A guy named Mark commented on my last post. Go ahead and read it. Today’s post basically answers some of his questions. If you create a mission statement, you then use that vision as the acid test for your success. The best of all worlds is when your job is directly related to the accomplishment of your mission statement. When you can make money fulfilling your mission statement, how can it get any better? However, there are millions who simply cannot do that. The best example I use is of a guy who goes to the church I used to pastor. He is a mailman, but in his “Mission Life” he teaches and leads in the children’s ministry. He is phenomenal at what he does. He always has been. His mission, his vision, his purpose, is to teach kids about God. That is where he gets his fulfillment. He works as a mailman to feed his family, but his mission is completely outside of his career.

Many people have this situation. If you can’t make money fulfilling your vision, then you find other ways to do it. To be completely honest, many of you are in jobs where you can’t tie it in to solving a major problem in the world. It is what it is. Nevertheless.

Let’s worry about how to tie in your career into your mission statement later. Look up some examples of mission statements. What defines you? Many people choose general statements like “To be the best dad in the world” or “To serve God with all of my heart.” Those of course are great, but it’s way too broad and doesn’t answer what’s unique to YOU. What I would suggest is turn those examples into values, because that is what they are. Your values guide you in the accomplishment of your mission.

My mission statement is: “To blow away the bell curve in everything I do . . . with the Kingdom of God receiving the benefits.” Blowing away the bell curve is the core of my mission statement. It’s a war on mediocrity. The bell curve describes the distribution of people in a given area. The most familiar bell curve relates to the disbursement of kids on the their grades. However, you can use it in any area. Your job: what percentile rank are you among your co-workers? Blow away the bell curve by asking the question: What do the most successful people do in my situation?

We all want to get better and advance in our respective jobs, hobbies, etc. But when I talk to people why they aren’t advancing, they default to their circumstances or something outside of them that is keeping them from moving forward. It is the common human experience. Whoever says, “Well frankly, I’m not disciplined enough or tenacious enough to find ways around the obstacles in my way nor do I respond effectively when I fail. My circumstances certainly hinder me, but frankly it’s my own damn fault.” WHO SAYS THAT? No one!!!

A powerful question I asked myself early on was this: “Is there anyone who has it worse than I do yet is very successful?” The answer is an obvious “yes”, so then I ask, “What are they doing to be successful? What are they doing to overcome obstacles, to overcome the exact same things I am facing?” They are on the top end of the bell curve. Why? Because they are not in the majority. The majority of people allow things outside of themselves to stop them dead in their tracks. They don’t have the emotional tenacity or confidence to overcome obstacles. They are in the comfort zone. They aren’t experiencing a great deal of turmoil in mediocrity, so they float in the sea of average on the inner tubes of how bad they have it. Well gee Mr. Al Bundy, is there anyone that has it harder than you and yet is blowing away their circumstances? Ummmm, yep! Man! Ugh! It drives me insane!

You need a mission statement. A statement that you can walk away from and say, “If I don’t accomplish that or live that, my life means nothing.” Can you verbalize the exact thing that is your destiny, your calling, your passion, your reason for living? No? Well then, I think we have our answer as to why you are in the middle of the bell curve with all of the masses of people who are mediocre. The worst people? Those who are crushingly average yet think they are awesome. Wow. I know a lot of those. Just shake your head and be grateful you’re not that blind.

Enough about them. What drives you insane about the world? What do you need to do in order to fire up the Iron Man core?

Once you find the area of the world that either drives you insane or the area that makes you get up in the morning, you have all of the energy you need to be successful. The reason why people just lethargically muddle through life is because they haven’t tapped into their own personal Iron Man core. You can read it on people’s faces. Some people have found it and it and it just resonates from them. It has NOTHING to do with the culture-imposed hierarchy of status. In other words, a person can be more fully alive in a career our culture deems as “low” than someone who is the CEO of a company. It doesn’t take long to observe this. Movies are made about it. If you can find out what that passion is inside of you, then you will absolutely love life. That doesn’t mean you won’t face obstacles or fail; it means you are so passionate about what you are doing, obstacles and failures become logistical tools of refinement instead of “signs” that you are on the wrong path.

People who are unsure about their passion or their calling take failure and obstacles as “a sign from God” they may be in the wrong place. All that is really happening is people are looking toward the benefits of the accomplishment of a vision, but those benefits have more to do with what they will receive from that particular path than what good it will do for other people. It’s too surface, too cheap, too weak. People with an Iron Man core attempt to fulfill a vision way above and beyond themselves. People who don’t that have a tendency to want the best things in life without working hard for them, so when obstacles for failure comes, they simply say it’s not worth it and looks for the next “path of least resistance”.

