day 1390: Setting Your Tone

While I am on a pilgrimage walk on the Camino de Santiago (St. James Way) in Spain, I have asked some of the most committed and courageous faith-driven business leaders I know to guest contribute to Purposed worKING.  Enjoy! - Rusty

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." -
James 1:19-20

Business leaders shape their organizations everyday by what they say and do.  Sometimes the tone they set has as much to do with how results are achieved as the strategic direction they set. Every leader must set high standards and achieve results but some do not utilize the power of their teams to achieve exceptional results.  Some leaders seem heavy handed and dictatorial, which demoralizes their people and in the end paralyzes creativity, teamwork, open dialogue and effective decision-making.

Many executives are unwilling to listen to anyone else when making decisions. They are smart and they think they have all the answers. How do they get away with this?  Simply, they get results. Teams become desensitized and conditioned to respond even though they believe they could help make better decisions if asked. The first time results go south the house of cards can begin to fall for the leader. The leaders begin to recognize they need help to solve the complex problems they face. They don’t know how to effectively involve their people because they are used to dictating what should be done.

People want to be inspired. A few keys to effective team leadership are patience to listen, speaking only when the perspectives of all-important constituencies are understood and not yelling and blaming other people for the problems. Showing compassion, caring and extending Christ like understanding are not weaknesses.  They set the right tone for outstanding team oriented decision-making.

Anger, impatience, and contention block the Holy Spirit from guiding us in our daily walk with God. May we all be swift hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath so we may inspire and unleash the God given talents of our teams.

Dan Paxton

President, Organizational Leadership Resource, Inc. 

day 1225: Out Of Tune

"They marched into Jerusalem to the music of harps, lyres, and trumpets, and they proceeded to the Temple of the Lord."

I was on an airplane and thought, "I'll watch a movie."  I scrolled through the Samsung tablet that I was given and nothing really caught my eye except for the movie, "A Late Quartet".  I'm a big Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken fan.  The thought of that much pure acting chops in the same movie seemed worth the watch.  The premise of the film is that a string quartet celebrating 25 years together is falling a apart because of many life reasons, with the catalyst being the character played by Christopher Walken contracting Parkinson's disease.  There are a lot of messages in the movie but one that has stuck with me is what can happen when one instrumentalist is out of tune, or out of synch, and what happens to everyone else.  What occurs is that everyone else will begin to play and tune to the one that is off key or off rhythm, thus destroying the sound of the whole. This happens everyday in our jobs.  There will be someone who is off of their game, off color, offsetting, off of strategy, and the rest of us will "tune" ourselves to them, versus collectively staying strong and true to where we know we are supposed to be.  Teams get weak and fall apart because of this phenomena.  It's worth having someone or someway of consistently checking and tuning back to true so to not let one person, or one team cause everyone else to go astray.

This can so happen to us in our spiritual lives as well. We can get pulled out of tune by the world and those around us who are the most influential.  We can learn two things here. One is that we are to always be on the watch and listen for where we are in our lives.  If we fall out of tune because we have followed where others have gone, then we need to go back to God's Word, prayer, church and fellowship to find our way back.  But secondly, and just as importantly, we can, if we are vigilant and we take this as part of who we are to be, we can be the countering true tone to the off tune nature of those around us.  When others are feeling lost in the score of life and they can't seem to find where they should be or what tone they should pursue, we can provide the example of a true and purposeful way to pursue.

Reference: 2 Chronicles 20:28 (New Living Translation)