Episode 213: 360 Degree Leadership: How to Lead Up, Across & Down | Business & Leadership Podcast

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Today Counts Show Episode 213

Preview

Jim: There’s a lot of people who don’t want to play in the same sandbox, bottom line. And it may not sound loving, caring, Christian, but it’s just opposite of that. Justice is one of the seven elements of character.

Your reputation, the trust that people have for you, goes downhill when you won’t act justly.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. And be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content.

All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Introduction

Have you ever felt like you could see exactly what needed to change but had no idea how to actually make that happen? Today we’re talking about something people call 360-degree leadership. At Lead Today, we call it organizational savvy. This isn’t just leading those on your team, but leading your peers, your leadership, leading up, across, and down, leading all around.

I’m your co-host Winston Harris, and I’m joined by Jim Piper. Jim, how are we doing today?

Jim: We’re doing pretty good.

Winston: Doing pretty good?

Jim: Yeah.

Winston: Considering one hour of sleep?

Jim: One hour of sleep. Yeah, at best. I’m being optimistic, positive about it.

Winston: The life of a traveling man.

Jim: But we didn’t travel much. That was the problem. Got stuck.

Winston: That storm got us.

What Is 360-Degree Leadership?

Leadership Happens in Multiple Directions

Winston: Yeah. But happy to dive into this context that I think a lot of leaders face in the marketplace, ministry, wherever you find yourself leading people or being on a team. Most leadership, let’s just say, doesn’t happen just from the first chair. So there’s usually somebody that we’re following.

We’re either leading in a context where we’re leading people, maybe we have a team under us, but then we’re a part of a team. So we’re also responsible for leading our peers, if you will. But then even leading up, which maybe some of us have never even considered or put language to, the fact that we have maybe a responsibility to influence those who are leading us.

I just maybe want to throw this out there, Jim. How many people do you come across leading and coaching and helping those who are in different seats even kind of reconcile this idea that we have to lead in multiple directions?

Influence Is Not a Common Mindset

Jim: I don’t know that I run into very many that have that as a cognitive mindset. There’s probably some, but I would say the vast majority. And I’m not just talking about lower management or someone who doesn’t even see themselves as a manager, or managers or directors or VP. All the way up and down throughout the organization.

Winston: Throughout the organization

Jim: Yeah, throughout the organization. I don’t think the idea of influence is really a mindset.
So when you talk about 360 degrees, I think to me that’s what we’re talking about. I think of taking a rock and throwing it in a pond and the ripple effect.

Why Leadership Is Often Seen as Hierarchical

Leadership Defined by Position

Winston: Well, why do you think or how do you think we’ve arrived at this definition of leadership as just the people under me? Is that a cultural thing?

The Influence of Organizational Structure

Jim: As far as my education goes back, it probably has to do with any kind of organizational structure. Structure is certainly good. It’s not bad, but it’s not enough.

The military has structure. Our education system in America first began to get people ready for particular kinds of jobs, most of which were manufacturing jobs. So there was a very clear structure.

Manufacturing and Traditional Leadership Models

Jim: I would also say that if you take manufacturing as an example, if we go back a hundred years in our country, manufacturing had to be, if not the dominant, a dominant force in America. When you think about that, think about how that would blow up your organizational chart today because you’d have a line supervisor that could be supervising 50 people or 100 people.

Now, that’s what you call a flat organizational chart today.

The Persistence of Hierarchical Thinking

Jim: So I think a lot of things have changed, but it’s still in our bloodstream. It’s still in our DNA. And of course, I already mentioned the military, but that’s a big part of it.

There’s a pecking order. We’re all raised in a pecking order. So you probably think about who’s in charge first. That’s probably how we have been raised.

Leading Up and 360-Degree Leadership

Leadership Beyond Your Own Team

Winston: Yeah. And this idea of 360-degree leadership, learning how to lead in multiple directions, I think you have to embrace this mindset that I’m not just responsible for those that maybe I have the privilege of leading, but I’m a part of a whole team.

Even if it’s not just my team, my decisions don’t just stay with my team. They affect the whole part. And so maybe just getting to the elephant in the room, how do I lead up? What does that even mean? What does that look like? Isn’t it my boss’s job to lead me? What does that even look like? Because that kind of feels like, do I even have permission to lead my boss?

Serving the Mission First

Leadership Begins With Commitment to the Mission

Jim: There’s so many really good ideas that come from that question. First of all, maybe we need to step outside of the whole idea of boss for a minute and think about what the boss wants us to do.

