Unleashing The Power Of Rubber Bands (5 page)

As leaders, we need to offer the armor, but smile when others try it on and politely decline. We watch in amazement as those we lead approach a problem differently than we might, but solve it well. We get excited when the direction and freedom we provide leads to fresh, new change. And we grow ourselves when we realize that this learning process is beautifully reciprocal.

A number of years ago, a young man named David Hubbard became the president of Fuller Seminary. He was the youngest man to have ever taken that post. One of the gifts God gave David to help him lead well was Max DePree. Max was a successful business leader who came alongside David and offered him six words.

Six powerful words.

“I am committed to your success.”

And then Max, a Fortune 500 company president, moved joyfully into the shadows. He positioned himself behind David.

From behind the scenes we can say, “If you need me, I’m right here. From time to time, I will whisper in your ear some of the most significant thingsthat God has been good enough to teach me. You can decide what you need. From time to time I will stand next to you and I will speak encouragement and a call to persevere, because sometimes that is just what a leader needs.

“I am committed to
your success.”

“I will believe in the gifts and ability and character that I see in you, and I will point you to the God who is the giver of all of those things. I am steadfastly devoted and faithfully committed to you as the leader of this place.”

When someone who is a little further down the road than you are stands behind and beside you like that, it spurs you on. It’s exciting at my age to see young leaderslearning, apprenticing, and then striking out on their own. And it’s even more exciting to look around at the rest of us who are giving, teaching, directing, and celebrating as we all head toward the same finish line.

Together.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

PERHAPS ONE OF THE
most powerful things a leader can do isto deeply value the contributions of everyone in the organization. Unfortunately, many leaders have bought into the celebrity culture (I don’t have time to cover it here, but when a nineteen-year-old pop star makes more in one appearance than the average schoolteacher can hope to make in a lifetime, we need a new culture). When contributions are unfairly measured against each other, it creates an environment of favorites and pits those who ought to be collaborative colleagues against one another in destructive ways.

It is not reasonable to assume that janitors will be financially compensated along the lines of the CEO, but an equal valuing of contributions is not about money. In fact, it doesn’t have to cost anything at all. And the power it creates in an organization can be amazing.

For a number of years, I worked as a nurse in a large hospital in the Orange County area of Southern California. For part of that time I was assigned to the emergency department. Every day was different, and most of the time, the work was interesting and action packed. But some days were definitely better than others, and it all depended on which of the doctors was working that shift.

I was not alone in my assessment. Any time we came to work and found this particular doctor on duty, we all knew it was going to be a great shift. Why? Because that man knew how to value people. He knew how to bring a disparate group of coworkers together and orchestrate us to function like a great team. He knew how to appreciate the unique contribution that each member made, and he knew how to call it out of us. Those eight-hour shifts flew by when he was in charge.

This was no small challenge in our department because often in an emergency situation, the team involved wasn’t a group of people who regularly functioned together. A few of us from the ER formed the core of the team, but we were often joined by someone from the lab, radiology, respiratory therapy, or translator teams, to name a few.

One evening we had spent nearly four hours working on a patient. It was unclear until about the last half hour whether we would be sending her upstairs to intensive care or downstairs to the morgue. Her condition was touch and go for a long time, and we were both exhilarated and exhausted by the time we wheeled her and her myriad of tubes upstairs.

During the code situation, this doctor had done what he did best. He asked for input from the various people on the team. He never gave us the sense that because he was the doctor, he felt entitled to decide everything for himself. When doing so did not in any way endanger the speed of care, he asked what we thought was going on or what to do next. And yet, even though he asked these types of questions, he never abdicated his role as team leader.

He complimented team members on a good IV start or a clear X-ray that aided in a quick and accurate diagnosis. He thanked people for their contribution during the action, and used the words
great job
over and over throughout the situation. In addition, he was quick to coach and correct when needed. We all welcomed that because with him as our leader, we
wanted
to grow and do better.

After the gurney was in the elevator, I went back to the room we had been working in. Just a few minutes earlier, the room had looked like a hurricane had gone through it, but now it was already clean and ready for the next patient. I was alone in the room, finishing up some documentation, when the doctor came back in. He was accompanied by an intern who had been his sidekick during the code. Oblivious to my presence, the doctor walked this young doctor-to-be through the experience, both encouraging him for the things he had done correctly and offering direction and alternatives for areas he felt had been lacking.

