Leadership 2

After the completion of our pastor/church exchange in England, we traveled to London and spent 5 days there. 3 of those days we spent racing around London seeing everything we could. For three of those nights we had the privledge of staying with a family in Sussex, which is about 45 minutes south of London by train. They are relatives of Woodville church members. Russ is an executive with American Express International. They are about to move to New Jersey/New York but have lived in Sussex for 3 years. Russ and I shared some wonderful conversations about leadership. He has been an active lay person in his local church at various times. Russ leads a team at AEI. In London he has basically been team leader for a European division and by virtue of his move to New York is becoming the global leader of that division. He is about 40 years old. Clearly he is a talented leader who they recruited and fast tracked into leadership. They regularly send him to leadership trainings and expose him to continuing education.
Our conversation was so helpful. Let me summarize some main points of it for you here.
1- Good Leaders are nimble. Russ' experience as a team leader has taught him that different members of the team need different things from you as a leader. One single leadership style is problematic. Many of us tend to fall into a natural style, for example; some are hands-on, some are hands-off. Some leaders involve themselves in the nitty gritty details and some are total big picture leaders. Some coach and stay close to their team members and some give them distance. Russ' counsel was to know your team members and what they need from you as a leader for success to happen. Some will need hands-on and others need some distance in order to work well. Good leaders discern the differences between their team members and are able to lead team members according to what they uniquely need to be successful.
2- Good leaders communicate expectations clearly. AEI has a master plan and an ongoing evaluation process in place. In the church, things often change dramatically when a pastoral change occurs. Some of this is to be expected but Russ said that evaluation of staff should be consistent throughout changes. Example: Staff at any church should expect to have a mid-year and end of year evaluation. In between these evaluations should be ongoing check-ins with staff.
3- Good leaders establish openness early and model it consistently. Regular conversations and the formal evaluations are virtually the same every time in terms of the questions asked. Ie. "What went well? What needs to be improved? Did you meet goals? Are you (team member) getting what you need from me (team leader)? Here's what I (leader) need from you (team member)."

*Thanks to Russ for this great conversation