These four topic areas contain all the skills a leader needs to be successful. It is important to continue to expand the skills in each of these areas. Since it is near the end of the choir year, this is a great opportunity for taking inventory of your skill set and determine the new skills needed or which of the skill areas need to be improved.
This month's newsletter does not have guest contributors. I have chosen to use this edition of "Leadership Tools" as a time for evaluation. Many church professionals are winding down the program year, which began in the fall and will take a break during the summer months. It's not a time for the church leader to take off, however. It's a time for evaluation and planning. The fall comes all too soon.
Therefore, May is a good month to look over the last 9 months and plan the summer planning processes and schedule.
Prepare ahead for your planning time and the sessions will be much more fruitful.
Plan to succeed or you will plan to fail!
FOUNDATIONS
How's Is Going With Your 2008 Goals?
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. Zig Ziglar
Review the January 14, 2008 Monday Morning Email at http://creatormagazine.com/dnn/MondayMorningEmail/January142008/tabid/362/Default.aspx
I gave readers foundational material for planning the year ahead. Typically, this process is scheduled annually at the same time each year. Use the material from previous years as a benchmark for future planning. This is not a win/lose concept, but simply a learning process. How well did you do last year in meeting your goals? What happened to your program and your ministry because of the goals? Were you able to accomplish more because you were intentional with planning what you wanted to see?Taking an opportunity during May gives you time to evaluate mid-year if you plan from January for the next 12-months. If you plan from Fall to Fall, then this is basically a year end evaluation. If you plan September to May and then execute a different plan for the Summer months, then May is the dividing point for these plans.
Therefore, May is a critical time to look over your scorecard. Evaluate often, then you can correct things before it's too late. Keep your notes, learn from the past and employ new ideas for the next period ahead.
Here's a template for evaluating a program or event:
Evaluation
How's the Productivity of Your Team?
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be
and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you use the team evaluation process described in the Foundations section above, then more will happen outside of the evaluation itself. What happens within the team and with relationships is the main success! Ministry is about relationships. Ministry happens with relationships. Relationships create opportunities for ministry.
If the programs and end results are the only focus for ministry, then there is little, if any, building of relationships. Take the time to work on relationships. You will find that having solid relationship makes ministry more effective, but also more enjoyable as well! Leaders not only lead transformations of organizations, but more important, transformations of people's lives - especially in ministry. In ministry we lead transformations. We empower and encourage the Spiritual Journey of those we lead.
This makes group interaction and teambuilding a high priority and a necessity for accomplishing effective ministry. Not only does the music minister need to build musical ensembles, but a community of teams as well.
Focus on relationships. Equip, train and empower members in ministry. Learn to delegate. Learn people and be acquainted with their skills and preferences. Success in leading teams does not come without effort and without learning how to build community. Building community is a similar concept to building ensembles. Musical groups can perform the music, but reaching the place we call "Ensemble" is truly a success.
Strive to build a community of faith that is truly a community that works together.
SYSTEMS
How's Your Calendar Look?
Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence.
Ongoing, continuous, non-stop personal development
literally assures you that there is no limit to what you can
accomplish. Brian Tracy
If you don't have time to do your work, then you are not effectively managing processes.
Review "Systems" in the January MME. Learn and review effective processes to be able to have time to devote to the most important things in life. Develop systems to deal with high priorities first, then low priorities.
Steven Covey uses a matrix to describe important and urgent factors.It looks something like this:
| Urgent: Not Important |
Not Urgent: Not Important |
| Urgent: Important |
Not Urgent: Important |
If you deal with things that are not important (but have to be done) when they are not urgent, then you can choose the time to deal with them without taking time from something important. If you procrastinate, then the item you labeled "Not Important" is taking important time from something else that is really important. It's the tyranny of the urgent! Do not spend your day putting out fires and dealing with less important things using valuable time! You are in charge, if you plan effectively. Planning means saying "No" to things that do not belong in your calendar - no matter who tries to give them to you - you have control!Check out Hugh's article Taking Command of Time: Getting Things Done for more details on these ideas. Leaders Transform: Products
Develop and maintain healthy systems for success. Be a student of process and develop a skill set that will not only make you more productive, but give you time to enjoy the successes you create. Enjoy your success today!
BALANCE
How's Your Daily Routine?
We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining
equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.
Francis J. Braceland
Can you say that you have effectively used every day? Can you say that you have planned correctly for success every day? Can you say that you have been able to work you plan without interruption?
Well, I doubt that you can honestly answer that you were successful in all of the categories above. Learn from your mistakes and plan accordingly. Plan tomorrow today and review the week on Friday.
Define the major accomplishments you wish to complete each day. Plan the priorities of every activity and schedule the highest priority first with the other following in sequence of priority. Review each day at the end of the day and set the priorities for the next day.
Successful scheduling will enable you to plan social, recreational and family time. Once you let those items slip off of your calendar, you have lost a part of life's joys.
Be serious about planning you day. Review and put a code by each activity along with a score related to the time devoted to the activity. (Planning = "P"; Team = "T"; Study = "S"; Worship = "W"; and so forth). Divide the hours into tenths and use 1.1 for one hour and 6 minutes. Add up each letter's scores and you will find where you spend most of your time. You might consider adding a trouble category such as Wasted Time ("W") to see where your problems are.
Look over the list and apply the changes from what you have learned.
Every day is important to your life. Treat every day as the last opportunity you will have and you will create an urgency to create and maintain balance in your life. Balance for work - family - worship - fun!
It's worth the effort!
Enjoy Hugh Ballou's new book - Transforming Power
Transforming Power: Stories from Transformational Leaders to Inspire and Encourage will be available in bookstores around the country by the end of May. Contributing authors include the publisher of Creator Magazine, Vern Sanders.
Go to: http://transforming-power.com to read about the collection of inspiring stories from transformational leaders around the world.
CONCLUSION
Arrive at your place of comfort utilizing the best of what you can learn from others. Build your foundation, maintain your relationships, utilize effective systems and keep a healthy balance in your life. Begin today. There's not an arrival point. It's simple a journey.
Grace and Peace to you in your duty and delight as a Christian leader this year.
Hugh Ballou
©2008 Creator Magazine All Rights Reserved