Any boss that is effective is first and foremost committed to the mission of the organization. So maybe one of the first things that we have to say is to be a person of influence, to have some organizational savvy, to lead 360 degrees, I first have to understand and be committed to serving the mission.

Because if the mission is something that everybody is committed to serving, then we have shared language, we have a common goal, and that will bring us together.

Sports as an Example of Influence

Jim: Maybe one of the easiest illustrations to use again would be sports. We use it a lot. But in business and in ministry, we use sports a lot because it just seems like sports talks more about leadership than anything, even more than the military.

Sports talks often about that. So think of your linebacker. Your linebacker is a defensive player. He’s one of 11 on one side of the ball, and yet there’s probably two or three more linebackers on the sideline that back him up if he’s not playing.

I mean, you got 50 or 60 guys on a football team. I don’t know what the number is, but you can have this lonely linebacker who can have tremendous influence on the team by the way he practices, by the way that he plays. And if he’s respected by the team, if he’s got an opinion, people will probably listen.

Performance Creates Influence

Jim: So the second thing I’d say is performers have influence in and of itself. So maybe the boss isn’t the way to think about it. However, I will say this. When you’re in the second chair, you sometimes see more than what the first chair sees.

Seeing From the Second Chair

Different Perspectives at Different Elevations

Winston: What do you mean? How could that even be possible? Doesn’t the boss see everything?

Jim: He or she is supposed to see everything. A story that I’ve told before, I don’t know if I’ve ever told it on our podcast here at the Today Count Show, but I remember I was the associate pastor of a large church in Southern California.

I was young, I was confident, I had lots of energy, and I was studying leadership like crazy. So what we would call my role would be a second-chair leader. In this case, maybe the second-chair leader. I just saw things that the first leader didn’t see because the first leader is leading at a different elevation, different altitude, and I’m sitting at a certain elevation, certain altitude.

The Value of Frontline Perspective

Jim: The closer you get to the work, you at least see different things. You may not see more things, but you see different things, and you owe it to your boss to share some of those things that you see.

That would be an example. A football team, why do you vote someone as captain? Because they already have influence. Why? Because they have the loudest mouth? Probably not. That’s probably not even on there.

Removing Assumptions About Leadership

Jim: But you know more than you think you do. And you might give proper credit to those that you work for, but at the same time maybe not serving that person as well as you could if you worked harder at removing assumptions that you think they see and things that they don’t understand.

The Rockfall Story: Warning Those Ahead

Seeing Danger From a Different Position

Jim: I remember this. This is a true story. I was on a hike, and I was following a friend who was not my boss, but he was my friend, and he was up in front of me. He was in front of me, so he was leading up the trail in Colorado when we were climbing a 14er. I could have sworn I saw something out of my peripheral vision up on the cliff.

Sure enough, I saw a rock budge. I saw a rock budge, and sure as heck, that thing let go and started coming down. I was able to yell and have him stop.

Winston: I would hope so.

Why Leading Up Matters

Jim: Yeah. I don’t know if it would have hit him or not, but it would have scared him for sure. So sometimes, just because of where we’re at in different elevations, we see things that others don’t see.

Short Accounts and Organizational Dialogue

Creating a Culture of Open Communication

Winston: You recently shared a talk in a different context that one of the pictures, the rock analogy come in, kind of made me rethink about this. I think it’d be valuable in this conversation, the idea of short accounts and earthquakes. If you could unpack that a little bit and why it’s valuable no matter in what direction we’re talking about leading up, those short accounts and those, “Hey, the rock is falling,” those, “Hey boss, I don’t know if you know this, but X, Y, and Z,” why that’s so valuable?

Jim: Yeah. One of the things that you can do, no matter your position, is talk. I’m not thinking about gossiping or talking about stupid stuff, but talk about problems, talk about the work, talk about whatever your endeavors are.

Because one of the things that you want to do to create a culture where it is dynamic is you want the culture to see leadership as a dialogue. If it’s a dialogue, then we all share in it.

Why “Short Accounts” Matter

Jim: So going back to your question about the earthquakes and keeping short accounts, no matter where I go, the majority of the organizations that I work with, I ask them, “Do you guys do annual reviews, formal annual reviews?”

