The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP026 – Creating a Great Leadership Culture—An Interview with Tim Stevens
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before. In your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hello everybody. And welcome to episode 26 of the podcast. My name's Carrie Newhoff. I'm so glad you've joined us and I really hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. My guest today is a guy by the name of Tim Stevens. Tim's just one of those guys who's been in leadership for long enough that when you actually sit down with him, you learn an awful lot, super fast. And I think you're gonna really enjoy today's interview. Tim talks all about culture and how to create the right kind of culture. If you've ever struggled with like, how do I find the right people? How do I lead through a crisis? Tim's your guy. And we're gonna talk about those and a few other subjects today on the podcast. So I think you're really gonna enjoy it. And Tim's got a brand new book out called Fairness is Overrated. And so we're just gonna talk through some of the key concepts in that book that I hope is really gonna help you. Because often in leadership, it's kind of the little things. It's the things that you're like, I don't know what's broken and I can't really figure it out. Tim's the kind of guy who comes along with his toolkit, leadership toolkit and goes, oh, I think it might be this. And you go, yes, it was. How come I didn't see that? So anyway, that's what's in store for you today. And I hope it really helps you and your team a lot. I wanna say thank you to everybody who's made this a great journey. Thank you to everybody who like has left ratings on iTunes. You guys continue to knock it out of the park. The podcast has had a run recently again in the top 10 of iTunes in the US iTunes store. And you know why that is? It's because you're leaving ratings, you're leaving reviews, you're subscribing, you're sharing it with your friends. And I just, I love the church. I really, really love the local church. And sort of my goal, one of my goals is to help leaders lead. And if you get this in the hands of more leaders, I hope in some small way, the church will be better for it. So thank you for doing that. And also, did you know we're just like, we can measure it in weeks now away from the Orange Conference. And I'm super excited to be at the Orange Conference this year. I'm leading the senior leader track. I hope you can join me on it. If you haven't registered, you can do so now. Just go to the orangeconference.com/seniorleader. You're gonna hear from leaders at the Orange Conference like Perry Noble, Judd Wellhite, Jeff Henderson, Josh Gagnon, Jenny Katrin, who was just on the podcast last week. Actually, a lot of these people have been on the leadership podcast so far. And it's just kind of a gathering of incredible leaders. It's headed up by Reggie Joyner. John Acuff is gonna be there this year. So's Cara Powell and Doug Field. So I mean, it's gonna be an amazing conference. But I think you're really gonna enjoy not only what comes from the stage, but also just hanging out with leaders between sessions. I know that's what I really look forward to. So why don't you come hang out with me? We're gonna be there April 29th through May 1st in Atlanta, Georgia. There's like 6,000 leaders gathering. And you can register today at the orangeconference.com. So thanks so much for tuning in. Here is my interview with Tim Stevens. Well, it's a lot of fun to have Tim Stevens on the podcast today. Tim, welcome. - Thank you. So glad to be here. - Hey Tim, you have just changed up jobs. You're now with the Vanderblumen Search Group. But prior to that, well, you did a few things in the marketplace and then for almost two decades, you were the executive pastor at Granger Church in Indiana, a church that grew from a few hundred to about 5,000 in your time there and had a worldwide impact. And the fun thing is you were one of the very first executive pastors. I can only imagine. I mean, back 20 years ago, they didn't have a lot of executive pastors. So tell us a little bit about what you did at Granger. - Yeah, that's a great question because that term means a lot different things at different churches. And so you really don't know what it means. In our case, you know, I kind of grew up with the church. I was there when it was started on staff when it was 250, 300 in size. So for us, the executive pastor was kind of the number two who was responsible for basically everything. The senior pastor had me as a direct report and had his assistant as a direct report. And I was not a teaching pastor. That's not a gift nor a desire or a passion of mine. So that worked out well. So he could handle the teaching and we could raise up other leaders to do that. But then I could lead the church, both on the admin operations side of things. And as we grew and had property and then built buildings and all that, that became quite a job. And then also leading the ministry staff as well. A lot of churches will divide that into two roles. And it's probably smart, but for me kind of grew up in it. So it actually worked out. - Were you one of the first pastors? Like people in that position was people like, you're a what? Did you ever get that? Or was it? - Yeah, actually I was a, you want me to be a what? (laughing) 'Cause I thought, you know, let's just call it an associate pastor or something like that. So it was a term you're right that was kind of new in the mid, early to mid nineties or at least in my circles, it was new. - Yeah. And so basically you're right, a lot of churches. I mean, we divide it these days according to operations and also according to ministry. But yeah, it means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Everybody seems to have an executive pastor. So I thought that was kind of a cool thing as we got going. So you just released, you've written a number of books, Tim. And I mean, you've got a great blog called Leading Smart that I think a lot of leaders who are listening will be familiar with and if not, you should get familiar with it. But tell us a little bit about your new book. Your new book is called Fairness is Overrated. Curious, why'd you pick the title? I mean, obviously it's a chapter in the book and you talk about fairness being overrated. But do you think leaders overrate fairness or what's with that? - Yeah, so great question. And we worked with the publisher with Thomas Nelson to kind of come up with the title. We had three or four different working titles as time went on and kind of settled on that one. The book