Michael Metcalf at Thrive Business Leaders Summit 2021

i'm so excited to introduce them so everybody go ahead and put your hands together for the one the only that's right michael metcalf cap are amazing yeah you guys are amazing 20 went far michael exactly hey man we are so excited to have you and it's been awesome we've gotten if you don't know we we get to work alongside michael so we've got to see this in action uh building a team and building momentum teaching your team to build momentum and have got to see it happen and and darren kovet right yeah snapped out and uh but michael we know that you have an extensive background working some large organizations multi-site churches but also got your start in business so i would love to hear a little bit about that and then i'll let you talk about what you want to talk about cool thanks you guys you guys don't know jody and misty but they are amazing they are a party uh waiting to happen i'm just saying not to mention that they can execute some amazing events and ministry so it's really cool to work with them this well thanks everybody for taking time to join to jump on and um hopefully in the next little bit we'll do some uh it won't be just a talk but it'd be something that's encouraging something you can use practically and everything that i'll talk about is something that i learned you always tell my wife uh shelby michelle she's got two names and i call her shelby but her name is michelle so it's one woman with two names not the other way around um but that's funny you're supposed to laugh uh but the everything that i know i learned from somebody and always tease and tell my wife you know i'm not really creative but i'm a really good parent i'm really good at repeating good stuff that i learned and i learned really just over life and business before i was a pastor i was in the business field so i got my start in sales and from there i branched out and became a consultant a management consultant and i worked for a company in chicago barrington illinois uh fun fact uh barrington illinois uh is connected to our second son we have two boys my wife and i um one is 26 and one is 19 and our 19 year old his name is chandler barrington metcalf and his middle name is barrington because we like that name and i used to work for a company there used to fly there every single week and i worked for a consulting firm and in that consulting firm my job was to help sales organizations um and businesses for-profit businesses improve their systems and processes and their human systems like how do you encourage how do you develop how do you grow people so that was my entire job i flew all across the country doing that we were contracted with four general motors chrysler att companies like xerox and we would go into organizations that were not doing so great and help them to get above the line financially and my focus was from a management focus and a development a people development focus so i got all of my really training in that and i always i always cared about people and i always wanted to help people and i didn't know that along the way what god was actually doing is he was actually preparing me to be in full-time ministry but i took that business background everything i learned there and then started to apply it once i got to the church world so that's a little bit of my background i did that for 15 years um and so most of the time of my life was in business and really where i learned and developed some of these ideas that we'll talk about today so we're going to jump in so make sure to ask any questions pop them in the chat as i'm talking about stuff or you want me to expand on things i've tried not to make this like a monologue a big talk but to just kind of set the stage discuss some things and then also ask you guys to ask questions so we can expand so i'm just not rattling off a bunch of information so first of all like i want to start with a statement and i think it's john maxwell who i originally heard the statement from the statement is is that managers solve problems but leaders build momentum managers solve problems leaders build momentum and and oftentimes i think that between the idea of a manager and a leader that people aspire to be one or the other like oh i want to be a leader you know it's kind of like a catch phrase i want to be a leader i don't want to be a manager but actually in whether it's business church world in life in your family it takes both you need management which is making sure things are progressing and you're taking care of things like a manager is solving problems and making sure things are staying on track and you need somebody who is the leader who's thinking about the overall trajectory of whatever your company is doing where your family is headed or where your ministry is headed so think of it that way managers solve problems but leaders build mo mentum now i want to give rather than like give the definition of what is momentum because we all know what that is i i i want to start with this thought process what really how i think about it as i'm leading a team a lot of times when we think about um building momentum we we think about the process of starting something like we want to want to get things rolling and get things moving you know we got the get the you got to push this ball up the hill and we focus a lot uh on building this you know building up momentum like i think of uh you know a cartoon character trying to push their boulder up the hill and then gets it rolling down and all the focus is on the beginning on getting things started but in order to to really build momentum properly and to teach your team to build momentum what you want to focus on is not a series a successful starts you want to focus on a series of successful endings what i mean by that is like you start a brand new project or brand new idea a brand new an event that you're starting and