Believe it or not, we’re still doing them. I don’t know if it’s 50-50 now; I don’t know what the number is. I haven’t done the study. I’m sure Harvard has. If we could call a friend, we’d probably know how many organizations over a certain size are still doing annual reviews.

The Problem With Annual Reviews

Jim: But the annual reviews are so weird, and they address this issue that we avoid so many conversations. I don’t just mean from the boss down to those that they lead, but even someone being honest with their boss about what could help them become more successful, what clear direction looks like, what they’re confused about.

It doesn’t all have to be dark and negative. It’s simply a dialogue.

Preventing Organizational “Earthquakes”

Jim: The more you do that, you create these short accounts so that you always know where you stand, and the boss knows.

Now here’s the funny thing for those listening to this and you’re not the boss, or maybe you’re a boss but you have a boss. You might think that your boss doesn’t care about where he or she stands.

Trust me, the boss is also wondering, “Am I a good boss? Am I doing a good job?” I don’t even know if I’m doing a good job yet. I’ve got to sit down with you once a year and tell you whether you’re doing a good job or not.”

Eliminating Surprises Through Dialogue

Jim: But if you have short accounts, there’s almost no need for a formal sit-down because you already know. Now, if you have to put that to some kind of metric because of salary increases and this and that, then you create those kinds of things. But it should never be a surprise.

Winston: Yeah, that’s really good. That’s really good.

Leading Up Under Difficult Leadership

A Real-World Leadership Scenario

Winston: So, I got a real-world situation. I get to talk to quite a few leaders in the spaces that I’m in, and this came up. This is probably a pretty general one, but no names will be mentioned.
Let’s just say a leader left a large company and came over to a startup situation and smaller team, smaller context. Maybe the systems aren’t quite established yet, and they’re kind of running and gunning.

When a New Leader Takes Over

Winston: They’re in this space and a leader gets fired. So this person that came over, their leader of their area, the person they work with, maybe gets fired. That person gets replaced with a leader from a different department.

So the person I’m talking to is under new leadership. That new leader is coming from a different department in the organization, and everybody kind of knows this person doesn’t know anything about this department.

Morale is down, and this leader seemingly isn’t open to any kind of suggestions. They’re just there to fill the position until maybe a new hire comes in.

So if I’m this person who’s under this new leader from a different department and morale is down, things aren’t flowing the way they were, I kind of feel stuck. What would you suggest? How do I lead up in this situation?

Understanding Baggage in the Workplace

Everyone Arrives With Baggage

Jim: Well, that’s a really great question. The first thing I would say is before you can lead up, you have to step out and think about your situation a little bit.

Let me explain it this way. Everybody comes into a new workplace with baggage. When I say baggage, what do you think of?

Winston: Pain.

Baggage Includes Strengths and Wounds

Jim: Yeah. Why do we always think of it in the negative? Because the truth is, when we pull up with that U-Haul, it’s kind of a mixed load.

You take some bags out and go, “Oh man, I can’t wait to show everybody this. This is going to be so awesome.” Because as I’ve looked around, they need this.

But then when people look at it, a lot of people aren’t impressed. They don’t think it’s as cool as you think it is.

And then, of course, you bring baggage, pain, scars, wounds, and “I’m never going to do that again.”

Recognizing the Complexity of Team Dynamics

Jim: One of the things that is helpful is just to step outside of your situation and recognize that if you’ve got seven or eight people working in close proximity, you’ve got seven or eight moving trucks that have come in.

There’s a lot of baggage to take off and examine and decide what is contextual and what is not.

Building Trust Through Vulnerability

Sharing Your Own Story First

Jim: That gives you a big theoretical, philosophical answer, but doesn’t hit it specifically.
So specifically, I would start by sharing my baggage.

There’s all kinds of opportunities to share baggage, especially if it’s a scary story, a bad story, because everybody doesn’t really get too excited about hearing you win the championships. For some reason, there’s something about our insecurities that we like to hear somebody else failed, they fell, because it somehow makes us feel, if not taller and better looking, at least equal.

Winston: It gives you permission.

Jim: Yeah. And it eventually gives you permission to talk about that.
It’s also good to lead with things like, “I’m insecure. I think you know how much I want to do a good job, but I’m confused.” Those kinds of statements.

Jim: So I shouldn’t just say, “You suck as a boss. Everybody hates you.”

Choosing to Help Your Boss Succeed

Leading Up With Genuine Intent

Winston: Yeah. Some people will think this is a sales job, so you have to be true about it. But one of the things that we also talk about at Lead Today is choosing your people.