Those who can use their interchange the words “calling” and “career” and have them mean the same thing have found their Iron Man core.

Once you have found that, you begin to wonder why everyone in the world doesn’t have the same passion. You begin to understand that you want to have other people help you fulfill that vision. You have to sell it to them and motivate them to use their personal resources to help accomplish that vision. One of the ways you do that is to try and make it their vision. That, in an essence, is leadership. Leadership is influence.

To help you find that core, you need a lot of thought and a lot of meditation. Just start asking yourself what drives you crazy about the world. Then ask yourself a series of questions: “Why is that so important to you?” or “What bad happens if you don’t do anything about it?” You will start to come up with core words. Those core words define why it’s so important. You want people to be or become what? What words perfectly describe it? You are on the path to forming your own mission statement and values. I will give you one more guiding principle and then we’ll start to form your mission statement and values.

The world is a mess, right? Right. The way we explain the start of all of this is from the first book of the Bible, Genesis. God is good, and He is up to nothing but good. In the first two chapters of Genesis, God created everything and it was awesome. God created a free-will creature (us) to shower him with grace and have a relationship with him and to receive worship from him. As you know, the only way to have a compliment count is that a person who can choose to not compliment you, compliments you anyway. That’s real. In order for God to receive true worship, He had to create us with the ability and freedom to choose not to. That way, when we do thank Him or tell Him how much we love Him, it’s genuine. You know what’s coming next.

We chose not to. In Genesis 3, we chose to go down the autonomous, auto-nomos (Greek for self-law) road and in a sense tell God, “We’ve got this, thanks.” God said, “Okay, I have given you that freedom.” But then He told us what the natural consequence of what we just chose to do. So from Genesis 4 until today and until God final restores everything (thank God, literally), we are simply experiencing God’s response to Genesis 3 (culminating in the story of Jesus), and man’s response to Genesis 3. So how does this apply to leadership?

In Genesis 4, we see men starting to organize, start making tools to make life easier, and invented music to make life more enjoyable. From Genesis 4 on, man has been working hard to defeat the effects of the their choices and increase the quality of life. Every job, every technological advancement, every pursuit of an enjoyable experience, every iPhone, iPad, and even golf is an attempt to solve problems and increase the quality of life. Everything from a hospital, to toilet paper (yep, even that), to massages (I need one bad) is our advancing forward to solve problems and increase the quality of life. What job do you go to every day? What problem is your company trying to solve or how is your company trying to increase the quality of life for humanity? Is that what you want to do? Does your current job fulfill the role of the power plant that feeds your voice, your “Iron Man” core? Before the next blog, look at the world and ask yourself what drives you insane about people, about this world. How would YOU like to improve the world?

In their seminal leadership book, The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner, before ever getting into their theory of leadership, begin with revealing the “Iron Man” seed and core of all leadership: finding your voice. Your voice is the energy core for why you want to change the world. Have you ever thought why you even want to lead? Is it simply a desire to have other people call you their leader? Of course, if that’s it, then you better go to the top of a mountain and ask an old guy for wisdom.

Most of you want to lead because you have a burning desire (in your heart) to make the video, the painting, or the image in your mind come to reality. You see a better world and you want to do everything you can to make it happen. That’s vision, that’s mission, that’s calling. That’s your voice. But where does the opportunity to find your voice come from?

Some of you will need to be patient for this next section. I am a Christian . . . great. I can feel some of you roll your eyes even before I post this. Tell you what, set your own personal record and chill out for at least 15 seconds, okay? Let me “take your side” for a minute. I’m sorry for the following tangent, but in light of our current culture, it’s necessary.

For those of you who are not Christians and are irritated with Christians, I understand. Please separate Christianity from Churchianity. If you read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), you will fall in love with Jesus. He’s awesome, he’s incredible, and if he were walking the earth today, you would follow him like he was your own personal rock star. However, understandably, you have observed churchianity, which is our man-made way of following the rock star. When you follow a rock band, do you love hanging with the fans? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The problem is that a lot of Jesus’ fans simply are weird, and neurotic, and believe that if they wave their morality flag high enough, everyone will come to church in droves because we Christians are just so . . . “Mr. Rogers ish”.