your goal is for that to win you know you're hoping that this new product this new event this new customer uh this new marketing strategy you're hoping that it goes well whatever it is you're doing we hope that it goes well when it goes well you know you're pushing that ball up the hill when it goes well we think of momentum as you know coming down the curve what the key to understanding and cascading momentum or building mandate is understand what you're working for is the tail end where it takes less effort and you want to connect another successful thing on the end of that tail end that's what momentum is is you're you're doing all this work to get moving but it's kind of a waste of all your effort if you don't have something that follows up right behind it because that's what momentum is you get the object moving uh mass plus velocity i think is the actual way mass plus velocity equals momentum so you're thinking about that as a project you want this and a leader's job is to create that a leader's job is to create a project an event um and to create the win help the team create the win and then make sure you continue connecting successful things together so in building momentum you're teaching yourself and your team to think about what do we do next so in the planning process you're thinking about the ending of the project not the beginning of the project if that makes sense it's really really important and for years i didn't really understand that trying to connect wins together so let me give you five things five quick truths about momentum five things that happen when you create momentum and then we'll get into some uh some some practical logistics momentum creates energy think about uh whatever it is that you do and when you get things rolling and you're you have a win you make a sale you get a new client you uh produce that brand new product you write the blog whatever when you finish it all of a sudden you've got energy and the reason energy is important is because usually while we're trying to whatever we're doing that creates that wind it takes emotional physical energy out of us we're taking all of our emotional uh resources our physical resources our actual resources putting it into this project and once it's over if it's a success then that momentum creates this energy and when you have that energy how many of you uh you can type this in the chat how many of you have been completely physically emotionally and mentally exhausted but because you had a win and there's this momentum you're energized even though you're you're exhausted even though you're tired though you're wiped out yeah we've all experienced that and and it's because momentum energizes us it's important to teach our teams this because we all lead teams are work on teams and we realize not just in 2020 and 2021 but the natural trajectory of life and work leading a family raising a family navigating thick life the natural trajectory is for us to get tired defeated uh discouraged when we teach ourselves and our teams to build momentum there's this rush of energy that comes behind it so um we just at the campus we just at the church we just finished christmas and we all worked really hard we pulled off a lot it probably i'm going to talk about this in a bit but it probably felt like when we first started talking about all we wanted to do it felt like way too much there's no way we can accomplish this and i'm going to tell you a secret about that in a second but it probably felt like there's way too much we can we can't do this and at the end of christmas we were all exhausted tired um wiped out out but because it was such a success because there was so much momentum we were all energized we were excited and and that energy helps you get through the tough times so as a leader it's important to help your team learn that and understand that and so when we were in some of the meetings i i said we talked about all the wins and successes but one of the things i pointed back to i said think about how we were thinking before all of this now think about how we think and what i was trying to get them to see is that man this is awesome it's exciting because momentum energizes the second thing momentum does is momentum enhances the team's performance so um the team if it's if it's just you you on the team or if it's two or three of you or if you got 50 people when you have momentum it energizes and enhances performance everybody wants to be on a team that is winning and momentum is winning what happens is is this uh when i talk about leading a team there's a philosophy that i have the philosophy is i want to inspire my team to go further i never want to ask them to do more this is a total it's almost uh completely converse to what what most leaders do i want to inspire the team to go further i never want to ask the team to do more what does that mean well when a team member feels like one their valued and they are encouraged and they have a win it naturally inspires you to want to go further if you think about it from a sports analogy standpoint we have all seen team members on a sports team that we maybe we watch sports or we've played sports uh your kids play sports we've watched the team member when the team is winning we've watched the team seem like they get even better and the reason is is because when you are helping the team gain momentum it is so encouraging and inspiring to them it enhances um the people performance i always say that momentum makes good team players great so if if you if you want to um pull the best out of your team help your team get a win matter of fact probably i would say that i don't know 50 of the things i think about is how do i help the people that i work alongside how do i help them create momentum as a team member as a leader how do i help them win because if i help them win chances are they're going to perform at a higher level and chances