I would think that if you are a person of conscience and you want to live well in this life, you should want to see your boss succeed.

Jim: Wow, that’s great.

Aligning Around the Mission

Winston: And so if you can say with a good heart, “I know we have the mission statement, and I’m about that mission statement you’re about.” A lot of places don’t have that, so you can’t say that everywhere, but let’s pretend this one does.

Where you make it personal is, “I know you’re about our mission, and closely related to that, I think the best thing I can do here is help you be successful.”

That sounds like a sales job, and it is kind of a sales job. If you are able to sell it and you mean it, then they’re going to wonder, “What does Jim mean by that?” It creates some curiosity.

Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership

Avoiding Manipulative Motives

Jim: One of the mistakes we tend to make, it’s kind of like in the Bible. I was talking to somebody today. We get convicted. Here’s a couple lines, right?
Scriptural Christian scripture. How does it go? “A soft answer reduces wrath.” Or something like that.

Winston: Turn away wrath.”

Jim: Oh yeah. “A soft answer turns away wrath.” That fits very well with “Humble yourself in the sight of God and He will lift you up.”

Transformation Over Immediate Results

Jim: Why do we see these verses transactionally versus transformationally?
Here’s what I mean. If I make these cool moves towards my boss, then this is what it’s going to do in him, and I’m going to see that immediately. But if I don’t, then, “Well, that didn’t work.”
So all we’re talking about then is manipulation.

Knowing Whether to Stay or Leave

Examining Your Heart First

Jim: You’ve got to get over that bridge first. Do you really want to see the boss succeed? If you don’t, then get off this podcast because it’s not going to work, and get out of the job.

Yeah. There are times where you are in an environment that you can honestly come to an agreement that God doesn’t want you there. But just because it’s toxic or it’s bad or not as good as it could be or not the way you want it, you still have to make a decision whether you believe God has you there for a reason or not.

If you’re just passing through to learn what leadership should not be like and take your lesson and move down the road, that’s fine. But you’ve got to make sure that you’re not quitting just because it’s hard.

Leading Across the Organization

The Challenge of Leading Peers

Winston: Yeah. That’s really good.

If we’ve already gotten to leading up, we get to leading across. We’ve got peers, whether departmentally or whatever that dynamic looks like in the organization or ministry or wherever you find yourself.

It almost feels like leading peers or leading across could be just as, if not more challenging, than leading up because this is the majority of the people maybe that we cross paths with. Maybe we don’t cross paths with our boss as much as the people that we’re working day-to-day with.

We also don’t necessarily have this built-in positional influence. If I have a team I’m leading, that’s a direct line, and I have a direct line to my boss. But maybe I’m not in the same department or not on the same team as my peers, but there’s still an intersection here.
How do I lead across the organization?

Serving Others as the Foundation of Influence

Jim: That’s really good. I think you’re right. If you can get your brain around serving your boss and really wanting the best for that person, I think answers follow.

Then, of course, leading people the way you would want to be led is a very simple idea that helps.

But when it comes to colleagues or peers, for some it feels like we’re all running a race to see who’s going to get the next promotion.

Competition and Peer Dynamics

The Problem of Unspoken Competition

Winston: Yeah. Especially the competition part, unspoken competition. How do we not let that get in?

Jim: Because if someone looks smart in the room and the other one doesn’t look smart in the room, that does weird things with colleagues.

Let’s just say it for what it is. We don’t use the word sin too much in the marketplace, but it’s making a comeback.

Defining Culture Through Values and Warnings

Jim: In fact, I’ve heard more and more organizations now, when they try to put this in a positive realm, they’ll call them core values. But then I’ve seen some of them change them to the Ten Commandments. Then I’ve seen where they’ve got the seven deadly sins.
They’re just trying to contrast and make culture as clear as possible because sometimes you can do that by saying what not to do. The opposite of that will be inferred.

Winston: Inferred.

Jim: Yeah. Inferred. Most consultants probably don’t get the big checks by doing that, but I have seen that to be true.

Balancing Logic and Empathy

Understanding Different Temperaments

Jim: What’s interesting is I just got off a call before this podcast with somebody. As I was looking at his temperament model, I noticed that he had two strengths that sometimes could appear contradictory.

One of them was super high rationale.

