Unleashing The Power Of Rubber Bands (2 page)

Rubber Bands

At its heart, leadership
is about promises, and of all itspromises, development is one of the most significant. Sometimes in our attempts to take this seriously, we put together very cumbersome developmental plans. Perhaps it’s better than the popular alternative of completely ignoring the issue, but I wonder if we make it too complicated.

One day I was in a meeting of senior leaders at Willow Creek, and Greg Hawkins was talking very excitedly. Which, come to think of it, is the only way I have ever heard Greg talk. . . . Anyway, he was talking about this topic of development and he pulled a thick rubber band out of his pocket. He stretched it between his two hands and said, “Very simply”—Greg is a genius when it comes to making complex issues simple and, therefore, doable—“this is development.”

He showed what happened when he moved his hands too far away from each other: The rubber band became taut and clearly in danger of breaking. Stretched too far for too long, the rubber band is ruined.

Inherent in the leadership
relationship is the
expectation that over time,
the direction you give will
result in progress toward
maturity, growth in skills and
character, and even
an increase in your own
leadership competencies.

Then he moved his hands closer together until therubber band became slack, not at all capable of doing what we hire rubber bands to do. Completely incapable of acting like a decent rubber band.

Inherent in the leadership relationship is the expectation that over time, the direction you give will result in progress towardmaturity, growth in skills and character, and even an increase in your own leadership competencies.

I think it is a helpful and good discipline to write out a simple developmental plan for the people you lead. And once that plan is written, the best way to implement it is to think of those people as rubber bands. When I was nineteen years old, I’m pretty sure Jamie Barr thought a lot about rubber bands when he thought about me.

Jamie was the high school pastor at my church in Whittier, California. He had spent years as a researcher at the City of Hope National Medical Center before he heard the whisper of the Holy Spirit calling him to seminary.

With a heart for high school kids, he eventually landed in the role of youth pastor at the church I was attending. I was a freshman at a nearby college that required a certain number of ministry hours a month, and Jamie’s area seemed as good as any.

Over the next five years, Jamie Barr became the first developmental leader in my life. He stretched me and challenged me, he supported and encouraged me, he believed in me and gave me things to do—things that mattered.

Jamie was the first person who ever uttered the words
Nancy
,
leader
, and
teacher
in the same sentence. Do you understand the power of naming someone’s giftedness? Themoment and memory of that has propelled me down some of the most significant paths in my life. Those words meant so much because they came from a leader who was stretching me and taking me places for which I had no map.

My most vivid recollections of those years with Jamie include conversations we had directly following either a success or a failure. After I had done something well, he would tell me about it. He would replay the details of what I had done, share his observations regarding it, and talk about the impact my actions had had on the high school kids. Then he would always say something like, “Okay, now get over it”—just in case I was tempted to linger a bit too long in the glory of the win. He kept my head on straight with that comment. I was nineteen, and if someone isn’t helping you keep your head on straight at that age, there isn’t much hope.

Whenever I did something that didn’t fit into the “success” category—when my teaching didn’t “click” or I was too glib (I think that only happened once. I am tempted to include one of those smiley faces here, but I don’t like them.), or when I made a poor decision or did something that was in my own best interest rather than that of the kids, Jamie would say something like, “So if you had that to do over again, what would you do differently?”

How graciously directive! I wasn’t going to get a chance to do it over again, but I
was
going to have a chance to learn from my mistakes and grow enough so that when the next opportunity came I might make a better choice.

So much hope was implied in that tiny question, and the way he worded it helped me to save face a bit. It spared me the crushing things that
could
have been said: “You idiot! How could you possibly do something
that
stupid?” And believe me, there were times when that would have been the best response. It also spared me from the painful illusions that I didn’t need improvement or that problems should be avoided. And it built within me a foundation of strength for the times when I would fail again.

Jamie gave me hope because he intimated that there would be a next time; this mistake, while still a mistake, had not rendered me completely unqualified for another chance.

There was hope in the fact that it was a collaborative question. Jamie allowed me to engage in a conversationabout what I could learn and how I could be shaped by that learning. The very best development that a leader can offer engagessomeone else in the dialogue of learning.

The very best development
that a leader can offer
engages someone else in
the dialogue of learning.

And so Jamie Barr grew me up. As a leader, as a teacher, as a follower of Christ. He gave me opportunities, challenges, and a relationship—three things that form a powerful crucible of development. He stretched me sometimes to the point of pain, but never to the point of breaking. He cared for me genuinely, of that I was never in doubt.