are that has a direct correlation to what we're working on our goal third thing about momentum is [Music] momentum shrinks problems and obstacles every business every organization uh every entity has problems what i've seen is when you're not moving forward and things are not and you're not winning problems and obstacles seem so much bigger like you just get you're you're completely wiped out by the problems they seem so much bigger because you don't have any wins and when you win those things team seem to shrink i've actually found personally that i am able to solve problems better if i have a team or business or church that is actually moving forward because the reason is and this has to do with your emotional bandwidth the team's emotional bandwidth you can the team can only deal with so much emotionally so if if if the team's not winning you've got a ton of logistical problems financial problems resource problems there's only so much that you as the leader and the team can deal with that's why it's important to create momentum because it shrinks problems and obstacles and the last thing i'll mention i said i'll define i'm just going to do this this last one and get into some practical stuff is momentum makes change easier in business uh leading organizations you're always you always have to be able to change the word for this year has been pivot i'm so tired of hearing that word the word pivot but we all know that we have to be able to change in business or leading organizations and people say that no one likes change i disagree with that i think people and organizations don't like the way we try to change them so usually the way change happens it's it's this meeting meeting comes in it's like hey i'm paraphrasing and being sort of silly here hey uh everything really sucks right now and we don't know what the future is and so let's make this change i was like what what what do you mean no i don't want i've always done it this way if we frame it differently when you when you are winning and and things are moving forward and people are saying stuff like man we're making progress man that was an aw and let me back up a little bit so often we think about momentum in these like a big event or a sale or um you know a brand new product or a new strategy i want you to think of momentum from the context of everything when when you have a conversation with somebody you're talking about uh any environment whether you're trying to talk about your business from with a customer or you're having a meeting or one-on-one with someone what you're doing is either creating momentum or it's sucking the life out and it's either going forward progressing or moving backwards so i want to think i want you to think about momentum not just in these big events but everything you do is is creating wins or creating losses so like if you have a one-on-one conversation with your team member when you walk away from that conversation they feel encouraged and inspired or that they feel depressed and defeated so think about it in airway in that in that context and going back to what i said momentum makes change easier so let's say you have um you know you've got to make a change in your business you got to make a change in your strategy and you've just come off two really big wins two great things happened and you said hey you know that was great and that was great and joey and missy will know that i say this a lot and i say what if i usually start conversation with i wonder if or what if and what i'm doing is i'm having the meeting in a different way rather than saying things are really difficult and this isn't working so we need to change it i just say i wonder if and after we've come off of some success and you say what if everybody's like hey i'm down for that why because well the last thing we did that worked out and the thing before that that worked out so it's easier to change things and make a change when you have momentum i actually sort of have an unwritten rule with myself if i feel like we need to make some sort of drastic change or we need to you know pivot unless it's forced upon me i want to create a win before i make this change i want to build some equity with the team before we make that change because momentum makes change easier okay so um i've got a lot of other content here but i'm gonna look and see is anybody asking questions jody if not i'll keep going or if anybody i'll go to the next thing and if anybody has a question about anything we just talked about pop it in the chat and i'm gonna actually transition to how do we do it how do we help the team learn to build momentum the first thing is this if you're going to lead your team because let me back up just a little bit why this is important if i'm the only one meaning you as the leader if you're the only one thinking about how to build momentum it will not be sustainable because you'll have to be the person always pushing the flywheel you'll have to be the one that's always trying to sustain stuff so the best leaders want to instill this thought process in their team and i'm a an experiential teacher so i rarely have meetings where i sit down and say let me teach you how to do x like that's not the that's not the way i i'm more of a coach than i am a teacher so i don't say hey let's learn you all need to know how to learn momentum i don't do that i just i live out what i expect and i'm a i call myself a player coach my job is to be in the game see how the players are doing and then coach them to be the best version of themselves the first way i build teach the team to build momentum is i have to be the person with the longest view in the room meaning i have to be the person that's thinking the furthest and the broadest about what we're trying to accomplish in a simple form that you would hear it say this way i have to be the one that embodies the vision of our team i have to be the one that sees