As we continue our series on leadership attributes, we now turn to appreciation. Several years ago, I asked a group of leaders and co-workers in the organization I worked what attributes of a leader were important to them. I received a wide variety of responses. One of the attributes that was mentioned was appreciative. To be a leader others want to follow you need to be appreciative.
In my experience, most employees in whatever area – business, church, non-profit, etc. – work hard and want to do a good job. They take pride in their work. At the same time, they want to feel appreciated. They want to know that their leader notices the work they do. Continue reading
Category Archives: Articles ~ Work
Living Out Our Faith at Work, Part 3
I had the opportunity to speak to a wonderful group at Truth in Love Counseling on living out our faith at work. This is part 3 of a five-part series inspired by that talk.
Suggestions on How to Integrate Your Faith and Work
What was it like for me to serve the Lord as a leader in a Fortune 50 organization, spending half of my time in the Administrative Services department and half in a large and diverse I.T. department? How did I try to live for Jesus in the workplace? How did I use the platform He had given me? How did I try to shine His Light to others? In other words, how did I try to integrate my faith with my work?
Tim Keller tells us “To be a Christian in business means much more than just being honest or not sleeping with your coworkers. It even means more than personal evangelism or holding a Bible study at the office. Rather, it means thinking out the implications of the gospel worldview and God’s purposes for your whole work life – and for the whole of the organization under your influence.” Continue reading
Learning Leadership Lessons
I was recently reminded how important it is to learn lessons from our leaders. That got me to thinking that there are a number of ways in which we can learn leadership lessons. For example, I learned a strong work ethic from my parents. They were both very hard workers, modeling that daily for my brother, sister and I. More recently, I learned lessons in courage from my brother, who nearly lost his life battling COVID, spending 53 days in the hospital. In fact, he was told just before he was placed on a ventilator that he probably wouldn’t make it. Who have you learned from, and what have been some of your best lessons learned? Continue reading
Integrating Your Faith and Work Through the Ten Commandments
Recently, I was teaching an adult Sunday School class at our church about what the Bible says about our work. We had a lot of excellent conversation, but I found one particular comment to be of particular interest because I had never heard it before.
I asked how the attendees tried to integrate their faith with their work. This can be difficult in situations in which speaking of your faith is not permitted. One individual stated that we could integrate our faith and work if we lived what the Ten Commandments taught. I had never thought of it that way, but it makes a lot of sense.
Here’s a few examples of how we can live our faith at work by obeying the Ten Commandments: Continue reading
The Biblical Value of Work, Part 2
Recently, we looked at the origins of work in The Biblical Value of Work, Part 1. Continuing our look at work, if we were to admit it, many of those we work with, and perhaps some of us, view work as a necessary evil. Most do not look at their work as a vocation, a calling, or even a career. No, it is just a job. They embrace Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” philosophy, celebrate reaching a midweek “Hump Day,” ask “Is it Friday yet?” and get the “Sunday Night Blues” as they think about going to work on Monday morning. Continue reading
The Biblical Value of Work, Part 1
Let’s face it, “Work” has a bad name. It is not unusual to hear people say, “That’s why they call it work, right”?
Do you believe that the only work that has value in God’s eyes is “full-time Christian work,” such as serving in the ministry as a pastor or missionary? Do you feel that there is “sacred” or “religious” work and everything else is “secular work,” and that secular work is a necessary evil, just to pay the bills and support your family, and contribute to God’s mission, but having no real value in God’s eyes? Do you think this is the way that most feel about their work, whether it is work they do that is paid, or as a stay-at-home Mom, retiree, or volunteer? I do think that is what many Christians think.
But is work just a necessary evil? I would say no.
As we will see, the Bible has a very high view of work. Continue reading
5 Ways to Have Better Meetings
For the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of assisting one of our pastors in facilitating soft skills modules for seminary students at our church through a NXTGEN Pastors Cohort. Recently, we covered the module “How to Run a Meeting”.
Attending poorly organized and managed meetings “weakens me”, and to be honest, it can be rare when we attend a well-run meeting. The bad news is that I’ve attended a lot of meetings at work, in professional organizations and church. Marcus Buckingham defines an activity that weakens us as one that drains us, bores us and is something on our calendars that we don’t look forward to. For many of us, meetings fall into that category. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Patrick Lencioni has said: “Bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication. Your meetings are a barometer of everything else.” Continue reading
Are You Working in Your “Strength Zone”?
I re-read John Maxwell’s 2008 book Leadership Gold: Lessons I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Leading. You can read my review of the book here. One of my favorite chapters in the book is “Get in the Zone and Stay There”. The chapter is about working in your “strength zone”. Maxwell writes that the more you work in this zone, the more successful you will be.
I was introduced to the idea of discovering and working in your strength zone through the work of Marcus Buckingham. Primarily through the use of his 2007 book Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, I was able to see the difference (of team members and myself), that working in your strength zone can make. People are energized, highly engaged in their work, and look forward to coming to work each day if they are doing work in their strength zone. I appreciate that Maxwell states that good leaders help others find their strength zones and empower them to work in them. Continue reading
Do You Love Your Work?
In Marcus Buckingham’s latest book Love and Work: How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life, he tells us that to do anything great in your life, you will have to take seriously what you love and express it in some sort of productive way. I have enjoyed Buckingham’s work for a number of years, especially his work on strengths, and his 2007 book Go Put Your Strengths to work.
When Buckingham talks about strengths and weaknesses it may be a bit different from how you have always thought of them. For Buckingham, a strength is an activity that strengthens you, while a weakness is an activity that weakens you. It does not necessarily matter if the activity is something at which you are particularly good. There are just some activities that we love and some that we loathe. I worked with someone who was particularly good with budgets, and as a result was always asked to do our team’s budget work. But even though she was good at this activity, she hated it (loathed it), and it always weakened her. Do you have a similar example in your work – something you are particularly good at, but you hate doing? My wife Tammy is particularly good at accounting work, but she does not really like it, and it weakens her when she must do it. Continue reading
Leadership Attributes: Continuous Learning
In our series on leadership attributes, we now look at continuous learning. In the organization I worked in my entire career we used to say that “school was never out”, to indicate a life-long learning mentality. That’s an approach every leader should have, as good leaders never stop learning. Continue reading