And while I never once saw him take out a written plan, I think Jamie may have had rubber bands on his mind.

the core of
Leadership

WHATEVER IS AT THE CENTER
of something has a lot to do withits quality, whether it is fruit, golf balls, or leadership.

I think the core of leadership is hope.

Leadership is the hope that we can change the things that need to be changed and create what we cannot now imagine. Hope gives us the courage to move forward, the power to forgive, and the grace to keep the promises we have made.

Hope dispels fears. Hope readies us for round two.

Hope holds our heads above water and gives us permission to regroup when we are tired. Hope redeems mistakes and prompts the optimism and resilience of a leader.

To lead well, we must possess the strong belief that our best days are ahead of us, always ahead of us. Hope and leadership are inexorably linked.

It is critical for leaders to do whatever they can to stay connected to hope, and to drink deeply from its well. We need to find ways to live that renew the life of God in usbecause the life of God is a life of hope, a meal that sustains.

Whenever I experience that wonderful convergence of myefforts and God’s gifts, the level of hope within me rises to new levels. Whenever I experience the true nature of God—not the myths of Him to which I sometimes cling like a child clings to a favorite blanket—I am surrounded by a hope that swirls around me in Dolby Stereo.

Hope and leadership
are inexorably linked.

Hope is like a bone marrow transplant: It changes everything. It invades and permeates. It releases us from cynicism and doubt, and restores belief. And it is stronger than the fear that prompted us to go looking for it in the first place.

Hope breeds confidence.

Hope is contagious.

Recently I met with a young kid. I can call him that because Jake is in his midtwenties and I am not. I could call him some other things as well, because over breakfast he mentioned someone who is in his late forties and referred to him as “an older person.” Since late forties is younger than I am, this kid almost wound up getting stuck with the check. But when I was his age, I thought late forties was old, too. Anyway . . .

Jake is finishing up his last year at Stanford business school and has started a 501(c)(3) called Nuru International, which creates innovative, sustainable solutions to extreme poverty. In Swahili,
nuru
means “a small light in the darkness.” Jake is a Christ-follower, and he is humble and passionate and gifted to lead this enterprise. Nuru is not a Christian organization per se, but it is led by a handful of committed disciples of Jesus, as well as a few others who have different or no faith background.

This was our second or third meeting, and Jake was taking me through his business model, including his vision, an analysis of the challenges, and the first steps of the plan. He listed out the team formation and the area in Kenya where their pilot project would be taking place. As I listened to his strategy, talked with him about God’s unexpected direction, and considered the well-thought-out plans put together by gifted minds of God’s people, I felt so hopeful.

With all the key ingredients in place—great thought and planning, visits to the area, meetings with local leadership, the caliber of people and expertise on the team—it seemed quite possible that this could be a stunning and sustainable model for making a dent in extreme poverty. Jake and his team had chosen to focuson the areas of health care, education, agriculture, water/sanitation, and small business development. Thegroup had created a holistic model designed to stir an integrated momentum into action that could, I believed, have enormous implications. There had been, of course, a local leadership development and succession strategy in place right from the beginning.

Then we talked about Jake’s financial model and fundraising and partnership opportunities. At the time, the group was about a week away from its first dinner with possible donors. Jake said, “I just hate to ask for favors.”

I completely understand that feeling; it makes sense. On one level. But in reality, Jake wasn’t going to be asking anyone for any favors.

Jake was going to offer hope. And offer people a chance to be a part of that. His gifts and his passion and his God had converged, and in Jake’s heart and mind Nuru had sprung.

Nuru has the potential to relieve the intolerable burden of poverty from people whose names we do not yet know. It has the positioning to allow dependent communities to grow into self-sustaining areas.

Jake is dedicated, committed, thoughtful, thorough, collaborative, and smart. He has done his homework, devised plans and strategies that empower, and integrated standardized and rigorous measurements for his own accountability. He has prayed and listened to God. He has made himself a humble student of other methodologies and sought out experts in his target development areas.

Hope is hard work.

No, Jake would not be asking anyone for a favor; he would extend hope and invite others to join him. We should be the ones thanking him.

Hope has so much power in it. When we release hope in individuals and organizations, they flourish. As leaders, we sooften become overly preoccupied with the wrong things. Things that in and of themselves are good and necessary, but not if we major on them. Few leaders I know have taken seriously the power of hope and done whatever they can to infuse it into their people.

Hope is hard work.

I’m not talking about mindless, inauthentic, cheerleading hope. Real hope is a potent force, and when it sits in the center of things, it becomes an epicenter.

There is a man in our church named Art Flegel. Art was a business leader in the community, serving for years as president of a chain of upscale furniture stores. He is now ninety years old.