is we're gonna talk about probably here in a few minutes as four kind of big categories and then lots of chapters in each category. And so we were trying to pull out one of the chapters that would both catch people's attention would be something that would be recognizable or applicable, it's probably a better word. It's something that we struggle with in church that people struggle with in business. And we really wanted to, as I was writing it, my target was 50% church ministry leaders which is the world I've lived in and 50% the Christian business leaders that we serve in churches. And so trying to find something that would be compelling to both groups. - It all sounds a little bit counter Christian to say, well, you gotta be fair, right? And I think a lot of church leaders fall onto that trap. So tell me, why do you think fairness is overrated? Do you think that sometimes that's an Achilles heel for the church? - I do, I think it was Hibles who said the church has a terminal case of niceness, you know? So fairness, I think obviously we should be just, we shouldn't discriminate. But when I think of fairness, one thing I think of is just in relation to time, you think about just Jesus and his time and how he spent a fair amount of time with the crowds, but then a lot more time with those 30, 40, 50 that were closest to his groupies, maybe we can call him that. And then even more time with his disciples. And then he spent a ton of time with the three that were closest to him. And he did that because of priorities, he did that because of what he was trying to accomplish on earth and what he was trying, his legacy that he was trying to build. And so I think that we can take a lot of good notes from that. There's also the, you know, the parable of the workers, the workers that, you know, they got into fairness at the end of the day, they came in and someone said, "Hey, well, you work for, let's say, 15 bucks. "We work for 15 bucks for the whole day. "I've got teenage son, they would do that, right?" - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - So, and they said, "Sure, we will." And then someone came in at noon, "Will you work for 15 bucks for the rest of the day?" Sure, someone comes in at three at six o'clock and then they start comparing notes at the end of the day and saying, "Wait, I only got 15 bucks for three hours "and that's pretty cool." And someone else got 15 bucks for the whole day and then suddenly it didn't seem fair. But it was fair 'cause it was what was agreed upon up front. And so we're constantly as leaders, I think, you know, having to lean into what is fair, got to consider that, but what are the priorities? What are we trying to accomplish? What are the outcomes we're looking for and how do we get at that? - One of the examples you cite in the book is even that you have two employees, they book in there the same amount of time, they hold analogous positions, but you pay one more than the other. A lot of people would say, "That's very, very unfair." Some might even say, "Well, that's unconscionable "in the church," but you say, "You know, it's overrated." So, can you do that in the church? Like, you know, what's the upside of doing that and what's the downside of doing that? - The downside when I don't like to see that happen is you got that exact illustration and you pay the married guy who's got four kids more than the single, you know, guy who's 28 years old and based on that versus what I like to base it on is value added and performance and replaceability. Those three things. So you can have two people in the same exact role, but let's use an easy example, campus pastors, you got two campuses, same size campuses, they're both in the same similar role, similar size staff, similar responsibility, but you have one that's just adding a lot more value and that is subjective, but as leaders, you kind of figure that out and you got one who's performing better. Maybe the campus is growing, whatever the metrics that you decided for that are happening and then replaceability. We just know that you think, "Boy, if this person left today, "I could find six others like him. "He's wonderful, he's great. "I like him on our team, but I could replace him. "You got someone else over here." Oh my word, it would be impossible to replace them and so replaceability is a factor and a lot of that's subjective as well. - No, you know what, that's really helpful and I think once you start to drill down into that, that makes sense, particularly the replaceability factor. I remember back to high bowls, a talk he gave years ago on leadership. It's like, who's the leader that if they told you they're leaving today, you would immediately lean over and throw up in the garbage can. And he had, I think, if I remember correctly, he said he had a leader who was that caliber of leader who left for like $10,000 a year more somewhere else. And he said, I might be getting the details wrong, but basically he said, you know what, if I'd just known that, I would have given him $10,000 on the spot to keep him there. And okay, so that's fair, that's good. And it's that kind of counter-cultural thinking or that kind of leadership culture thinking that I think makes the book such a compelling and an interesting read. So your book is centered around four primary leadership skills. Being a leader worth following is the first one. The second is finding the right people. Third is building a healthy culture and the final one is leading confidently through crisis. So what I wanna do, Tim and the bulk of our time together is talk about each in turn. If that's okay, so first step. What makes a leader in your view? What makes a leader a leader worth following? - Yeah, that one's first for good reasons 'cause I think it really is the foundation. And I think it's, you know, it's a life of integrity. It's balanced a lot of times. What gets us ahead in our work world whether we're in the marketplace or in church, what gets us ahead is killing ourselves. It's a lot of time. It's working more hours than anyone else works, showing up earlier than anyone else shows up, doing more than anyone else does. And then we get noticed and we get ahead. But I think what happens is that when we're doing that, it's kind of eating away, potentially. It's eating away at our soul and it's making us, maybe the fractures won't show up for two years or five years or 10 years. But fractures eventually show up and then the leadership starts to crumble or the foundation for leadership starts to crumble. - I think being a leader worth following also has a lot to do family relationships if you're married, if you