the big picture i have to be the one that is consistently thinking dreaming and believing how broad we can go i have to have the longest view in the room you can't build momentum without having a massive view or a massive dream or a massive dream a vision about what you think you can accomplish it starts with the leader whether we know it or not i think instinctively we know this but people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves we all have that desire so a leader has to set the expectations and the dream really really big um there's a book uh called um made to last and good to great both of those books are by jim collins and jim collins has a term that he uses several of them uh he has a term called the flywheel and he has a term called a b hag big hairy audacious goals and what he means by that is as leaders we have to set goals that sort the name of the book is there's two of them uh and he mentions it in both the name is uh built to last and uh good grade um he says you have to have big hairy audacious goal goals and what he means by that is you have to have goals that seem almost overwhelming and and so these goals that seem so far reaching and so over the top that it off it actually forces you to think differently about how you would accomplish these goals it forces you to it forces the team to really stretch their thinking and really to get innovative and so it it starts with the leader having this really really big vision this really big big goal and then you have to articulate it with click with clarity so i'll give you an example i'll give you a business example of this that we all can um that we all can connect to so uh starbucks one of the case studies that uh jim collins uh used in his book was starbucks and he was consulting with starbucks on uh one of these big goals and he said all right go through the process of your leadership team and come up with a big goal so they went off and they came back and they said we want to open 2 000 stores in the next 20 years and jim collins says well what will you have to change in your organization to do that and the ceo said well i don't have to change anything we're on track to do it and it's probably going to happen matter of fact we'll probably get there sooner and he said well that doesn't seem like a very big goal if you already are on track to accomplish it he said you know that's no good go back and start over so he left he came back and he said they when they came back they said all right what's your your big audacious goal and the ceo of starbucks i'm going to phrase it the right way steve starbuck says our goal is to become the most well-known and the most loved uh uh beverage company in the world and and so jim collins said well who's that who's that company now and they said it's coca-cola we want to become the most well-known and the most loved beverage company in the entire world and jim i think the follow-up question was do you think you can do it and the leadership's saying leadership team said we don't know well most of us would say that they are if not the one of the most loved and well-known uh beverage companies in the world so i i say that to say when you have this long view in the room when you're the person that's dreaming and really coming up with these giant goals what you're doing is is your your pulling out of your team imagination you're pulling out of your team this idea of let's do something that we we may not be able to do and that is part of teaching your team how to do that teaching your team to build momentum is setting some big amazing goal and then right underneath that so the way i phrase it is having the longest view in the room and the reason i say having the longest view is because i think we overuse the word vision um and we say vision vision vision about everything i want to have a long view meaning i want to be able to see down the road i want to see broad and wide so having a longest view then after that we have to build clarity then you have to you have to give your team individual super clear steps that you want to take to get there um you've got to have amazing clarity with with what we're doing we have the why this is what we want to become the most well-known and loved beverage company and now you have to break it down and be super clear because now you give me handles and one how i think we can do that is one two three you have to have clarity because clarity gives your team handles it gives them something to grab onto the clarity is not necessarily telling the team what to do clarity is telling your team giving them the the why and starting the process of the how i i don't have to tell them so what i need to do is go leave this room and do one two three but one of the ways i think we would become the most beloved and well-known beverage companies is if our product was awesome if our product was awesome then people would buy it regardless if it costs four dollars for a cup of coffee have you ever thought about that cup of coffee costs four dollars and we do it all the time it's insane if we had the best product the what if when people walked into our i'm giving examples of clarity what if when people walked into a starbucks they just felt like they wanted to be there what if when people walked into a starbucks they it felt like this is their coffee shop what if when people walked into a starbucks they felt like oh this is nostalgic so you're you're creating this clarity to be able to allow your team to grab onto it uh and so see really long be able to see broad and then build clarity around that all right i'm going to keep going unless there's any any questions chat i guess we i guess we're going to do question and answer at the end or jody go ahead i was going to say we can do that um we can do it at the end there was a question but i think if you want to wait to the end i think it'll be a good it'll be easier okay great