Two bottom lines: 1) We are sorry for being such dorks. We don’t really get how to represent Christ. Perhaps if you saw more of the power of God in our lives instead of stuck-up holiness, you might be more open to it. Right? And 2) Jesus still rocks and you need to quit using us as an excuse for not pursuing Him. If you want to know what God is like and what God thinks of you and if He “gets you” then read the gospels and imagine sitting under His teaching. He is the exact representation of who God is. You’ll fall in love with Him. Thanks for listening. Now back to the creation of the “Iron Man” energy core. Our voice.

Do you want the following statement said about you: “He/She is one of the most teachable people I have ever met!”?

I hope so. How can you possibly gain that reputation? If you are only reactive in the eradication of the blind area, then you simply have to offend enough people, have them confront you, respond well when they do, and then hope they are around when someone gossips about you (because you offended them) and the person who confronted you before says, “Go to them! He/She is one of the most teachable people I have ever met!” But, because they probably only have one experience in confronting you, they may not feel comfortable making such a broad-stroke comment about your character. Further, even though they don’t like the fact that this person is gossiping about you, they can’t help to wonder, “Wow, Greg offended this person too. What the hell is wrong with him?”

The only real way to obtain that type of reputation is to become proactive about shrinking the size of the blind area.

When is the last time you went to your spouse and asked, “How can I improve as your husband/wife?” When is the last time you went to your children and asked them the same question? Your co-workers? Your boss? People at church?

You never have? Why? Let me ask you some questions:

1. Do you believe you have a blind area?
2. Do you want to become a better leader, parent, spouse, etc.?
3. Do you understand the core fear of every human being is to tell another human being they are wrong, or that they have offended someone, or that they are simply clueless in an area?
4. Do you know that even though you truly are teachable, people are still scared to death to confront you in any way?
5. Do you know that there are countless times when someone should have addressed your blind area but chose not to?
6. Do you also realize by default of this discussion you are blind to that fact?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, then how on our great God’s green earth do you expect to find out either what is in your blind area or find out how severe that issue is unless you proactively ask people?

Try it. Reverse it. What would you think of the person who approached you and asked you the same questions? You would be blown away, wouldn’t you? Why? Because you know that most people would NEVER do that! But when they do, it’s amazing! Why? Because people who actually do that show an incredible amount of humility AND an incredible amount of confidence. Do you know what confidence is? It’s arrogance plus humility. Read that again. Be confident in who you are, which means you are okay with not having the corner market on any given subject, which is okay because you are teachable and a life-long learner who loves the knowledge available to all of us through what other people possess.

Proactive teachablility is so powerful because it’s so rare. It’s so powerful because somehow people instantly feel secure with you around because you “get it” and they are completely safe with you because you won’t overly criticize them for their mistakes or weaknesses because you own your own weaknesses. You “get” the fact that we all hate ourselves when we screw up and are desperately trying to get better and improve. They feel safe with you because you won’t beat them up more than they already beat themselves up. They love you because you are not arrogant.

If you can master proactive teachability, then 99% of your ability to influence is already taken care of. Now all you need to do is become a master of your particular field of interest. Boom.

Leadership is influence. Next, I will walk through the major components of how people truly gain leadership power. Before that, I had to lay out the pre-requisite to all leaders: they are teachable and humble. To take teachability and humility to a whole new level, be proactive about it.

The blind quadrant is the main area in the discussion of proactive teachability. The blind area is the area of your personality that other people can see, but you can’t see yourself. To illustrate in non-personality ways, it is the “bad breath” area, or “you have a spot on your tie” area. It is blatantly obvious to other people, but you just can’t seem to see it in yourself. It’s not that you don’t recognize how you act, it’s that you don’t recognize that when you act that way, people have that overwhelming feeling that rushes through them that can only be described by one word: awkward. You know there are certain character traits that are unique to you, but you are “blind” to how it comes across to other people; or even if you understand it may be a certain personality “quirk” of yours, you don’t realize the degree of it. You may only rate this particular weakness with a “1”, but others rank it at a “6” or even an “8”. You are blind to the fact that you are killing yourself!

On a more practical level, we may be blind to the application of certain knowledge. Have you ever had someone work hard at explaining something to you and eventually the “a-ha” moment came when you finally got it? Of course! We all have!

The point to all of this is that we all have a blind area! So how does that affect you? It affects your attitude, how you carry yourself, and how you approach problem-solving.