have kids, you know, I think Stanley came out with that book years ago called Choosing to Cheat. Changed the title later. I don't remember the title now, but. - I don't remember the new title either, but I'm sure you can find it. Andy Stanley used to be choosing to cheat. Now it's like fairness is overrated. - No, no, no, no, that's your book, that's your book. - Yeah, go there, look for it. - Go ahead. - But I think, you know, and I didn't like the first title either because specifically in the church world, I don't think when you choose to make your marriage and your parents, your parenting, your relationship with their kids a priority, I don't think that is cheating the church. - Right, right. - Even though it may mean sometimes you're leaving at three o'clock to get to the baseball game or you're spending extra time, you know, doing these things that are gonna be long lasting way past your leadership's stint at that particular location. - Sure, yeah, but I think Andy's point, you know, was, for a lot of us that feels like cheating. Like I have to be here and I have to end so, you know, hence the idea. And you would agree, you think, no, you've got to put your family first. So part of being a leader with following then is character, right? So you're talking about character, you're talking about prioritizing your time so that your family doesn't get cheated or harmed in the process. Any other components, Tim? - The whole idea of having margin in your life, whether it be in your time, your calendar, your finances, you know, when we don't have margin, which a lot of us kind of live there, we kind of live pegged out on the meter. And so the people that we lead, when they see us, we're just zing, zing, zing, going from thing to thing to thing, because we have no margin. We're putting out fires, we don't have space. So we can't have a great meaningful conversation with someone on our team that they really need to have because we don't create margin for it. In our personal lives, we can't respond to a financial need someone else has because we have no financial margin. I'm now commuting a distance to my office. And, you know, if I don't leave margin, I'm just tense. I'm frustrated, I'm grumpy, I'm stressed. - So just so you know, when Tim says he's commuting, he means he's going from Indiana to Houston. So that's not like 20 minutes either way, right? - Well, and specifically, when I'm in Houston, it's a 55 minute drive from where I'm living, staying to the office, so. - Oh, wow. - So if I don't leave margin for that, that's, I mean, I'll just feel that all sense that I'll carry that through the day. If I leave margin, if I leave an hour and a half before my first obligation or meeting, I'm fine. I feel great, I look at the podcast like yours. I can kind of focus my heart and my soul. But margin is just huge. And I think leaders were following, kind of build that in, which may be counterintuitive because we think that, you know, most high level, high capacity leaders are really, really busy. - You know, it's so funny, I've got a current story out of that. I was on a, being interviewed for a TV program here in Canada, just outside of Toronto. It was about an hour and a quarter drive under perfect conditions. I went three hours early, just 'cause it had snowed that day, and I'm not kidding. I got stuck behind snow plows for over an hour and a half, every minute of my margin, I showed up two minutes late to that, which wasn't a big deal. But literally, it was sucked up, not by traffic, but I got stuck behind snow plows. If you live in the north, you know what that is. If you don't live in the north, you're like, what? Anyway, don't get stuck behind snow plows. They go so slow. But you're right, I wasn't stressed because I thought I built in all this margin, and they were thrilled that I made it. Like they had tons of employees who canceled that day 'cause they couldn't make it. I did the interviews, had a great connection, and went home, and it was fine. Now, so that's key. Now, a lot of leaders, you're talking about the soft skills here 'cause I know when I was a young leader, I always thought, well, you know, leadership is just about yet another skill set, but you really start your book with character and clearly. I mean, I don't wanna be asked trivial questions, but like, how important is character? And I think those of us who have been at it for a while would go, well, it's kind of everything, it's the only reason we're still in the game, but that wasn't intuitive to me when I was in my 20s. - No, it's not. And I think you can hide for a while behind if Assad and not having kind of the inner character that's really required. I think you can, you go five, 10, you might even be able to go 15 years if you're really good. But eventually, the cracks start to show through. If you stay at a place long enough and with friends and people who really love you long enough, eventually that starts to come through. And I've seen that happen with good friends who kind of get taken out of the game because of integrity issues, choices that they made. And none of us are immune from that. We're all kind of a few bad decisions away from the same thing, but I do think that there are certain things that we can kind of guard in our lives. My previous pastor Mark Beeson at Granger, he called him rumble strips. So you're going along the highway and you've got the solid white line. And if you cross the solid white line, no big deal. If you hit the rumble strips, still no big deal. Just kind of get back on the road. You go beyond that, you hit the guard rail, you go off the road over the cliff, then it's a problem. And those rumble strips may not be right or wrong. They may not be like sin or a matter. - You're not gonna get fired for it, but. - Exactly, and they're personal. They're not something someone else can put in place. You just kind of put rumble strips in your life for yourself to keep yourself on the road that you want to be on to get you where you want to go. - That's a good analogy. So if you're a younger leader or just a driven leader who maybe hasn't neglected the character aspect of life, like some of that involves practical skill as well, because I remember a season in my life and sometimes I still feel this way or where I'm, as you describe, zinging. You know, you got a million things, your church is growing, your organization is growing, you're busy. What are some very practical steps you can take if you find yourself without margin? Or you know, your character's kind of, yeah, it's not being cultivated as your skillsick. - Yeah, probably the biggest thing comes to mind