all right so um now the next thing um skip where i'm at okay so the next thing that we need to do is we need to teach our team how to build energy all of this sounds really intuitive because i'm a very intuitive person when you explain something and i have to say what does that mean you have to teach our team how to build energy all of us in the roles we have have things we have to do that isn't necessarily connect so think of let's use the starbucks analogy again starbucks says this is our big audacious goal and we want to build momentum towards this goal well they still have all these coffee shops they have to run they still have to find new employees they still have to make products they still have to improve processes so they have this future oriented goal or event or you know something they're moving towards but they still have all of their work to do as well you follow me on that so if now it's like i've got two things when you're trying to teach the team to build momentum you also have to give them permission and teach them how to build energy by trying to focus most of their efforts on this one project that you know is going to be successful this one project that you know you're working towards and what i mean by that is you have to empower your team with the ability to say no to busy work now this is gonna maybe blow some of you guys away but uh uh and this is probably this could be controversial first for some of you um i i don't really care if my team is busy all the time like it i don't care if you know some leaders think have this mentality when i was in the restaurant business there was this term if you can lean you can clean if you've never been the restaurant business you don't know that but if you can lean and the idea was listen do something you know like you got to be working well i i think over over you know my 48 years of life and leading organizations what i realized is i don't want the team necessarily busy i want them focused and and i i know things have to get done but if all of a sudden we've said we're going to be the best at this then i want to give them permission and empower them to work on mostly those things and so i i always tell teams that i'm working with i always say i have three responsibilities that is to resource you to remove obstacles resource remove obstacles and um i'm forgetting the third thing resource you remove obstacles and uh i think it's just clarity re serve resource and remove obstacles and and so my job as a leader is to get stuff out of the way so we can focus on building this momentum and sometimes uh i had a conversation like this with a team member just this week and i was downloading one you know all the stuff we just came off of and i said how did it go and they said it was awesome but it was really difficult because i had all of this stuff i had to do while working on all of this stuff so what i said was let's talk about all this stuff and as we were talking about the team member asked me why are why do you want to talk about all this stuff and i said because i want to be able to help you continue to win win win what i was saying is i want to continue to help you have personal momentum i want to help you to see if there's a another way we can accomplish these things then you're going to have more focus on this big thing and you're going to continue to tack win on back of wins on backup wins so not only i'm thinking about the momentum of the organization but i'm thinking about the individual momentum of the team and i have to allow them to build up their own energy and their role so i've got to get the distractions out of their way it's not like some sometimes i want the team member to have less on their plate so they can do more and how i can get into how i can accomplish that because sometimes that sounds weird um so if you have questions around this idea um type them in the chat we can talk about it but i want i want that team member to be able to have clarity and focus and because i'm the leader and if they say well i spend seven hours a week writing emails and i know i've got another team member and it's draining for me and i know there's another team member that's dying to write emails and they've got more margin then i can solve that problem i can resource them and say hey let me get those emails off your plate and let me put it on this person's plate because this person is dying to have to write emails and you are dying because you have to write emails so so then what i'm doing is i am helping the team member build energy and i'm helping them get uh energy themselves i'm pulling stuff off of their plate and then i'm telling them i'm teaching them guess what i want you to continue to focus one of the things in in leadership and leading people is often times i feel like we think how do i get the most out of a team member i think the exact opposite i think how do i find out the one or three things that this team member does the best that they're most engaged by they're most inspired by and they're uniquely equipped to do this how do i get them focused on those things they're still going to have stuff in their role that they have to do that aren't those three things but if i can get them focused guess what they're going to build energy they're going to have their own personal momentum and then i'm teaching them how to build momentum in their role and that cascades into building momentum as an organization so you got to teach them to build energy help them remove distractions out of them out of their way so they can continue to build up that steam um the the last tactical thing i'm going to talk about well actually let me go here i got one more thing i want to add in well i'll say that to the end um you have to teach your team the fourth one i'm going to expand on this because i've got a several months but we're getting several more things but we're getting to close to when it