Tag: vision

How Climbing Higher Brings Leadership Clarity

On By johneltonpletcherLeave a comment

Are you feeling foggy, stuck in the daily quagmire of down-in-the-weeds decisions as a leader?

In Uncharted Leadership, Angie Ward explains the key behaviors of adaptive leaders. First on the list, she urges:

Get on the balcony. It can be easy for leaders to lose sight of the big picture because we have gotten caught up in the action on the ground. But adaptive leadership requires a mix of action and reflection, much like the difference between being part of a dance versus watching the patterns on the dance floor from a higher perch. An effective adaptive leader will be able to move back and forth between views.

My own low-view frustration

Mid-January of this year, I had an especially bustling, frazzling week. Multiple meetings carried thick content and heavy conversations. I felt stuck. Very few interactions proved enlightening, easy, or carefree. I had one of those weeks when every relational interaction and task proved to feel more than a bit puzzling. Each day produced more questions, conundrums, and unsettled decisions.

It probably should not have surprised me. Over the years, I’ve sensed my perspective often gets fuzzier, more blurry right before the view sharpens. At the very start of the year, I was moved to pursue Jesus-like wisdom for the year’s challenges and directions. So, I prayed as I pondered:

  • How should our team best collaborate for the year’s key endeavors?
  • What should be our path for vision fulfillment?
  • How will we assemble a truly thoughtful strategy?
  • When is best to execute next steps?
  • Who do we really need at the table for next pivotal, winning conversations?

Extremely early on a Friday morning, I was headed home from a quick two-day conference in Des Moines. I boarded my 6 a.m. flight to depart. It was a gray, cloudy sky. In many ways, the morning scenery and temps matched my own outlook. Foggy. Puzzling. Challenging to see through and discern the way. I could not help but think how good it would be to get out of deep-freeze Des Moines.

Our draped-in-darkness plane was only half full, so I started out sitting in a sweet aisle seat. To my delight, no one sat in my row. Score! Plenty of leg space and elbow room. Like my other start-of-the-year mornings, I had begun opening moments of my day with fumbling, quick, reflective prayer. “Lord, help me see more clearly.” I had asked God’s Spirit to grant me Christ-like wisdom, power, and fresh anointing to do good (Acts 10:38).

But now a few hours later, as we approached thirty thousand feet, my head was down. I found my heart and mind flooded again with the fogginess of my week’s meetings, dizzying content from the conference, and further personal puzzlement over pressing questions. What should be those next steps? I was sipping a hot coffee I’d purchased before boarding, but I was still feeling very groggy from my 3 a.m. wake-up. My head was hanging.

Then I looked toward the far seat. Glancing through the window, I was drawn to shift over and look out. “Oh wow! What a wondrous new view.” We were now gliding across a carpet of clouds, and a thick line of glowing sun was starting to peak just above them. It was stunning to behold.

And right there, my download of clarity commenced. For the next several minutes, my heart and mind were flooded with fresh, clear, crisp ideas to meet my challenging conundrums. I grabbed my journal and pen. What flowed from pen to page was definitive, stunning, and joyously confidence-building. I gained:

  • Core concepts for upcoming teaching content.
  • Clear focus for developmental endeavors with our leaders.
  • A colorful collage of essential training to offer.
  • Faces and names of great people to include.
  • Even probable times and locations for certain events.

Wisdom from above

Perhaps you call it being in the flow or gaining an epiphany. I can say with certainty, the LORD answered my earlier-morning prayer. My need for fresh wisdom, anointing, and powerful insight was being met with his rich resources. I was so grateful. Those amazing moments calmed my heart, set the stage for the new year, and steadied my pace for multiple meetings, brainstorming conversations, presentations, and think-tank sessions with others in the weeks to come.

In our quest for leadership clarity, I believe this is one sweet outcome of following the Apostle Paul’s injunction: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:1-2). Classic words of wisdom urge us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil” (Prov. 3:5-7).

Three Perspective Prompters

How have you personally made space in the past to climb higher and get fresh perspective?

What leadership issues have you feeling stuck, slogging too low in perspective right now?

What will you do this week to climb higher in your view and seek the Lord’s wisdom?  

See Your Work through Better Lenses

On By johneltonpletcherLeave a comment

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What do you see? Is your vision blurry?

Michelle gets up each morning to teach math at Donegal High School. Plenty of days, it could seem like exponential drudgery. Amid tedious numbers and grading ad nauseam, what might infuse her daily work with real joy and significance?

Andy works on broken-down automobiles every day, rain or shine. His tasks are greasy, grimy, and often knuckle-numbing. He’s a FORD guy at heart, but willingly turns wrenches on anything with wheels. In the past two years, he has curiously discovered fresh purpose and greater sense of personal mission.

Charlie designs and installs high-end video/audio in primarily commercial applications. In recent months, he’s been overheard saying: “We used to have a good business; now we have a seriously GREAT business.” Why such advancement?

Abigail is in her 20’s, a brilliant art student, passionately discovering how her crazy creativity and design flair might actually evoke God’s smile and express Christ’s own passion for recreating and redeeming.

Each of these hard-working leaders has very intentionally engaged in a next-level adventure during the past twelve to twenty-four months. They have embarked on the audacious quest to more fully integrate their faith and calling in Christ with their daily tasks.

They are each seeing and developing life vision with bolder clarity, utilizing some better lenses for discovery.

First, they are developing a bolder perspective that includes a serious theology of work. They’ve started to see God as the first creative Worker and each of us, made in his image, as coworkers, co-rulers and co-leaders over his creation. They are seeing a bigger vision of God’s redemptive plans to reclaim humans and all of creation—including our everyday work—as marvelously instrumental in His redemption story.

Each of these workers is also seeing more clearly with a second lens, a greater commitment to personal integration. Instead of viewing their daily life as split-up, compartmentalized between secular life and sacred life, they are learning to see life as WHOLE, gaining a more holistic integration of faith and work. With the opportunity to love God and neighbor with all they have, every action, decision, and conversation in ones’ workday can be and should be all to the glory of God. They’re finding they can truly BE the church Monday through Saturday, not just on Sundays. It’s WHY Christine was so instrumental in helping one of her clients, Robert, come to a renewed faith in Christ this Christmas season. It was such a joy to see him baptized in early February. Christine was taking her faith to work everyday and impacting Robert, and then bringing him along with other friends to church on Sundays. Robert was responsive to Christ, and Christine stood with him helping him as he publicly declared his faith in Christ at his baptism.

And that’s the third lens. It’s not only a theological lens and an integrated lens, but it’s an intentionally relational, missional lens. For people like Christine, as well as my friends, Kevin, Greg, Chuck, Barb—and others who are passionate about connecting—there is this growing perspective that their workplace is their primary mission field. With such clarity of vision, leaders say, “Yes, I am there each day to glorify God with extraordinarily excellent work, including superb products and services. AND I am there to build life-changing connections that can potentially change people’s eternal destinies.”

Michelle, my friend who teaches math, says this about her own vision now:

“I never realized that my workplace could be my mission field. I always felt that my work had meaning. I just did not realize the potential for mission that was surrounding me every day. Throughout this experience, I felt an amazing shift in my spirit. I started to see that I could be a positive role model for other professionals. I realized that my mood, attitude, and actions could influence others. I now look for ways that I can make a positive contribution to the world through my work—from the simple act of redirecting a negative conversation to discussing the Bible with a colleague. I feel more comfortable sharing my faith and being a positive example for others in my workplace.”

How about your vision at work? What do you see?

Vision—eye