that's really practical is relation to your calendar. I think if someone can get control of their calendar, and by that I mean prioritizing the things that are most important to them. So, you know, if you're married, getting those date nights on your calendar months and months in advance and plugging them in. If you have to move one, then you move it, you don't cancel it. Getting the time with family, with kids, the important events in their lives on your calendar way ahead of time. Carving margin, you can carve margin on your calendar by just blocking out time. So I'll put on my calendar, no meetings and kind of block out chunks, just so I have margin. So I can walk around the office, so I can stick my head in people's doors. I can be available, I can have my door open. Those kind of things, I think, getting control of your calendar and being really proactive with things that are most important to you, I think that can go a long ways. - Actually, nice little dovetail. You guessed posted on my blog fairly recently and it was a post called, I think it was six ways to control your calendar, so it doesn't control you. - That's right. - We'll link to that in the show notes. So really practical advice on how to do that. And I agree with you, I'm passionate about that. Like right now, while we're recording this, my son's home from university on reading week. He's from two hour flight away. Every single day of my calendar writes down Sam's home and I just know I'm gonna run at a different pace because my son's home is still gonna get my job done but I've gotta create white space in my calendar for that. Okay, so being a leader worth following, that makes a lot of sense. Like at the end of the day, you don't wanna follow someone who's skilled but has no character. You'd almost rather follow somebody with character who maybe doesn't have such a great skill set. Ideally, they fuse, right? You get a hard skill set as well as being a person of integrity that's worth following. So that sort of takes us to the next subject, which is people. You talk all about finding the right people. So I hear leaders say over and over again, Tim, I can't find enough good people. What are some best practices you've discovered in your leadership in finding the right people? And you might even say what you're doing now, which is actually all about finding the right people. All right, we didn't talk about that in the intro. No, that's- And we'll get to the question. Yeah, that's true and it does ring true now because every day, every week, I'm working with leaders who are looking for good people. So I transitioned to a role at the Vanderblum and Search group. And so it's gotta be the greatest position or role in the planet because I get to spend all my time building the team at Vanderblum and Search group. A team that then helps churches find great staff. Yeah, and William's been on the podcast too. I think it's episode 19 and we'll link to that in the show. Yeah, and he's a tremendous associate and someone, it's just been tremendous to even in these first months to learn from him, but so I get to sit with pastors, with leaders, with organization leaders who are looking for great people. So, and then in my seat at Granger Community Church, I don't know the exact number, but it had to be over 200 people in the 20 years I was there that we interviewed and eventually hired. Wow. So you're going through tons and tons, you're trying to figure it out every time. And it's competence, its capacity, its chemistry, its culture, it's all the things that we've heard talked about. But I think best practice, a couple of best practices on that, one would be don't go solo when you're trying to hire someone. A lot of times you might be good at it. I think I'm good at it, but I'm not as good by myself as I am with the team. And so pulling in discerning people that don't have anything to lose by that person coming on the team is tremendous. And if you pull that team in, do group interviews, get some other eyes on it, define the parameters way ahead of time so that when you get the people in the room, you're not confused about why you're hiring them or what they're going to do. But I think using a team for that. Another thing that's probably counterintuitive, maybe, maybe not for some of these days, is my kids call it creeping, I might call it stalking, whatever you want to call it. There's just so much out there these days that people have put out there about themselves in cyberspace, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the stuff. And that is, you can find out so much about a person that what, 15 years ago wasn't true. - That's true, and you get a sense of their personality too, like do I even like this person? - Yeah, you do, and chemistry is huge. I think it's one of the biggest factors in hiring the right people. So I like to look at their photo albums, just kind of see what they find worthy of posting. Is that the kind of staff person I want? I like to look at, a big one is, how do they treat people online who they don't agree with? Whether it's politically or religiously or parenting styles or whatever. - Yeah, the angry blogger, the angry commenter, right? - I think that is indicative of how they'll treat people in my organization, if I bring them on the team. So I think that-- - That's good. - So there's so much out there, and chemistry is such a huge thing. Probably the last thing I'd say on finding the right people, I think sometimes, and especially in the church world, and this is probably true anywhere, we think our organization is awesome. And we think everyone else thinks our organization is awesome. So we go to interview someone, and we think they think we're awesome already. So we kind of back off and don't try to sell our organization to them, 'cause we think they wanna be here, and it's just a matter of if we say yes, they'll jump at it. I think leaders have to do a better job, not just of recruiting, if they're looking for someone, but also selling, convincing them, not convincing, but laying out the vision. And obviously, you don't want someone there who's coming just because you gave a good speech. But to go the extra mile and really sell them, get them connected to people on your team who represent the organization well, and sell them on the community and the demographics and the culture and the people and all of that. - You know what, that's a really good point, because I think definitely you always run in every job search, and we've done our share as well, where people really wanna come to work for you, but they probably shouldn't come to work for you. Maybe they don't