leaves some time for questions we have to teach our team if we're going to teach them to build momentum we have to teach and build into our team their ability to embrace change and their ability ability to be resilient if i am looking at team members the thing that is most valuable is a team member who is able to navigate change well and a team member who is resilient and and sometimes i think we as leaders think these are qualities either you have or you don't have i believe that these are qualities that you can actually teach people you can teach people how to embrace change and you can teach people how to be more resilient the reason that this is important is because building momentum and teaching your team to build momentum think about it for a second what you're actually saying is i want you to always be moving forward which takes you always putting effort and energy in there's always going to be obstacles if i hit an obstacle as a team member and i stop or i get frustrated or i get depressed or i get sad and i can't move forward we all experience that there there are weeks that i am working and doing zoom calls and and i am frustrated i'm tired i'm mildly depressed but because i've learned resiliency i've learned to keep moving forward so if you're going to try to teach your team to build momentum they can't do it if they can't move forward themselves emotionally physically and spiritually they have to be able to push through the obstacles and that's something you can teach that is something you can coach team members on they have people have to learn to embrace change our regardless of our personality type our um natural response to change is i'd rather not [Laughter] my natural response to change is skirt not gonna be able to do it like that that's what our natural response is so uh and be because i'm a person who likes process and systems it's always my natural response but what i've learned is i have to embrace change if i'm going to remain if i'm going to have them use a big term if i'm going to have the emotional elasticity to continue to be engaged in my job i have to have resiliency i have to be able to embrace change brand new something comes you know down the road and rather than me responding saying well heck i didn't see that coming now what am i gonna do we'll never make it ah you know what i i i knew it wasn't gonna happen anyway i hate this why do we have to rather than responding that way just being like okay so what do we need to do now does it mean you don't feel those things internally but in order to be a person that is continually moving forward and creating these wins you've got to be able to embrace change and look at change differently rather than thinking it's an obstacle it's an opportunity i said this in just part of the session earlier that all throughout this whole covet season we have to look at all of the things we navigate is when it feels restricted that actually invites uh innovation and and so if we look at change differently and we teach our teams to embrace change rather than constantly feeling like it's a threat on our life and our jobs and our roles and look at change as an opportunity to continue to grow look at change as a challenge to win to cascade momentum and teaching the team to embrace change which i really feel like is teaching resiliency is huge if you were to tell me would you rather have a team of experts or a team who just won't give up i would rather have a team who just won't give up any single day because together we'll keep fighting i i used to say this i don't say it as much anymore but i used to say um the secret to me uh i want to say success because i don't know that i'm successful but the secret for my life is i just don't quit i just keep going and if we can teach our teams that as a quality and a behavior trait um then you're you're well on your way to teaching your team's momentum all right so let's stop the content and we'll do do some questions michael so good i feel like i'm ready to go charge the hill right now i'm good so good yes um now i'm like craving a starbucks so we're gonna get off of this i can get one but i think your question was real quick yeah before we get going i would like to know this you mentioned an email person is there an email person on our in our organization that we can handle our emails oh man i was like i just if you know him i just know me and let him know okay some awesome questions that a couple of asked um and then we'll just let you answer them and we'll just keep asking you the questions so one was by chip um said how do you maintain momentum in our churches when we are having to start and stop with services interrupted by weeks online because of covid so how do you i guess what do you what can you do with when it's kind of a stop and start motion it's been pretty tough i think for everybody business-wise church-wise how do you um maintain momentum in that season that's a great question um i think one of the things that you have to do is you have to try to figure out other ways to keep the teams uh keep the church connected keep the team connected for example you know we haven't been navigating all of this stuff as well and one of the things we are constantly thinking about is how do we do something that can't get erupted we did we've done bible plans together right now we're doing a 21 day fast together and this is something that regardless of what happens with covet what we're hoping to do is keep people engaged and a lot of times when we think of momentum we think of it as an event based type thing and it it can be that but momentum is also just engagement so if i can figure out a way to keep the church engaged even if it you know it could be something as big as saying hey we're all going to get on a zoom call once a week and you know just talk about a prayer request something as large as hey we're going to all get on a youversion