value to others.
My team enables me to do what I do best.
My team allows me to help others do their best.
My team gives me more time.
My team provides me with companionship.
My team helps me fulfill the desires of my heart.
My team compounds my vision and effort.
My team empowers me to realize my dream.
Without my team, I would not be able to do anything of significance.
Who Should Be on Your Dream Team?
How do you answer the People Question, which asks, Have I included the people I need to realize my dream? When I talk to people who have passion and a clear picture of their dream, I always ask them who they have enlisted to help them achieve it. Most good leaders know that they cannot accomplish their dreams on their own, and they start naming the people who are working with them. But some people seem dumbfounded by the question. It never occurs to them that they will need the assistance of others to achieve their dreams.
Who Do I Include on my Dream Team? Three Types of People:
1. People Who Inspire Me
Inspiration often gives birth to dreams, but it is also needed to keep dreams alive! We all need people to encourage us, cheer us on, and lift us to a higher level. Some people simply have that effect on us. When we are with them, they motivate us to live stronger, think better, work harder, and risk more. They compel us to continue!
2. People Who Are Honest with Me
Other people I need on my dream team are individuals who are willing to tell me the truth. That may at first seem contradictory to my desire to include people who inspire me, but that’s not the case. I don’t look for people who want to knock me down. Rather, I look for people who are willing and able to give me constructive feedback. That’s especially important in the area of dreams because, as Greek orator Demosthenes asserted, “Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, we readily believe.”
Many people never ask for honest feedback from others. I think they fear reality and worry that someone telling them the truth will discourage them so much that they’ll give up their dream. But a dream without honest feedback is often little more than make-believe. And a dream that cannot survive honest criticism is a dream that’s likely never to be attained.
3. People Whose Skills Complement Mine
You can’t do everything, and neither can I. Successful people seek help from individuals who are skilled in areas other than their own. Most of the people on my dream team are very different from me in their giftedness. Our team may have the same values, vision, and priorities, but each member is different in the area of skills and temperament. As a result, together we accomplish more than we ever would independent of one another. We complement and complete one another.
The kinds of people you need on your team depend on your particular abilities, experience, and temperament. Think about your strategy for achieving your dream. What must be done to achieve it? Which of those things best suit your abilities? Which will require the help of others with different skills? Where will you need people with experience? What kinds of tasks will require a temperament different from yours?
I don’t know what your dream is…
I don’t know what you desire to accomplish or who you will need to include to see your dream come to fruition. You may need only the encouragement and care of one other human being to help you keep going. Or you may need an army. Regardless of your situation, I can tell you that you do need others. The bigger the dream, the greater your need. But here’s the good news: the size of your dream determines the size of the people who will be attracted to it. If you have a very big dream, you have even greater potential for good people to help you. What you need to do is connect with them, invite them in, transfer the vision, and turn them loose.
***
This week I’m writing and spending time with family. And I’m already hard at work on the 2010 book. It’ll be on the importance of connecting for communicators.
Thank you for the incredible support you’ve shown for me and this blog. Here’s to continued interaction and added value!
Seeking creativity in its natural habitat
Posted by: | CommentsIn Part 1 on the topic of creativity, I told you that I didn’t fit the creative mold. But I didn’t let that stop me from working to become more creative.
I shared with you how I look to the creative thinking of others for the tools and inspiration to grow in this area. (If you haven’t read Part 1, click here to learn more.)
But learning from others wasn’t enough. I have discovered that my usual environment and learning methods sometimes make it very hard to get into a creative frame of mind.
Forget waiting for creativity to find you.
You see, I’ve been described as a “high energy person.” I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities, and I really like being busy. I find great enjoyment in multitasking.
In the Fast Company interview that I referenced in the last post, Teresa Amabile said, “Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”
That can be a problem for me: Lack of time. I’m capable of filling every hour with tasks and appointments. When that happens, creative thinking falls by the wayside.
To change this, I have to give creativity the time and attention it deserves.
The first thing I do is write thinking time onto my calendar like a regular appointment. And then I treat it like an appointment. I gather my legal pads, files and other resources, and I move from my normal work area and settle into a quiet, peaceful spot. There I narrow my focus.
Over time, I’ve developed the discipline to keep my mind from wandering off-topic. And carving out these distraction-free hours makes me quiet and still enough to let creative ideas “bubble up.”
When I was younger, my thinking spot was a rock on a hill. Later, I set up a “thinking chair” in my office, which I use solely for that purpose. These days, I also do some of my best thinking while swimming laps in the pool. It doesn’t replace the writing time that I still schedule. (I just haven’t found a waterproof legal pad yet…) But an hour of swimming laps back and forth, with its silence and rhythm, gives me just what I need to focus on one or two specific problems or ideas.
Maybe deep thinking and introspection comes more naturally for you. Even if it does, setting aside dedicated time for creative thinking will help you be intentional. No one can afford to go about their daily life waiting for the muse to strike. Instead, chase after and tackle her, doing so in a way that works for you.
No one person has a corner on all of the creativity.