have a lot of options or whatever. But if you're really looking at top tier talent, you're looking at people with options. And I hadn't really thought about that. But you could be in a place where the only reason they said no to you is because they didn't understand your organization well enough, and they had somebody else who explained their organization better when, in fact, they could have been great, and your best talent is gonna get away because you didn't sell during the interview. That's really good. Another interesting point, I don't know that this was specifically in the people section, I think it was, but you talk about working with friends, and that's an interesting debate. It's a debate in business, it's a debate in not profits, it's certainly a debate in church world because there's been a big push to hire from within, as well as from without. But you actually come out on the side of, it's incredibly painful, it can be awkward, you can lose friends, but hire 'em. - Yeah, I do think it's worth it, I really do. I think, let me talk on two sides of that. One side is, when they're on the team, well, first of all, if they're not my friends, when I hired 'em, if I didn't know 'em, I want them to be my friends. And not just, we're friendly, but this is someone I would hang out with, if I could, if our lives merged. I think that's just really important. I think, when we give our lives, our whole lives to a cause or an organization, then we wanna do that with people that love to do that also, and we wanna connect at that level. And yes, if you run into conflict or problems, then it's really painful, because this isn't just someone who's feeling a role for me, this is someone I play basketball with, or this is something, our family's hanging out. So that's really hard. On the front end, I would say it's incredibly hard to be objective when it comes to friends, which goes back to hiring as a team, and even saying, hey guys, I'm not objective on this, I love this guy, and I hope he could be on our team, but I'm not objective 'cause we're such good friends. One thing we do at Vanderbiltman is, sometimes we'll be someone who'll hire us, a Churchill hire us to fill a position, and they say, we also have this guy in our church, who he might be a fit, he might not. And what we try to do is kind of provide some outside eyes on that so that we can be totally objective, we don't have a dog in the hunt, so to speak, and we can kind of bring that person in with four or five that we'll find externally, and we can lay them down in front of that way, they may end up picking the guy that was in their church, but at least they have some comparison, and they know that it's based on some true data. - Yeah, and so in your books, the risk is worth a reward if it's better, properly. - I think so. - Cool. What are some mistakes you've seen leaders make in finding the right people? - I think hiring too quickly is a big one. In a book, Tony Morgan and I wrote together, we got a chapter called Long Hello's and Quick Goodbyes, and I think that's really crucial. It is just making sure, it's not just we go to coffee and boy, this really feels good. A lot of times if church leaders hire from within, sometimes they kind of bypass the reference checks, 'cause this guy's been in our church for seven years, we know him pretty well, we've worked with him in volunteer events and stuff, but they have no idea his reputation in his professional world and life, and I think talking to references and then asking the references for additional references is really important. And I think probably another one, another mistake is making decisions with limited information. I think resumes, one of the chapters in the book is called resumes are worthless. And then I say in there, they're not really worthless, but they're not valuable as a solo tool in hiring someone. Usually resumes have education and job experience, but those are just just the starting part point of when I'm looking at someone, I wanna know their experience, their skills, their passion, their heart, their leadership ability and the chemistry and how much they understand the culture, none of that's on resumes. So I think resumes might get your attention to get you in the door and they might draw, my attention as a leader, but we certainly don't wanna make decisions based on that. - Well, and as you say, your social media creeping, or what do you call it, stalking, is probably gonna reveal more about a person than even their resume. Resume will be a first step, but no, that's really helpful. Let's switch gears and talk about the third area of the book, which is culture. And you talk about building a healthy culture, which is, I've heard a lot of people talk about that these days. So I think it's a big subject. What are some of the building blocks to your mind as a leader of a healthy culture in an organization? - Yeah, I think a lot of that comes from how you as a leader lead. So you have the type of leader who may never say this out loud, but by the way that they act and walk around, they are convinced that they're the smartest person in any room that they walk in. - Yeah. - And we've probably just probably been lots of listeners that have worked for with or around someone like that. And that's no fun. I think building a great culture includes being a leader who highly values the team around him or her, who is constantly asking questions, who assumes that he or she has a lot to learn from the leaders around him. And that, what that does is it just kind of, everyone kind of just bumps up to another level because they realize how much is at stake. They realize that they're needed and valued. And that's just huge. I think when a leader, whenever I've had a leader who really believes the best in me, who kind of speaks life into me, who gives me opportunities to succeed or fail, who stands by me, even if I do fail, who is consistently trying to give credit to me, even if sometimes I didn't deserve it, it was a team effort. I think that kind of leader is building a tremendous culture. And I think also leaders who don't just give responsibility, but they give authority as well. See a lot of times where a church leader will, let's say they hire a worship leader, senior pastor hires a worship leader, but he really still wants to sign off on all of the music for the weekend. And he still wants to, it comes in every week and kind of tweaks with this or that. And he shows up at the rehearsals and isn't very helpful there. And so pretty soon you have a frustrated worship leader who thought he was supposed to come and do a certain thing, but finds out