bible plan together and we're going to read through this book together read through this bible plan together and we're going to do that every single week or every single day right now we're in a 21 day fast and every single day there's some digital way for people to be connected matter of fact i'm always thinking about how do we do something that's not connected to the weekend it because if it's not connected to the weekend and i can keep people's spiritually emotionally tapped in and engaged then i can keep that train going and i have to i don't have to be concerned with all of the logistics and details of what's happening in the city and so i think that's what you have to do you have to really you know get in a room with a few people that you trust if you've got a team or volunteer team or some other leaders that you trust and say what is something that we could do outside of the weekend service that would keep our volunteer teams engaged keep our congregation engaged and that's gonna it's really really key that's a great question great stuff along those lines of church uh just another question for those that work within their organization within volunteers how do you keep building momentum within volunteers because it's a little bit of a different level obviously than an employee how do you approach that yeah so i um there's three things that i try to do so the first job the first i was going to say pastorate my first role as a pastor was just me and all volunteers and there's three things that i learned there's a lot of stuff that i do that i don't talk about it's just i'm just doing it and what volunteers need and how you keep the momentum with them and and teach and equip them volunteers need uh three things they need empathy expectations and encouragement empathy expectations and encouragement uh your staff team needs that as well so what i mean by that so if if you have i literally used to do this when i had just a volunteer team and i'm leading this church of about 400 people and i'm the only person that's on staff barely on staff based upon what i was getting paid come on somebody then i would have i had a list of my volunteers and literally outside and next to them i would think well what is herb i had this guy who was like my right hand guy and his name was herb and i'm like what does bethany and herb need this week and i would think herb needs encouragement i pick up the phone uh i go you know take him to outback take him to starbucks he needs encouragement some volunteers need expectations and expectations is simply hey man you know what i know for example it should be a conversation right now i know right now it's really confusing on what we're doing i don't even know from week to week what we're going to do but here's what i do know i do know that you and i we're gonna stay connected i do know that you and i when this thing turns around you and me we're gonna we're gonna make a name for jesus in this city and so what we're going to focus on right now we're just going to focus on staying connected we're going to focus on dreaming about the future but it's expectations then encouragement and what happens when i do that with a volunteer team i'll say this other part um this is going to be a little bit comfortable come a little bit maybe maybe it's not i tend to want to ask and expect a volunteer team i lead them the same way i would lead a staff member a team member go back to the thing i said earlier because i never want to ask people to do more i want to inspire them to go further and the way you do that is with those three things you you have to have empathy that means you have to understand what they're feeling you you have to understand what your volunteer team is feeling you have to help set the expectations for the season that you're in for the work that you're going to do for the project this happened the leader sex expectations and you have to give them encouragement uh and and those three things they cascade if i can continue to do that for example um uh there i have a there are several people that are in our church that aren't staff member that i stay connected to um the church is bigger so i can't stay connected to everybody but there's a few people i stay connected to and i'm do i do that process a text a phone call a cup of coffee when i can and and that is that is helping stay connected and then i'm trying to figure out what is the what how can i help them move forward what's the thing they need to do and how do i help them get there uh so i don't think it looks much different i just think it has to be you have to be super intentional with it it's kind of a rambling answer i hope it was helpful so good so good um this is a really good question because i would just say firearm but um kay wrote um how do you build momentum with a teammate if they are showing resistance or you can tell that they're not given their all that's a good question that's hard that's a great question i i think people um i'm preferencing this answer in this response and the reason i'm preferencing it is because we all have experienced this sometimes i think when us as leaders when a person when this is happening we know that they're not engaged we know that they're not um doing their jobs we know that they are you know exactly what you described i think for for the most part most of us and it's not everybody i'll use myself i used to always think that that behavior was malicious meaning you know what you're doing like you know you're not doing your job you know you got a bad attitude you know you you know you're not handling the napkin ministry you know what you're doing i used to always assume that it was malicious but what i learned is is that we're all people so where i start is i would give you actual practical steps i would like i know this is happening i would kind of pay attention to it and then i wouldn't like be like hey let's have a