If you want to do something creative, bring in others to help you. Now this comes easily for me. I love spending time with people. The synergy of a good conversation energizes me like nothing else.
And my favorite thing is to gather with people I respect for a shared creative meeting. In fact, I do this with just about everything I come up with. And I promise you, every idea I take into a collaborative environment comes out better than it was before.
Here’s a current example. My newest book, Put Your Dream to the Test, started out going in a completely different direction. Sitting with a “creative brain trust,” I shared an outline that I thought would be great for the new book. But as we batted it around, my writer, Charlie, zeroed in on a single chapter and its outline. He spoke up: “John, THIS is the book you need to write.” The energy in the room ignited. We all knew very quickly that he was right. And that single chapter outline bloomed into one for the entire book. I think it goes without saying that Put Your Dream to the Test is a much better book than that original outline would have produced.
Do you share your creative ideas with others? Or do you merely turn them over and over within your own mind? If so, you might be limiting your ideas, when including others in the process could take them to a level 10.
Pull together a team of people who can increase the creative energy in a room. Then toss your idea into the middle of the table and let them have at it.
Want to be more creative? Be proactive. Schedule it. Chase after it. Don’t wait for the muse to strike. Creative thoughts rarely come and find us. We have to be intentional about finding them.
Put Your Dream to the Test is available online and in bookstores now.
Want to learn more? Read the entire first chapter here.
Developing your creativity – even if you’re not sure it’s within you.
Posted by: | CommentsOne magazine I enjoy reading is Fast Company. And I recently came across an interview there with Teresa Amabile It’s from a few years ago, but it really got me thinking.
Amabile heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. For eight years, she and her colleagues combed through a study they conducted on creativity in the mid-1990s – in which they looked at creativity “in the wild.”
“We wanted to crawl inside people’s heads,” explained Amabile, “and understand the features of their work environment as well as the experiences and thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.”
In the end they came up with “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Take a look at the entire interview. It’s a fascinating study, and I found myself agreeing with its conclusions.
The article also prompted me to share some of my own observations about creativity. This felt especially timely in light of our tough economic situation, when innovation is so important.
In fact, I found that I have so much to say on the subject that I can’t do it all in one blog post. So the following is Part 1 in what I want to communicate on building creativity. Let me know if it helps you.
Creatively Challenged
I discovered my own need for creativity in a college class. At the beginning of the semester, everyone took a quiz to measure creative potential. My result? I registered very low on the creativity scale.
I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t a creative person? Did this mean I would end up one of those boring pastors? I really hoped not.
Many years later, the Harvard study seems to show that the rationale behind any kind of creativity assessment is flawed, because the first myth on their list is, “Creativity comes from creative types.”
Amabile explains that creative “types” don’t have a monopoly on creative thinking. To the contrary, she says, “almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.”
Fortunately for my college self, even though I didn’t have access to the Harvard research, I was still too young and ignorant to be totally discouraged by the test. I decided right then that even if I wasn’t born creative, I would become creative.
Creative Thinking Does Not Begin in a Vacuum.
Creative people don’t necessarily sit down with a blank piece of paper and invent something completely new. In fact, they usually start by turning to the creative work of others to help them solve their particular problem.
Right after I saw the score on that assessment test, I set my mind to studying creativity. I started collecting creative material: quotes, articles, notes from speeches, books, whatever I could get my hands on. Everything was categorized and filed. At first this did a lot to teach me how creative minds thought.
Soon I discovered that it inspired creative thinking within me.
After that, whenever I planned a message, book, or article, I would pull out my file on that topic and read through the material.
One quote would get me thinking about a concept that would become a point in my lesson. I’d read an article, and because I disagreed with one point, I would come up with three points that I did believe were true.
(Note that I work hard not to use the ideas of others and claim them as my own. If I know a source for a quote or idea, I always give credit. And for my books especially, my writer and I spend hours tracking down sources and obtaining permissions to quote others. If you’re unclear on what exactly plagiarism is, see this helpful article from Purdue University.)
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Read what’s out there. Ask yourself why you like what the author said. Or why you disagree. Come up with what you would say to disprove their point. Or to further prove it.
Learning from others and applying it to your own situation is a big inspiration – and the first major step – toward thinking creatively.
In Part 2 later this week, I’ll share the ways I’ve found to schedule creativity, along with how collaboration can make a good idea great.
Stupid is as stupid does…
Posted by: | CommentsThe reason I started blogging was to teach leadership and try to add value to you, my readers. But in today’s post I need to tell you something of a more personal nature.
I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life. Early in my marriage I would win arguments with my wife, Margaret, and hurt her feelings really badly. I have made business moves that lost tens of thousands of dollars at a time. And I’ve made leadership decisions that led to failures for my organizations. But up until now, none of the dumb things I’ve done has gotten me arrested.
Here’s how this came about. Last Sunday, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, speaking for the Church of the Highlands. It’s a wonderful church with a marvelous leader named Chris Hodges. He is a good friend, the congregation is fantastic, and I had a terrific time.
Most of the time when I have speaking engagements, I fly commercially, especially when the commitments are far from home. But when the engagement is not very far away and it means that I will be able to sleep at home in my own bed, I’ll sometimes fly on a private airplane. That was the case on Sunday.