The Challenge of Appearing Cold or Stoic

Jim: If you’ve ever met somebody who is extremely logical, they also tend to be very stoic in their face, which can communicate that you’re an idiot. They look at you like you’re an idiot. Yet he also had super high empathy. When I saw that, I said, “How do those two work together?”

Expressing Empathy While Processing

Jim: He goes, “Well, they don’t work together very well.”
He said this: “Here’s what I learned. I learned that initially I put people off because I didn’t know that my face shut down while I began to think.”

Once I learned that my face shut down when I began to think, then the empathy would kick in where I’d say, “Man, that’s a really hard thing. Now I’m going to get weird on you. Let me think about that.”
By thinking out loud, he was expressing empathy.

Leading Through Action and Example

The Cartoon About the Complaining Worker

Jim: It’s kind of like I saw a cartoon one time where there were three or four guys with shovels digging a ditch. They looked like city workers or something.

One of them was complaining about the boss because the boss was over in a trailer in air conditioning, drinking a pop, feet up on the table. This guy was just ripping his boss.

Quiet Leadership Through Service

Jim: One of the other colleagues looked at him, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Yeah, it’s hot out here, isn’t it? It’s hot.”

Then he just walked over and started digging the ditch.
The next frame showed the guy got up and started helping dig the ditch.

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Leading Without Positional Authority

Jim: So, you’re still leading, but you can’t lead with the command of positional authority. You can still lead by example, which we’ve talked about before, and with empathy.

I think he would agree. He’s looking over there. He’d say, “Well, you think that boss would be smart enough to at least shut the door so we don’t see him putting his feet up on the desk?”

Yeah. He could have gone that route. He could say, “You’re right. That guy’s an idiot.”

Peer-to-Peer Conflict on the Same Team

Winston: What about the peer-to-peer interactions that we all are sure to have, which is conflict? When we have the same goal and we’re butting heads, we have similar ideas or differing ideas, or we’re in the meeting and we’re trying to have our voice heard, and we’re still technically on the same team, but we either feel really strongly about a direction something needs to go and we want people to follow us. What is peer-to-peer conflict?

Jim: Yeah. Well, since you played basketball, you’re going to understand this. I know you are. So, you’ve got this guy who’s a ball hog and he’s not passing the stinking ball, right? There’s a guy flat out open underneath the hoop, and yes, he misses 20% of his layups, but still, that’s an 80% chance that he’s going to score.

Even though you’re going to step back, take a step-back three, and you have a 35% shooting percentage, who should get the ball?

What’s really hard being a colleague leading others is to get after that person, which you can do, especially kinesthetically when you’re moving like that.

But here’s what’s hard. Most competitive athletes don’t have a problem getting after one of their teammates. It’s what it does to them in the process of doing that.

Winston: What do you mean?

Confrontation Without Losing the Relationship

Jim: Here’s what I mean. Once it bugs me so much that I stop playing myself and now I’m just focused on you and what you did do or what you didn’t do.

Now, if I can get to the higher level, get on your case, slap you on the butt, in other words, get on your case, definitely get on your case, but make sure that I give the message that I know you’re better than that and you know you’re better than that. Come on.

Then get back into the character that I need to be, which might be, two plays later, passing the ball back to you.

Most people struggle with that. Once they lock on to something that’s wrong, that’s what they lock on to.

So when it comes to, or probably maybe what you’re closer to asking, you just avoid it.

Well, here’s the sad reality. I don’t know that I’m giving much help here other than stating the reality. If you avoid it, then you’re going to lose. Then you lose.

So if you choose to avoid it, you lose, the team loses. If you get after somebody, you’ve got to get back into character and make sure that after you get after them, they’re still your teammate and you haven’t brought them down.

That goes back to the short accounts even with colleagues.

Winston: Peers, yeah.

Jim: Yeah, but it takes courage to be in good relationships.

All right, so you’re probably already imagining it, so let’s just talk about it. The problem is that most people, I don’t know if that’s accurate, I think it probably is, at least initially, do not accept confrontation.

Winston: So I’m willing to have the confrontation.

Jim: But he’s not willing to receive it. Right.

Depend on People or Develop People?

Has that ever happened to you?

Winston: Oh yeah.

Jim: Yeah. I already saw your body going,  “Yeah. But that sucker didn’t even—” [00:30:57]

So here’s the funny thing. Can you still get back into form and pass him the ball? I think it’s the same thing. That’s just maybe a harder test.

