It's Tuesday at 2:00pm! (PST Time: I live and work from Southern California)
Greetings to you!
Each week I send out a short leadership blog that's called "Tuesday at 2:00pm". The purpose of this is simply to provide a brief thought on leadership that you can read and think about in just a few minutes. I send it out every week at 2:00pm (PST) and encourage you to make an appointment with yourself to pause and think about the thing I'm writing about.
Russ...
LEADERSHIP QUOTE:
"Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own." Henri J.M. Nouwen
What does this stir up? Either write me HERE or comment at the end of the blog post HERE.
A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:
This month I want to explore some quotes and ideas around the theme of COMMUNITY. This is a topic I've been thinking a lot about lately, and as I explored some thoughts on it I drove me deeper. To see past themes and blog posts, visit my website HERE.
The quote above from Henri Nouwen is just worded so well. I love that idea, "Community is the fruit of our capacity...", the idea that Community is so sweet, so wonderful, so important, when we approach from an unselfish perspective.
I don't know about you, but there are Communities that I'm connected with that I often approach for what I can get out of them as opposed to what I can contribute. Sometimes it's my church, sometimes it's with friends and sometimes it's with an organization I'm serving, but I've learned that it's really easy to allow my own personal needs and interests to become my "agenda", and this is wrong.
I need to approach each of these Communities from a different perspective, a perspective of what are the interests of others, and how can I make sure that people are being heard and their needs are being addressed.
If I'm only looking out for myself, I often don't have the ability to even think about what is going on with others in my Community.
Super simple: If I want any community that I'm a part of to be the best, I need to be a person who is thinking of others and modeling that behavior for everyone.
I wish I wasn't so selfish!
Think of 3 ways you can place others needs above your own in one of the Communities you're a part of.
DEEPER STILL:
This month I want to highlight 5 different values of a healthy Community, and challenge you to think about how that value is being lived out in your life, through your life, and into your Community!
The 5 we'll explore are:
1) A Trusting Community
2) An Honest Community
3) A Listening Community
4) An Encouraging Community
5) A Celebrating Community
Let's start with A Trusting Community.
A Community has to be a safe place for everyone. Somethings this can happen on a large scale, sometimes a Community needs to broken down into smaller groups where real trust can happen.
Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team talks about the importance of TRUST as the foundation for any team, or any Community.
Lencioni shares a couple of great points on Trust:
Trust takes time to build, it doesn't just happen overnight
Trust can be broken, and then must be rebuilt, again and again
Every time the Community changes, trust needs to be reestablished.
Trust is often best built through shared experiences
Here's the bottom line for all of you: Building Trust Takes Work, and Keeping Trust Takes MORE Work.
I think sometimes we think it just happens. It doesn't. You need to be intentional in building it, maintaining it, modeling it and keeping it as the foundation of the Community.
But let me tell you... a Community built on TRUST is a beautiful thing. It's worth your effort, time and focus!
Think of ONE WAY to build trust more deeply in one of the Communities you're a part of.
Things I'm Reading, Listening To and Watching This Week:
Check out this great geography site: thetruesize.com Explore the sizes of countries & regions around the globe. I got lost in this page for a while and it was really fun!
I just started a new podcast series with Sharon McMahon called 9066:One Signature Changed Everything. It's a history lesson on our American response to people of Japanese ancestry during the war. Really interesting and challenging! 2 episodes are out so far.
I'm enjoying my Nespresso machine, and like the afternoon beverage of choice: Coffee Melozio
Visit the new website for The Orange County Barnabas Group
You've heard me talk about our friends at Harbor Ministries.They'll be presenting this week at The Barnabas Group, but we're then helping to host a Tom Petty Tribute Concert on April 7th in San Juan Capistrano. Join us for an evening of great music, and an invitation to learn more about Harbor!