I was doing what any good nurse would do in a similar situation: eavesdropping. Then the doctor said something to the intern that I will never forget: “When the code was over, did you notice the young man from housekeeping who came in and cleaned up this whirlwind mess?”

You could tell by the look on the intern’s face that not only had he
not
noticed, but he also had no idea why he was being asked this seemingly irrelevant question. I guess irrelevance is in the eye of the beholder.

The doctor went on. “His name is Carlos. And he is one of the best workers in the entire housekeeping department. When Carlos comes in during or after a code, he gets the room cleaned up so quickly that we can immediately take another patient in the space.”

The blank expression on the intern’s face told the doctor that he still had little to no level of understanding of the point of all this. So the doctor continued. “Carlos came up from Mexico about three years ago. His wife’s name is Maria, and they have four kids.” He then went on to name the children as well as their ages.

“They live in a small rented house in Santa Ana, about three miles from here. The next time we work together, I would like you to tell me something about Carlos that I don’t already know. Okay, let’s go, we’ve got other patients waiting.”

Sometimes you get to watch breathtaking leadership.

When we play favorites, everyone knows what’s going on. It is demotivating at best, and devaluing at worst. Most likely you know exactly what I mean, because most of us have worked for leaders who play favorites. It’s so obvious it is palpable, yet no one admits it. And this makes the game all the more crazy-making.

Great leaders know the value of doing the right thing, and that includes valuing the contribution of all the players. The power that is released in a culture that values collaboration is so great to see. A leader who knows names, knows individual stories, and honors the role of each person reflexively brings out the best contribution possible.

Obviously the caveat here is that any one given leader can only know so many people. But even in large organizations I have seen leaders do a great job with this. There are many different ways to do it; what matters is that you do it.

One leader I know in the business field asks his direct reports to tell him about a manager or administrative or janitorial staff member who has done a great job recently. He asks them to give him as many specifics as they can. And then he sets aside fifteen minutes every week to leave a voice mail, detailing the behavior and thanking those people for the ways in which they did their jobs in those instances.

He leaves it on their voice mail at home.

I love that. They would certainly expect it more on their work voice mail, but imagine coming home after a long day, hitting the play button, and hearing the president of the institution you work for congratulating you for something you did that week. And then thanking you for helping to create a great organization.

That’s just one way of valuing collaboration. There are a lot of ways to notice people, especially people whose jobs do not put them in the limelight often, whose work often goes unnoticed and unappreciated. People get weary doing that kind of job week in and week out. They begin to feel as if they are in the middle of a giant game of rock, paper, scissors. Just when they think they are the rock, along comes paper . . . and they lose.

Great leaders refuse to play that game. They find ways to notice, to appreciate, to praise, to thank. They don’t do it in ways that manipulate or control. They authentically understand that everyone has a job to do, and when someone does it well, it should not be overlooked. Max DePree often reminds board members that they should know at least one name of someone who works on the cleaning staff—his or her name and story. Powerful stuff, not to be underestimated.

Funny how doing the right thing so often goes hand in hand with releasing astonishing power in both people and organizations.

It is easy to forget this and to start weighing the contributions of people according to what
you
value, or even based on what
you
would have done in their situations. “Be like me and you will get attention” is often a forceful but unspoken value in a corporate culture or ministry environment. Great leaders push themselves to understand the unique and valuable contributions of everyone on the team.

I remember vividly an Axis meeting where we were faced with a problem. It was a significant issue, and the meeting included a mix of staff and key volunteer leaders. As I explained the problem and my desire to use this meeting to talk about problem solving, I noticed that the guy sitting across from me had that “whenever you stop talking, I have something to say” look. Surprised that he didn’t find my vision casting so compelling that he completely forgot what he was going to say, I called on him when I finished.

Right away he said, “I’ve been thinking, and I have a plan sort of sketched out. Would you mind if I drew it up on the whiteboard and quickly talked us through it?”