Winston: I was recently confronted, and I’m still processing this question. The question more or less is, “Do you just depend on people or do you develop people?”

Jim: Can I say both?

Winston: That’s the tension to wrestle with, whether this is peers leading or leading down. When somebody is capable and you built relational equity with them, are you just transactionally doing work together, or are you willing to engage in ways, not in a negative way, but confrontational conversations, that will build us both up? Or do I avoid it just for the sake of getting things done faster, more efficiently, not rocking the boat?

I think that’s a real tension. Am I just trying to get through the day and get home?

Learning, Teaching, and Team Contribution

Jim: I think under the umbrella of organizational savvy, we’re not talking about perfection. I think that’s a great question.

Let’s go back to the game of basketball. Probably the reason why I hadn’t struggled in basketball is because I’ve always been the learner. It wasn’t my first sport.

I remember little things. In junior high, I didn’t know that you could dribble yourself into trouble or stop dribbling in the corner.

Someone teaches you that, and you go, “Oh, so how did he know that?” All of a sudden, you lift that person up.

Now follow me with this. As I got older, I would hear people say “hedge, hedge.” I didn’t know what hedging was. I clipped my hedges, [00:33:01] but I didn’t know basketball hedging.

A Division I basketball player was very teachable with me. I was probably 20 years older than he was. It took courage for him to test me to see if I was teachable. When he showed me that, I went, “Oh.” Then when they taught me how to do a true pick and roll, I’d set the pick and then wonder what happened.

Winston: Pick and float. Pick and get lost.

Jim: Yeah. Pick it, go to the three-pointer, which you can, I guess, if you were a threat out there.

Trusting the Team

But it wasn’t just that. Little things, like being a rescuer. I would always try to do too much, and he would teach me to trust your teammates, stay on your man, and eventually you’ll learn where the opportunities are, the passing lanes, and those kinds of things.

When I started playing with people who were really good, here’s what happened to me. I became someone who wasn’t a problem for the team, which made me feel like part of it. I was contributing; I got to score a few times.

So sometimes I think we have to ask, “Am I in an environment where I’m a learner, or am I in an environment where I’m a teacher?”

I think that will help. Maybe somebody thinks they should be in a place where they’re a learner, but in reality, they’re an opportunity to teach.

Leading a Team Through Performance Challenges

Frustration With Team Performance

Winston: What about, as we start to land the plane, getting into leading those that we actually clearly have the responsibility to lead, our team, whatever that might look like?

I feel like probably the most common frustration is when the people that I’m responsible for aren’t performing. I’ve tried to address the things that feel most obvious, but it just seems like there’s not a response. I think most leaders would say this is the majority of their tension. My team isn’t performing the way I “want” them to.

If I feel stuck there, what does that look like?

Leadership as an Art, Not a Science

Jim: Well, being a 360-degree leader is very much an art, not a science. We should probably be a little bit patient.

Even now, at the age of 66, I ask myself questions like, “Would he appreciate this? Would she appreciate this? Or is this more about me worrying how I’m going to come off?”
I have to get down into that level first.

Because I would say it’s an art, if you’re going to develop people into becoming a 360-degree person, you’re going to have to delegate what that looks like as a task first.

It has to be a concrete thing.

“John, here’s what I want you to do.”

Developing Leadership Through Assignments

Jim: So you’ve got a little department war going on. Your department and that department are going after it.

What do you think two chiefs would do? One has to invite the other into a conversation.

I would literally give it as an assignment. Depending upon how it goes, sometimes everyone’s surprised. It goes really well because they actually just talked. Other times it doesn’t go super well. But in either case, they come back to me, and then we talk about it, and then we send them out again.

Teaching the Meaning of Leadership

Jim: We also tell them what they just did. “What you just did is you influenced a colleague, you served the mission, and you displayed what real leadership really is.”

All of a sudden, the equation starts coming together. “Oh, this is what leadership looks like.” It’s not simply being the boss. Maybe John Maxwell is right that when it really boils down to its most common denominator, leadership is influence.

Recognizing When Someone Is Not a Good Fit

Knowing When the Relationship Is Not Working

Winston: What if the team, maybe performance is an issue, but what if you’ve just kind of come to the end of your rope? How do you know if this team member, or even yourself in this dynamic, is just not a good fit?

Jim: Yeah. You know it because it doesn’t work, right? It just keeps coming back broken.
I’ve quoted him before, but when Lloyd Lewan gave me three words to think about when I was building an organization back in the 1990s, he said, “You’ve got to have a clear vision so people understand where they’re going.”