Have you ever met someone who isn’t teachable? You have a discussion with someone where you talk to them about a true, legitimate mistake they made and they get defensive and simply won’t “own” it. Isn’t that infuriating?? Just admit it! But they won’t.

Imagine another situation we have all faced. Someone offends you, but they seem clueless to that fact. Now you are in a major predicament. You so desperately want to go and confront them, but you are scared to death to do so. Why? What is the one fear all of us have? That’s right, we are worried they won’t respond well, they’ll get defensive, and the relationship is worse off than it was before. You mull it over and mull it over some more, but you decide to let it go, but you honestly know you can’t. You hold that offense against that person and even though your intensity eventually decreases, you still have that “story” in your mind about that person.

But let’s say you do confront them and they respond with “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” You feel better, they are grateful you confronted them, and life is better. Cool.

If you understand that you have blind areas, you have a core understanding about yourself in two areas: 1) That your thinking may be off and it needs to be corrected; and 2) You offend or turn people off by the way you come across to them. It’s not about your motives. None of us “mean” to do that, but we do.

There is a difference between believing you have a blind area and becoming alarmed by the fact you have a blind area. If your intensity is too low, you simply wait for others to build up enough courage to talk to you about it, and then you respond accordingly. If you have a higher level of intensity about it, you proactively pursue ways to eradicate it.

If your intensity is non-existent, you simply become defensive when people try and correct you. If that’s you, quit reading this blog because I honestly have no respect for people who can’t own their stuff. Further, the true fact is that you get defensive because you are just so damn scared of failing, you just can’t bring yourself to admitting you’re wrong. We all understand the fear of failure, but to add on top of that a lack of teachability is just insulting to the human race. Grow up.

What is present in the heart and mind of someone who is teachable? Let’s begin walking through it

There is a technique of self-understanding called the Johari Window. Cool name? It simply comes from the first names of the two guys who developed it (Joe and Harry). The key questions are: “How well do you know yourself?” and “How well do other people know you?” If you know it and they know it, that information exists in the “open” window. If they don’t know it and you know it, that information exists in the “closed” window (or the window of façade). If neither of you know it, it’s “hidden”; and if they can see something about you that you can’t, then all of that data lives in the “blind” window. Here is a picture that displays it well:

Cool? Do you get it? Do you agree that all of us have all four rooms? Good.

As we grow, experience life, and more importantly respond to life, the rooms don’t stay the same size. If you are growing in maturity, the hidden room starts to shrink because there is less and less data in that room. You get to choose which room it goes in. If we live in an ideal world, the data would simply transition from the hidden room to the open room. We grow and mature through interactions with other people. They observe how we live and respond and dream and act and then we dialogue about it asking the key question “Why?” and we start to discover that we live and respond and dream and act that way because that is what is important to us. It is what we value. Now that same process shows us that we are acting in a certain way and once we discover that, we realize we don’t want to act that way and we change how we think, which changes how we act.

Now if we have bad experiences, we get nervous about those interactions with other people, start biting our nails, losing our hair, and start shoving as much new data about ourselves into the closed, or façade, area. We become guarded and start manipulating relationships, information, and what we do or say because become scared about what other people are going to do with the information about us we give them. That’s why it’s a façade. We start wearing masks and not showing our true self. Scary, huh? It’s based in fear. We become afraid of other people. We lose trust, and we run back inside and check to make sure the door to our true selves is locked. Whew! Remember, we all have all four rooms. Our emotional health is equal to the size of each of the rooms. Next: the blind room.

We began with the theories of leadership: Great Man, Trait, Behavioral, Contingency, Transactional, and Transformational.

We then simplified the definition of leadership by adopting John Maxwell’s one-word definition of leadership: Leadership is influence. Leadership is obviously one person trying to motivate another person to join them in accomplishing something in a certain direction. But you don’t need all of that; it is inherent in the word. You know it and feel it right when you say the word in your mind. As well, you want to influence people. How do you do that? You use both formal and informal processes to do that. You can about all of that in my most recent blogs.

Before I get into the specific aspects and techniques on how to influence people, I want to set the stage for what I believe to be the most important trait that literally either qualifies you or disqualifies you to lead. It’s what I call proactive teachability.

I will build an overall diagram, but as of right now, it simply looks like this:

Proactive Teachability can also be called humility. The reason I don’t call it humility is because our culture has packed a negative aura around the word. As soon as we say “be humble”, we take it to mean “walk around and hang your head low, don’t be assertive, but be timid, quiet, and don’t try to take the lead”. Even if you disagree with that, I simply like the word “teachable” better.

