ClickCease
Matt Rusten
Why Joy is Vital for Your Leadership and Company

Is joy an underrated asset in your leadership? In our latest article, Matt Rusten explores why joy, much like humor, plays a vital role in building a thriving company culture. From increasing team engagement to fostering resilience, joy can transform workplace dynamics and inspire purpose-driven work. Discover three key ways to cultivate joy in your organization and why it’s essential for leaders who seek both results and fulfillment.

Why Joy is Vital for Your Leadership and Company
Business, Faith, Faith at Work
Convene
Do Not Worry

‘Do not worry.’ We’ve read Matthew 6:25-34 in the Sermon on the Mount, but what does that look like on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis? God knows our every worry, fear, and concern – and He can handle it. Many thanks to Darrell Passwater, Convene Forum Team leader, for his encouragement to think about how our lives might be different by truly living out this scriptural principle.

Do Not Worry
Greg Leith
Who Will Lead Your Firm the Day After the ...

Got a quick minute to chat? I’ve been wanting to share something with you as you lead in the midst of the election cycle in the USA or when your political election takes place in your country. When the dust settles on the election and the new country leader is declared, one thing will still be as true as it is right now. You’ll still be the one leading your firm the day after the election. Your team members will still come to work the day after the winner is declared. They’ll still be looking to you for leadership, for a paycheck, for a sense of community at their workplace.

What do they want most that only you can deliver? It’s meaning. That meaning they’re looking for begins with you and your leadership. To be sure, what Washington DC does actually can impact your business significantly, however, the president of the United States or the leader of any country does not lead your firm. You do. It’s an enterprise entrusted to you to lead as a steward. It’s a place where people look to you for answers, where people want to be part of a team that cares about them and where people want to be valued, appreciated, and loved. The next president of the country will not show up this week at your office to encourage your team, fix a broken piece of equipment, hire the next team member, sell a big account, or cast a bold vision about how your team will reach your goals and impact the culture.

Who Will Lead Your Firm the Day After the Election?
Chip Neidigh
A Safe Place To Fall
A Safe Place To Fall
Dave Ulrich
3 Principles of Hope That Enable Transitions

As we find ourselves mid-October and a blink away from a new calendar year, it is an opportunity to prepare for how we view transitions. Transitions allow for reflection and renewal, for letting go and beginning anew, and for learning from the past and creating the future. Instead of laying out trends for the next year, I would like to comment on a fundamental enabler of any transition: hope. Leaders who want to improve, CEO’s who work toward excellence, HR professionals who aspire to deliver more value, and employees who seek well-being all achieve their transitions by realizing hope.

Hope integrates many of the positive traits that shape transitions for others and matter to me personally: learning, patience, service, faith, humility, optimism, gratitude, and so forth. I send hundreds of formal and informal e-mails every month to invite people to programs, to thank people for attending programs, to check in on those I mentor, and to stay connected to those I care about. I begin almost every one of these notes with “Hope you are well.” Hope is one of my personal desires, tag lines, and biases and an enabler of any transition.

If I could implant one trait in my family, friends, and colleagues who are undergoing continual transition, it would be hope. 

3 Principles of Hope That Enable Transitions

team health

Communicate Like You Don't Work Here Anymore

I was chatting with a friend who recently left a ministry job in which he’d been very effective, yet was not appreciated for his talents and efforts and as such was considerably underpaid.  Plus he admitted that he wasn’t listened too. While my friend loved the ministry and the job, he was in essence forced to look elsewhere for a job from which he could support his family, as well as feel appreciated and rewarded for his efforts. I was stunned when my friend told me that after he’d notified his boss that he was leaving, they were able to sit down and have a better conversation about the job, expectations, pay and goals than at any other time during his two-year employment.  His comment was “I wished we could have talked like this when I was still with the organization.” 

How did this happen? I thought about my friend – passionate about the ministry he’d worked for. He gave it his all, and had done a great job in helping it grow in effectiveness. By all accounts he was very good at what he did. Now he was going to a new (and hopefully better opportunity), while the ministry he left was now in the position of having to replace a valuable team member with somebody new. My sense is they’ll be lucky to hire someone as good.

As I thought about what happened I asked myself why my friend and his former boss didn’t have their really good discussion (or perhaps several of them) prior to his leaving? That could have been a game-changer…with perhaps drastically different results than what happened.  Isn’t that what a ‘healthy’ organization would do?

Pat Lencioni, considered by many the ‘father’ of organizational health, identifies 4 essential elements of team health:

  1. Build a cohesive leadership team

  2. Create clarity

  3. Over communicate clarity

  4. Reinforce clarity

In case you missed it, the word CLARITY is used in 3 of the 4 disciplines. Could Mr. Lencioni be trying to emphasize the importance of CLARITY? My friend might ask why clarity is so hard, and how can we learn clarity to learn better, more healthy teams?

Maybe we’re not clear because we fear confrontation, or perhaps we’re not paying attention, or thinking the other person knows what we are thinking, or don’t know how to be vulnerable with the rest of the team? Or perhaps all of the above.

Whatever the reason, the only way clarity can be exhibited, practiced, and perfected, is through effective communication. As servant leaders, it is our responsibility to lead the effort to practice excellence in being clear with our team. Here’s a short list of some of the most effective ways to accomplish this:

  1. Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31) - pay attention to them, show you care for them.  Put them first.

  2. Seek first to understand, then to be understood (a corollary of #1 by Stephen Covey).

  3. Ask lots of questions (Jim Alampi suggests your questions / statements ratio should be 20:1).  Good questions dig the holes that provide ‘wells’ of solutions.

  4. Listen. Listen well. Then listen some more.

  5. Be vulnerable and transparent. Your leadership in this area will bring about the same in the rest of your team. If you’re not vulnerable your team won’t be either.

  6. Over communicate (Lencioni says that when your team begins to mimic you that you’ve achieved the proper level of communication!). It is almost impossible to over communicate!

Create clarity – over communicate clarity – and reinforce clarity. Focus on that and you won’t end up having your best conversation with a team member after he leaves your firm. And you’ll have to hire one less person.