As I got on the plane, someone from Chris’ congregation gave me a gift: a handgun. “This is for Margaret,” he said, “so she can feel safe when you’re traveling.”
Now, I’m not really a gun person. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people who own guns. I have been hunting a few times with friends, so I’ve shot a gun before, but I’ve never bought one. It’s just not my cup of tea. But I knew this was being given as a gift from the heart, so I accepted it, put it in my carry-on, and got on the private plane and flew home.
And then I forgot about it.
For the next several days, I was focused on preparations for an upcoming speaking engagement in Dallas. There was a moment when I thought to myself, “Oh, I’d better remember to get that gun out of my bag,” but because I was in the middle of writing, I didn’t want to stop. By the time yesterday rolled around, it had completely left my mind.
If you’re my age, you may remember a cartoon character called “Mr. Magoo.” He was a man who seemed to wander from danger to danger without ever getting hurt.
My friends used to call me Mr. Magoo. For those of you a little younger, they have also called me Forrest Gump.
Well, off I went to the airport in full Mr. Magoo mode. In security, I put my carry-on bag on the conveyer belt and didn’t think anything of it. Truly, it’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.
You can probably guess the rest. I was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to jail, where I was fingerprinted and photographed. Needless to say, it opened my eyes to a world I’d seen only in the movies. I was glad when I posted bail and was able to leave.
I said this post would be of a personal nature, but there is still a leadership lesson to be learned from it. First, take responsibility for your own actions. What I did was wrong, and it was my fault. I certainly didn’t intend to break the law, but I will face up to the consequences.
The second lesson, to use the words of my friend Kevin Myers, is this: “Stupid hurts.” If you’re not paying attention and you do something stupid, it’s going to hurt you.
In the end, I just hope my mistake isn’t going to hurt anybody but me.
Comments are closed on this post.
You’re doing too much on your own.
Posted by: | CommentsI get asked all the time about my busy schedule, and how I find time to accomplish all the things that I do.
When I answer that I delegate as much as I can, people nod in recognition. But I can tell that they’re not really satisfied with my answer. That’s because every leader “knows” about delegation. But most have had one of two experiences with it.
They either hold onto as much as they can and only give away what they absolutely cannot do themselves, OR they try to dump everything on unprepared and unsuspecting followers. The result? Burnout … or a train wreck.
So how do you avoid the extremes and make delegation work for you?
Create a culture of development.
I often hear from leaders who admire my assistant Linda Eggers, or my writer Charlie Wetzel. They’re amazed at how much I feel comfortable handing off to one or the other. And invariably, they ask, “How can I get someone of that caliber on my team?”
My answer is always the same. Find someone with the ability and willingness to learn, and then invest a lot of time in their lives.
With everyone who works closely with me, my goal is to teach them to think like I do. So at the beginning, I pour a lot of myself into them.
I don’t just make decisions and ask them to implement them. I share my thought processes and encourage them to tell me what they think I would do.
Linda, Charlie, John Hull (president of EQUIP)… Because of our time spent in development, I can now trust each one to make decisions and communicate the same way I would.
Give away everything you can.
It may seem to you that I give away some pretty important tasks. You’re right; I do. And that makes me unusual.
Generally, the more important a task is to the leader, the more tightly they hold onto it. Even if it’s not a good use of their gifts or it keeps them from doing other things.
So regardless of the task’s importance…
1. If someone else can do a task better than I can, I give it away.
And I’ve discovered that I do only four things really well: lead, communicate, create, and network. I routinely give everything else, such as administrative and financial tasks, to the experts.
2. If someone else can do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I give it to them.
John Hull, in his role as president of EQUIP, my nonprofit organization, came to me as an already seasoned leader and communicator. From the beginning, I felt confident handing the reins of the organization. And over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time together. Now he knows even better how I think. I’ve always been proud to have him represent me, so much that if you want a picture of how I would personally lead, I’d tell you to just look at him.
3. If someone else has the potential to do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I train them.
When Charlie Wetzel started researching for me, he gave me material that was of no interest or use to me. But I didn’t take that as evidence that I’d better hold onto that task. Instead, I came up with a process for teaching Charlie to look for material the way I would.
Here’s what we did: We would both read the same book of inspirational quotes and mark those that we thought were good. Then we’d compare our notes. At first, 90% of our choices didn’t agree. So I’d explain to him why I did or did not choose certain quotes, and we’d try again with a different book. Within a few months, Charlie and I agreed on 90% of all research material. We trained in a similar way with writing.
Today, fifteen years later, Charlie knows what I want before I do! He truly reads my mind and writes in my style. He knows my idiosyncrasies and my passions. Because of this, Charlie can take my material and make it better. He rewrites my writing and improves what I want to say. And I agree with 98% of his choices.
Take a look at your delegating style. What are you dumping without development? What are you holding onto that’s stealing time from your priorities?
If you take time to train your people, you can trust their thinking enough to let them do even the most important tasks well. Then you can use your best energies to do the things you do best.