that really he's just kind of, he's kind of an executor. He's not a leader. He's just getting things done, but really the person who makes all the decisions is above him. And so he has no, and that just kills culture when you hire someone to lead, to be responsible for something, and then you don't let them. - Yeah, and it's not healthy. And it's interesting, you said earlier in the interview that a lot of us get into this because we were the fastest or we worked the hardest or the longest or whatever that is. And a lot of those traits tend to be micromanaging, controlling, visionary. There's a certain confidence/arrogance that comes with that style of leadership as well. And that might build your church, but eventually that'll kill your church, right? - Yeah. - Is that kind of what you're saying? - Yeah, yes, it is. And I think sometimes a leader will, like you said, start something and use a certain, pull certain tools out of their leadership skill tool belt that help them get it going, and build it, and build teams and draw them out. - And they may be necessary for a season, right? Like, you know, when you're 80 people, yeah, you got your fingers in a lot of pots. - You sure do, and you want to. You want to maintain quality and excellence, all that. Those same skills can be, like you suggested, what actually kills the organization later. If you don't begin to turn over some, not just responsibility, but also authority leadership to others so that they can carry it on so you can do what only you can do, and they can do what they can do. - So is the culture actually then really largely determined by the tone or the wake of the senior leader or the senior leadership team? Is it always tied to the leader, or does it operate independently? - I think for organization wide, as far as, you know, the entire organization, it's hugely influenced by the senior leader and that leadership team. But I also think, and I've seen this happen, and I've done it myself, where you can be in a really stinky cultural organization that's toxic, and you can make a difference in a department. You can make a, you know, you can be leading a department or lending your influence in a department and really improve the culture. And I think like a good virus, that will spread. Other people in the organization will want to be on your team, will want to, want a team like your team. And I think that can really help as well. - So yeah, you can't just blame the senior leader. If you're not the senior leader, you've got a responsibility as long as you're in the organization to build a culture and you can be the healthy little branch or division of a place that needs some change. - Yeah, and I think if you're right, if you're close to the senior leader, kind of right next to him or her and in their ear, then you have some responsibility to seek truth to power, to use your leverage, your influence with love and grace, to say, you know what, hey, I've been thinking about such and such, maybe some event or system or process that will really build culture and improve things. - Hey, can I try this for a while? Can I give this a shot? You know, asking permission to kind of and just run with things and see what works. - What happens when the leader isn't very open to that feedback? I hear that a lot from listeners and from readers. They're like, yeah, well, I would love that in a perfect world, but you don't know my boss. - I think what ultimately happens is people leave the organization. You see a lot of turnover. You see a lot of, you know, we've had that occasion where we go into a church and we meet with the senior leader and then we have a staff meeting and everyone in the staff, we kind of has their head down and they don't speak out much. And when they do it kind of gets corrected by the guy at the end of the table. And you can just see it's like the life's been sucked out of them. And I think people don't stick around for long and hopefully eventually the leader sees that and realizes I got to change something. - So one more thing on that. Let's say you're the leader listening to this and all of a sudden you're having one of those moments where you're going, I think that person's me. How do you break the ice? Like if you realize maybe I'm the toxic person or maybe nobody talks to me about the fact that I'm not awesome because they're all terrified or maybe that's why we have such a high turnover. How do you break that cycle when you're the leader? - I think it takes a huge dose of humility. Back to what I talked about really to asking questions. It takes asking questions and in that situation, no one's going to answer you for a while until they see that you really want the answer to the question. - Right, so if you go in there and say, "Hey, do I sometimes like poison the waters around here?" People would go, "Oh, no sir, never, never." - Totally. - Yeah, no. - They walk in and say, "How do I come across?" "Oh man, you're amazing." Well, their paychecks on the line, they've seen this probably not work in the past. They're looking at land mines. They don't want to step on any of them. So it really takes, if there's a pattern there, it's going to take a lot of asking questions and being really serious. And maybe what I think would be really a humbling move is say, "Hey, let's bring someone in from the outside. Let's bring in at Granger. We used a guy named Doug Slabaugh, just a tremendous, he wouldn't call himself a counselor, but he was kind of like a staff counselor. And if we ran into some rough patches, we would bring him in and just say, "Would you just go around and listen and talk to people and ask them how it's going, and we're not going to hold it, anything against anyone, and you can bring back everything anonymously if you want, but we just need to hear." And that's pretty, that takes some guts, but I think that's pretty smart, especially if you've got this toxic culture you're trying to get past it. - Yeah, that's good. That's a really, really strong word, super helpful, Tim. So let's move to the final section of the book then, where you talk about, and this is an interesting phrase, I found it, leading confidently through a crisis. That's what the fourth section of the book's called. It sounds to me a bit like a contradiction in terms. I mean, when there's a crisis, that's when your confidence is shaken, right? So tell us about that, and how on earth do you find confidence in a crisis? - Yeah, I think that's, you know, sometimes I was kind of studying for this book and looking through kind of historical leaders. And something that I read, or someone asked a question, you know, when you