Under the category of Informal Leadership lie the aspects of charisma, relational power, and referent power. People who have very charismatic personalities can immediately change the climate of a group of people. If they combine that with having a passion on a particular subject, we are excited to help that person and follow that person; have that person INFLUENCE us. When we have a relationship with someone, they influence us. They lead us. Whenever we begin a relationship with someone, we just decided to scoop a percentage of our identity out of our heart and hand it to that person. You have just told them “you have authority over this percentage of my identity”. So whatever they think of you, you have obligated yourself to accept or deny their opinion of you. That’s why when you get in an argument with someone you like or love it’s very emotional. That emotion is the energy you use to try and reconcile the paradox that the one you gave a percentage of your identity to thinks something different about you than you think of yourself. Think of it this way: if a complete stranger walked up to you and insulted you, you would raise one of your eyebrows and think they are absolutely crazy. You don’t even struggle adopting their insult into your identity (unless you set records in the are of neuroticism). That’s relational power. Now if your boss (who has positional power) also develops a relationship with you, the relational power overtakes positional power. You follow them more from the realm of relationship than from position. Conversely, if your boss only uses positional power and not relational power, you begin to disrespect your boss because they don’t get the core of the human experience: we are all here to increase each other’s quality of life. The positional power person doesn’t get this and their style of leadership comes across as you exist to only advance their little kingdom. That’s why relational power is so important.

Finally, referent power is relational power on steroids. It states, “I’m going to follow you because it’s you.” Relational power plus time plus integrity plus success equals referent power. Read that sentence again. Referent power has all of the components of both formal and informal power…. except positional power and coercive/reward power. When someone holds referent power, they don’t need their position; nor do they need to use coercion or rewards to motivate people. It is SO powerful! Do you see why I have such a disdain for positional power? I have no respect for people for people who hold to positional power. How do you know they are only relying on positional power? Evaluate how passionate they are about developing relationships with their direct reports.

If you have to tell people you are the leader (position), you’re not. Leadership is granted to you, it’s not taken by you. If you have to take authority, you are on the fast track towards failing as a leader.

One more thing: It’s both/and, not either/or. You need both formal and informal power. Formal power without informal power means you are a jerk. Informal power without formal simply means you’re a nice person, but you don’t change things (because you lack knowledge and expertise).

Influencing People

How do you do it?? When I want other people to join forces with me to accomplish one of my visions or goals, the automatic thing to do is talk to them about it, right? Tell them what your idea is, why it’s important, how they can help, and what the end results will be if they help you. This is certainly true, but let’s hit the minus button on the leadership map and look more broadly at theories, but not as broad as the theories described earlier.

Before, we discussed the theories of Great Man, Trait, Behavior, Contingency, Transactional, and Transformational. Now we turn to the actual traits and behaviors found within the above theories. What did these leaders actually do in order to be examined and included in the development of these theories? Think about yourself. Whom do you allow to influence you? Those people you care about, those you have to let influence you (your boss), and those people that have mastered areas of life or have mastered a skill set you yourself desire to master. Make sense?

The most important thing to remember is that leadership is influence, NOT position. It is about people allowing you to influence (lead) them. It’s their decision, not yours.

Formal vs. Informal; Management vs. Leadership

First, let’s drill down into the actual “things” that allow one person to influence another.

Under the category of Formal Leadership exist positional power, coercive/reward power, and knowledge and expertise. Even though it’s obvious I detest positional power, it nonetheless is a factor in having one person influence another. Position in and of itself is not evil, it just so quickly goes to a person’s head, the consequences seem to outweigh the benefits. The reason why positional power seems to go south so quickly is because those who rely on positional power go immediately to the use of coercive/reward power, which is the second piece of formal leadership. You will remember that these are the two main components of transactional leadership.

The most legitimate aspect of formal power is knowledge/expertise power. Those born with a high IQ not only absorb information very quickly, they are able to use their God-given processor to assimilate knowledge together to advance the overall knowledge on a given topic and be able to create and be innovative. We are more than ready to submit to teachers and professionals in various subjects to allow them to mentor us and guide us in various disciplines because they are experts and we passionately desire to know what they know. Why? Because we believe we will have a higher quality of life if we have the expertise they hold.

Tomorrow: Informal Power