Leadership Summit 2011-08-12 Session 6b: Dr. Henry Cloud: The Evil, The Foolish, The Wise
(I like his first name :)
Leaders will talk to him about this “guy” that they're having problems with. If you can implement what we talk about today, you can save years of time.
Wherever you are, God has called you to be a steward over a vision, to change a world, a nation, a city, a family.
Are you going to let this “guy” prevent you from fulfilling the vision. It robs you of your job, and keeps you up at night. Sometimes this “guy” stops the organization and stalls the vision.
Truth / Reality - First task is to figure out what reality is. Most people don't like to deal with reality. How many of you like to tell people about reality.
He was having issues with exercising, he lost structure with his traveling.
Where you are not able to structure your own life, get someone/something external to help you get the structure. He got a trainer and said a few weeks in that they forgot to take the “before” picture, she said “it's ok, we still can.” Some feedback just is difficult.
Some people, maybe you, take the feedback and adjust and get better. The problem is that you lead like that. But, not everyone is the same, not everyone is like you. You can't deal with everyone you lead the same way. You need to diagnose the people you're talking to and deal with them appropriately.
Three categories of people:
This comes from the Bible and other research.
A. Wise
B. Fools
C. Evil
Everyone has all these parts, but some make a career out of one of them.
Wise – When the light comes, they adjust themselves to the light. When the truth comes to them, they change. Bible says that if we correct a wise person, they get wiser.
Another quality of the wise person, when you confront them you see a smile and get thanks. You coach these people and give them feedback, give them resources. The leadership challenge: make sure they are a match for what you need them to do. Give them good feedback and coaching, keep them challenged appropriately.
Fools - May be the smartest and brightest and most gifted, often they are. When the light shows up, they adjust the light (it hurts their eyes), they try to dim it. A wise person changes themselves, the fool tries to change the truth or shoot the messenger. They will also point things back to you, or find blame. When they start to externalize the problem, you know you're dealing with them. They will deny, minimize, externalize, shoot the messenger, they aren't happy to hear it and get angry, they will have a meeting after the meeting and try to triangulate against you. This splits the organization and the church.
One of the worst feelings of the leader is hopelessness. The reason is that the problem isn't in the room. The fool doesn't own the problem, they can't make themselves part of the problem. A nice responsible leader has hope that a fool will one day start listening.
As a leader, you need to get hopeless. Insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. The Bible says don't try to correct a fool; Don't confront a mocker. The Bible tells us to stop talking becase the fools are stopping the vision, the plan. Their reality has now stopped the vision. Bring them in and talk to them and tell them you're not talking to them any more about the problems. Take it up to the pattern that you don't know how to give you feedback that changes anything, it makes me hopeless. When it happens, I have to protect the vision (protect the quarterly results, protect the vision of the team, etc.). I am going to limit my exposure to this problem, I may have to remove you. Please let me know how I can talk to you that will make a difference. Sometimes this softness will make it work. Maybe they will ask you to make a change that will make it work. But, what will we do if I do that and the change doesn't happen. What will we do then? What are the specific consequences?
Change comes to fools when they are confronted with the truth, own it, and know the consequences. The pain of not changing needs to be greater than the pain of changing.
Good news about fools is that many of us are recovering fools, Christ changes fools.
Leadership challenges: Limit your exposure, clarify consequences, give them a choice, follow through.
EVIL – They want to inflict pain, they have destruction in their hearts. Paul says we should reject a desicive person after the second warning.
We go into protetection mode with these: Lawyers, Guns (sometimes you need to call the police), and Money.
Leadership is about getting the people to work the plan. Take the challenge to not let someone's character stop the vision.
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For more information on the Leadership Summit and Ocean Grove (“God's Square Mile on the Jersey Shore”) where their mission of Spiritual Birth, Growth and Renewal is lived out in community, visit my earlier post:
http://henrywill4.blogspot.com/2011/08/info-on-leadership-summit-im-attending.html
You'll also find links there to other great bloggers and tweeters on the conference.
You may also like my post about "Drinking from a Fire hose or quenching your thirst with a cup of water" http://bit.ly/nZBA88
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