think, when you look through the list of the, let's say just the US presidents, or the list of the US presidents, and you come across names, that you have no idea. Like, I'm sure I studied this person in school, I have no idea. - Who are they? - Who are they, what did they do? And then you read a little about them, they really, they just kind of had a normal presidency, peacetime, not a lot happened, no big crisis. That's kind of where leadership is forged, and where you really kind of see where character shows through, or lack of character shows through, is when there's this crisis, you know, when things just suddenly blew up, when the largest donating member in the church walked out mad. When, you know, the staff just split apart, or 700 people just left, and went and started a church down the road. In politics, it's the scandals, it's the wars, it's the, you know, the significant national crises. - No, it is, I mean, I'm a Canadian, but you think about what I know about American history, it's like people like Washington, right? Lincoln, what did they lead through? Revolutionary Wars, the Civil War, Roosevelt, the Second World War, and the whole Depression. And I mean, when you become the President of the United States, and all of a sudden your nation descends into civil war, that's not a happy day, right? And a lot of us run, a lot of us turtle in moments like that, but you're right, there is a link between crisis and greatness. And those who are able to rise above the crisis to move people through it. And, you know, the leading confidently through crisis, so I remember back to 9/11. And, you know, every leader, probably in any organization, had to figure out how to lead confidently their people through that, in churches that was for sure true, as we're trying to, you know, lead people through that when their confidence is completely shaken, they're scared to death, they have no idea what's gonna happen next. Honestly, as those leaders are leading confidently, they don't know what's gonna happen next either. So it's not, the confidence isn't, I know the future and it's okay. The confidence is, we're gonna figure this out, we're gonna do this together. I'm not going anywhere. We've got the right people that can figure this out. - I think that's a big key to leading confidently, 'cause, you know, I know as a leader, I have to time, I don't know what's going on, but is that, is there, I was having this discussion with a friend of mine this past week, you know, that there are just certain leaders that have that sense of confidence that I don't really know what's wrong, and I'm not arrogant enough to say, this is it when I really don't know, but I'm confident I can figure that out. Is that just a quality in leaders? Is that something that can be learned? Like, what are some of the transferable principles about how do you become that person in a time of crisis? - Yeah, and I would say, I'd tweak that a little bit and say the leader that's attractive to me is not the one who says, I'm confident I can figure this out. It's the one that says, I'm confident we can figure this out. - That's a good point. - And I think that's a nuance that's really important, because, again, they're pulling the wisdom of the team and they're the ones that are going to keep the ball moving on the conversation and the decisions that need to be made, but they're relying heavily on, you know, great leaders. And then everyone just kind of like, you know, their chest pops out and they're like, okay, he says we can do this, I think we can do this. I work with a lot of churches where they're seeing your pastor left and we're helping a search committee of lay leaders, of volunteers in the church. They didn't sign up to pick their next pastor. You know, they're just in this situation 'cause suddenly he's gone and they've been tapped to do this. And so, you know, it's that sense of, okay, we've got to figure out how to lead confidently through this crisis because everyone's looking to us for the next leader and they're looking and, you know, they figure it out and they get wisdom and they get help and they figure out how to take their next step and they communicate to the people that we're going to figure this out together. - Yeah, so that might be the secret sauce in leading confidently in a crisis. And some of that I think is probably faith related, right? Like God's bigger than whatever problem we're facing and if we just hang in it long enough, we're going to figure this out. And I think you're right, team is key. Like for me, it's like having, and that gets back to your second principle, which is finding the right people. You want the right people in the room when there's a crisis. You want the right elders, you want the right leaders, you want the right staff, you want the right lay people. And hopefully you're not the smartest person in the room because if you get that good group together, you know, eventually between the three, five, eight, 12 of you, whatever there is, you'll figure it out somehow. - Totally. And the sequencing of the book is that way on purpose too, because finding the right people and then working really hard, never spiked the ball on culture. So working really hard on making sure you have a great culture. So that when you come to a crisis, you can get through it because you have-- - No, that's really, really wise. So I'm sure some leaders, you know, all of us are running this through the filter of our own lives and our own leadership. Probably some things that we're like, ah, that was nice to hear some affirmation. And then probably from time to time, it's like, wow, there are some gaps. What would you recommend for a leader who's listening in and going, oh gosh, I have a lot of work to do? Any thoughts on where to start or a couple of things they could do just to say, okay, this is the beginning of a new era for me as a leader. - You know, I think becoming a listener, finding someone who will speak life into you and speak truth to you. And it's not always the person you work for. A lot of leaders are averse to conflict or they don't, they, or maybe they're just not tuned in, but there are people around you and in your life, more people who you can just say, hey, I'm gonna take you out to lunch once a month. Would you be willing to just speak into my life, someone who's close enough to see you day to day, week to week? - I think, and then just asking questions, that vulnerable, difficult questions, you know, what's, you know, if you just came away with what's one thing I can work on this month to make me a better leader, and had a really good sense of what that was and