Too often, I think, we unfairly stereotype the elderly. We accuse them of being resistant to change and stuckin the old ways of doing things. But here’s what I think. I think people who resist change and hold on to the old ways when they are in their twenties become people who resist changeand hold on to old ways when they are older. People who embrace change and gravitate toward new ideas in their twenties become people who embrace change and gravitate toward new ideas when they are older.

Real hope is a potent
force, and when it sits in
the center of things, it
becomes an epicenter.

May I present Art Flegel?

Did I mention that he is ninety years old?

Art and his wife, Cleo, live across the street from us, so we get a front-row seat to the way they live. I have decided that I want to be Art Flegel when I grow up. Art always has a sparkle in his eye and a spring in his step. Often at six in the morning when I am stumbling out of our front door in my green robe to try to find the newspaper, I encounter Art. He is in his workout clothes starting his morning walk. And he is in a great mood. I slink back into my house, newspaper in hand, a bit humiliated that I have been outdone by a ninety-year-old before I have had my breakfast.

Art is working on a book about his family’s genealogy, and he tends to a front and a backyard that look like they belong on the cover of
Sunset
magazine. The azaleas, roses, begonias, and agapanthus are testimony to his green thumb and his perseverance. He often shows up at our front door with a handful of breathtaking flowers to grace our family room.

On the afternoon of Art’s ninetieth birthday, John and I walked over with a cake to help him celebrate. We left about forty minutes later, shaking our heads. We had both seen a living example of how we want to grow old. Art had beamed as he talked about the future—gotta love the sheer hope in that!

There have been a lot of changes going on in our one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old church, and Art couldn’t stop talking about them. He said he didn’t know how much longer the Lord would give him, but he sure hoped he would be around for the next few years to see how the multisite church campuses were going, especially in reaching people who don’t know Christ.

There is a marvelous passage in Psalm 92:12, where the writer says that the righteous will flourish. I do love that word for the picture it paints.
Flourish
can look different in different people, but it is unmistakable when someone is flourishing.

Psalm 92:14 goes on to say this:

That is a great picture of what it might mean to grow old well with God. It is also a great picture of Art Flegel, someone all leaders can aspire to be like.

If it is possible to continue to be productive in old age in a way that is reflected in the phrase “fresh and green,” then we would do well as leaders to include people of older generationsin our leadership circles. A life lived well with God over the years produces wisdom and hope—such a necessary duo. We would do well to identify the Art Flegels and put them into the game. We would also do well to grow old well with God.

Hope can be released in
small ways, like seeds that
take root unseen and later
reveal their growth.

Hope can be released in small ways, like seeds that take root unseen and later reveal their growth. These small things made such a difference when I started doing more speaking and leading. There were two people in my life who were responsible for giving me those opportunities,and as they did, they also gave me something else that I’ll never forget. I’m not even sure these guys were aware of it, but their actions filled me with hope and, therefore, perseverance. Each time they scheduled me to do something, they also scheduled the “next time.” So each time I tried something new, I never felt as if my future and all of its opportunities were dependent on the way I handled this one assignment. The message this sent to me, however subliminal, was that I would always get more chances.

The weight of one mistake didn’t feel like it was the end; instead, it felt like more of a learning opportunity. I knew that someone was developing me rather than auditioning me. This took so much pressure off and allowed me to do a better job. Of course, I understood that this was not an open-ended invitation to do poorly. I think those who were leading me had made enough observations about my gifts that they were ready to give me chances to develop. And their confidence, communicated to me in multiple opportunities, was strengthening.

Sometimes the gift of hope is about believing in others before they can even see it themselves. I would bet that every leader could point to a number of people who have given him or her that gift along the way.

Another small seed, more team-oriented than individual, is the “autopsy.” You wouldn’t expect that a word like
autopsy
could contain hope, but I think it does. Healthy teams do autopsies after most of their activities, gathering together both to celebrate and to analyze what happened. Autopsies allow teams to have honest conversations aboutmissing the mark and what they could have done differently or better. While at first glance, this may seemlike something difficult that you’d want to avoid, autopsies are actually just the opposite.

Honesty has a way of making

things stronger over time.

Too often, we have conversations that are designed to “protect” by ignoring mistakes. These discussions have the appearance of strengthening, but actually result in shrinking us and making us weaker.

But the learning that helps us to do better next time is liberating and growth producing. The courage to conduct an autopsy leads to healthier and more cohesive teams, better results next time, and increased confidence in individual leaders. Honesty has a way of making things stronger over time.

And that’s got hope written all over it.