Vision, Focus, and Influence

Jim: Then you’ve got to make sure that everybody on the team understands what they do and how they do it, how it connects to that vision. He called that focus.

So give me two words. Vision. Help everybody understand their focus. That helps toward the vision.

Then finally, influence. Influence is that relationship where I can look at you and say, and I don’t have to say all these words, but these are all the unspoken words that will be true:

“We’ve been working together for a long time. I love you; I know you love me; I care about you. You care about me. We’ve been through this. We’ve been through that. I don’t have time to explain this right now, but you just do this.”

That’s influence.

Or when you’ve got to trust somebody.

Signs of a Poor Organizational Fit

Jim: Now, if those three things aren’t clicking, you don’t have a fit. If you’ve done your part as a leader, give the vision, make sure that they understand why their work fits into the vision, and that you have a working relationship that makes sense.

Organizational Savvy and Managing Dysfunction

The Importance of Small Conflicts

Jim: Going back to your earthquake scenario that we didn’t quite finish, in California, what they taught me was you want to have a bunch of little earthquakes, little tremors, because what you don’t want is to go for seasons and years and even longer than years where there’s no earthquake.

Because most likely, when the plates do give, people will die.

So that’s kind of the whole idea of organizational savvy.

Facing Dysfunctional Organizations

Jim: One more thing about organizational savvy that we didn’t talk about, and it probably wouldn’t be good if we quit without mentioning it, is how do you deal with dysfunction?

I don’t think we’re ever saying in this podcast that organizational savvy fixes all errors and all dysfunctions. Because when the boss has his uncle and his cousin or his girlfriend on the team, and you look at the performance of those people and go, “None of them would make the team, but somehow they’re on the team.”

Those are some of the ugly realities of some organizations.

Deciding How to Respond to Dysfunction

Jim: That’s when you have to decide if that organization has enough integrity for you to trade your time for that goal, or if it’s your job to try to correct that. Or if it’s short-term, then it does kind of feel strategic and maybe manipulative.

But even manipulating something is not always a sin. It kind of depends on what we’re talking about.

Navigating Moral Complexity in Leadership

Jim: We want to really get down and dirty on what it takes to get something done. It gets to be muddy water, but you’ve got to really be clear in your own head because a lot of situations you’re walking into are super dysfunctional.

If you’ve decided that you’re there for a reason, then you’ve got to figure out to what lengths you’d be willing to go and make sure you don’t get taken down in the darkness.

Motives, Manipulation, and Ethics

The Thin Line Between Leadership and Manipulation

Winston: Yeah. I think I’ve heard it said there’s a thin line between manipulation and leadership. It comes down to motive.

Jim: It really does. Yeah, it really does.

Situational Ethics and Difficult Decisions

Jim: Let’s just be extreme. If you’re in the middle of a crime, are you always going to tell the truth?

Well, you’re going to say, “I have no idea, but I’m going to do what I need to do to get out of that situation.”

I don’t know that I believe in situational ethics, but there must be something like that in some of the shadows of life.

Abraham as an Example of Imperfect Leadership

Winston: Yeah. We’re doing the Genesis project, and we’ve seen time and again, especially with Abraham. My man was lying. My man was somehow getting blessed.

It wasn’t that God is promoting lying, but he was making some decisions that in real time he thought, for whatever reason, were correct. They were incorrect, but it still advanced God’s purposes.

Justice, Accountability, and Final Reflections

The Importance of Justice in Leadership

Jim: I loved your last question, though. I think that’s just a real legitimate thing.
There’s a lot of people who don’t want to play in the same sandbox, bottom line.

It may not sound loving, caring, Christian, but it’s just opposite of that.
Justice is one of the seven elements of character.

If it’s not, your reputation and the trust that people have for you goes downhill when you won’t act justly.

Encouragement to Take Action

Winston: That might be a word for somebody today. Maybe the first step is to act justly, to have the conversation, to step out and consider all the baggage, all the different things that might need to take place. There’s a few different action steps here that I think we’ve heard today.
Jim, thank you for unpacking that with us and for us.

Jim: That was a real topic.

Closing Thoughts

Winston: Yeah. I believe there are people watching and listening that are going to take so much away from it and that you’re going to be a better leader from it.
So thank you for joining us, and until next time.

Outro

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