meeting i would i would strategically start with i'm going to ask this person i'm going to say man what's going doing hey what's been going on how's your family and i may do that for like unless they're burning something to the ground like if something is on fire i probably gotta do this process quicker but i'm gonna be like how are you doing what's going on and you know i may do this in a meeting i may do it in a in a uh on a weekend you know i have a thing we call red light red yellow green light and i say man you know red light means i'm tired i'm frustrated and i'm about to quit ministry uh yellow light means i probably need a day or a week off green light means i'm great so i may start with that hey red yellow green and if they're like bro i'm red then i'm like oh dang then i might give it a day or a week and i'll be like hey let's talk about that red light because a lot of times what there's something under the surface our emotions what we think about and what we feel is comes out in actions so i'm gonna i'm gonna get to what's going on and then if they say i'm fine i'm fine i'm good nothing's strong and nothing's up great then i'm gonna say well here's the thing man the reason i ask is because it seems like and i'm gonna use this word it seems like you're not engaged if they're you know making mistakes or whatever i'm going to use the word it seems like you're not engaged seems like there's something going on and you just don't it just seems like you're not engaged tell me about that and what i want to try to do is get to the root cause of what is happening and going on so that's the way i would handle that and then if i can get to the root cause then what i want to do is i want to help them build momentum and navigating that and i'm actually working with a few people on stuff like that right now that there there's something going on in their personal life and i'm helping them navigate that and their personal life is affecting their ministry life but i to help them navigate that so they can get healthy and be able to perform if it's not malicious yeah that's great man because you start out with the volunteers that's probably great insight for employees as well i love that not assuming that it's malicious that is it that's some great i also like you said if we said yellow we need a week off is that what you said now you know how to answer it in the meeting next time so i think we're gonna do one more question just to help um because i know you're probably getting thirsty but now you just took a drink so we can go another hour um one of the questions i think it's important to know is um what does take away momentum so what are some of the momentum killers in a business world or even in the church world of going all right we need to look out for that so we can steer clear of some of the momentum killers that we might know of i don't know if you yes well uh two or three come to the top of my mind the first one is really easy the first thing that kills momentum is not being decisive um i'm gonna i'm gonna try not to talk too long i know we're coming to the end of the pro the deal but when we don't have the ability to make decisions and be decisive in a in a quick way it always affects us um it is being able to be decisive is a momentum killer especially if you you're the leader of a team because the team can only go as fast as you can go and this whole covet situation is a great example of that it's like you know i'm not a person who sits down and does a lot of research on on society and and stuff i just kind of watch the news and you know just try to stay as informed but this cover thing you had to see what is our city doing can we be open can we not be open you know what are all the proto calls you have to follow and i kind of got to take that information in so we can respond quickly because you you you'll never be able to cascade momentum if you have uh either decision fatigue so that's you won't make a decision quickly or you're looking for all the information i read a study about great leaders and it said great leaders one of their top qualities is their ability to make decisions quickly and their ability to make decisions without all the information uh great leaders are able to make decisions with about 60 of the information and if they wait till they have 90 or 100 they're too late so that's probably the first most important thing and uh is is decision making and i'm gonna stop there i'm not gonna i could have a whole conversation about that michael before we go i know before i go before like us teaching or speech or maybe and going in before your employees and you're like do you get in front of the mirror and you talk to yourself do you like get eye of the tiger playing um how do you get yourself like pumped up because michael is the number one when michael walks into the room the energy goes i feel like you're wrong i feel like you have in your ear plugs i have the tiger am i wrong i don't you have to you're ready to party at all time and bring the momentum up so he is we always were like michael's coming yes so awesome or just scares you because he walks in here we go either way well thanks so much michael for taking the time fantastic stuff to put into practice and i know for all of you um uh some great stuff for you to be thinking about over these next weeks and months so thanks so much for being with us um just so you know this will be on along with the other breakouts will be on the thrive website on demand so you can check this out later if you want to go slower take some more notes or check out some of the other ones that you didn't get to check out today thanks again for being with

Channel: Thrive Conferences

Views: 148

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Ask Thrive, Thrive Leadership, Thrive Conferences

Id: -0QFEhSxeIw

Length: 58min 4sec (3484 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021