Mind? Well, yes. First you need to acknowledge that what I have just said is the most brilliant contribution to this problem to date. It was like he hadn’t even heard a word I had been saying. It was like his mind, and his own unique perspective, had been launched into work even as I was still talking.

And the worst of it was this: His idea was terrific. No, seriously. I mean his layout of a strategic plan, divided into timelines, with specific names by each area, was amazing both in its scope and its potential to solve this problem. Actually, maybe the worst of it was that I wasn’t the only person to notice it. Everyone else around the room was vigorously nodding their approval and admiration.

I should have been ecstatic. I knew that. I should have been delighted that in such a short time, such a great mind had done the work of wrapping itself around the dilemma and coming up with a workable solution. Except that I was jealous. (At this point, I am thinking about publishing this book under an assumed name.) How pathetic was my response?

While the green-eyed monster had my tongue, otherschimed in according to their own particular areas of giftedness and offered to contribute in a variety of ways. Some offered to organize people around each of the leaders of a strategic segment, some committed to making sure the communication was clear and aligned. Others said they would get people together who felt called to pray for these efforts, and still others said they would be involved in either teaching or putting together teams for the administrative details.

In the time it took to evaluate this man’s idea as a team and gain consensus that this was indeed the best way to go, everyone fell into place according to his or her best contribution and just filled in the blanks. It really was a beautiful thing to watch, and if I hadn’t been so focused on myself, I might have seen the beauty in it.

Fortunately, I recovered enough to save face and not say anything stupid before the meeting ended. The drive home was quiet. I was the only one in the car. But there was no shortage of conversation going on in my head. I was ashamed of all the internal positioning I had done, even though no one else knew about it. (I have been a Christian long enough to know how to sin on the inside.)

I felt like a child, wanting all the attention and the credit. Wanting my gifts to be given the number-one prize. Wanting everyone to be directed and led by me so that even their contribution could be directly tied to my efforts. I wanted everyone on that team to think I was indispensable and responsible.

That’s the bad news. And I am embarrassed to put it into print. But unless I am terribly mistaken, I am not alone in having had those less-than-brilliant leadership moments.

Here’s the good news. It didn’t even take me the full drive home (only about three miles) to realize how ashamed I was of myself. At least I had had the good sense to keep my mouth shut, or maybe it was just my good fortune that this all unfolded so rapidly I didn’t have time to make a fool of myself. I was the only one who knew.

But I did know. And once I was able to admit, to God and myself, how immature my reactions were, I was able to start moving past them. I was able to see what happened in that meeting as the great thing that it was. I was able to applaud this man’s contribution and subsequently the contributions of so many others who rapidly got on board. I was able to be grateful for the team that was coming together in spite of me. I was freed from the terrible burden of feeling that everything was dependent on me, which is too much weight for any one person, really.

Getting me out of the way of my own team was one of the best things that ever happened. Equally valuing and needing the various contributions each person had to bring was life giving and put us on the right path to solving our problem. Months later, I did admit what had been going on deep inside me that night. That kind of vulnerability is good for leaders. Difficult but good.

Turns out, everyone on my team had experienced similar feelings at one time or another. Whaddya know?

When we free ourselves up from evaluating and weighing and comparing everyone’s contributions, remarkable things happen. It is easy, especially in churches, to put the blue ribbons on people with obvious up-front gifts—the teachers and leaders and singers. Their giftedness putsthem in the spotlight in a way that almost inevitably leads to them getting more attention than they deserve.

When we free ourselves
up from evaluating and
weighing and comparing
everyone’s contributions,
remarkable things happen.

But as we all know, there are some things that even a sermon or a song cannot do.

For seven of the nine years that John and I lived in Chicago, we worked on inviting our neighbors, Neil and Pat Benson, to church. Neil and Pat were great neighbors, the kind who are pleasant every time you interact with them and whose yard is a pleasure to look at. They were both schoolteachers in the local district, had no children, and put their Christmas tree up every year by Halloween.

So although I’m telling the truth when I say they were pleasant, I will admit that both their yard and their Christmas tree made me feel inferior. I still liked them, and we had a cordial relationship with them. We tried every which way we knew to get them to accept our invitation to come to church with us.