worked on it, my goodness, just think of the type of leaders we'd be after six months or a year if we were just really kind of focused on that. It takes a huge amount of vulnerability and humility. - Well, that's true, but you know what I think is I mean, that describes I think a lot of our journeys as leaders is the impact is cumulative. You can't turn it around overnight, but if you're saying, okay, I have a defensiveness issue, I'm gonna work on my defensiveness this month and you know, you don't nail it overnight, but six months, a year or two years later, you realize, wow, I just, I don't get triggered by that stuff like I used to, that's powerful and then you're kind of free to work on something else. So I think that's really good advice, just to take it one day at a time and one bit at a time. I talk to leaders a lot about 360 surveys and here's one way you can know if you have a struggle with humility or pride is if you hate 360 interviews, in fact, you refuse to take them, you probably have an issue with that where, 'cause you don't want feedback. You don't wanna know what people think 'cause they're probably wrong. I mean, in your mind, you're thinking. - Nobody knows me well enough, right? No one understands. - But you might figure out, and especially if you're working on four or five or six, I really need to work on these things. Do your, you know, this doesn't have to be organization. You can do your own 360 feedback, give someone a little five question survey, ask them to rake you on your defensiveness and your pride or your explosive personality or whatever it is that you're trying to work on and then do that again in three months and do it again in a year and do it again and just see, am I making a difference and get some tangibles from those people if you're not changing or if it's getting worse, what is it I do and when do you see that, how can I respond differently? I mean, it takes a lot of humility again, but. - No, that's so true and you're right. It doesn't have to, you don't have to bring in a consultant and pay thousands of dollars or like go online and take a survey. It's like, here's three questions, give them to five people and get back to me. You're right, that's really true, but it does take an awful lot of humility. Tim, I'm so glad you wrote the book. I mean, it really is, it's just chock full. It's gonna take you a while to get through it. It's not a complicated book, but like it's just dense. It's packed with wisdom. And if people want to find you or the book, where can they find you most easily these days? - Oh yeah, thanks for asking. So the fairness is overrated.com is the best way to learn about the book, read a sample chapter and then there's six or eight links of where you can buy the book online. It's also typically on the shelves at Barnes and Nobles and places like that as well. But that'd be great leading smart.com. I almost gave you the wrong address. Leading smart.com is my blog. - Would you been writing for years? When did you start? - I think I started in '06. I've become a little slower in my writing lately as I've been focused on the book. That's great. And then www.bandabloominsearch.com or www.bandabloomin.com also worked. And you can find me there as far as professionally if I can ever help you with anything at your church. - Great. And we will put all those links into the show notes. Tim, I'm so thankful for the time that you spent with us today. You really have a lot of leaders, thank you. - Thank you so much. I appreciate it. - Well, that was super cool, wasn't it? I mean, that was like drinking from a leadership fire hose. Tim's just been at it long enough and seen enough that he's got some incredible insights. And if you want to follow Tim more, his book again is called Fairness Is Overrated. You can find him on leading smart.com. And all the links, including a summary of some of the best quotes from Tim can be found in the show notes today. And all you have to do is head on over to carrynewhoff.com. I'll spell it for you in this episode. C-A-R-E-Y-N-I-E-U-W-H-O-F dot com slash episode 26. And you will see all the links to everything we talked about. And also, if you hop on over to the blog, there's some great conversation going on. And I would love for you to be part of that conversation. I'm one of those bloggers who's decided to leave comments on. A lot of people have taken them off recently. And I'm leaving them on not because I want to invite trolls, but because I really believe that when we talk about things together, we get better. And so, if you are in the habit of leaving good comments on blogs, drop on over to carrynewhoff.com. And we've had some fascinating conversations. Last month, I did a series. It was in episode 23, 24 of this podcast with Will Mancini and David Kinemann and also some accompanying blog posts all about why church attendance is declining and why even committed Christians are attending church less often. If for some reason you miss that or you're tuning in for the first time, you can just head over to carrynewhoff.com and you can find it there. Actually, if you look at recent posts, one of the posts did so well. It's now like the second most commented post in the history of my blog. And it's about 10 reasons why even committed church attenders are attending less often. So if that kind of stuff interests you if you're a church leader, that's what I write about on the blog. I also write about change and personal growth. So that's just at carrynewhoff.com. And again, this episode with the show notes carrynewhoff.com/episode26. Hey, next week we're back with a really good friend of mine. His name is Brad Laminick. He for a decade led catalyst, one of the greatest leadership movements in the Western world today, bringing together some of the top leaders. Brad is gonna talk all about career calling and why some leaders hang on too long. Do you know that he actually retired at age 40? Well, not retired, but he just switched careers and he's gonna talk about that. And how do you know when you've stayed too long? How do you know when it's time to hang in there? Brad's gonna talk all about that. That's episode 27. The best way to never miss an episode is to subscribe and you can do it for free on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio. Hope you do that. And again, for all of you who leave ratings and reviews, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We'll talk to you next Tuesday. And in the meantime, hope this helps you lead like never before. - You've been listening to the carrynewhoff leadership podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)